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60 years ago, first Defense Sec’y said ‘Zionist pressure’ endangered US security, all the way to Afghanistan

By Philip Weiss on July 19, 2010

I’ve kept dropping hints about this. It’s time to post some excerpts about the birth of Israel from the Forrestal Diaries– by James V. Forrestal, the first U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Forrestal is famous of course for tragedy: Not long after these thoughts were set down, Forrestal was sacked by Truman in March 1949 and died two months later, apparently jumping from a high floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he was being treated for depression.

My introduction. 1, know your narrator: James Forrestal was a serious man to the point of humorless, rigid/repressed, intelligent, self-made.

The son of a contractor, he became a Roaring 20s socialite and a partner at Dillon, Read in New York and was not at all political in the partisan sense. His Quixotic quest as a Truman appointee was to depoliticize the Palestine issue, to get Republicans and Democrats to cut a secret deal not to pander so that the U.S. interest could be sorted out by elected leaders and their aides without political pressure. It’s a crazy quest in a democracy– but then, just as crazy as the idea that one special interest should essentially control policy in this area unto Armageddon.

2, One lesson here is that Partition, which the UN Gen’l Assembly approved on Nov. 29, 1947 amid heavy lobbying, was opposed by almost all the wise men whom Truman had assembled to steer the ship of state, and meanwhile pushed by political rabbis, including Clark Clifford and Truman’s former business-partner Eddie Jacobson, and other Zionists or envoys for Zionists who beat a track into Truman’s office. Bear in mind that the ’48 election, with Thomas Dewey challenging Truman, is in the wings;

3, Note that Forrestal meets with two powerful senators from opposing parties, J. Howard McGrath, who heads Democratic campaigns, and Arthur Vandenberg, a key supporter of Dewey for president, and they both essentially say, It’s Chinatown, Jake! The issue is too radioactive in terms of donations for us to go near.

Repeat: Money– not voters.

4, All the pressures we see today to nullify Obama’s policy-making visa vis a Palestinian state were there back then, and Forrestal identified them as a lobby. The question I ask again and again on this site is, How stupid are the American media and the people, that an assertion is made by serious people not once but again and again, from Robert Lovett to Forrestal to Rabbi Elmer Berger to Paul Findley to George Ball to Walt and Mearsheimer and David Hirst and Lawrence Wilkerson– asserted again and again over 7 decades, an assertion at the core of our foreign policy today, and the media still won’t touch it?

5, Forrestal was hounded by Zionists. Because of his stance on Israel, columnists Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson smeared him, and exhumed his unhappy marriage, including his role when his glamorous wife was robbed of jewelry on Fifth Avenue 20 years before these events. Speculating about the cause of Forrestal’s tailspin is not my focus. I would only point out the Terrible Pathos/Tragic Arc of being a Defense Secretary who is calling for military support to protect the life of U.N. envoy Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem in summer ’48 and he fails, Bernadotte is killed, and a few months later, he too dies.

And Jerusalem is not internationalized, and Zionist territorial gains well beyond Partition are memorialized. Tragedy. The tragedy of the unfolding of extremist Zionism.

6, The diaries were heavily-edited, and often paraphrased, by editor Walter Millis. (The unredacted original, at Princeton, apparently has even stronger material than what follows.) OK, take it away Mr. Secretary:

29 August 1947 Cabinet

[Under Secretary of State Robert] Lovett reported on [Palestine]…He said that the tendency in the General Assembly toward taking decisions by majority vote could constitute a danger to the United States. There was some indication of a lash-up between the Asiatic peoples and those of the Middle East on a color-versus-white basis. He said that while much emphasis had been placed upon the distress and commotion among the Jews, there was an equal danger of solidifying sentiment among all of the Arabian and Mohammedan peoples against us.

4 September 1947 Cabinet Lunch

At the end of the lunch [Robert] Hannegan [Postmaster General] brought up the question of the President’s making a statement of policy on Palestine, particularly with reference to the entrance of a hundred and fifty thousand Jews into Palestine. He said he didn’t want to press for a decision one way or the other but simply wanted to point out that such a statement would have a very great influence and great effect on the raising of funds for the Democratic National Committee. He said very large sums were obtained a year ago from Jewish contributors and that they would be influenced in either giving or withholding by what the President did on Palestine.

