Time Magazine in 1952: Some Unvarnished Truths About the US and Israel
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- Written by M. Shahid Alam M. Shahid Alam
- Published: 09 December 2010 09 December 2010
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Was there ever a time when a leading organ of the US media could speak the unvarnished truth about the links between the United States and Israel?
Consider this quote from Time magazine of January 1952, embedded in an article that explained its choice of Mohammed Mossadegh as its Person of the Year for 1951. It had no compliments for Mossadegh, the man who was spearheading his country’s bid to take back its oil resources from the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. No surprise there.
Surprising, however, is Time’s candor on Israel. It minces no words. US support for the creation of Israel had alienated the Middle East: it had been a costly error, motivated not by national interest but petty considerations of presidential politics. Truman had supported the creation of Israel in order to court American Jewish votes. This was the plain truth: a US President had placed his electoral chances ahead of a vital national interest. Apparently, in those days, Time could write the plain truth without worrying about the tide of flak from the American Jewish community.
Here is the quote, with italics added for emphasis:
“The word “American” no longer has a good sound in that part of the world [the Middle East]. To catch the Jewish vote in the U.S., President Truman in 1946 demanded that the British admit 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine, in violation of British promises to the Arabs. Since then, the Arab nations surrounding Israel have regarded that state as a U.S. creation, and the U.S., therefore, as an enemy. The Israeli-Arab war created nearly a million Arab refugees, who have been huddled for three years in wretched camps. These refugees, for whom neither the U.S. nor Israel will take the slightest responsibility, keep alive the hatred of U.S. perfidy.“No enmity for the Arabs, no selfish national design motivated the clumsy U.S. support of Israel. The American crime was not to help the Jews, but to help them at the expense of the Arabs. Today, the Arab world fears and expects a further Israeli expansion. The Arabs are well aware that Alben Barkley, Vice President of the U.S., tours his country making speeches for the half-billion-dollar Israeli bond issue, the largest ever offered to the U.S. public. Nobody, they note bitterly, is raising that kind of money for them.”
Time does not see Israel as a victim. There is no mention of the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ either. Instead, Israel had been created “at the expense of the Arabs.” It refuses to “take the slightest responsibility” for the million Palestinian refugees. It is also the source of Arab hostility towards the United States.
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Israeli Army Razes West Bank Village
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- Written by Alessandra Bajec - IMEMC & Agencie Alessandra Bajec - IMEMC & Agencie
- Published: 08 December 2010 08 December 2010
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The Israeli military bulldozed Tana village early on Wednesday near the city of Hebron, Press TV reported.
Israeli
bulldozers entered the village of Tana, leveling a school and forcing
dozens of families living in tents to evacuate the structures.
A Red Cross building, which reportedly served the impoverished residents
of the village, was also severely damaged in the bulldozing, witnesses
said.
The Palestinian Authority did not condemn the demolitions. Israeli
authorities commented that the structures had been built without the
needed permits.
Based on figures revealed by the Israeli NGO Bimkom, almost 95% of
applications filed by Palestinians for construction permits are
rejected. Bimkom also noted that Israel's Civil Administration only
grants around 12 permits per year.
Palestinians point out that Israel's ongoing demolition plans undermine
their efforts to create a free and independent Palestinian state.
According to the Palestinian Information Center, since the start of
2000, 995 Palestinian homes have been demolished in occupied Jerusalem
making 5,783 people displaced, including 3,109 children.
There is Nothing 'Divine' About Haifa's Fire
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- Written by Joharah Baker for MIFTAH Joharah Baker for MIFTAH
- Published: 07 December 2010 07 December 2010
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It is always disappointing when politicians refuse to see further than the tips of their noses. Unfortunately, this is the case far too often here in Palestine. The effects of this tunnel vision are ridiculous in the best case scenario, extremely damaging in the worst. One such case of short-sightedness came from Hamas' deposed leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh on December 5. While he led a Muslim prayer for rain in a local mosque, Haniyeh decided to offer his take on the enormous brushfires, which have been raging through the Carmel forest in Haifa since December 2, quipping that they were "divine strikes from God for what Israel has done" [presumably to the Palestinians].
