Obama’s Beginning of the End
by Eric Margolis
In 1956, Britain, France and Israel colluded to invade Egypt to overthrow its hugely popular nationalist leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. US President Dwight Eisenhower deemed the tripartite Suez aggression immoral and damaging to American interests in the Muslim world. “Ike” ordered the British, French and Israelis to get out of Egypt at once – or else. They got out.
Fast forward to 2010. President Barack Obama demands Israel stop building illegal Jewish settlements around Jerusalem and on the West Bank. Obama rightly concludes the ongoing agony of Palestine has turned the Muslim world against the United States. It is also the primary cause of what Washington calls “terrorism.” After the Suez invasion, Israel’s American partisans set about building an influence network that would ensure no American president could ever force Israel to do anything against its will.
Their brilliant success was again confirmed this week as Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Israel’s rightist coalition, literally spit in Obama’s face, sneeringly rejecting the president’s pleas to create a viable Palestinian state. The US Congress and rightwing media actually applauded the public humiliation of their president and vice president. How the mighty have fallen. Obama has shown himself utterly without spine, and terrified of the Israel lobby at a time when his political fortunes are plummeting. The White House understands that America’s vital interests in the Mideast are being increasingly undermined by Israel’s adamant refusal to allow a workable Palestinian state instead of apartheid-style Arab Bantustans.
A triumphant Netanyahu made clear Israel would retain all of Jerusalem, settlement blocks around it, water resources, key roads, the West Bank high ground and the Jordan River valley. In short, “useful Palestine.” The rest, waterless scrub and slums, might be left to the Arabs. Nothing was said about Israel’s illegal occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights.
Even Obama’s shameful offer of a multi-billion dollar bribe to Israel of 20 F-35 warplanes and unlimited diplomatic support, in exchange for a flimsy 90-day building freeze, was contemptuously rejected by Netanyahu. He knows the US Congress would give Israel the moon if asked. The US has already given Israel at least $114 billion since its creation in 1947.
What does Obama’s humiliation mean? His chances of being defeated in the next presidential election are growing. Obama’s arch-rival, the pro-Israeli Hillary Clinton, is positioning herself to take over the Democratic Party from Obama.
The US diplomatic, intelligence and military establishment has got the message, loud and clear: don’t mess with Israel. The last US president who tried to restrain Israel’s West Bank colonization, George H.W. Bush, failed to win re-election; his able secretary of state, James Baker, was slandered as an “anti-Semite.” By caving in to Israel’s hard right over the West Bank, Obama sends a message of profound weakness to the rest of the world. He is signaling that Israel, not the White House, really makes America’s Mideast policy. Israel also increasingly influences US policy towards Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Iran and North Korea. The humiliated Palestinian Authority is shown as a helpless puppet of the Americans and Israelis, as rival Hamas has long charged.
Obama’s defeat suggests Israel now has “carte blanche” to move ahead and attack Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah, Syria, and eventually Iran. In fact, Israel now seems to have the power to plunge the US into war against Iran whenever it decides the time is right and the risk worthwhile.
Since the US has become a helpless giant, it’s up to the rest of the world to end the suffering in Palestine. Brazil and Argentina have taken an important step forward by recognizing a Palestinian state in the pre-1967 borders. The 2002 Saudi peace plan still offers all parties concerned the fairest, most practical road to peace.
The UN General Assembly should again endorse this plan and call for more pressure on Israel. But Netanyahu and his fellow rightwing zealots are determined to hold on to every meter of the West Bank and Golan. Some far rightists want to expand Israel into Lebanon and Syria. Israel’s refusal to compromise over Palestine is at the heart of its increasingly dangerous confrontation with Iran.
Obama’s shameful failure will haunt the world for decades.
— There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth. Friedrich Nietzsche
Boadicea's Chariot 
The UN is even more spineless than the US.
It is very true that Israel rules the US and probably most of the western world. The occupation and seizure of lands by Israel is very wrong and always has been, but politicians and the UN are worms.
Do they not realise that allowing Israel to get away with all this inflames the loony muslims and gives them ammunition to use against us.
But I still go back to my old thoughts “Who ever decided it would be a good idea to set up and Israeli state in the middle of Arab lands.?” A bit like putting a mouse in a cage full of cats.