29 September 1947 [Conversation with president]

I asked the President whether it would not be possible to lift the Jewish-Palestine question out of politics. The President said it was worth trying although he obviously was skeptical.. [I said] It was dangerous to let it continue to be a matter of barter between the two parties…

6 October 1947 Cabinet Lunch

Hannegan brought up the question of Palestine. He said many people who had contributed to the Democratic campaign fund in 1944 were pressing hard for assurances from the administration of definitive support for the Jewish position in Palestine. The President said that if they would keep quiet he thought that everything would be all right, but that if they persisted in the endeavor to go beyond the report of the United Nations Commission there was grave danger of wrecking all prospects for settlement.

7 November 1947 Cabinet

[Middle East is a tinder box, warns Secretary of State George Marshall]  I repeated my suggestion, made several times previously, that a serious attempt be made to lift the Palestine question out of American partisan politics. I said that there had been general acceptance of the fact that domestic politics ceased at the Atlantic Ocean and that no question was more charged with danger to our security than this particular one.

26 November 1947

Lunch today with Senator McGrath.

[Summary is by Walter Millis, editor of diaries] Forrestal derived several points from McGrath’s conversation. In the first place, Jewish sources were responsible for a substantial part of the contributions to the Democratic National Committee, and many of these contributions were made “with a distinct idea on the part of the givers that they will have an opportunity to express their views and have them seriously considered on such questions as the present Palestine question.” There was a feeling among the Jews that the United States was not doing what it should to solicit votes in the U.N. General assembly in favor of the Palestine partition. (To this Forrestal objected that it was “precisely what the State Department wanted to avoid; that we had gone a very long way indeed in supporting partition and that proselytizing for votes and support would add to the already serious alienation of Arabian good will.”) …

[The two men discuss a possible Gallup poll to see if Americans would support use of force to preserve Partition.]

I hoped that Senator McGrath would give a lot of thought to this matter because it involved not merely the Arabs of the Middle East, but also might involve the whole Moslem world with its four hundred millions of people—Egypt, North Africa, India and Afghanistan.

1 December 1947

…Lovett reported on the result of the United Nations action on Palestine over the week end [vote in favor of Partition]. He said he had never in his life been subject to as much pressure as he had been in the three days beginning Thrusday morning and ending Sunday night. [Herbert Bayard] Swope, Robert Nathan, were among those who had importuned him… The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which has a concession in Liberia, reported that it had been telephoned to and asked to transmit a message to their representative in Liberia directing him to bring pressure on the Liberian government to vote in favor of partition. The zeal and activity of the Jews had almost resulted in defeating the objectives they were after.

I remarked that many thoughtful people of the Jewish faith had deep misgivings about the wisdom of the Zionists’ pressures for a Jewish state in Palestine, and I also remarked that the New York Times editorial of Sunday morning pointed up those misgivings when it said, “Many of us have long had doubts… concerning the wisdom of erecting a political state on a basis of religious faith.” I said I thought the decision was fraught with great danger for the security of this country….

3 December 1947

Lunch today with [former Secretary of State] Jimmy Byrnes. We talked Palestine… He said that David Niles [adviser to Truman, pro-Zionist] and Sam Rosenman were chiefly responsible for the President’s decision [partition]; that both had told the President that Dewey was about to come out with a statement favoring the Zionist position on Palestine, and that they had insisted that unless the President anticipated this movement New York State would be lost to the Democrats. ….

I said I thought it was a most disastrous and regrettable fact that the foreign policy of this country was determined by the contributions a particular bloc of special interests might make to the party funds…

13 December 1947

At the Gridiron Dinner tonight I spoke to Governor Dewey about Palestine and posed to him the question of getting nonpartisan action on this question, which I said was a matter of the deepest concern to me in terms of the security of the nation. The Governor said he agreed in principle but that it was a difficult matter to get results on because of the intemperate attitude of the Jewish people who had taken Palestine as the emotional symbol, because the Democratic Party would not be willing to relinquish the advantages of the Jewish vote….

