Open letter to President Obama: Your legacy
From Alan Hart, author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews
Dear Mr President,
This open letter was inspired by a friend of mine who suggested that you should be urged to resign rather than remain a prisoner of the majority in Congress who take their orders from the Zionist lobby and its so-called Christian evangelical allies and who by doing so are betraying America’s own best interests and could be called traitors not mere stooges. My friend made this suggestion after he had reflected upon what I had said to him – that because you allow Israel to act in defiance of international law with impunity, you are complicit by default in Israel’s war crimes.
Of course, I know that you won’t resign but I have a suggestion about what you could do after the upcoming mid-term elections if you are to have a legacy worth having.
Empty shell of democracy
The essence of what I am going to suggest is that you could and should set in motion the process needed to give America some real democracy. In this letter I am going to offer you my thoughts on the why and how.
What passes for democracy in your country is for sale to the highest lobby bidders (not only the Zionist lobby). You have the framework for democracy but not the substance.
For democracy to exist the citizens of nations, the voters, must be informed enough about critical issues to be able to call and hold their leaders and governments to account, and not only at election time but between elections, all the time. This is most certainly not the case in America. What passes for democracy in your country is for sale to the highest lobby bidders (not only the Zionist lobby). You have the framework for democracy but not the substance.
Before I go further I want you to know that this gentile Englishman (me) is not in any way, shape or form anti-American. I have been visiting your country on and off for nearly half a century and, as I wrote in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jewsand have said on public platforms coast-to-coast across it, I have a love-hate relationship with America. What do I mean?
On one level and generally speaking, I think Americans are the most uninformed, misinformed and therefore gullible people on the face of Planet Earth. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that deep down Americans are, I truly believe, the most idealistic people in the world. It follows that if they were aware of the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, and if as consequence of that awareness they understood who must do what and why for justice and peace, they would support a president using the leverage he has to try to oblige Israel’s leaders to end their defiance of international law and be serious about peace on terms the Palestinians could accept.
A question arising is this. What is the essence of the truth of history all Americans need to know about what used to be called the Arab-Israeli conflict if they are to be empowered to play their necessary part in making democracy work?
I’m now going to summarise very, very briefly the essence of seven truths all Americans need to know. (The detailed and documented evidence that supports them is in my book, three volumes in its American edition published by Clarity Press).
Seven truths all Americans need to know
1. Very few Israeli or other Jews have any biological/ancestral connection to the ancient Hebrews. The notion that there are two peoples with an equal claim to the land of Palestine is Zionist propaganda nonsense.
2. Israel is a Zionist not a Jewish state (how could it be a Jewish state when a quarter of its citizens are Arabs and mainly Muslims?) And Zionism and modern Judaism are not one and the same as Zionism asserts they are in order to label criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. Zionism and Judaism are, in fact, total opposites. Like Christianity and Islam, Judaism has at its core a set of moral values and ethical principles. Zionism’s policies and actions demonstrate complete contempt for these moral values and ethical principles. (Do you know, Mr President, that in a recent article on the Israeli army’s delivery of death and destruction to the Gaza Strip American Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun, said he was “mourning for a Judaism being murdered by Israel”?)
3. Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing; and without the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust Zionism almost certainly would not have been able to mobilise and command enough Jewish support – financial, political and other – to establish itself in Palestine in state form. (Prior to the Nazi holocaust a majority of the Jews of the world were opposed to Zionism’s enterprise. They believed it to be morally wrong. They believed it would lead to unending conflict. And they feared that if Zionism was allowed by the major powers to have its way in Palestine it would one day provoke anti-Semitism. Which is what it is doing today.)
4. Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Despite some stupid rhetoric to the contrary, the Arab regimes never, ever, had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. (When Israel closed the Palestine file with its victory on the battlefield in 1948 and the Armistice Agreements that followed, the Arab regimes shared behind closed doors the same hope as Zionism and the major powers – that the Palestine file would remain closed. The Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency. Their “crime” was and is their refusal to do so).
5. By the end of 1979, nearly 35 years ago, the pragmatic [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat, on the advice of President [Jamal Abd-al-]Nasser more than a decade earlier, had prepared the ground on his side for peace on terms any rational government in Israel would have accepted with relief. He did it by persuading the Palestine National Council, more or less a Palestinian parliament-in-exile and then the highest decision making body on the Palestinian side, to endorse by 296 votes to four his policy of politics and compromise with Israel – compromise which until then had been unthinkable to all Palestinians because it required them to make peace with Israel in return for only 22 per cent of the land they rightfully claimed as their own.
Arafat also informed Israel’s leaders through secret channels that he and his leadership colleagues understood and reluctantly accepted that in order for a Palestinian mini-state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be acceptable to most Israeli Jews, the Palestinian right of return would have to be restricted to the territory of the Palestinian state. That meant, as Arafat told me, only about 100,000 Palestinians would be able to return. But he was not renouncing the principle of the right of return for others. His hope was that one or two generations of a two-state peace would lead by mutual consent to one state with equal rights for all and therefore the space and trust needed to allow many more Palestinians to return. His priority in 1979 was to get “something concrete” for the Palestinians instead of nothing.
6. Since 27 March 2002 there has been on the table an Arab Peace Initiative (API) which was presented at the Beirut Summit of the Arab League by then Crown Prince and today King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. In return for an end to Israel’s occupation of all Arab land grabbed in the 1967 war (actually a war of Israeli aggression, not self-defence) and Israel’s acceptance of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the API offers an end to the conflict and with the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement the establishment of normal relations between Israel and the entire Arab world.
If Israel’s leaders had been willing to explore what was on offer in the API, they would have discovered two things. One was that a comprehensive peace agreement could contain a clause limiting the Palestinian right of return to territory of the Palestinian state with compensation for the rest. The other was Arab flexibility on Jerusalem. The API has East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state, but in negotiations for a full and final comprehensive peace the Arabs would accept that the whole of Jerusalem should be an undivided, open city and the capital of two states.
7. For some years Hamas’s top leaders have been on the public record with the statement that while they will never recognise Israel’s “right” to exist, they are prepared to accept the actual existence of an Israel inside its borders as they were on 4 June 1967, and live in peace with it, if that is the wish of a majority of Palestinians as expressed in a referendum.
Two related conclusions are demanded by the truth of history.
One is that it’s not Israel that has lacked and lacks a Palestinian partner for peace. It is the Palestinians who have lacked and lack an Israeli partner for peace. (There’s a case for saying that Israeli Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Rabin might have been one but he was assassinated by a Zionist fanatic who knew exactly what he was doing – killing the peace process Arafat’s pragmatism in motion.)
The other conclusion is that Israel’s leaders are not remotely interested in peace on terms that would provide the Palestinians with an acceptable amount of justice.
As I think you know, Mr President, but dare not say, the game plan of Israel’s leaders is to make life hell for the occupied and oppressed Palestinians in the hope that they will either abandon their struggle and surrender to Zionism’s will by accepting crumbs from its table – a few Bantustans here and there which they could call a state if they wished, or, preferably, pack up and leave their homeland to make a new life elsewhere.
A question arising is what will Israel’s leaders do when they come to the conclusion that they cannot break the spirit of Palestinian resistance with bombs and bullets and humiliations of all kinds? My fear is that they will create the pretext for a final ethnic cleansing of Palestine. (They could do it by getting half a dozen of their agents to dress as Palestinians and kill 30 or 40 or more Israeli Jews. That done the Israeli army would be ordered to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan, Syria, Lebanon or wherever. Those who didn’t flee would be slaughtered. And while the Israeli army was doing the slaughtering Israel’s leaders would say to the world, “Surely you understand why we had to do this.”)
What a courageous US president must do
In the American system, and given that for various reasons the mainstream media prefer Zionist propaganda to the truth of history, there is only one person who can reach the people with the truth – the president. The how is very simple. He takes to what is called on your side of the pond the “bully pulpit”, which means that he goes over the heads of Congress with a prime time TV and radio address to his fellow Americans.
In 1957 President [Dwight] Eisenhower, a leader with principles and balls, did just that to prevent the Zionist lobby and its traitor agents in Congress blocking him from demanding an unconditional Israeli withdrawal from occupied Egyptian territory. (You’ll recall, Mr President, that in 1956, in secret collusion with Britain and France, Israel invaded Egypt to trigger war with the intended purpose of overthrowing President Nasser and grabbing back control of the Suez Canal which he had nationalised). In his address from the bully pulpit Eisenhower explained why he was insisting that Israel should with without conditions.
The sad truth today, Mr President, is that the UN Security Council is impotent because of your willingness as the prisoner of a political system that has been corrupted by lobby funding to follow Zionism’s orders and veto any resolution designed to call and hold Israel to account for its crimes and bring an end to its occupation of the West Bank.
Now to the main point of this letter.
If you did take to the bully pulpit after the upcoming mid-term elections in order to set in motion the process needed to give America some real democracy, you would have to do much more than tell the truth about the making and sustaining of the Israel-Palestine conflict and who must do what and why for justice and peace.
Take lobby funding out of politics
You would need above all to explain why legislation is urgently needed to take lobby funding out of politics – I mean out of election campaigning and electioneering in all its forms. The case to be made in favour of that can be stated very simply. There is no other way to clean up and out the corruption of American politics. As long as those seeking election or re-election to Congress can be bought by powerful vested interests (not only the Zionist lobby) America will remain a democracy in name only not substance. And on policy for Israel-Palestine the President whoever he (or she) is will remain a prisoner in the White House.
As long as those seeking election or re-election to Congress can be bought by powerful vested interests (not only the Zionist lobby) America will remain a democracy in name only not substance.
The case for believing that a good majority of your fellow Americans would welcome and support an initiative by you to give substance to democracy can also be stated very simply. According to reputable polls over recent years the vast majority of Americans have little or no respect for Congress and many have at least a degree of contempt for it. They know it is corrupted by lobby money. (In my opinion it would be surprising if this contempt for Congress was not strengthened in the minds and hearts of some Americans when, in mid-July, the Senate passed by a vote of 100 to 0 a resolution fully supporting Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip and not mentioning Palestinian deaths.)
In conclusion I’ll touch upon, again very briefly, the reasons why I think you should take to the bully pulpit after the mid-term elections to launch and lead a campaign for real democracy in your own country.
The first and prime duty of any president is to serve and protect America’s own best interests. Support for Israel right or wrong (an Israel that can be described today as a racist, going-fascist, out-of-control monster) is not in America’s own best interests. It is a major factor in the radicalisation of the entire Arab and wider Muslim worlds which contains roughly a quarter of the human population of Planet Earth. A truth is that the vast majority of all Arabs and other Muslims would prefer to be America’s friends but American policy is turning them into enemies. With their war on Iraq “Dubya” Bush and Tony Blair became the best recruiting sergeants for violent Islamic fundamentalism in all its forms. By continuing, if only by default not design, to allow Israel to act with impunity in defiance of international law you, Mr President, are helping to create an environment which will assist the growth of violent Islamic fundamentalism. (Yes, I know that’s what the neo-cons and probably some within the military-industrial complex want.)
By continuing… to allow Israel to act with impunity in defiance of international law you, Mr President, are helping to create an environment which will assist the growth of violent Islamic fundamentalism.
Like many Arabs and other Muslims, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I hear some of your statements. When, for example, you announced new sanctions on Russia, you said, “We stand up for rights and freedoms around the world.” Should you not have added “with the exception of the rights and freedoms of the Palestinians”?
And please, Mr President, consider the following very, very seriously.
If Israel continues on its present course there is a real possibly that at some point in the foreseeable future the rising, global tide of anti-Israelism will be transformed into anti-Semitism, leading to holocaust II, my shorthand for another great turning against Jews everywhere.
If that happens it will be not only because the policies and actions of Israel’s leaders awakened the sleeping giant of anti-Semitism. (In my view this giant would most likely have died in its sleep after and because of the Nazi holocaust if Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers to have its way in Palestine.) If there is another great turning against Jews everywhere it will also be because successive American presidents did not use the leverage only they have to require Israel to live in accordance with international law and the norms of civilised nation state behaviour in general, and to respect the rights and freedoms of the Palestinians in particular.
Do you want that on your conscience, Mr President?
I am, of course, aware that after the upcoming mid-term elections your main concern in what is left of your presidency will be your legacy. If on policy for Israel-Palestine you remain a prisoner of a political system corrupted by election campaign funding, I don’t think it, your legacy, will be one that you could be proud about.
But it would be an entirely different story if as I have suggested you broke out of prison by launching and leading a campaign to give your country some real democracy. If you set the necessary process in motion. and if then enough of your fellow citizens played their necessary part in keeping it going to a successful conclusion, you would go down in history as one of the greatest American presidents and arguably the greatest of them all. And you would be respected and admired by the citizens of the world instead of being seen by an increasing number of them as you are at present – a Zionist stooge (a reluctant one I believe) and a joke.
With best wishes,
Sincerely,
Alan Hart
P.S. There’s a question I’d like to ask you about [Binyamin] Netanyahu in the light of his absurd statements of justification for Israel’s latest war on the Gaza Strip. (I think his single most obnoxious statement was his endorsement of the assertion made by Elie Wiesel that “Hamas engages in child sacrifice”.) My question has a context.
Way back in 1980 I had conversations with the best and the brightest of Israel’s former directors of military intelligence (I name him in my book). I said to him over coffee one morning that I had come to the conclusion that it was all a myth. What I meant and went on to say was that Israel’s existence had never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. Through a sad smile he replied, “The trouble with us Israelis is that we have become the victims of our own propaganda.”
Netanyahu is obviously a victim of his own propaganda. But is there more to it than that? Is he deluded to the point of clinical madness? In other words, is he insane?
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