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’.

SJF,
Naturally, “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”, but without even an affected form of understanding (i.e.tolerance) the only alternative outcome is the one as portrayed by the ‘New Scientist’.

Both the Israeli’s and the Palestinians have now reached an impasse where the international ‘voice’ no longer penetrates and is mostly, to them, irrelevant. The statement, “Israel wiped Palestine off the map, and now lives in a permanent state of fear of retribution” obviously delegitimizes Israel and is quite absurd to consider.

A post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, perhaps in the realisation of Kant's "Perpetual Peace," is also a great humanitarian ideal, embodied within the U.N. Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear is currently bound to Israel’s political sovereignty. The greatest hypocrisy of the west, with all of her humanitarian idealism, will be to expect Israel to sacrifice these notions, as integral to her sovereignty as it is to ours.

Good on you , Relda, and am glad that SJF also goes your way,

Further we can only pray that an article on the Obama Agenda in the latest Guardian also bears what we might call an attempt to use the Sermon on the Mount concept of Sharing the Blame.

As any historian knows, any argument against sharing the blame, is usually from those who too much use phrases, such as - that’s only in the past – or, let’s forget it, because we think different these days.

I guess the only way to prevent such slippages of human nature right now is to either create a new UN based on Kantian Reasoning or mend the old one, in which we would need to sack most of the former executives, anyhow.

Finally, it is still well to remember that Kantian Reasoning dispels just one power running the global show as Bush et al were attempting to do.

Rather the far more honest concept of democratic multi-power which not only helped to end the Cold war, but is still recommended in our Uni’ Schools of Humanities, anyhow.

Hoping for Commonsense.
Regards, BB, WA.

Bushbred

‘Good on you , Relda, and am glad that SJF also goes your way …’

I do??

Sorry, BB. But I’m mostly opposed to relda’s position. I’m not sure what I have said to make you think otherwise. I do try to sympathise with Israel's stance on Palestine, but I have long since stopped making excuses for it.

Relda

‘Both the Israeli’s and the Palestinians have now reached an impasse where the international ‘voice’ no longer penetrates and is mostly, to them, irrelevant.’

Not to the Palestinians. To them, the international voice is extremely important because they have almost nothing else. They justifiably believe that the world neither knows nor cares for the suffering and injustice they have endured.

The international ‘voice’ I refer to is not the voice of world leaders (including Australian), who continue to discredit themselves with their own publics over Palestine. I refer to the voice of ordinary people of principle finally waking up to what Israel has really been doing to the Palestinians for over 60 years.

The US in particular has the leverage to end Israel’s state-sanctioned cruelty, but the US administration will change direction on its Israel policy only if and when there is a significant shift in US public opinion. Also, the US position greatly impacts on Israeli public debate. A change in the official US position on Israel would spearhead a change in Israeli debate.

Sorry, SJF, I misread what Relda was really getting at, and do believe he or she seems a bit in two minds about the problem.

Also what is mentioned about Immanuel Kant pressing for one courageous nation as being righteous in the way that Israel is acting, does not fit in quite with Kantian philosophy which I believe would not have one powerful nation like America arming and backing one single state.

Regards, BB, WA.

Bushbred,
True, SJF and I appear to have definite and differing views on Israel’s legitimacy – and I’m certainly singled minded in my support of her existence (read my posts for a 3rd time) – a distinct divide, however, is shown on Israel’s legitimacy amongst the so called 'united' 192 world member states.

Israel is by no means perfect - 50,000 ideological settlers living on the West Bank are at odds both domestically and internationally. But do the countries of Australia, America, Russia or China etc., reach anywhere near the same ‘perfection’ as demanded of Israel? Your avowed ‘expertise’ in political theory allows Henry Kissinger some authority on the Israeli armament policy; Kissinger’s foreign policy was a nemesis to the anti-war left under the Nixon and Ford administrations - his primary concern lay in the American Interest. "It is an act of insanity and national humiliation to have a law prohibiting the President from ordering assassination." - H.K. in 1975. Kissinger’s world was of the Realpolitik where, “…Israel is sovereign in this decision [for nuclear armament]."

The dynamic operating within the U.N. seriously undermines its credibility. Many members (a virtual Who’s Who of human rights violators) are determined mainly to prevent the Commission from accomplishing its purpose. As an effective ‘Abusers’ Defense Society’, they vote consistently to block any serious effort to investigate or condemn their own human rights record or abuses by fellow despots, e.g., Algeria, Bhutan, China, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Togo, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.

A steady build up of fuel led to an Australian fire without precedent in terms of human tragedy. Ignorance fuels an intense hatred on both sides of a divide within the Middle East. One perhaps wonders at the unparalleled conflict that may emerge, given the ‘perfect storm’ of political and economic events currently building.

Kant’s philosophy and the ‘democratic peace theory’ are certainly worthy of consideration. Perhaps ironically, George W. Bush and Tony Blair embrace these also, arguing that the democratic peace is a historical fact. Democracy, alone however, is an unlikely cause of the democratic peace.

Richard

Must say, Relda, that Immanuel Kant’s reasoning was not so much protecting democracy simply as said, but after his disappointment with Napoleon not carrying out Libertinian principles through his autocrat personalism, Kant thus made the following declaration in his quest for Perpetual Peace:

From this day on, not one personage alone, nor even one personage alone represent ing the Good Lord, should ever be allowed to make final decisions in front of what he called a Federation of democratic/libertinian nations to preserve Perpetual Peace.

Thus it was that the League of Nations was eventually founded, followed by the United Nations but both failing because of the very thing that Kant warned against, single party authority or virtually the same political behaviour, letting a single authority like an American President have the last say.

Much of this was discussed so much during the Korean War with challenges against former war leaders like Macarthur having too much to say, when there should have been more consensus.

Certainly there was consensus even near the end of WW2 with the Bretton Woods Agreement, from where it is said that though he only was allowed to speak for Great Britain at the time, wonderful ideas such as the Marshal Plan where derived from suggestion s by an aging Maynard Keynes.

The end of the Cold War was attained also not so much by direct authority but much informal discussion, Reagan and Gorbachev virtually playing their parts but more as figureheads.

Certainly more wisdom and understanding is needed, Relda, and let’s hope Obama comes up with it .

Regards, BB, WA.

As you say, Bushbred, more wisdom and understanding are needed, and as Kant surely implies, peace and its lasting solution will go well beyond one person – whether it be a Napoleon, Reagan, Gorbachev, Bush or an Obama, through whom a false hope is placed.

Kindest of Regards

relda (BB)

Relda (Bushbred)

‘But do the countries of Australia, America, Russia or China etc., reach anywhere near the same ‘perfection’ as demanded of Israel?’

Who wants Israel to be perfect? I just want Israel to stop persecuting, dispossessing, bombing, maiming, crippling, imprisoning, walling up, ghettoising, bulldosing, humiliating and ethnically cleansing Palestinians. I’m sure the isolated, embattled, numbingly grief-stricken Palestinian people have a similar barometer of ‘perfection’ to hold up to the State of Israel as well.

Also, re Israel’s ‘legitimacy’ – this is a rhetorical furphy, especially given Israel’s powerful status in the West and the cowardly realpolitik of the Arab states. The Israeli obsession with being ‘wiped off the map’ is more of a paranoid projection of its denied guilt about Israel’s own de-legitimization of the Palestinian people and culture, coupled with the trauma of the Jews’ own past persecution.

Unlike the indigenous-annihilation crimes that Australia, the US, Canada etc committed, Israel is annihilating the Palestinian culture within full view of the world community.

Because we can’t cover up Israel’s crimes against humanity, the West is desperately trying to maintain a culture of Israeli absolution. I won’t make any huffy declarations that Israel ‘can’t keep getting away with it’. It can, it does and, unless the compassionate people of the world make themselves heard, it most likely will.

Bushbred

I don’t have much knowledge of Kant or his Perpetual Peace philosophy, except for a brief perusal of the not always reliable Wikipedia.

All I can say is that perpetual peace can never be achieved. It’s a delusion that keeps justifying war and military expenditure.

Conflict is an essential part of humanity. War is not. Because conflict is human, we have allowed ourselves to be brainwashed – generation after generation – into believing that war is human as well.

Humanity will always stand up for itself in the face of unfairness, aggression and injustice. That involves conflict. War was invented to monopolise the human right to conflict, by bringing all the resources and rules of conflict under control of the governments of nation states.

"Israel has become one of the worst perpetrators of ethnic cleansing in modern history"

Oh, come off it! The Palestinian population is INCREASING! Either Israel is supremely incompetent at ethnic cleansing (where the point is to reduce the population, not increase it), or ethnic cleansing just isn't happening.

Criticise Israel for legitimate reasons, but bollocks about ethnic cleansing merely undermines your argument, and shows you know little about the conflict and are simply interested in making Israel look bad. It's because of people that criticise Israel out of hand without knowing much about the conflict that accusations of anti-Semitism start getting flung around.

Hint: The Palestinian population is increasing at a faster rate than surrounding, non-occupied Arab countries. How is that ethnic cleansing, exactly?

Elder of Zion

Ethnic cleansing is not about 'reducing' population numbers. It's a term first coined by Western sources to describe 'mass killings, deportation, rape, internment, and intimidation engaged in by rival ethnic groups ... with the goal of rendering ethnically mixed areas homogeneous and thereby establishing a de facto claim on ethnic grounds to sovereignty over disputed territory'. [Answers.com]

Israel's policy towards the Palestinians fulfills all these requirements (the only possible exception being rape). OLO space restrictions prevent an adequate description of the extensive ethnic cleansing policies practised by the State of Israel on the Palestinian people over a 60-year period. However, suffice to say:

1947 - 720,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from 77% of Palestine, 418 villages destroyed and several massacres occurred - the most notorious being Deir Yassin. Successive conflicts and aggressions by Israel have caused Palestinian refugee numbers to increase to 4.5 million, many still living in UN refugee camps after 3 or more generations and denied right of return.

Today, three-quarters of Palestinians are displaced and more than half are displaced outside the borders of their homeland.

Since 1967, 300,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned without trial and over 500,000 have been subjected to torture, abuse and neglect within prison, often leading to deaths in custody.

From 1967 - 2008, Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory has been one of illegal and active colonisation - land confiscations, the building of 200 Jewish settlements and the transferring of more than 400,000 Jewish settlers to Palestinian territory.

Jerusalem has been actively 'de-Arabised' with the construction of 12 neighbourhoods transplanting 25,000 Jewish settlers.

Considering that, in 1947, 94% of Palestinian land was owned by Palestinians, who comprised 65% of the population (90% in 1918), the heavily reduced and demoralised state of Palestinian culture constitutes ethnic cleansing on a grand scale.

In terms of Palestinian population increases, this is mostly racist hysteria-mongering from the Netanyahu camp. Population studies do not bear this out and, even if they did, it's common knowledge that poverty and extreme survival conditions induce people to bear more children.

Quick correction ...

In previous post, I wrote: 'Considering that, in 1947, 94% of Palestinian land was owned by Palestinians...'

I should have written: ''Considering that, in 1947, 94% of land in what is now Israel was owned by Palestinians...'