(…[T]o his [Dewey’s] inquiry as to what we could do now, I said there would inevitably be two things coming up: (1) the arming of the Jews to fight the Arabs (2) unilateral action by the U.S. to enforce the decision of the General Assembly.

At this point Vandenberg interjected to say that on the question of unilateral action he was completely and unequivocably [sic] against such action because it would breed in his opinion a wave of violent anti-Semitism in this country.)

16 January 1948

[Millis writes that Forrestal prepares a paper for Lovett; and that Forrestal] had discussed the question, the paper concluded, “with a number of people of the Jewish faith who hold the view that the present zeal of the Zionists can have the most dangerous consequences, not merely in their divisive effects in American life, but in the long run on the position of the Jews throughout the world.”

[Lovett produced a paper from the State Department, Millis continues] This, as Forrestal paraphrased it, concluded that the U.N. partition plan was “not workable,” adding that the United States was under no commitment to support the plan if it could not be made to work without resort to force; that it was against the American interest to supply arms to the Jews while we were embargoing arms to the Arabs, or to accept unilateral responsibility for carrying out the U.N. decision…

Forrestal [again per Millis] felt that the State Department was “seriously embarrassed and handicapped by the activities of Niles at the White House in going directly to the President on matters involving Palestine.

“… I gave it as my view that the Secretary of State could not avoid grasping the nettle of this issue firmly, and that it was too deeply charged with grave danger to this country to allow it to remain in the realm of domestic politics.”

12 February 1948 Meeting-National Security Council

[A]ny serious attempt to implement the General Assembly’s recommendation on Palestine would set in train events that must finally result in at least a partial mobilization of U.S. forces, including recourse to the Selective Service.

3 February 1948

[Discusses idea of depoliticizing it with late president’s son, Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr, a storng supporter of Jewish state]

I thought the methods that had been used by people outside of the Executive branch of the government to bring coercion and duress on other nations in the General Assembly bordered closely onto scandal. … I said I was forced to repeat to him what I had said to Senator McGrath in response to the latter’s observation that our failure to go along with the Zionists might lose the states of New York, Pennsylvania and California—that I thought it was about time that somebody should pay some consideration to whether we might not lose the United States. …

Had lunch with B[ernard]. M. Baruch. …

He took the line of advising me not to be active in this particular matter and that I was already identified, to a degree that was not in my own interests, with opposition to the United Nations policy on Palestine. He said he himself did not approve of the Zionists’ actions, but in the next breath said that the Democratic Party could only lose by trying to get our government’s policy reversed….

August 1948…

It was also on the 11th that there came… an urgent request from the State Department for a detail of enlisted men from the Mediterranean Fleet to assist Count Bernadotte, the United Nations mediator…

21 October 1948 National Security Council meeting

[according to an assistant’s note.] “Mr. Forrestal said that actually our Palestine policy had been made for ‘squalid political purposes.’… He hoped that some day he would be able to make his position on this clear.”

July 19, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Mr. Blair: At-Tuwani Awaits Your Response

By Ron Taylor | Palestine Chronicle | July 16, 2010

Dear Tony Blair,

I think even you would admit your appointment, in 2007, as Special Envoy to the Middle East Quartet was not met with unfettered joy in occupied Palestine. In fact, to be quite honest, the announcement was greeted with a mixture of dismay, derision and not a little anger.

It’s not too difficult to imagine the reasons. After all, you had been Prime Minister of a country which is seen as a right-or-wrong supporter of Israel. You are an avowed ‘Friend of Israel’. And, the party you once led receives large donations from well-known Zionists.

Probably even more damning though is that you danced to George W Bush’s tune and enlisted your country in the disastrous invasion of Iraq – widely seen by many in the Middle East as an Israeli war waged by the West. Yet another reminder to Palestinians, if one were needed, that Western policy in the region seems permanently set to favour Israel.

