Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land

U.S. Media & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Sut Jhally & Bathsheba Ratzkoff / U.S. / 2003 / 80 min

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.

Through the voices of scholars, media critics, peace activists, religious figures, and Middle East experts, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land carefully analyzes and explains how--through the use of language, framing and context--the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied terrorities appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one. The documentary also explores the ways that U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel's PR campaign. At its core, the documentary raises questions about the ethics and role of journalism, and the relationship between media and politics.

Interviewees include Seth Ackerman, Mjr. Stav Adivi, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Hanan Ashrawi, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Neve Gordon, Toufic Haddad, Sam Husseini, Hussein Ibish, Robert Jensen, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Karen Pfeifer, Alisa Solomon, and Gila Svirsky.

New York Zionists celebrate the deaths of Gazan children

This film perhaps makes more sense in light of the US political elite’s response to the bloodshed in Gaza.

You just knew in advance of the vote on US Resolution 1860 on the 8th January that it was going to be shit on by the US. Of the 101 Israel-related irresolutions voted on at the UN, 65 have been critical of Israel; none of the Palestinians. Israel has observed none of them. The US has scuppered them all. What is instructive is that the US so blatantly looked for the tiniest breach of UN resolution to launch a war on Iraq.

Ironically, Condoleza Rice who assisted in the preparation of the aforementioned resolution was eventually instructed not to vote fort it. Seemingly, according to the boastings of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, when he heard the US intended to vote on the resolution he demanded to get Bush on the phone, and refused to back down after being told that Bush was at that moment giving a lecture in Philadelphia. In double-quick time, Bush interrupted his lecture to answer Olmert's call, so Olmert has claimed, and to be told which way the US was expected to vote at the UN.

Now cast your mind back a few years. On the morning of September 11th, President Bush is interrupted while reading a story to school children and told the World Trade Center had been hit------and he went on reading. Hit for the second time by a plane, that is – having been informed before he entered the class that one plane had already hit the twin towers. The US was so clearly under attack by hijacked planes and Bush sat for seven more minutes, the book My Pet Goat, being far more interesting.

Now, here we have Olmert calling Bush and demanding he comes to the phone and Bush responds in an instant? Jeez, who is cracking the whip in the USA?

Israeli politicians have been boasting for years about the respect they command in the US and their power and influence there. Consider the line form my last posting: “A member of the Israeli war party once commented that New York has only two Senators representing it in Congress.

LIkerwise, you needed no crystal ball to know that The House of Representatives would vote in support of Israel. Indeed, they voted 390-5 for a resolution that backed Israel in its Gaza onslaught, affirming "Israel's right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza." A day earlier, the Senate overwhelmingly supported Israel and its right to defend itself against terrorism.

The US Senate (8th January) voted 100% on a non-binding resolution promoted by the influential Israeli lobby AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee), and effectively endorsing Israel’s war on Gaza. The resolution, entitled “A resolution expressing solidarity with Israel in Israel’s defense against terrorism in the Gaza Strip” recognizes “the right of Israel to defend itself against attacks from Gaza” and reaffirms “the United States’ strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas”.

Is it any wonder New York Zionists can thus celebrate on the streets? Is it any wonder they feel so unashamed of their ostentatious shows of jingoism, when Israeli state violence is so clear;ly endorsed by Congress and indeed the president?

Oh, here’s Bush again, having been told that a second plane had hit the twin towers:

Uncensored Video Report From a Doctor In a Gaza Hospital

Dr . Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor in Gaza, tells Sky News that the number of civilians injured and killed in Gaza proves that Israel is deliberately attacking the population.

Transcript:

“Just a little bit more than an hour ago the Israelis bombed the central fruit market in Gaza city and we had a mass influx of about 50 injured and between 10 and 15 killed. At the same time they bombed an apartment house with children playing on the roof and we had a lot of children also. So this is really like speaking from the dumps of Inferno, it’s like hell here now, and it’s been bombing all night. Until now close to 500 people have been killed and the number of casualties is getting to 2,500 of which 50% are children and women.

Are your hospitals reaching capacity? Can you deal with these people?

We have been doing surgery around the clock. I have just talked with one of my colleagues in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit), he's not been sleeping for three days and the hospital is completely overcrowded, we are running 6 - 7 Ors (Operating Rooms) and there are injuries you just don’t want to see in this world… children coming in with open abdomens and legs cut off. We just had a child that we had to amputate both legs and an arm. And their only crime is being civilians and Palestinians living in Gaza. The relief now is not more doctors and more drugs; the relief now is to stop the bombing immediately, this cannot go on, it’s a disaster.

You’ve talked about the civilians, the women, the children, the men who aren’t involved in this, but are you also getting casualties that are Hamas fighters?

To be honest, we came on New Year’s Eve in the morning. I’ve seen one military person among the tenths… I mean hundreds that we’ve seen and treated, so anybody who tries to portrait this as a totally clean war against another army are lying. This is an all-out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza, and we can prove that with numbers. And you have to remember that the average age of the Gaza inhabitants is 17 years, it’s a very young population, and 80% are living below the poverty limit of the UN. So this is a poor and very young people, and they are able to escape absolutely nowhere, because they cannot flee like other populations can in war time, because they are fenced in and they are in a cage, so they’re bombing 1.5 million people in a cage… young people, poor people and, you know, you cannot separate between the civilians and the fighters in such a situation.”

