Receiving Bill Clinton

2 responses to “Receiving Bill Clinton”

1. 

   nhr

   Apr 23, 2009 at 12:41 pm

   Chaim Weizmann, arguing the Zionist cause, is reported to have said to Lord Balfour, the then British Foreign Secretary: "we [the Jews] had Jerusalem when London was a marsh."

   Balfour, in a memo to Lord Curzon, his successor to the post of Foreign Secretary, wrote: "Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, and future hopes, of far profounder import [sic] than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. In my opinion that is right."

   In the early decades of the 20th century, it was thus still considered entirely natural to intertwine religious — i.e. essentially theocratic — worldviews into foreign policy decisions.

   Even in the 21th century, that kind of Sunday school thinking about what the ethnicity of Judea’s or Palestine’s population ought to be is still alive among e.g. some of the Bible-thumping crowd south of the Mason-Dixon line. Christian ideology, incidentally, offers some Gentiles a convenient means to reframe an unstated antisemitic "ours is a Christian nation; we don’t want Jews in our own backyard" position into a more politically correct "Israel — a.k.a. Palestine — is the place where Jews ought to be" discourse.

   People brought up in a culture with Christian roots are all, to some extent, influenced by that narrative and mental framework, and but uneasily distance themselves from its normative comfort, just like the pre-Copernicians found non-geocentric models of the Universe specious and heretical.

   The ultimate relevance of the feudal, corrupt and autocratic Saudi regime in resolving the decades-long conflict in the Middle East is very limited, for the territorial overbooking of Palestine is a problem whose origin and responsibility rest essentially with Europe and the US, and that can be solved only by Europe and the US.

   The Saudi regime might think e.g. that the Palestinians should now officially renounce their claim on the West Bank territories annexed by Israel’s potent army, and that life in shrinking concrete- and barbed-wire fenced, economically and environmentally not viable Bantustans should be an acceptable price for Palestinians to pay for lasting [sic] "peace".
   Such thinking, based on the "right of (military) might" is no different from what has been the (mis)guiding principle of the innumerable failed "Middle East Peace Plans" for the past six decades, and is deluded, fundamentally unfair, unsustainable and immoral.

   To quote Albert Einstein: "Insanity: the belief that one can get different results by doing the same thing."

   Reply
2. 

   photosam88

   May 18, 2009 at 7:41 pm

   Small countries are little more than places for large countries to play war games. Iran, Russia and China are fighting it out with the west in Israel and Europe as always is an appeaser but with a 10% and growing Middle East population they are now in effect a portion of the Iran controlled middle east. Saudi Arabia may be large in size and influence but unstable politically and small in population and seen as a pawn of United States so it is not taken very seriously by most muslims.

   Reply