But appointed you were, and some Palestinians may have even been pleasantly surprised when you were said to be shocked by the level of discrimination you had witnessed in the West Bank. It is this issue and a recent visit to Palestine which has prompted this letter to you.

In March of 2009 you visited At-Tuwani, a small West Bank community in the South Hebron Hills. Under the Oslo Accords of 1993, At-Tuwani, like many other rural Palestinian communities, found itself in that part of the West Bank which was designated as Area C. (Sixty per cent of the West Bank is classed as Area C which means it is under full Israeli civil and military control.)

As you know, life for Palestinians in Area C is particularly difficult. Firstly, in most instances the Israeli government refuses to grant building permission to Palestinians living in places like At-Tuwani and any structure built after 1967 is considered to be built illegally. Consequently they face the threat of the demolition of their homes, mosques, schools, clinics and wells. They are not even allowed to build infrastructure for mains electricity and water supplies.

Secondly, many communities in Area C are subject to attacks by violent Jewish settlers who, incidentally, do not have problems regarding building permits, despite the fact that under international law they are considered to be there illegally.

At-Tuwani is particularly troubled in this respect. Over a period of several years settlers from the nearby settlement of Ma’on and its outpost Havat Ma’on (illegal even under Israeli law) have, amongst other things, poisoned water sources, killed livestock, destroyed crops and, worst of all,  attacked Palestinian children as they make their way to and from school. The situation in the village is so bad that international peace activists from the Christian Peacemaker Teams and Operation Dove have a permanent presence there to protect Palestinians. I understand that you were briefed in detail about these attacks.

You acknowledged the problems faced by villages such as At-Tuwani and told the press that: “The reason for coming here today is to draw attention to the fact that without a new and different system applying in Area C, it is very hard for Palestinians to enjoy the standard of living they should be able to enjoy and develop their land as they should be able to develop it.”

You also learned that, aside from violent settlers, one of the biggest obstacles in the way of an improved standard of living is the lack of an adequate electricity supply. A diesel-powered generator only operates for 4 to 5 hours per day. A mains supply, just like the one enjoyed by the settlers who attack them, would make an enormous difference to their lives. Children would be able to do their homework in the evenings, fridges would become useful, the few streetlights would work.

But as Saber Hreini, At-Tuwani’s mayor, pointed out, the provision of mains electricity would involve the building of permanent structures on village land. Permits would be needed but would not be forthcoming from the Israeli military.

In trying to be fair to you, I imagine that you were moved by At-Tuwani’s plight and wanted to make a difference. Presumably that is why you later told Mr Hereini that you had received an assurance, unwritten, from the Israelis that the construction of the necessary infrastructure would be permitted.

On the basis of this assurance, shortly after your visit work started. Two rows of pylons began to spring up. One, starting in the centre of the village, would meet the other, snaking south from the nearby Palestinian town of Yatta, by Route 317 – a modern road built to allow settlers easy access to Jerusalem and Israel.

But on May 25th 2009 the Israeli military ordered a halt to the work.  No written orders were presented at that time. The following day Mr Hreini wrote to you saying, “We hope that in your role as envoy to the Quartet, you can be of assistance to us in contacting the Israeli Government with the hopes of procuring written permission for these projects. We fear that without written permission our problems will continue.” He did not receive a reply.

Work continued, but on July 28th written orders for the demolition of the pylons were issued by the military. The orders were once again ignored. But, just as the project was nearing completion, on October 30th Israeli soldiers entered the village and forcibly stopped the work, confiscating materials and tools in the process. Then, on November 25th soldiers and border police arrived and, despite protests from villagers and their international supporters, the area was declared a closed military zone. The two pylons nearest to Route 317 were demolished. There would be no mains electricity for At-Tuwani.

A few weeks ago I visited At-Tuwani and saw for myself where the pylons used to be. I also saw power cables hanging uselessly waiting to be connected. I spoke to people from the village. They were angry with the Israeli authorities, of course; but also with you, Tony, angry that you had made a promise you could not keep.