Gaza - biggest prison break ever

After six days of siege, you couldn’t help smiling, if not cheering, seeing, TV footage of Hamas knocking a ginormous hole in the wall that has cut Palestinians in Gaza off from the outside world, with 350,000 Palestinians going on a spending spree for fuel, medicine, and other supplies that have been cut off during the blockade.

As Al Jazeera points out below – “if Gaza is the biggest prison on the planet, this is the biggest jail break”.

In the US, it is a crime punishable by imprisonment, asset seizure, and law enforcement harassment (all without due process) to express "support" of Hamas in any way. Thus, the CNN anchor shows no interest in the justice of the situation and only seems concerned with the structural integrity of the wall itself. Instead of showing the Palestinians as human beings, they are filmed from a distance to obscure their humanity and the desperation of their plight. Note, too, the CNN reporter telling how he witnessed people coming back with “cartons and cartons of cigarettes,” declining to mention the food, fuel, medical supplies and other necessaries of life that Palestinians have also been bringing back into Gaza in bulk. I’m just surprised he never said he saw people staggering back intoxicated.

Compare if you will the coverage of the incident by Al Jazeera and CNN (also below)

I’m not gonna level the usual critical socialist cross hairs at this event and conclude “only under socialism…”, not least because Palestinians are too preoccupied with the daunting daily struggle for survival to organise and campaign for world socialism. For the moment, Palestinians, betrayed by their own "moderate" political leadership and, indeed, the entire international community in their struggle for ‘freedom’, have broken a siege imposed on them by an Arab government in collusion with Israel. To me it shows that people do have power and can prevail even in the face of overwhelming adversity. Maybe one day workers everywhere will wake up and realise that walls and frontiers and borders can be pulled down.

Meanwhile, Israel seems to continue to suffer from historical amnesia. One of the Nazi's favourite policies was to wall Jews in ghettos, depriving them of food, livelihood and access to medical care in an attempt to degrade them. The Israeli war machine uses just the same tactic in Palestine.

Writing for Counterpunch. Stanley Heller observes. “In 2000 the British firm British Gas Group (BG) discovered proven natural gas reserves of at least 1.3 trillion cubic meters beneath Gazan territorial waters worth an estimated $4 billion. A deal was being worked out with the a Palestinian investors group, but was put on hold due to the Western embargo of the Palestine Authority after the Hamas, victory. There has been some speculation that Israel has been so pitiless against Gaza not because of the relatively small loss of life caused by Palestinian missiles from Gaza, but because it wants Gazan gas to fuel the Israeli economy.”

Friends Reunited

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia recognizes the principle of freedom upon which the United States was founded, including the freedoms enshrined under the first amendment of the United States Constitution. (Joint Statement by President Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, 25th April, 2005)

I wrote yesterday about Bush and his “awfully difficult decisions.” Today we learn of another Bush decision which is more imbecilic than ”awfully difficult.” In his two day trip to Saudi Arabia, a country already armed to the teeth courtesy of Britain, Bush announced plans to sell Saudi Arabia £120 million of 'sophisticated' missiles as part of a $20 billion arms package for the region.

He certainly makes some contradictory decisions. On the one hand he announces his intended Middle East trip is all about making peace and assuring ‘democratisation’ of the region and then we learn of this £20 billion arms deal. Nice one, George. If you want peace, prepare for war. And with democratisation high on his agenda, just who else does he go kowtowing to? None other than the Saudi regime, some of the worst human rights abusers in the world (see a previous piece on this blog). Did he slate King Abdullah for his outlawing of trade unions, the ban on political dissent, demonstrations, the lack of democracy, the oppression of women? Not on your nelly!

As Michael Hirsh, writing for Newsweek, observes :

“What could not be found on Bush's schedule was one Saudi dissident or political activist, much less a democrat. Just a day after his speech in Abu Dhabi—and three years after declaring in his second inaugural address that "it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture"—the president made time for a tour of Saudi Arabia's National History Museum but not for a meeting with Fouad al-Farhan. Farhan, Saudi Arabia's most popular blogger, was arrested in Jidda last month for daring to defend a group of Saudis who wanted to form a civil rights group.”

Creating an alliance against Iran aside, high on Bush’s agenda is the oil crisis back home. At the moment oil stands at almost $100 dollars a gallon, a four fold increase in recent years, and Bush is desperate the price comes down – well, there’s an election coming up and oil prices might reflect badly on the repukes -and thus he urges the Saudis to increase production:

"I would hope, as OPEC considers different production levels, that they understand that if . . . one of their biggest consumers' economy suffers, it will mean less purchases, less oil and gas sold."

In a round table talk with reporters, whilst in Saudi Arabia, Bush was asked about the alleged incident in the Strait of Hormuz. His reply was reminiscent of that he gave when asked about Osama bin Laden and replied that he didn’t give a shit, that he wasn’t a priority any more:

"It's not going to matter to me one way or the other if they hit our ships, and the Iranian government has got to understand that"

And days after Bush’s historic visit to Israel, to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace we find violence erupting on two fronts, with an Israeli air strike killing 17 Palestinians in Gaza and a car bomb destroying a U.S. Embassy vehicle and killing four in Beirut.