Oh dear. Does nobody, except Boa, read history anymore. The Arab population of the Ottoman province of South Syria was low – very low – until Jewish immigrants moved in and started farming the land productively.
Jeeaz!
Really, Bravo?
So the inhabitants weren’t doing much with the land then, so that makes it reasonable! I’ve heard various versions of this, and I’m inclined to agree with this article and Rick’s comment above.
I would never have guessed. Never mind the facts, go with the emotions.
Chuckle, I’ll leave that to you. 😉
Really.
he big lie. History reversed – black is white. How to parrot the white guilt line and airbrush the truth out of history.
Of course, the British Consul General James Finn did not write in 1857, ‘…the country is to a considerable degree empty of inhabitants…’ (FO 78/1294, 15 Sep 1857.) Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, the cartographer, did not write ‘In Judea…for miles and miles there was no appearance of life orhabitation.’ (……………… need a reference) The Palestine Royal Commission did not note that, ‘on the road fromGza to the North, no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached (the Jewish village of) Yabna…the villages in this area were few and thinly populated…’ (Peel Report, 1937.) Sharif Hussein, Guardian of the holy places of Arabia did not write, ‘The resources of the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants.’ (Al Qibla, 23 March 1918.)
Of course, Palestine was historically the homeland of the Palestinian Arabs alone, not the land of Israel, re-named Palestine during the Roman occupation – and only for that time – never Christian lands invaded and occupied by expanding Islam.* Of course, Palestine was never part of Syria, never the Ottoman Province of South Syria. There were no Greeks – 20% of the [population in the 1600′s (F Eugene Roger, La Terre Sainte, 1637,) – and the Ottomans did not encourage immigration by Syrians, Egyptians, Turks, Armenians, Persians, Kurds,Afghans, Circassians, Bosnians Algerians, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Georgians… to try to make something of the place. A Governmant handbook of 1920 did not note, ‘ The bulk of the population are fellahin…in the Gaza District they are mostly Egyptian and elsewhere of the most mixed race.’ (Syria and Palestine, FO Handbook No 60. HMSO 1920.)
It is absolutely not the case that the small Arab population of South Syria did not regard themselves as Palestinians, or people of a separate nation, how could you say such a thing? Clearly, it is not the case that Arabs flocked to the area on the back of the increased prosperity brought by Jewish settlers, (see quote from Sharif Hussein, above,) so that the Arab population increased by 118% between 1922 and 1946 (Howard M Sachar, History of Israel, Knopf, 2003.) Franklin D Rossevelt did not conclude in 1939 that ‘Arab immigration into Palestine since 1921 has vastly exceeded total Jewish immigration… The Arabs of the British Mandate did not, on any account regard themselves as mainly Syrian, and the Peel Report did not say that they ‘…clung to the principle that Palestine was part of Syria and should never have been cut off from it.’ The Syrian leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi did not testify to the Peel Commission that, ‘There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible.Our country was for centuries part of Syria.’ Ahmad Shuqairy, founder of the PLO, did not say in testimony to the UN Security Council, ‘It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria, (UN Security Council Special Committee on Palestine, 1956.)
And, never let it be said that the Arabs of Palestine fled their homes because they were told to do do in advance of the invasion of the new State of Israel by five Arab armies in 1948. The Higher Arab Executive did not broadcast warnings to leave, or that those Arabs who accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as outcasts. (Economist, amongst many others, October 2 1948.) Khaled Al Azm, Prime Minister of Syria after 1948 did not write, ‘Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees while it was we who made them leave….We brought disaster upon the refugees by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave…We have rendered them dispossessed.’ (Memoirs of Haled al Azm, Beirut 1973.) Mahmud al Habbash certainly did not say, ‘ ‘…in 1948 Palestinian Arabs left their homes willingly under the instruction of their own Arab leaders and with false promises of a prompt return. (Column in Al Hayat al Jadida, official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, 13 Dec 2006.)
Distorted, white guilt-ridden opinion and bigotry is supportable only if the facts are completely ignored and the grauniadista chatterati re-writing of history is believed.
*Conquest of Syria, 637
Conquest of Armenia, 639
Conquest of Egypt, 639
Conquest of North Africa, 652
Conquest of Cyprus, 654
Conquest of North Africa, 665
First Arab siege of Constantinople, 674–678
Second Arab siege of Constantinople, 717–718
Conquest of Hispania, 711–718
Conquest of Georgia, 736
Conquest of Crete, 820
Conquest of southern Italy, 827
Check all the references if you wish.