During your visit of March 2009 you were asked what you would do about the situation there. “It’s got to be stopped, hasn’t it? This is what should happen. But it needs to be done in a systematic way so that the whole way the area is looked at and administered is changed to make it fair.”

But I am afraid, Tony, that your analysis of the situation is flawed. It is the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestine which allows these things to happen. The occupation is not fair and never will be. It is not meant to be fair and no amount of tinkering with a system designed to oppress can make it so. For Palestinians currently living under occupation the only way they will be able “to enjoy the standard of living they should enjoy and be able to develop their land as they should be able to develop it” is for the occupation to be brought to an end.

One final point. The people of At-Tuwani and members of the Christian Peacemaker Team have tried to contact you since the work to provide electricity was stopped. They have not been successful. Can I urge you to respond?

Yours sincerely
R Taylor

July 16, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

United against Peace

By William A. Cook | Palestine Chronicle | July 15, 2010

The UN must assert its responsibility for all its member states.

A confluence of news stories emerged this past week that, if related, shed an unusual light on the deteriorating crisis in the mid-east, most especially on Palestine and Iran. On June 27th, Ha’aretz made this observation about discussions at the G-8 meeting in Ontario: “World leaders ‘believe absolutely’ that Israel may decide to take military action against Iran to prevent the latter from acquiring nuclear weapons,” citing a statement made by Italy’s PM Silvio Berlusconi.

Indeed, he went on to say that “Israel will probably act preemptively.” So engaged were the representatives of the G-8 that they issued a statement “calling on Iran to ‘respect the rule of law’ and to ‘hold a transparent dialogue’ over its nuclear ambitions.” Their statement went on to say that Iran should show a ‘commitment to international law’.

On July 7th, Newsmax, in an article titled “Lieberman: US Prepared to Strike Iran to Stop Nuclear Weapons” states: “The United States may be forced to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities if diplomatic efforts and economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic fail, Sen. Joseph Lieberman said Wednesday after a meeting with Israeli officials in Jerusalem.”

On July 11th, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh told Press TV that “over a 100 countries in the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency have condemned Israel for not cooperating with the IAEA. The Zionist regime has refused to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty and it is believed that the regime has about 200 nuclear warheads capable of being mounted on long-range missiles and a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.”

How are these stories related?

First, the G-8 “world leaders,” i.e. the richest 8 nations on the planet, believe that Israel could preemptively attack Iran causing undisclosed consequences to the interests of the world’s communities and economies. Press TV adds that 100 countries, not all obviously among the richest, condemn Israel’s refusal to cooperate with its neighbors in working with the IAEA to ensure a safe mid-east where no nation possesses nuclear weapons. And, finally, Senator Lieberman offers that the United States might join Israel as the military force that acts preemptively. The uniting factor in the three news items is the state of Israel and its principal supporter the United States.

Second, each cites the United Nations as a significant operative in how Israel’s potential action or that of the United States affects world events and, by implication the rightful authority in the community of nations for the consequences of the actions of these two states. Note that the “world leaders” call on Iran to “respect the rule of law,” “to hold a transparent dialogue,” and to show a “commitment to international law.” International law resides in the authority of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice as reflected in the Charter of the UN, the International Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions. Needless to say, the IAEA is an operative agent of the UN responsible for oversight of agreements related to nuclear weapons, including the non-proliferation agreement controlling such weaponry in the mid-east.

Third, despite the apparent recognition of the UN implied in these articles, the reality of what they intend versus what they state or imply suggests that Israel is not bound by a respect for the law, by the need for transparency regarding agreements or weapons, or by a commitment to international law. Only Iran is held up for condemnation as a threat to world peace and as a nation that defies UN policies and resolutions. Indeed, as Lieberman observes regarding the Iranian threat, “There is a broad consensus in Congress that military force can be used if necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.” This would suggest that it is not the UN that decides whether Iran is in conformance with the agreed upon policies of the member states of the United Nations, but the Congress of the US acting on behalf of its client state, Israel.