Interestingly, at a press conference in Israel this week, a spokesman for the Israeli government said that the missiles they were getting from the US were smarter than those being sold to Saudi Arabia.

I wonder if King Abdullah will take Bush aside and say: “Yo, Bush, about these weapons you’re giving Israel. How come they’re better than the crap you’re selling us?”

And I can just see Bush answering: “And what’s all this about you sucking up to Iran? Here’s me trying to form an alliance against Iran these past two years and there’s you at the Gulf Council of Cooperation walking hand in hand with Ahmadinejad! Let’s just say I’m hedging my bets.”

Bush scares me shitless

"I can predict that the historians will say that George W. Bush recognized the threats of the 21st century, clearly defined them, and had great faith in the capacity of liberty to transform hopelessness to hope, and laid the foundation for peace by making some awfully difficult decisions." George W. Bush, January 4th, 2008 Interview for Israel's Channel 2

I must confess to being a mite fearful of late, fearful for my class, my fellows throughout the world and for whom I hold no ill feelings. It’s like those crazy days when Reagan rattled his nuclear sabre at the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when I was first married and had a baby daughter; in the days when it was advised that the best way to survive a nuclear blast was to remove the doors from your house and lay them at a 60 degree angle to a wall, piling pillow cases filled with soil from your garden against the outside, thus creating your very own shelter – the days when I lived on the top floor a fucking block of flats, for Christ’s sake!

And It’s people like George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condi Rice and John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the UN and the rest of those war mongering bastards that cause this fear. I cursed their kind a quarter of a century ago and I curse them still.

Despite the claim from the IAEA that there is “no evidence of a nuclear weapons program or any diversion of nuclear material [in Iran],” the masters of war are hell bent on making the case that another Middle East conflict will be necessary. It matters not that an IAEA inspection team have meticulously searched Iran’s nuclear sites, the case is being made in Washington, and promoted by the US media, that Iran is an aspiring nuclear power with its cross-hair sites trained on the US.

Nobody in Washington seems concerned that the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate reported in November of last year: “Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons programme as of mid-2007…We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear programme…Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons programme suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005”.

Even as the NIE was doing the rounds in Washington, Bush’s language was belligerent in the extreme, with talk about “world war three”,

Oh, I’m fearful alright, fearful because I can honestly see these blood thirsty maniacs in Washington ordering “pre-emptive” nuclear strikes on Iran. No way will they make an attempt to invade the country and fight battles the old fashioned way, hand to hand.

Cheney recently ranted on about “meaningful consequences” if Iran forged ahead with its legitimate nuclear enrichment programme. Bush has reiterated those very words in the last few days. Rice, ever keen to raise the stakes, says: “We face no greater challenge from a single country than Iran… This is a country that seems determined to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community that is determined that they should not get one.”

And despite the fact that there is as much evidence for Tehran’s desire to build atomic bombs as there was for Saddam to lob a missile at the west within 45 minutes, Bush has been in the Middle East for the past week stirring up the shit, trying to build an Arab alliance that will sanction the bombing of Iran. Israel is already as keen as hell for war.

Speaking yesterday in the UAE, Bush said that Iran is threatening the security of the world, and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to confront the danger "before it's too late." Bush said: "Iran is today the world's leading state sponsor of terror. It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home. It seeks to intimidate its neighbours with ballistic missiles and bellicose rhetoric. It defies the United Nations and destabilises the region by refusing to be open and transparent about its nuclear programmes and ambitions."

Any critic of US foreign policy could easily have levelled those same words at the US and backed them up with sound evidence. I know could easily.

Bush continued: "Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments with our friends in the Gulf, and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late."

Earlier that day in Bahrain, U.S. Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which patrols the Gulf, informed Bush that he took it "deadly seriously" when an Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged at and threatened to blow up a three U.S. Navy vessels near Iranian waters.

This timely, though bullshit, incident happened on the eve of Bush’s visit to the Middle East, with the Pentagon claiming Iranian patrol boats had threatened to attack and blow up US naval vessels in the Straits of Hormuz, The Pentagon even released a recorded radio message - “I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes.” - and it was reported the ship’s commander was a split second from opening fire on the Iranian patrol boats. However, new information over the past three days has emerged that suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no US commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats.

Serious damage to the US version of the incident was the video released by Iran last Thursday showing an Iranian naval officer on a small boat hailing one of three ships. The Iranian commander is heard to say, "Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian navy patrol boat." He then asks for the "side numbers" of the US warships. A voice with a US accent replies, "This is coalition warship 73. I am operating in international waters." It is now apparent that the Iranian message released by the US was a fake. What, the US war machine fake intelligence? Never!

I think that few, if any, politicos, believed the official version when they heard about it, seeing this as another “false flag”, the type that has been hoisted by the US in the past and in order to justify military aggression. And as if Iranian seamen would be so stupid as to attack a US naval vessel spark such bloodbath in their own country! I myself forecast such a “false flag”! incident and I sincerely believe there will be another.

Roger Bybee, at Znet writes:

“The US hostility toward Iran remains so intense that when European nations and the US developed a package of incentives to steer Iran off its nuclear course, the US "insisted that all language addressing Iran's security interests be removed," as Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, former National Security Council staffers, wrote in a New York Times op-ed (12/11/07)

“…The Bush Administration has repeatedly proven itself not only impervious to, but utterly dis-interested in hard evidence like the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. The Bush Administration now sees itself as bolstered by the illusory success with the "surge" in Iraq, although only 38% of Americans believe it has improved conditions, according to a CBS/New York Times poll conducted Dec. 5-9.