Bearsy, I do agree with the thrust of the author’s comments. I have worked in the Middle East area for about thirty years, covering Jordan, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain, and have a reasonably grasp of the area’s history. I consider Britain’s role in the creation of Israel to have been one of the most shameful episodes in Britain’s post-WW II history, and zionism to be responsible for a great proportion of the problems which exist today in that region. I hope that helps to clarify my position.
Bravo, it all depends who is writing the history you are reading. Prior to the formation of Israel, to suggest that it was a semi-arid desert sparsely populated, is a travesty of the truth.
I worked in Jordan for several years in the early 1980s. You may or may not have heard of Bank Al Othmany (Ottoman Bank) but it was operating throughout the Middle East as the leading bank, when the Ottoman Empire controlled the entire area, pre- 1947. Its branch network in that area was eventually bought by an international bank. This meant that we had branches in both Israel and Jordan. Pre-1947, there was a thriving Arab business community in what is referred to as The West Bank, and there were Jews living there also, in peace and frequently as business partners of Arabs. The bank’s lawyer in Jordan was a Palestinian, a refugee following Israel’s formation, who prior to that formation, had been senior partner of a very prosperous legal firm with Jews as his partners, in Jerusalem. They mixed not only in business but also socially. You need to have been kicked out of the country your family has lived in for generations to understand the depth of feeling of these refugees; with each passing generation the bitterness deepens, and I see no sign of any solution in either my lifetime or that of my children if Israeli intransigence and disregard for UN resolutions continues as they have done for so many years.
CW, I read as wide a variety of books as I can cram in, it is a waste of time and effort reading only what agrees with your viewpoint. I think the variety of sources I quite above should amount to something or other.
Bravo.
I could do exactly the reverse and give you to the position from the Palestinian point of view, all with references and etc.
I feel it would be utterly pointless.
Have you read any of the many many accounts of the origins of the Israel/Palestine conflict.?
There are many, and indeed by Israelis who are not proud of the actions of the few who sought to found a Jewish state at the expense of the original inhabitants.
Your view is very simplistic and a complete whitewash.
I too blame the British for a great deal of this mess.
I fully understand why Israel must fight for her existence, and why the Jews wanted a land of their own, but I also understand the bitter resentment of those who were dispossessed.
>Your view is very simplistic and a complete whitewash.<
Not my view – or do you not bother with references?
And the answer to your question, is Yes, as you would have realised had you bothered to look at the references I include in my comment.
PS. My references include Palestinian points of view.
I feel a game, set and match moment approaching………….. 🙂
Bravo. I did read your comment above, including:
“Distorted, white guilt-ridden opinion and bigotry is supportable only if the facts are completely ignored and the grauniadista chatterati re-writing of history is believed.”
Hence the utter pointlessness of continuing this debate with you, I’m afraid.
I noticed! Trust me, I CAN read, Bravo.
Bravo, every good zionist library will provide you with a million or more quotes and references suggesting the place was empty, and if it wasn’t, whoever was there, had no business being there, having been shipped in by one ruling power or another. One reads the same slant on South Africa from people anxious to explain how they were doing the country a really big favour settling there.
Ethel Mannin’s “A Road to Beersheba”, and a more academic work, The Palestine Diary, Volumes One and Two, are essential reading to an understanding of the region’s problems and their genesis.
I quote from the Web, on the author of the Palestine Diary:
If Dr. Robert John were remembered for nothing else, he would be forever remembered for his two volume history, The Palestine Diary. In a world awash with Zionist propaganda it remains the classic reference work on the subject. Next to “The Holocaust” no subject has been more thoroughly distorted than the history of Zionism in Arab Palestine. The Palestine Diary remains the only complete history of the dispossession of the Palestinian Arabs. In all the years since it was first published in 1970 it remains the most complete and objective study of the subject. Not surprisingly, The Palestine Diary encountered major publication problems. No university press would touch it, despite the endorsement of the world renowned English historian, Arnold Toynbee.
Dr. John himself was dismissed from numerous jobs with major U.S. corporations, all of them fearful of the well known lobby.