Two major concerns arise out of these observations: neither Israel or the US is held to the same standards as all other member nations of the UN, and Israel and the US determine for the member states of the UN what will be the action they can take against either the US or Israel. These are distinct yet related observations. Because the US has veto power in the Security Council it can and it does negate any actions taken by the member states against Israel or the US. This is a structural problem inherent in the powers vested in five nations that have permanent status on the Security Council. Procedurally, there is little the majority of nations can do to prevent the US protection of the Israeli state.

Since the UNGA has acted in over 160 resolutions to condemn Israeli actions, attempting to bring it in line with the UN charter and declarations, and since the UNSC has acted approximately 30 times to force some compliance, it’s obvious that the world communities have found the state of Israel to be wanting in its adherence to UN policies and agreements. Therefore one might conclude that the UN has attempted to hold Israel to the same standards as other member states, but has been thwarted by the US veto power to enforce its policies and compliance.

For virtually all of the past six decades, Israel and the US have acted as one against the wishes of the UN membership as those actions relate to Palestine and more recently to Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Today, Israel wants Iran’s ‘nuclear ambitions’ curbed, ambitions it has determined exist despite IAEA investigations to the contrary or the reality that Iran has signed the non-proliferation treaty and Israel has not. But what Israel wants, the US will provide according to Lieberman, including preemptive strikes against a legitimate member of the UN that has done nothing aggressive against either the US or Israel. Israel on the other hand, during these same 60 years, has attacked Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine and continues to occupy portions of Lebanon, Syria and virtually all of Palestine. Curiously enough, during all this time, the United States has shamefacedly portrayed itself as the broker for peace in the mid-east. Nothing could be further from the truth. The US Congress and the Israeli Knesset are Siamese twins bound together by an umbilical cord of dependency through interlocking arteries of corporate and military budget lines that keep the complex alive while force feeding our representatives with blood money.

All of which brings us to this simple conclusion: Israel and the United States, the two states against peace in the mid-east, must be aborted from the decision process that determines peace in the mid-east. Consider the reality and not the illusion. Look through the eyes of the real victims not through the fractured lenses of the controlled media that fails to cover any perception but that offered by our Congress or the Israeli dominated international news. The mantra beats on—Israel has a right to defend itself and, therefore, must provide protective borders around the state of Israel. Hence it has a right to invade Lebanon to its north to ensure that no rocket, missile or person (terrorist) can enter Israel; it must blockade the sea on the west to ensure that nothing enters Israel (weapons or terrorist) from international waters; it must confiscate an eastern border from north to south to ensure that no weapons or terrorists enter Israel from Jordan despite having agreements with Jordan as a peaceful neighbor; and it must have a protective border with Egypt in the south despite having a like peaceful relationship with that nation.

Logic would suggest that Israel’s need for protection and, therefore, its need for these aggressive measures that result in stealing land from others, breaking international laws, and creating hostility throughout the region would apply to each of its neighbors. After all it is Israel that has weapons of mass destruction, though it does not reveal that reality transparently, has invaded its neighbors frequently over the years, and continues to occupy and oppress the peoples of Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. Consider what would happen should Iran or Syria or Jordan or Egypt move to strengthen their respective borders by applying the same tactics as Israel. Lebanon would invade northern Israel, Egypt would not cooperate with Israel in the south, Jordan would take Israel to the international court to object to its illegal acquisition of the richest agricultural land in Palestine given by Jordan to the Palestinians, and Syria would move to force Israel to comply with UN resolutions demanding that it return the Golan Heights.

Consider further the umbilical cord that ties the US to Israel and the 60 years of non-peace that has existed as each successive President and new Congress acts to bring a viable peace to the mid-east. It has not happened. Why not? Read Dr. Jeff Halper’s enlightening chapter in The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction, recently published by Macmillan. There the whole sordid history of intentional delays and deceits is laid bare for the world to see. The US does what Israel wants, as Lieberman so eloquently testifies. Unending war is good for the economy, at least for the elite that control it. The suffering of those destroyed by their wars is of no concern to them.