“But based upon the continuing ferocity of post-NIE statements by Bush and Gates, don't be too surprised by a "faith-based" US strike against Iran before George W. Bush leaves office. “

Over on Information Clearing House, William H White sees another dimension to a war with Iran – namely the pretext to enforce a state of national emergency in the US, and the link highlighted below is well worth following up:

“Assuming a decision to attack Iran, given weather and other logistical concerns, combined with attention to the domestic political schedule, the timing would likely be within two to three months or early fall.

“Should this occur, the potential for destabilizing domestic and foreign consequences increase substantially, approaching near certainty. This nominally unattractive and reckless gamble would fit Bush's character as well as the pattern of his governance. Also, this is his last shot, with a chance to create conditions in the Mideast that lock in future policy options, as he has in domestic policy with a massive deficit. Given the consequences, he would attack not only his foreign enemies, but at the same time strike at his domestic foes under the cover of the resulting emergency.

”The later the attack on Iran comes, or a significant response from Iran, the more likely it would be combined with or be followed by a formal declaration of a national emergency, possibly affecting US national elections. The result would be a de facto coup d'état.

”Finally, to further assess its likelihood, ask the question: who is to stop him? Not Congress; not the courts; not pubic opinion nor the press. The only chance, however slight, of stopping Bush would rest almost entirely with the British government, if Parliament became aware of the plan prior to the commencement of hostilities.”

I can’t help but feel there is a lot more than comes across in that opening quotation from Bush –“awfully difficult decisions”!

At the end of the day, Bush, like me and hopefully most readers of this bog is a class warrior, the big, big difference being that we fight on different sides of the class divide and with diametrically opposed interests. Whereas the class conscious are all for peace and harmony and ending waste and want and war, Bush and the clique he represents see profits everywhere, are after ‘full spectrum dominance’ and the freedom to go about their business without criticism from any corner. For workers everywhere, we will see any attack on Iran as an out and out atrocity, a catastrophe for humanity of mammoth proportions; for Bush it will be simply another “awfully difficult decision.”

George W Bush - Middle East peace advocate or just plain gangster for capitalism?

Tomorrow sees Dubya Bush jet off for Israel – perhaps the only country where his visit would not result in angry demonstrations – and ostensibly in an attempt to shore up perhaps the most catastrophic foreign policy legacy of any US president and a popularity at home that has saw republican supporters leave in droves. It’s perhaps no accident that his 9 day departure for the Middle East coincides with the important early stages of the US election campaign – the imbecile is quite simply perceived to be one huge and embarrassing liability at the moment and someone no repuke candidate wants to be seen acquainted with.

Few if any have any confidence in Bush personally pulling off anything remotely resembling an agreement between Israel and Palestine, this being a pledge he made at the Annapolis conference back in November. Said Bush:

"I am looking forward to sitting down with friends and allies to assure them of my commitment to the Middle Eastern peace and to work with them to make sure they are committed to Middle East peace."

Not only are Bush’s plans seriously hampered because of the split in the Palestinian leadership and which has left Hamas in power in Gaza and the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority, lead by the President Mahmoud Abbas, more importantly he underestimates the level of support in Palestine for Iran, a country he quite obviously intends to attack.

As Uzi Mahnaimi wrote in yesterday’s Times: “Israel security officials are to brief President George W Bush on their latest intelligence about Iran’s nuclear programme - and how it could be destroyed - when he begins a tour of the Middle East in Jerusalem this week.”

Way to go, George. What better way to promote Middle East peace than to start another war there! Sheesh, why didn’t I think of that?

Muhnaimi continues: “Ehud Barak, the defence minister, is said to want to convince him [Bush] that an Israeli military strike against uranium enrichment facilities in Iran would be feasible if diplomatic efforts failed to halt nuclear operations. A range of military options has been prepared….While security officials are reluctant to reveal all their intelligence, fearing that leaks could jeopardise the element of surprise in any future attack, they are expected to present the president with fresh details of Iran’s enrichment of uranium - which could be used for civil or military purposes - and the development of missiles that could carry nuclear warheads.”

In response to this fresh “intelligence”, Bush said: “I read the intelligence report carefully. In essence, what the report said was that Iran had a secret plan to develop nuclear weapons. I’m saying that a state which adopted a non transparent policy and had a secret plan for developing nuclear weapons could easily develop an alternative plan for the same purpose. So to conclude from the intelligence report that there is no Iranian plan to develop nuclear weapons will be only a partial truth.”

Maybe Bush should start reading reports by his own people, such as last November’s CIA National Intelligence Estimate, which states:

“We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.

“We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.

“Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”

The report can be downloaded in pdf format here.

And, back to Bush again: “My message to all countries in the region is that we are able to solve the problem in a diplomatic way, but all options are on the table.”

In a “diplomatic way”, George? Like when Saddam bent over backwards for a diplomatic way out of the invasion of Iraq, bending over backwards to comply with UN Resolutions and to prove he had no WMD?

