Pawns of the War Party
by Justin Raimondo, September 07, 2006clip. . .
One of the most interesting, and little-talked about, consequences of the Iraq war has been the extension of Israeli influence – and aid, including military aid – to Kurdistan. Seymour Hersh reported on this, and Le Figarodetailed the developing American-Israeli rift over the issue, with Washington increasingly nervous over thegrowing Israeli presence and what it portends for the region. The Turkish military, formerly best buddies with the IDF, are furious at what they consider to be a stab in the back by their sometime allies, and relations between Ankara and Tel Aviv have subsequently soured.Israel’s interest is in establishing a base that borders Iran, from which to monitor developments in country and build an enclave from which to launch armed attacks.Pejak is the ideal instrument with which to accomplish this, and if Washington isn’t directly funding or otherwise aiding the Iranian Kurdish guerrilla group, then the Israelis surely haven’t neglected such an opportunity.The Israelis are eager to use the Kurds as a tripwire for war, not only with Iran but with Syria, where restive Kurds have recently begun to rise against the regime ofBashar al-Assad. If the Israeli strategy is to spark a regional war that will rearrange the map of the Middle East and oust their enemies from Beirut to Tehran, then the Kurds are the perfect fuse. If you look at the claimed area of Kurdish predominance – “Greater Kurdistan” – it runs through Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and as far north as Armenia. Kurdistan, in short, is ideally located as a base from which to launch a campaign to destabilize Israel’s enemies and effect “regime change” throughout the Middle East. >>MORE<<. . .clip
by Walid SalemIsraeli and Western historical studies of the 1947 partition plan overwhelmingly demonstrate that it was accepted by the Zionist movement and was rejected by the Palestinians and the Arab countries. But is this the real story? Aren’t there other narratives? What does a re-examination of the historical reality reveal in this regard?
Was Palestinian and Arab rejection of the plan really the primary reason for its failure to be implemented or were there other critical factors? For example, was the plan itself created only to legitimize Israeli goals, despite the fact it was never applied on the Palestinian side? A general problem with the dominant historical narratives is that they either place the events and arguments of 1947 outside their historical context, and outside their relationship to previous events, or they connect them only to whatever complies with the writers’ biases and inclinations. This paper aims to show the reasons underlying Zionist acceptance of the partition plan, to examine whether the Palestinians and the Arabs really rejected it and, finally, to investigate whether international, Zionist and some Arab statements aided the implementation of a partition quite different from that set forth in the official document promulgated by the UN on November 29, 1947. |
Rearranging the Middle East
JUNE 5, 2013 9:40 AMBritish perfidy and French collusion have created a Middle East that has been unstable since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of WWI. The Arab Spring and the convulsion it created in the Middle East require a rearrangement of the boundaries drawn by the British and French following World War I.The British government signed the McMahon-Hussein Agreement of October, 1915, with Sharif Hussein Ibn Ali of Mecca (Saudi Arabia), the Hashemite guardian of the Islamic holy places. The agreement promised the Arabs lands liberated from Turkish Ottoman control in exchange for Arab participation in the war (WWI) against the Ottomans. Less than a year later, in May, 1916, representatives of the British and French government reached a secret agreement known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, which was an understanding between the two powers (with Tsarist Russia assenting) on how to dismember the Ottoman Empire. Sir Mark Sykes and Georges Picot reached a deal that would divide the Ottoman held Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. The maps drawn by Sykes-Picot gave the French control of Lebanon and Syria, and the Alexandretta region of Turkey. The area around Jerusalem was to be internationalized. The British, however, demanded the Port of Haifa and Acre. The British would also go on to carve out the oil rich areas of Iraq, including Basra (Shiite southern Iraq) and Kirkuk (Kurdish northern Iraq), as well as what is today, Jordan. A straight line divided Syria and Mesopotamia, with the French slated to administer the northern part (most of today’s Syria) while the British would be taking the southern part, which meant most of today’s Iraq.The Sykes-Picot agreement was in sharp contradiction with the earlier McMahon-Hussein Agreement. The Balfour Declaration (November 2, 1917) provided for a Jewish Homeland that was inclusive of Palestine and Jordan. In 1922, in what amounted to another twist in British connivance, the British cut off almost 75% from what was allotted to the Jewish Homeland to create the Emirate of Trans-Jordan. Earlier, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the Zionist movement and a world renowned scientist, was instrumental in winning WWI for the British by inventing a fermentation process that allowed the British to manufacture their own liquid acetone. The British government had previously offered Uganda for Jewish settlement in what became known as the “Uganda plan.” The majority of Zionists rejected the plan, seeking a home in their ancestral homeland of Palestine, known today as the State of Israel. <>
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