Giving Israel a Pass
February 9th, 2008For those who might be interested, here is an article that I recently wrote for Truthdig:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080201_giving_israel_a_pass/
Posted on Feb 1, 2008
As I was reading through several news items last week on the Internet about the appalling situation in Gaza, I received an e-mail alert from my wife. It had been forwarded to her by a Parisian friend who is an expert in Orientalist art; she had received it from a well-known French television actress.
According to the alert, courses in England about the Shoah had just been withdrawn from British schools because they “shocked the Muslim population which denies the existence of the Holocaust.”
The e-mail continued, “This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.
“Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be ‘a myth,’ it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets. This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide!
“Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world.”
My attention was now torn from the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza and shifted to the charge that British schools had just stopped teaching the Holocaust.
My curiosity piqued—I hadn’t heard that news about Britain—I went to Snopes.com, a Web site that examines such charges. The story, it turned out, first appeared in April 2007, not last week; according to the site, the report was also wildly inaccurate.
The truth was that “One history department in a northern UK city stopped teaching about the Holocaust because it wished to avoid confronting anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils.”
That fact was originally disseminated in a government-sponsored study—a study which was then grossly misreported by a British newspaper to indicate that, rather than in just one history department in the northern UK, Holocaust studies had been terminated across the country.
That error was further magnified by a British group which launched a worldwide alarm on the Internet with the headline: “Recently, this week, UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum. … “
The group made an urgent plea for a global “chain of memory”—the same plea that my wife had just forwarded to me. In other words, nine months later it was still careening around the Internet.
In the process the message had become further distorted. In September 2007, someone surmised that the “UK” as in “UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum” referred not to a country but to the University of Kentucky. A slight “fix” was made in the message, and a new storm of outrage zapped across the Internet, now targeting a hapless American university.
On Nov. 8, 2007, UK Assistant Provost Richard B. Geissman issued a press release categorically denying that the university had cut Holocaust studies from its curriculum. “The academic administration of the University of Kentucky,” he declared, “would never permit such a grotesque lapse in its commitment to the principle of academic freedom.”
I found that Snopes.com had also investigated another similar flurry: “Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country’s Jews and Christians to wear colored badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims,” began that e-mail.
The e-mail quoted Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, as saying, “This is reminiscent of the Holocaust. Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.
“Iran’s roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth. …
“The world should not ignore this,” said Rabbi Hier. “The world ignored Hitler for many years—he was dismissed as a demagogue, they said he’d never come to power—and we were all wrong.”
That story also turned out to be false.
Which is not to say anti-Semitism is no longer a problem in the world. Of course it is. But surely it is not the major threat to humanity that this planet confronts.
The question I raise is this:
Why is it that so many of my fellow Jews have a hair-trigger response to the slightest suggestion that anti-Semites may once again be on the prowl in England or France or Iran—that another Hitler lurks just over the horizon? Read the rest of this entry »
Dead End
January 23rd, 2008Last Friday, President George Bush called for a $150 billion dollar stimulus package to “jump start” America’s flagging economy. The problem, he assured his viewers, was temporary.
“I’m optimistic about our economic future,” said the President, “because Americans have shown time and again that they are the most industrious, creative, and enterprising people in the world. That is what has made our economy strong. That is what will make it stronger in the challenging times ahead.”
What was the reaction of the U.S. and the rest of the world to those rousing words from the head of the world’s most powerful nation?
Stock markets tanked across the globe. Tuesday’s historic rate cut by the Federal Reserve has temporarily staunched the bloodletting, but no one believes the crisis is over.
Right now, in Europe we are waiting to learn if markets will plunge even further.
This is not to pin the melt-down on Bush alone. (More on that later.) But the fact is that the international prestige of an American President, his ability to reassure jittery investors around the world—never mind his own country–has never been lower.
From the start, Bush’s vacuous promises and pigheaded policies—at home and abroad—have turned out to be miserable failures, bringing only disaster in their wake.
Why give any credence to this latest White House initiative?
In just about ever arena, from its attempts to sabotage the U.S. constitution, to intervene across the Middle East and Central Asia, the Bush administration has reached a dead end.
Bush of Arabia-what the talk shows missed
January 17th, 2008For late-night talk show hosts, yukking up George W. Bush’s visit to the Middle East was like shooting fish in a barrel.
Supposedly on a mission promoting peace (between Israel and the Palestinians) the President spent most of his trip rattling sabers against Iran. He spoke glowingly in Abu Dhabi of democracy, but spent most of his trip brandishing swords and holding hands with dictators who are the U.S.’s allies across the region.
One flagrant incongruity, however, seems to have gone unnoticed: Bush’s timid request to Saudi King Abdullah and other rulers in the Gulf to rein in soaring oil prices because, said Bush, they are hurting the U.S. economy.
But the point is that the current economic crisis in America was not triggered by Arab but by American greed: the disastrous mortgage melt down provoked by sub-prime loans. That collapse was the result of the Bush administration and U.S. regulatory agencies refusing to reign in the unscrupulous policies of the mortgage industry, despite repeated warnings of looming calamity.
Second point: while our media was focused on Bush’s pitch to the Arabs for lower petroleum prices—which was politely but firmly turned aside by a Saudi official—at the same time, hugely wealthy Arab investors were helping to bail out some of America’s largest financial institutions, staggering in the wake of the sub-prime crisis.
Read the rest of this entry »
George Bush in the Middle East:Shadowplay
January 15th, 2008Much of the reporting of President Bush’s trip to the Middle East is shadow play, an incredible con game. The suckers are the American public.
Today’s headline, for instance, has Bush telling Saudi King Abdullah that the high price of oil is hurting the U.S. economy. This, the White House press people, reporters and editors apparently all agree, is front page material. But who are they kidding?
The Saudi leaders and their good, old family friend, George Bush have known for ages about the havoc that rocketing oil prices are wreaking on the U.S. economy. All along, in fact, the Bush administration has been cautiously attempting to convince the Saudis, OPEC’s largest producer, to keep prices down. To no avail.
Back in April 2005, for instance, in Crawford Texas, when Bush last met King Abdullah face to face before he took over the Saudi throne, the subject of high oil prices came up. Oil then was selling for $54 a barrel. It’s now $94.
What new leverage does George W. Bush suddenly have?
Instead, he comes bearing gifts. To thank the Saudis for supporting the latest, feeble U.S. peace efforts in the Middle East, Bush is promising them 20 billion dollars in sophisticated weapons—including 121 million dollars worth of precision guided bombs.
But to defend the Saudis against whom? Iran? Does anyone really think the mullahs in Tehran are going to dispatch their forces to attack the Saudis? Or are the Saudis supposed to use those arms against Iraq’s shattered forces? Or is it just a great way for the Saudis to recycle some of their petroleum wealth back to U.S. industry?
Which brings us to another irony of the current Bush trip. A few days ago in Abu Dhabi, trying to whip up support for U.S. policy, he gave a speech condemning Iran and extolling the virtues of democracy from the cavernous marble auditorium of a 3 billion dollar gold plated hotel.
A strange choice of venue: the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai and the rest of the emirates give short shrift to democracy themselves.
They still run their lands as tribal domains, hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into the coffers of a few thousand incredibly wealthy individuals. One after another, their new, high walled, sprawling mansions line the broad residential avenues in Abu Dhabi.
The tribal sheiks maintain their hold over the 4 million residents of the Emirates by distributing enough of their vast wealth to the small proportion—only 17%- of their population, who are actually citizens, to keep them fat and happy, and unconcerned about such issues as freedom of the press. There are estimates, for instance, that the average citizen of Abu Dhabi is a millionaire.
Their rulers, on the other hand, are not dumb. Many have been educated in top U.S. and European universities. Read the rest of this entry »
Tony Blair-Peace Maker or Deal Maker?
January 10th, 2008This morning brings the remarkable news that Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone to work as a part time consultant for the huge JP Morgan investment bank, at a salary estimated at a million dollars a year.
What I find remarkable is not so much the news as the apparent lack of reaction to it. It’s not just a question of a British leader leaving his nation’s top office for employment in a sprawling company with worldwide interests—everyone does that these days—but the fact that Blair is doing it—while at the same time continuing official duties in a very sensitive and financially key part of the world.
Blair is not being hired by Morgan for his economic skills, which were never impressive. As JP Morgan’s chief executive Jamie Dimon announced frankly, “There are only a handful of people in the world who have the knowledge and relationships that he has.”
Such relationships are key to Blair’s current official duties.
Thanks to pressure from his friend George Bush, Blair was handed a very sensitive assignment: Middle East envoy working on behalf of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU.
Though supposedly focused on Palestinian development, Blair’s activities necessarily involve top level contacts with leaders throughout the world, particularly the leaders of the Middle East, leaders flush with trillions of dollars in assets, leaders making enormous deals and investments around the globe–the kind of deals that are Morgan’s bread and butter.
Is it not conceivable there might be a slight conflict of interest, at least a whiff of impropriety, in Blair’s twin roles as peace maker and deal maker?
When Blair’s diplomatic appointment was announced, many in the Middle East and elsewhere questioned the former PM’s ability to act as an honest broker in the region because of his unequivocal support for George Bush in the war in Iraq, and failing to call for a halt to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon last summer. They had a point.
Blair’s million dollar job with J.P Morgan provides skeptics with further ammunition.
Plus ca change
December 19th, 2007From our Plus ca change department:
–Some 90 nations met in Paris this week to pledge more than seven billion dollars in aid to the Palestinians to help the relaunched peace process. Analysts have pointed out that the new aid promised to the Palestinians, will be of little use if Israel continues to throttle the Palestinian economy with border crossings, checkpoints and the huge barrier wall.
But you’ve got to admit the Europeans who joined the Paris aid effort have to be some of the most masochistic donors on the planet. They’ve already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into various projects in the West Bank and Gaza, only to see them blown to smithereens over the past couple of years by Israeli bombs and rockets.
But why should Europeans even be raising new funds?
If the Arab states really wanted to set the Palestinian economy back on its feet they could do it all by themselves—with both hands tied behind their backs. They’re rolling in new wealth. Right now, just in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, there are more than two trillion—that’s trillion–dollars worth of hotels, condominiums, sky scrapers, artificial ski slopes and islands being built. The Emirates are spending hundreds of billions of dollars more so that each sheikh can have his own airline. At the same time they’re snapping up banks and businesses around the globe—particularly in the United States – at bargain basement prices. .
Instead of buying a chunk of Citi Bank they could have bankrolled all of Gaza.
Qaddafi in Paris—But who are the hypocrites?
December 15th, 2007The following article (with slight modifications) ran December 14th in TruthDig:
France is seething over the official visit of Muammar el-Qaddafi to Paris—a landmark affair: President Nicolas Sarkozy’s invitation was the first such offer from a Western leader since Qaddafi’s notorious rupture with the West in the 1980’s.
Unfortunately, the arrival of the Libyan tyrant also happened to coincide with World Human Rights Day. But the predictable political uproar in Paris raises as many questions about the hypocrisy of those who criticize Sarkozy for playing host to Qaddafi, as it does about the morality of the event itself. In fact, the issue resonates far beyond the borders of France.
Not only was Qadaffi, received formally—if coolly–at the Elysees Palace, but the one-time international pariah, whose secret services blew a couple of packed airliners out of the skies, was invited to address the French National Assembly—an event which the majority of the deputies boycotted. He was even allowed to pitch his heated Bedouin tent in the garden of the mansion where foreign dignitaries are traditionally put up.
The trial of Chemical Ali-the media farce continues
August 24th, 2007.
Like a distant historical footnote to the bloody tragedy raging in Iraq, the trial of Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Chemical Ali, and 14 other former lieutenants of Saddam, began this week. The prosecutor accused them of perpetrating “ among the ugliest crimes ever committed against humanity in modern history.”
In a just world, George H.W. Bush and James Baker would also be in the dock.
Chemical Ali and his cohorts are being charged with the slaughter of tens of thousands of Shiites following the failed uprising of 1991. It is the third trial before the Iraqi Special Tribunal for crimes against humanity committed during Saddam’s reign.
But, from the beginning, the Tribunal has been a uniquely Kafkaesque affair: first because of the total disconnect between the drama being played out in the court room and the slaughter going on outside the heavily fortified Green Zone. Secondly, by the fact that the horrific history of the 1991 repression is being recounted as if it occurred in an international vacuum. No mention whatsoever of the complicity of the United States and President George H.W. Bush in those bloody events,
Though the British Press has made some mention of America’s role, as far as I can make out, the major American media –and that includes the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, CNN and the Associated Press— have not made even the faintest allusion to the U.S. involvement. Read the rest of this entry »
“Web of Deceit” among nine books chosen by Barron’s for readiang this summer.
July 26th, 2007Gene Epstein of Barron’s has selected “Web of Deceit” as one of nine books for less than light reading this summer.
“Web of Deceit (Other Press, 2007), by former 60 Minutes producer Barry M. Lando, is an historical work of political economy in two senses: as a case study of the economics of oil and the corrupt economics of the arms trade. The book is also, as its subtitle makes clear, “The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush.” But it spares no one in between, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
“In the process, Lando also shows that oil and the arms trade were usually at the root of Western complicity. While not likely to brighten a summer afternoon, Web of Deceit is essential reading for those who care about what their government does in the world.”
For the full article click here.
Israel’s primal myth: Barrier to Peace
July 22nd, 2007The following article was posted July 21, 2007 on Truthdig.
By Barry Lando
Forget about Hamas, the wall, Gaza and the occupied territories. There can be no peace in the Middle East until Israel and the Palestinians deal with one key issue: the Palestinian demand that Israel recognize their right of return. That demand is based on the Arab charge that the Zionist state created the refugee problem in the war of 1948-49 by a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. It’s an accusation that Israel’s leaders have consistently rejected. Jewish soldiers could never commit such crimes. It was the Arabs themselves, they say, who created the refugees.
It has become increasingly evident, however, that the Israeli position is, in fact, a self-serving myth created when the Jewish state was born, perpetuated ever since by the country’s leaders and still blandly accepted by Washington.
The myth goes like this: In 1948, when the Arabs attacked the newly declared state of Israel, the Arab population fled by the hundreds of thousands. They left not because of attacks by Israeli soldiers but because of the calls of their own Arab leaders, who guaranteed them a speedy return once the Arab armies had triumphed over the upstart Jewish state. Indeed, they fled despite the attempts of many Israelis—as was movingly portrayed in the film “Exodus”—to convince their Palestinian neighbors to remain. Why should such treacherous people have the right to return? Not to mention the fact that their return by the millions would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
This is the story that Israel’s leaders and Jews throughout the Diaspora have clung to for more than half a century. But since the early 1990s a new generation of Israeli historians and investigative journalists—drawing on formerly classified documents as well as recollections of Israeli leaders of the War of Independence—has demolished the traditional Israeli position.
According to their research, the Palestinians fled their villages not in response to a call from Arab leaders but because of a concerted campaign of terror—including massacres and rape—perpetrated by military units of the newly declared Israeli state.
As Gideon Levy, a leading columnist from Haaretz, put it, “1948 was Israel’s finest hour, the culmination of a mad dream: the formation of an independent Jewish state.” At the same time he declared, “it was our darkest hour, in which we committed war crimes on a large scale. And did so in all good conscience.” Read the rest of this entry »