Anxious for some “false flag” incident to revive support for an assault on Iran after the NIE upset plans for an attack on the country, the Pentagon coincidentally kicked off at the weekend over the “hostile intent” of Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats after an alleged incident in the Strait of Hormuz this weekend.

“In what U.S. officials called a serious provocation, Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats harassed and provoked three U.S. Navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, threatening to explode the American vessels, reports the Associated Press.

“U.S. forces were on the verge of firing on the Iranian boats in the early Sunday incident, when the boats turned and moved away, a Pentagon official said. ‘It is the most serious provocation of this sort that we've seen yet,’ said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.”

Click here for the MSNBC TV report of the incident.

Writing on the Counterpunch website today, Gideon Levy says:

“A man is coming to Israel this week who has left a trail of killing, destruction and global hatred. Never has the U.S. been so despised as during Bush's seven years in office, which abruptly brought his county back to the not-so-merry days of Vietnam.

“He led the U.S., and the free world in its wake, into two brutal and completely futile wars of conquest, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. He sowed mass killing in these two wretched countries under the false pretext of a battle against global terror.

“In Western Europe, in South America, in Asia, in all parts of the Arab and Muslim world and in parts of Africa, the sole global superpower has come to be viewed as a hostile, arrogant and ostracized entity…. The Middle East has only moved further away from peace during Bush's tenure.”

Make no mistake about it, the last thing on Bush’s mind during his trip to the Middle East is peace. He is the ambassador of powerful oil interests, not only concerned about US oil security but, more importantly, anxious which aspiring superpowers will have future access to world oil supplies and thus emerge as a serious contender on the world capitalist stage. Expect war to be high on the real Bush agenda over the enxt nine days!

Syria - on the wrong side of history

"What I said to him [President Bashar al-Assad of Syria] very clearly is that there are things we believe he should do if he wants a better relationship with the United States, if he wants to play a helpful role in solving the crisis in the region. So if President Assad chooses not to respond, if he chooses to dissemble, if he chooses to find excuses, then he will find that he is on the wrong side of history." (US Sec. of State Colin Powell, following a visit to Syria, May 11)

"I made it very clear to the prime minister [Ariel Sharon], like I have consistently done, that Israel's got a right to defend herself, that Israel must not feel constrained in defending the homeland." (President Bush, summarizing his conversation with Ariel Sharon after the Israeli attack on Syria, Oct. 6)

"I am happy to see the message was delivered to Syria by the Israeli air force, and I hope it is the first of many such messages." (Defence Policy Board member Richard Perle, in Israel, Oct. 14)

"We tolerate nuclear weapons in Israel for the same reason we tolerate them in Britain and France. We don't regard Israel as a threat." (A high-ranking administration official, identified by the Guardian as leading US neocon John Bolton)

On October 5th, Five months after Powell laid down the law to Bashar al-Assad, two weeks after Bolton's report and, as the press were reporting that Congress would adopt sanctions against Syria, Israel bombed what it claimed to be a "terrorist training camp" in Syria, ten miles north of Damascus.

Damascus insisted the camp had been discarded seven years ago and seemingly there were no casualties. Syrians, however, have expressed bewilderment at the attack, ostensibly in retaliation for a suicide bomb attack in Haifa which killed 21 people, and for which the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad had since claimed their part in.

Syria, of course, had to be attacked. It was after all a Jenin woman lawyer (Jenin is in Israel, incidentally), who most likely had never travelled to Damascus in her life, who blew up herself and 21 innocent Israelis – a suicide bombing which needed no terrorist camp training. Israel, though, is simply following in the footsteps of the US. Was not Afghanistan the first to bear the brunt of the US retaliation for 9-11, in spite of the fact that 15 of the 16 terrorists known to have hijacked the planes that day were from Saudi Arabia? And was not every attempt made to link Iraq with al-Qaeda, actually hours after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, despite the fact that Iraq is a secular state and al-Qaeda a militant Islamic fundamentalist organisation.

Typical of the vociferous US neocons is Richard Perle. His quote, above, is from his talk to reporters and delegates at the inaugural "Jerusalem Summit,” on October 21, a gathering of Israelis and mainly American Jewish and Christian analysts and politicians opposed to conceding a Palestinian state. Perle, who was honoured at the event, praised Israel highly for the air attack on the alleged terrorist camp in response to the suicide bombing in Haifa. The Jerusalem Post the following day quoted Perle as saying: "President Bush transformed the American approach to terrorism on September 11th, 2001, when he said he will not distinguish between terrorists and the states who harbour them. I was happy to see that Israel has now taken a similar step in responding to acts of terror that originate in Lebanese territory by going to the rulers of Lebanon in Damascus."

Perle’s sentiments at once reveal, of course, that the Israeli Attack upon Syria could not have happened without the support, or the expected support, of the USA and which came in the shape of the ‘Syria Accountability Act’, and which was finally passed, 398-5, by the House of Representatives on October 16.

The Voice of America reported House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as saying: “We will send a very clear message to President Assad and his fellow travellers along the 'axis of evil.' The United States will not tolerate terrorism, its perpetrators or its sponsors, and our warnings are not to be ignored."

In the weeks prior to the vote, speaker after speaker warned that Syria is the new threat previously posed by Iraq: that it has weapons of mass destruction, some with biological warheads, that it took delivery of Saddam’s elusive arsenal just before the invasion of Iraq in March.

