NewTimes Survey"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall...

NewTimes Survey
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free"
John 8:31

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March 2003

The following is the lead article for this month.

Israel's War
By Jeremy Lee

Whether or not we are at war by the time you read this, the delays that have postponed invasion week by week, month by month for almost a year have allowed a critical examination of claims, counter-claims, evidence and motives that would normally never occur in a war situation. Articles are appearing in the mainstream media that a year ago would have seemed impossible.

Commenting on Prime Minister Howard's address to the nation in mid-March, the Catholic Bishop of Canberra-Goulburn, Bishop Power was reported (The Australian, 14/3) as saying:
"I believe that the US and our Prime Minister would be far more constructive if they took an even-handed approach to Israel … I have no doubt they favour Israel too strongly. If there was a more balanced approach it would take a lot of the angst out of the Muslim world …"
Once, such a comment was so rare as to seem inadvertent. But now there is so much evidence supporting that view it is almost mainstream.

Peter Hartcher, writing in The Australian Financial Review (14/3/03) under the heading WHISPERS ARE GROWING LOUDER, told of what happened to a Member of the US House of Representatives when he dared mention the unmentionable:
"When a member of the US Congress admitted that he had publicly blamed America's Jews for leading the US to war in Iraq, three things happened. First, he apologized. Second, he was disowned by his party, the Democrats, and broadly denounced. Third, it brought to the surface a debate that has been seething for months just below the horizon of public visibility Israel's wars? "

The key question (Hartcher continued) in this debate: Is the US going to war in Iraq not because it is in America's best interests, but because it is in the best interests of Israel?

And is the US fighting Israel's wars for it under the cover of the so-called war on terror? These are questions that are much whispered in Washington, but seldom addressed openly.

A US official in Washington who works on the Bush Administration's Iraq policy says that, even within the government itself, 'it's the elephant in the room - we all know it's there, but nobody mentions it.' A lobbyist in Washington uses the same expression: "It's the elephant in the room, and no-one wants to mention it because you'll be accused of being anti-Semitic' ….."

Last September the veteran journalist Alan Ramsay - another of whose articles we carry in this issue - commented in The Sydney Morning Herald (11/9):
" … For 35 years, ever since Israel first ignored (and went on ignoring) UN resolution 242 in 1967 to withdraw from all occupied territories, and later UN resolution 338 in 1973, Washington at no stage has sought to insist the UN "enforce" such resolutions nor to threaten Israel with military reprisal. Rather, Israel, with US connivance, has for decades ignored with impunity literally volumes of UN resolutions against its behaviour against Palestinian rights. Nor has American hysteria over Iraq research into/acquisition of weapons of mass destruction ever been visited upon the unarguable nuclear weapons capabilities of Israel, Pakistan, India, South Africa or China. Such obvious and irrefutable double standards never seem to trouble either the conscience or the self-righteous rhetoric of our various prime ministers and their seductive White House callers …."

Ignored UN resolutions

In this issue we also carry a list of UN resolutions concerning the Israel/Palestine impasse, none of which the United States, or Australia for that matter, would dream of enforcing. Indeed, the US has used its veto many times on behalf of Israel; which makes its self-righteous indignation over France's threat to veto a UN resolution on war against Iraq appear exactly what it is - hypocrisy.

Is it 'anti-Semitic' to point to the links between the Ariel Sharon government in Israel and
the pro-war lobby in the White House?

The link has been referred to by recent programmes on both the ABC and SBS, as well as a growing number of commentators and academics round the world. It is made more obvious by the number of pro-Israeli Zionists acting as spokesmen for US and European nations. Mr Ari Fleisher spends more time expressing President Bush's views than the President himself. His war cabinet, containing such Israeli affiliates as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith are now well known.

The Sharon position is nothing if not well represented. In Britain, foreign minister Jack Straw appears pressing the war against Iraq as often as Tony Blair. And, of course, there are courageous Jews who increasingly oppose the pro-war position, and speak out courageously. One thinks of the 590 'refuseniks' in Israel itself, prepared to suffer jail terms rather than serve in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. One thinks of speakers and writers such as Noam Chomsky, Israel Shamir, the late Israel Shahak and David Lilienthal, themselves often targeted by those who use the accusation of 'anti-Semitism' as a weapon to crush discussion.

Powerful lobbies

But the Jewish lobbies in America and Australia are powerful enough to quell any tendency towards even-handedness in the ranks of party politicians. And it is the same lobbies that attempt to silence the whispers that abound. But, as Hartcher said in his article, "THE WHISPERS ARE GETTING LOUDER".

It may be that war and its aftermath will turn the whispers into roars. In this issue we carry an article by former journalist and one-time Anti-Defamation League activist Jack Henshaw, on the long-term strategy for the Middle East, written 34 years ago. Some things have obviously changed since it was written, obviously the end of the Cold War and the demise of Soviet Communism. But the strategy remains the same. The article is prescient, and hugely relevant as we hover on the edge of catastrophe in the Middle East.

As C.H. Douglas so accurately pointed out, "Modern wars are fought between A and B for the benefit of C".