The eventual publisher of The Palestine Diary, New World Press in New York, had its presses burned to discourage reprints of the heretical work. The Palestine Diary has always been a difficult work to find. It is so clearly written, well organized and factually unimpeachable that its research is simply devastating to Zionist pretensions. Robert John had many accomplishments in his life besides The Palestine Diary. But it was his magnum opus and the work which shall overshadow everything else he did.
Unquote
It was required reading before any Middle East posting for Arabists, to ensure they understood the history, not the propaganda.
P.S.See Joshua xxiv. 13 for what God had to say about the land “given” to the Jews!
I feel a” must go and cook supper” sort of moment approaching, Janus. It happened just after a “why do people post various assorted references and expect that this proves them right” sort of moment. 🙂
Thank you, CWJ.
You have rather more patience or time than I, at the moment.
That should keep Bravo busy!
i will look it out, CWJ, but I never rely on a single authority.
>Various assorted references.. I have never, ever, said anything about being right, on any blog, ever. Your comment is a both a strawman and an insult – back into supercilious mode, is it, (though you forgot the sly little wink)?
Why do people not call an opinion piece, that offers no support for the views offered, ‘partisan?’
Bravo, I would never opine on the Middle East problem on the basis of books I had read, or references I had looked up, without having read The Palestine diary, even having spent so many years in the area. Supercilious in the sense of contemptuous is precisely what I am of anyone pushing the zionist cause without recognizing, realizing, or accepting that there is another side to the coin, which is as deserving of our consideration. Perhaps I didn’t look hard enough to see if you were being even-handed in your commentary – my apologies if I missed it.
If you are describing the Margolis article as partisan, what you may have missed is that he is in fact of Jewish descent. Generally you would have expected any partisan leaning to have been in favour of the Israeli position. That it is not, is a mark of his objectivity.
“Your comment is a both a strawman and an insult – back into supercilious mode, is it, (though you forgot the sly little wink)?”
Oh, Bravo, the unintentional irony is exquisite. Do take a moment to re-read your comments!
Happy Hanukah/Eid Mubarak/Merry Christmas to the lot of you, and may peace descend on Bearsy’s Empire – I have a family to attend to, so please excuse me from further verbal jousting for the moment.
I really like Israel and I really like Israelis. That said,
it is necessary to understand the culture of the region. Israel is no more
than a side-show, a distraction. Does anyone really think that there was peace in the
Middle East at any time in history? There wasn’t. Israel might be an irritant, but based on the domestic toils in the Middle Eastern countries since 1948 it would show that they are still as interested in killing each other as ever. The disdain for the US in the Middle East is also rather more deeply-set than just US support for Israel. Though at first the US was more trusted than the UK or France, both countries loathed for their meddling in the internal affairs of Middle Easter societies, this soon changed as the US proved just as likely to meddle than the former regional powers. No, Israel is far from perfect and it should respect the Jordanians in the West Bank a bit more than they have (The West Bank was, after all, Jordan before the 1967 war). Israel, however, can rightly point to the Gaza strip and say that they gave them exactly what they wanted and what did they get but a terror-ruled hell hole. If anyone wants Israel to cede anything they have to make Israel’s security is sacrosanct. If not, there will be nothing but destruction.
You gotta wonder about this, ” literally spit in Obama’s face”.
Does anyone remember the USS Liberty incident? It was all glossed over. Hardly any repercussions at all.
The Golan Heights were lost to Israel in a war where Syria was on the losing side. Tough on Syria.
I’ve never heard Hezbollah described as a “resistance movement” before. They are a bunch of thugs using a country that is not their own (Lebanon) to launch attacks on Israel.
“Yes, Araminta, I remember the attack on the USS Liberty, although it was 43 years ago, but your point escapes me.”
It was an interesting event which seemed to me to illustrate the unthinking support of the US for Israel.
But of course, you may feel differently.
I’m not feeling especially subtle at the moment, Bearsy, but I appreciated the thought. 🙂
Christopher isn’t “right” by the way. He does take both sides of the question on board certainly, and his comment is reasonable and well stated, but just an opinion.
For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t think I’m right either; I’m merely expressing an an opinion.
I’m happy to hear the views of others, and certainly I respect Christopher’s view.
I’m not a lawyer, Bearsy but I do consort with them from time to time.
Delightful people, and they earn lots of dosh. One picks up bad habits.
Yes, that’s much better. 🙂
-“and he doesn’t have any Jewish roots whatsoever.”
Bearsy, Eric Margolis was the son of Henry Margolis. Henry was Director of the CBJE (Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education. (http://www.clevelandjewishhistory.net/sj/lr-projects-sefer.htm)
I had described him correctly as of Jewish descent. I believe that is the appropriate term for someone whose father is a Jew married to a Gentile, who may or may not choose to espouse the religion themselves – i.e. they can only be Jewish automatically from birth, if their mother is a Jew.
I don’t disagree with you that he certainly gives the impression of espousing some fairly wild-eyed causes in some of his writings, but it does not detract from the article I “cut and pasted” for the interest of those who may not have seen it.
This is a cyber-first. Bloggers who state opinions but don’t necessarily think they are right! 🙂 Then we have bloggers who think they are always right and get antsy when challenged. 😦
Bugger me, sixty-four quid on Amazon. Think I’ll look around a bit.
Bearsy, you could well be right, but rather than relying on anything as unreliable as wikipedia as a source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_Jews#Journalists) I have contacted him, and will let you know in due course when he replies, since you feel his antecedents are relevant. Just a hint though, Margolis is the Hebrew for pearls, so if he is not of Jewish descent, I will eat my virtual hat.
I don’t get it. Why would anyone feel it necessary to publish a list of Canadian Jews?
Sipu
Why does anyone publish anything on Wikipedia? I suppose because they felt it may be useful to someone or other – who knows?
Here is another reference to his antecedents from Wikipedia, but, as I mentioned before, you can’t always trust Wikipedia to get it right – they could be referring to a completely different Margolis.
Eric Margolis – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eric S. Margolis is an American-born journalist and writer of Albanian and
Jewish descent. For 27 years, ending in 2010, he was a contributing …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Margolis
CWJ, yes, I suppose mine was a silly question except for the fact that I distrust the motives of the contributors.
Bearsy, I have just done a google search for “Eric Margolis”. It is about the fourth item down the list as summary:
Eric Margolis – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eric S. Margolis is an American-born journalist and writer of Albanian and
Jewish descent. For 27 years, ending in 2010, he was a contributing …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Margolis
In any case this isn’t leading anywhere very fast – clearly you consider him a fruitcake, and many of his articles would suggest that he does tend to tread where others would not follow even out of curiosity, however I felt his line in this article was appropriate. Given that he is viewed as so far Left as to be dangerous, by NeoCons, we should perhaps be more surprised by his slating Obama’s administration? Perhaps he is a more even-handed fruitcake in his attacks than we supposed?
I refer us back to Friedrich Nietzsche’s quotation which ends the article, which sums up the situation fairly aptly.
🙂
His mother, however, was Albanian and over 70pc of Albanians are Muslims. If his descent would have any bearing on the credibility of his opinion then wouldn’t that make it less by extension?
😦
What is unusual about his antecedents is that his father was of Jewish descent married to an Albanian Muslim – I would have thought it may have given him a rather more balanced view than many of us have…
Erm, I thought Jewish descent is traditionally matrilineal? (On the line, I guess, that up until very recently you could onlybe sure that your mother was your mother…)
This letter from the Spectator has an interesting twist on the question of Jewish descent.
Sir: Melanie McDonagh (‘Who’s the daddy?’, 23 October) overstates her case.
I have always understood the reason that Judaism changed from patrilineal to matrilineal descent was the result of Christian neighbourly rape. The rabbis, by means of Responsa, decided humanely that the offspring of such encounters were not only Jewish but legitimate.
Gerald Samuel Petersfield
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_20101030/ai_n56168765/
Bravo22c
#1 You will find Volume II of the Palestine Diary 1945-1948 in paperback for about $20.99 at
http://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Diary-3rd-Intervention-1945-1948/dp/1419635700/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1293643178&sr=8-8
You might also find “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe, an Israeli Jew, of interest.
#2 I may have muddied the waters by describing his father as being of Jewish descent. His father was Jewish. He himself was not Jewish by birth, and his mother was not Jewish, but he was of Jewish descent in the sense of hereditary derivation, in that his father was Jewish – i.e. he was not born a Jew as to be so your mother must be Jewish, as you correctly identified. He may or may not have embraced the religion and vice-versa – I don’t know, but doubt it.