Not so long ago Richard Perle and fellow neo-conservatives, stated in a report exclusively prepared for Benjamin Netanyahu and other radical Israeli Zionists (Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000) that "Israel can shape its strategic environment... by weakening, containing and even rolling back Syria... Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which America can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran." In other words, Sharon's script was written by those US neocons more interested in a Greater Israel than the blowback such Israeli military actions against its neighbours would create for the US at home and aboard..

What is apparent is that there are two layers to the Bush administration – the oil baron faction, made up of the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, and a second layer of neoconservatives (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton etc) who unite a traditionalist domestic agenda with an futuristic, imperialist foreign policy that seeks to benefit from the U.S.'s post Cold War rise as the sole superpower. The neocons promote the "New American Century” philosophy, in which the US pursues its goal of "full spectrum dominance", making use of "pre-emptive" strikes against prospective challengers. A great part of their game plan is to reshape the Middle East, not only to guarantee the security of Israel as a US satellite but to secure future US supplies, and profits from, the region’s oil reserves. Despite the present nightmare their ongoing efforts have created in the region – particularly the Iraqi quagmire – their power goes unchallenged and they continue to promote the idea of regional regime change in US interests. Though highly influential, the neocons do not control the White house as yet and neither is the Bush administration motivated wholly by Sharon’s right wing designs. The simple fact is that Israel is an important regional ally of the US, chiefly in regard to the corporate, military and geopolitical aspirations of the US capitalist elite. Total US domination of Southwest Asia - a politically volatile but oil rich region - would give Washington enormous influence over time-honoured allies it now wants to "contain," and over any potential rivals. To date, Israel has played but a minor part in Bush's “War on Terror” and one would expect the Bush camp to insist it keeps to its occasional walk on role and not impede US designs on the region by escalating anti-US feeling in the Middle East. But globopolitics knows no set rules where profits are involved and you could beforgiven for thinking that any retaliation against Israel would give the US the pretext it needs to escalate its domination of the region viz-a-viz its continuing “War on Terror”.

As for Colin Powell and Co, it is our contention that it is they, the defenders of capitalism, the enemy of the working class who are on the “wrong side of history” – a history characterised by an archaic system of class rule in defence of the interests of a small, privileged minority. Their history is one of murder, exploitation and robbery. Real history, our history, begins when we put an end to their system and with it the wars and misery it spurns; when the resources of the world - that the Bush administration seem to think are theirs by divine design - are the common property of all.

Curbing China's Designs on Oil

Make no mistake about it – the hell about to be unleashed in the Middle East has far less to do with transatlantic designs to curb Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction and everything to do with US control of the region’s oil supplies.

The US has long been aware that its own oil supplies were not going to last forever. Indeed, it is now estimated that existing US oil deposits will be exhausted within 25-30 years, which is about the time that China will have the same oil demands as the US. With this realisation the US is now securing its future control of the world’s oil supplies – hence its operation since 9/11 to surround Asian oil supplies with US military bases, a move that also puts US bases within striking distance of China.

Having already installed its military throughout Central Asia, the US is now in the process of doing the same in Western Asia. As China endeavours to arrange its future supplies of oil and gas, it finds itself everywhere blocked by the US. This much was hinted at in the recent US National Security Strategy with Bush announcing America’s right of defence (with military action) to any threats to its interests.

How does China enter the equation you may ask? Aside from the fact that China will become a leading oil importer within the next decade, the US has long since recognised China as a likely threat to its plan to dominate the markets of East and South-East Asia. But for the moment, curbing China’s designs on oil is a chief concern of the US. It can sort out the problem of China as a commercial rival in time.

China has been yearning for a gas pipeline from the Caspian region to China since around 1995. Intent on creating a security-cum-economic organisation for the planned pipeline, China took steps to initiate a group called the “Shanghai Five” (later six) consisting of China, Russia, and the significant Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and later Uzbekistan). Ostensibly, the idea for the group was to control fundamentalism and terrorism in the region (stretching to China’s westernmost Xinjiang province). Conversely, with the US’s invasion of Afghanistan, and the setting up of its military bases in the very countries who were to be in the Shanghai grouping, China’s plan was sabotaged. Later, during a trip to Iran, Chinese president Jiang Zemin stated that “‘Beijing’s policy is against strategies of force and the U.S. military presence in Central Asia and the Middle East region’.... Beijing would work together with developing nations to counter American ‘hegemonism.’”

Last year, Chinese firms purchased two Indonesian fields for $585 million and $262 million, respectively. Moreover, Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri has visited China twice since 2001, hoping to bag a $9 billion contract to supply liquid natural gas to power industries in southern China. In time with this the US increased its activities in the Indonesian neighbourhood, coercing the Philippines into accepting US “help” in rooting out fundamentalists, patrolling the Malacca straits with the Indian navy, and forcing Indonesia to accept US ‘cooperation’ in containing Al Qaeda elements in Indonesia itself. Back in December of 2001, a RAND Corporation presentation to a US Congress committee on “threats to the security and stability of Southeast Asia and to US security interests in the region,” outlined a chief area of concern as being “China’s emergence as a major regional power.” It argued that “China’s assertiveness will increase as its power grows.” It conjectured that “conflict could be triggered by energy exploration or exploitation activities”, and suggested the formation of a “comprehensive security network in the Asia-Pacific region.” Departing from the line that it was hunting for a handful of Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in the Philippines, the RAND Corporation says that “the US should provide urgently needed air defence and naval patrol assets to the Philippines to help Manila re-establish deterrence vis-a-vis China and give a further impetus to the revitalization of the United States-Philippine defence relationship.... the US should expand and diversify its access and support arrangements in Southeast Asia to be able to effectively respond in a timely way to unexpected contingencies. After all, six months ago, who would have thought that US armed forces would be confronted with the need to plan and execute a military campaign in Afghanistan?” Like the US, China simply cannot ignore its reliance on west Asian oil. China has oil field development contracts with those very countries in west Asia targeted by US sanctions—Iraq, Iran, Libya and Sudan. With this entire region now to be besieged with the invasion of Iraq, China’s deals are destined to be dealt the same severe blow as its plan for a central Asian pipeline. Scarcely startling, then, that “Chinese leaders believe that the US seeks to contain China and [the US] is therefore a major threat to its [China’s] energy security”, as the US-China Security Review Commission’s report points out. (“China digs for Middle East oil, US gets fired up”, Reuters, 24/9/02).

Manifest Destiny

At the end of his State of the Union address, a speech hypocritically punctuated with references to the US as the champion of liberty and democracy, the saviour of oppressed people everywhere, President Bush declared that “the liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, but God’s gift to humanity.”

The message is simple. The US is enacting God’s will with its constant invasions of far away countries. It’s right to intervene anywhere it sees fit is conferred by divine right. This is hardly a new idea. Defending the US annexation of Texas in 1845, John O’Sullivan asserted that the US was simply fulfilling its ‘manifest destiny’ with ”the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government.”

References to God and the US’s divine mission now fuse every speech Bush makes with reference to Iraq. His unique brand of divine right imperialism - his promise to bring democracy and freedom to the people of Iraq - now accompanies the usual rhetoric about ridding the world of a mad man.

We can only assume the writers of Bush speeches suffer massive bouts of historical amnesia, for this journal has several times in the past had cause to quote comments by senior US officials in relation to Iraq.

We need only observe Madeline Albright’s (former UN Ambassador) comment, when asked her opinion of the 500,000 Iraqis who had died since sanctions were imposed. She replied it was a “price worth paying.”

Colin Powell, now seated on the right hand of Bush, was once asked his opinion of the number of Iraqi civilians killed during the Gulf War. He replied: “Frankly, that’s not a figure that bothers me.” Indeed, the number of civilians killed overseas never bothers US policy makers. When Vietnam invaded Cambodia to put an end to Pol Pot's bloody massacre of 2 million civilians, it was the US who supported a Chinese invasion and the US who sided with the Khmer Rouge. And where was the US when 1 million civilians were being butchered in Rwanda? Again it was the US who propped up other murderers who massacred their own people in their tens of thousands - Noriega, Pinochet Mobuto, Sukarto, Sukarno, Amin, Trujillo, Marcos, Papa Doc and Savimbi. On top of this the US has helped topple 40 governments since 1945 and subverted elections in another 23 countries. Always to further the interests of their corporate elite and always to the detriment of human rights and civilians who desire only peace. Whilst Bush is keen to find a link between Saddam and Islamic terrorism it is to be remembered that during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the US funded islamic zealots to the tune of $6 billion; training the terrorists of the future - some now prisoners of the US in Cuba - in US military bases such as Camp Peary, Camp Picket, Harvey Point and Fort Bragg. When it comes to human rights abuses and terrorism, the USA is top of the premiere league of rogues states. Bush's grievance with Saddam has nothing to do with saving lives and everything to do with securing US access to the region's oil and gas supplies

THE MIDDLE EAST CRISIS

Ariel Sharon’s untimely visit to Temple Mount on September 28th, with his entourage of 1,000 soldiers, was perhaps the final slap in the face for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had suffered decades of poverty, degradation and discrimination since Israel annexed their land in the wake of a failed Arab invasion in 1967.


For the crimes of their forbears, the youth of Palestine have perhaps suffered the most at the hands of the Israeli state. Indeed, it is the Palestinian youth that have largely carried the new intifada and been its first victims.


The statistical injustices which are very much part of the present unrest speak for themselves. Since the start of the Oslo peace process seven years ago, Palestinian GNP has fallen by 35%, unemployment in some areas stands at 40% and the average income per head of the population living in Gaza and the West Bank is $1,500 (compared to $17,000 per head in Israel proper). The Israel/Palestine disparity is also echoed in access to land and water. Whilst Israel’s population of 6 million share 2.1 million hectares of land, with access to 2 billion cubic feet of water, the 3 million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza share only 0.6 hectares of land and have access to a miserly 232 cubic metres of water. When it comes to other serious issues such as health housing and education, it is evident that Palestinians are very much second class citizens.


Moreover, since the Oslo round of talks, Israel has continued with a closure policy which has restricted movement from one part of Palestine to another – a freedom of movement guaranteed under the Oslo and Wye Valley agreements – and isolated towns and cities and further exacerbated Palestinian social and economic problems. Like the black South African resistance movement, engaged in an age long struggle against white minority rule, the stone-throwing youth of Palestine can perhaps be forgiven for perceiving their struggle to be one against a Middle Eastern form of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.