One need only consider the expansion of the American military throughout the nations in the mid-east and its placement of airbases and military installations that give it dominance throughout the region. Iran is literally surrounded by weapons of mass destruction, US weapons of mass destruction that coupled as they are with the desires of Israel to expand its borders to “greater Israel,” far beyond the boundaries provided by UN resolution 181 in November 1947, boundaries provided by an ancient g-d that served as real estate agent to Abraham, and the threat to Iran and all other mid-east nations glows like white phosphorous and is just as dangerous and life threatening. It is the US and Israel that are the ones acting out of concert with their neighbors and wreaking havoc on the world.

So what’s to be done? Precedent suggests a possibility. In November of 1947 the UNGA passed Resolution 181 partitioning Mandate Palestine into two parts, one for an Israeli state and one for the Palestinians. Despite the procedural reality of the UN this resolution was acted upon without having been acted upon in the policy sector of the UN, the Security Council. This would suggest that the UNGA has the implied power to act without concurrent UNSC action and have its resolution approved by member states subsequently. Since Israel was the benefactor of this process, it could hardly object today if the UNGA were to pass a resolution that would establish a recommending body of members, exclusive of the US and Israel, to bring forth a resolution that would effectively force a just solution to the illegally dismantled partition plan passed in 1947.

Should such a body give priority to the resolutions passed by its members since 1948, it would recognize that Israel would have to collapse its territorial acquisitions by approximately 31% from its current illegal possession of 86% of the original Mandate land offered to them by resolution 181. This would then provide a viable contiguous Palestinian state. Alternatively, Israel could and the Palestinians could decide to live together in one state with equal citizenship for all. Should the majority of UNGA member states approve the resolution offered by their committee, a solution to the crisis might be in the offing. On the other hand, should the Israeli government reject this offer, it would find itself isolated from the world community and subject to whatever sanctions might be imposed by the UN.

Understandably, not all the resolutions since 1948 have been favorable to the Palestinians. They, too, would be subject to the decisions made by the new committee deciding the fate of the Israeli/Palestinian crisis. In simple terms, the UN would have effectively removed the peace process from the two states that are, as they state themselves, one and “unbreakable” in their desires and intents and, consequently uniquely unqualified to be the arbiters of the fate of the Palestinians or of other states in the mid-east. To accomplish this end, the people of the world must view the reality of the mid-east through the eyes of those suffering the destructive power inflicted on them by the United States and Israel.

Every principle on which the United States rests from the Declaration of Independence to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution cries out against the actions of the United States and Israel as they inflict a merciless set of attacks, invasions and wars on the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, and now, Turkey and Iran. That statement recognizes the power of the Israeli lobbies on behalf of its client state, Israel, as it is more than complicit in the enforced dominance of the US in the world. No one can witness the enormous control asserted by Israel over the US Congress where almost 400 representatives and 100 senators vote in unison to support Israel’s destruction of Lebanon, its invasion of Gaza and its murder of Turkish citizens without recognizing their control. The people of America are no longer in control of their government; it has become a client state of a foreign power.

It is time for America to demand that its government respect equality of life, not destroy it wantonly through mercenaries and drones, reject wars of deception perpetrated by purported friends of the nation by seeking reconciliation with those we’ve destroyed, and, finally, withdraw support from the rogue nation of Israel that has severed America from the community of nations making it vulnerable to those who would use America for their own ends, and become once again [sic] a nation of the people and for the people not a nation of elites who use the people by inducing fear and phobia to control.

Virtually all members of the UN understand this reality as the above news items testify. As it becomes more and more clear that Israel and its compliant US Congress care nothing for the rights of other nations as their promotion of aggressive action against Iran proclaims, a virtual mirror process that brought about the war against Iraq, the world communities must face the reality that the US cannot control Israel nor its own policies. Therefore, the UN must assert its responsibility for all its member states and resolve a conflict that has plagued the world for the past 60 years. It’s time illusion gives way to reality.

– William A. Cook is Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His most recent book, The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction is now available at Macmillan publishing or through Amazon and other book sellers. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: wcook@laverne.edu or visit: www.drwilliamacook.com.

July 15, 2010 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment