Hope this may influence Odama's significant coming agenda.

As a trained political historian in a modern democracy might ask what is the correct way to analyse today’s political problems, particularly in the Middle East.

There is little doubt that today’s Middle East conflict is nothing like the major cause of both WW1 and WW2, both huge castrophies which rather disgustingly began mainly between two Western nations, Germany and France, finally both bringing in the rest of Europe and Russia, as well as the United states.

Speaking philosophically, today’s conflict, because it is so religious, is much more worrying because it so lopsided, Western Christianity being gigantic in military capacity, while Islam, comprising the major anti-white Western forces, though huge in people power, is so pitifully low in regular armanents it could be the cause of today's terroism.

The point is how does a trained Aussie historian go about this problem, which in some ways resembles my personal problem when I wrote a series on Westralian history called A Land in Need, in which some readers later told me I had been too sympathetic with the murderous Aborigines who in the early days attacked white settlers homes and viilages which were not protected by the military.

To close on Iran, which so many of our OLO’s fully agree with the Bush terminology of Iran as an evil state, while I don't admire the Iranian leadership I still respect her as the former Persia, who these days unfortunately, is regarded so low in status by America.

I now turn to the story two years ago about the Iranian female judge who angrily replied to a suggestion how Iran would be much better learning the American Way to true democracy -

To which she hotly replied -

Yes, it is true that we could do with democracy, but certainly not fashioned on the American Way.

Certainly any democratic Aussie, or indeed any Western political historian should be allowed these days to weigh up the above, and maybe even think the same.

From BB, Buntine, West Aust'

The authors of ‘An agenda for Obama : Comments’, give the Obama administration’s highest priority for the Israeli/ Palestinian ‘peace process’ as for there to be no “tolerating Palestinian incitement against Israel”. As the “delegitimisation of Israel is also endemic in Palestinian media, including that controlled by the Palestinian Authority”, this incitement undoubtedly runs deep. To tie this in with the two biggest obstacles to the Palestinian economy, “corruption and a lack of security”, we obviously have a very ‘loaded’ and unstable situation.

Peace in the Middle East will need to rely on an international body capable of definitive and informed action – unlike the international community’s abysmal failure to protect Rwanda in their hour of desperation and greatest time of need. The self-appointed world police authority failed similarly. Staying out of Rwanda was an explicit U.S. policy objective. Rwandan genocide specialist Alison L. Des Forges suggested that U.S. officials knew “two days, not two weeks” after the initial killings that extremists “with an avowedly genocidal agenda had murdered legitimate Rwandan authorities” and were seizing power in the government.

Israeli politics, understandably, turns toward the right, where questions of security are paramount and public cynicism toward any international sympathy is likely to be on the wane.

Who knows better than Europeans the dangers that arise from unbridled power politics, from an excessive reliance on military force, from policies produced by national egoism and ambition, even from balance of power and raison d'état? But I would suggest along with others, Israeli survival runs far deeper than this – indeed, probably linked also to our own (survival).

‘Regional Nuclear War Could Devastate Global Climate’ – Science Daily (Dec. 11, 2006)

The scramble for carbon credits and the political green-fest to save the planet pales into insignificance in light of the same scientific apparatus that foretells climate change. This same science gives the sobering reality of nuclear conflagration: A small country is likely to direct its weapons against population centers to maximize damage and achieve the greatest advantage - fatality estimates for a plausible regional conflict ranged from 2.6 million to 16.7 million per country…. "With the exchange of one hundred 15 kiloton weapons as posed in this scenario, the estimated quantities of smoke generated could lead to global climate anomalies exceeding any changes experienced in recorded history," - Prof. Alan Robock, Department of Environmental Sciences and associate director of the Center for Environmental Prediction - Rutgers' Cook College.

I mistakenly wrote in my previous post that Israeli “public cynicism toward any international sympathy is likely to be on the wane”. Should have been read and written as,"cynicism toward...international sympathy is UNlikely to be on the wane”. This is largely due to Israeli politics and society being so misunderstood along with Israeli fear, her apparent islolation and her growing paranoia.

"The melancholy truth, I fear, is that the candles of civilisation are burning low. The world is increasingly governed not so much by capitalism, or communism, or social democracy, or even tribal barbarism, as by a false lexicon of political cliches, accumulated over half a century and now assuming a kind of degenerate sacerdotal authority.... We all know what they are...." - Israeli Ambassador Herzog's Response To U.N.’s ‘Zionism Is Racism’ (Resolution 3379) in 1975. This resolution was revoked in 1991 by UN Resolution 4686 – but UN Jewish antipathy continues, and via similar majority sentiment as expressed in 1975 - even if calculatingly suppressed.

Relda

‘…UN Jewish antipathy continues, and via similar majority sentiment as expressed in 1975 - even if calculatingly suppressed.’

There is nothing 'suppressed' about it. Israel’s detractors know full well that anti-Semitism exists, as do many forms of racism. However, we cannot keep allowing Israel to use anti-Semitism to define who it is, and to excuse whatever it does, as a result of the trauma of its past.

For as long as Israel refuses to accept that its ongoing problem with the Palestinians is caused by its continuing occupation and persecution of them, not by a hatred of the Jews, it can realistically expect a continuing decline in world sympathy.

Not only is Israel's irresponsible election of (what looks to be) a new ultra-right wing administration a threat to every country within its nuclear orbit, particularly Iran, its survival is threatened by its very own actions – not by the Palestinians and not by anti-Judaism, anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism. Israel has become one of the worst perpetrators of ethnic cleansing in modern history and, as a result of its own actions – however, sympathetically we try to view Israel’s paranoia – is losing its dignity and its humanity.

SJF,
A mockery is made of Judaism where the concept of “betzelem elohim” is corrupted; a precept recognizing that every human being is created in the divine image. This is where the Jews lose their dignity, and we along with them. The ‘tikkun’, or repair, has within its fabric this very precept – a reminder of our universal commonality; we are ‘Adam’ - i.e. humanity.

Israel’s history can easily (if not, simplistically) be read as confirmation of an early anti-nationalist conviction. The formation of a ‘Jewish State’ appears a contradiction of this ideal. Can a nation founded as a Jewish homeland, with a "right of return" for diaspora Jews but no one else, a Star of David on the flag and a national anthem that evokes the "yearning" of Jews for Zion -- ever treat non-Jews as true, equal citizens? The ultra nationalist party,Yisrael Beiteinu, opposes the separation of religion from state on the basis that the ‘uniqueness’ of the Jewish people places no distance between state and religion. This is obviously a mistake for a secular and democratic state. For most of the Orthodox community, religion can mean only one thing - what the rabbis decide. As with Christian fundamentalism, there exists a stiff-necked severity.

If Israeli Jews wish to ‘convert’ the Arabs within their borders to loyalty and good citizenship, they should expand, not rescind, the basic democratic rights of its Arab minority. But instead they radicalize them, and create an enemy within. If Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas were to properly understand the ‘tikkun’ neither would they continue as enemies and seek to wipe Israel off the map.

relda

The Israeli people have been enculturated from early childhood with the belief that Israel is the only place where Jews can be safe. It logically follows then that only Jews can be safe in Israel and that by expanding the democratic rights of Israeli Arabs, Israeli Jews risk becoming a persecuted people again.

Given the nature of Jewish history, this fear of annihilation is understandable but given Israel’s ongoing and disproportionate cruelty towards the Palestinians, it is no longer acceptable.

‘If Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas were to properly understand the ‘tikkun’ neither would they continue as enemies and seek to wipe Israel off the map.’

Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas have no obligation to understand the ‘tikkun’ any more than Israel has an obligation to understand the religious concepts of Islam and Islamic militancy.

This is an issue of humanitarianism, not religion. Israel wiped Palestine off the map, and now lives in a permanent state of fear of retribution. I don’t believe that Israel can break out of this moral prison of its own making. The only thing that can save Israel, the Palestinians and the increasingly likely war between Israel and Iran is the voice of the international community.

Bushbred

‘... so many of our OLO’s fully agree with the Bush terminology of Iran as an evil state …’

Why must we keep viewing Iran in this way? Yes. Iran is an authoritarian theocracy. That does not make it evil. It has an anti-Western foreign policy. That does not make it evil. It does not like Israel. That does not make it evil. It responds belligerently to (mostly arrogant) overtures from Western governments. That does not make it evil. It is committed to developing nuclear energy (and quite possibly nuclear arms). That does not make it evil.

The only issue that really makes it ‘evil’ is because it forms part of the ‘THEM” of Western politics, not the ‘US’.