There is nothing exceptionally unique about the present crisis in the Middle East. For the Palestinians, it is a familiar tale about conflict over land and resources between an occupier and a subject people. But there is one significant difference here. This is an ‘occupation’ deemed illegal by the United Nations under resolutions 242 and 338 which call upon Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.


And it is further an occupation sanctioned by the world’s only super power – regardless of the hypocritical cant mouthed by US peace brokers at the negotiation table. As Tim Llewellyn commented in The Observer of 15th October:


“The US of Bill Clinton and any foreseeable US of George W. Bush is the friend, mentor, armourer and financier of Israel, advocate, judge, progenitor and saviour of unilateral Israel’s rights and executioner of Palestinian aspirations.”


This is the US which allegedly plays an objective role at the negotiating table, whilst propping up the Israel state to the tune of $4 billion per year – money which is dressed up as aid, which is never accounted for and in breach of US legislation which outlaws the financing of a state with a covert nuclear weapons programme. Hence Senator Pat Buchanan’s remark that “Congress is Israeli occupied territory.”


For its part the US has invariably steered peace negotiations away from the UN whilst refraining from every opportunity to invite Israel’s European neighbours or the wider international community to the peace talks. Meanwhile, at the United Nations, the US has consistently sided with Israel, the two countries almost alone in opposing resolutions censorious of Israeli policy; the two countries siding, in fact, as sole opponents of a myriad pro-human rights resolutions. Little wonder, with so much US support Israel feels vindicated in invading Lebanon, bombing who and wherever it chooses, restricting the movement of Palestinians, annexing East Jerusalem and building settlements in areas that could only ever frustrate the peace process. With regards the latter, in the seven years since Oslo, Israel’s ‘illegal’ settler population in Gaza and the West Bank has increased from 110,000 to 195,000 – 60% of this increase in the West Bank. And for all Bill Clinton’s apparent eagerness to get the peace process back on track, it is clear that this is one outgoing president pursuing his own agenda, looking for a foreign policy success to lay before the US electorate in time for November’s presidential elections. Throughout his term in office, like his predecessors, Clinton and team have overtly and covertly worked the Middle East peace process to advance US-Israeli interests only.


Neither would it seem can Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO and heading the Palestine Authority, deliver the much hankered after peace. Arafat was the leader that so many Palestinians invested their hopes in, but like all ‘good’ leaders, he is at the mercy of those with even more power. In recent years there has been a growing image of Arafat as a puppet of Mossad and the CIA, whose reputation for corruption is not concealed by his life-long struggle against Israeli perpetrated injustice. Only three years ago, his own accountants were forced to admit that $400 million had gone astray. Out of his current budget, some 60% is dispersed by Arafat to his bureaucracy and security forces. Of the remainder only 2% goes to infrastructure. While he surrounds himself with a police force of 40,000, (a 33,000 increase since Oslo) prepared to arrest and detain anyone perceived as a threat – union leaders, human rights activists, those militants Israel deem a serious threat to their interests, his regime censoring a press critical of his ideas, and with the Fatah faction and the tanzim militia bent on a pro-Hamas line that Arafat seems reluctant to follow, Palestine is looking increasingly like a dictatorial regime inside a more repressive state in which those with the most to lose are those with the least.


In recent weeks we have witnessed the painful fractioning of society across the Palestine territories. Both sides of the religious/nationalist divide have organised into militias. In the increasing ‘lebanonisation’ of the region. Fatah commanders pursue a 1970’s agenda of all out war against Israel, whilst right-wing Jewish extremists refuse to acknowledge the rights of Palestinians in defiance of previous Israeli commitments. As we go to press in the wake of another US brokered deal in Egypt, the shallow trust it had taken seven years to build seems about to evaporate. Although ostensibly the basis for a ceasefire, as the ink was drying on the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement, the violence of the preceding weeks continues with Palestinian extremists still firing on Israeli soldiers and Israeli tanks still positioned at roadblocks and outside key Palestinian cities. Seven years after the Oslo round of negotiations and two years after the agreement at Wye Valley that saw the PLO detach itself from its promise to destroy the state of Israel, the prospects of peace in the wake of the latest agreement seem as distant as ever. As the editorial of The Guardian commented (18th October): “[the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement] is as fragile as a gossamer thread on a windy autumn’s day, and possibly just as transient.”


So where do socialists stand in all of this? When it comes to the nationalistic zeal and religious fervour of recent weeks, there is nothing at all with which we can identify, for both are abstractions that have imbued the workers of the region with a false consciousness that prevents them identifying their real interests. The label Jew or Moslem, Palestinian or Israeli do not camouflage the bigger and more permanent label of ‘working class’, a label most caught up in the present crisis could, if challenged, identify with. Though we have focused here on the Palestinian grievances against injustice, it is fair to add that the majority of Israel’s Jews are also exploited and degraded and live lives of relative poverty too, and within a system that depends on the exploitation of a global majority and their division for it continued survival. And as the warring camps in the Middle East continue to vent their hatreds we can only maintain that there is more that unites them as members of that exploited majority, with the same basic needs and desires than can ever divide them along religious or national lines. For the real conflict is yet to be waged – that between ourselves, the exploited, and the master class – though with ideas, not rifles and catapults.