What prompted Haniyeh to make such a ridiculous and frankly, damaging statement is incomprehensible. For one, it is not diplomatic in the least, especially for a man who claims to be a high ranking official and who has shown a level of political pragmatism on more than one occasion. Second, it is not logical, because according to this rationale, every calamity that befalls the Palestinians is presumably a similar "divine strike" for what we have done.
Most of all, however, it is short-sighted in that Haniyeh seems to forget that the luscious green forests of Al Carmel were once Palestine and continue to remain so in the hearts of pretty much every Palestinian. A fire that scorches the earth, no matter where, is detrimental to all humankind, regardless of who inhabits the land at that particular moment. Over 40 lives were lost, tens of thousands of people (including Palestinians living inside Israel) were evacuated from their homes and 12,500 acres (50,000 dunams) of greenery were reduced to ashes. Even Turkey, which has been at loggerheads with Israel ever since the Mavi Marmara fiasco in which Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish citizens, offered its help in putting out the fire. Palestinian firefighters also joined the battle against the blaze, crossing the Green Line into Israel.
"We were received respectfully. After all, we're dealing with a humanitarian crisis which knows no borders," said Bethlehem's Civil Defense Chief Ibrahim Ayish, who said he and his team wanted to join forces with Israeli and international teams in order to "protect the environment and nature."
As a Palestinian, the fire in the Carmel mountain region of Haifa was devastating to watch, especially since it took place in such a cherished city. While it's true that Haifa was captured in the 1948 War and has been known to the world as an Israeli city ever since, this does not negate the fact that Haifa was once home to a Palestinian population, the overwhelming majority of who became refugees following their exile.
US scraps Israel settlements freeze bid to revive talks
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- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 07 December 2010 07 December 2010
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The United States is abandoning efforts to persuade Israel to renew a freeze on settlement-building as part of efforts to revive Middle East peace talks.
Washington had been negotiating with Israel to try to meet Palestinian conditions for restarting direct talks.
The Palestinians suspended talks in September after a 10-month freeze on Israeli building in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, expired.
The US says it will continue to explore ways to bring the two sides together.
A senior US official told the BBC that attempts to get Israel to renew a partial freeze on settlement construction in occupied territory had failed.
But he said this did not meant the end of Washington's efforts to revive the peace talks.
Last month, the Obama administration offered Israel a sizeable package of incentives, including jet fighters and security guarantees, in return for an extension of the previous moratorium.
The Palestinians have said they will not return to the negotiating table while building continued.
A second official said the administration had determined that the moratorium extension was not the best basis to resume talks.
It is unclear how the US is planning to proceed, says the BBC's Kim Ghattas at the state department.
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators will be in Washington next week and Hillary Clinton will make a speech about the Middle East on Friday.
FBI plant banned by mosque – because he was too extreme
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- Written by Guy Adams in Los Angeles, Tuesday, 7 December 2010- AP, Independent (UK) Guy Adams in Los Angeles, Tuesday, 7 December 2010- AP, Independent (UK)
- Published: 07 December 2010 07 December 2010
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Craig Monteilh says he was recruited by the FBI after leaving prison in 2006
The spying game wasn't all it was cracked up to be for Craig Monteilh, a convicted criminal recruited by the FBI to investigate the march of radical Islam into Southern California. His endless talk of violent "jihad" so alarmed worshippers at the local mosque, that they took out a restraining order against him.
Monteilh spent 15 months pretending to be Farouk al-Aziz, a French Syrian in search of his religious roots. He prayed five times a day at the Islamic Centre in Irvine, Orange County, wearing white robes with a camera hidden in one of its buttons, and carried a set of car keys that contained a secret listening device.
The enthusiastic attempt to catch local Muslims discussing terror campaigns backfired, however, when community leaders went to the police with fears that the suddenly devout young man, who got up to pray at 4am, had become a radical in their midst.
The terror case Monteilh had been helping build against Ahmadullah Niazi, the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden's bodyguard, collapsed in September, when the bungling informant revealed that his FBI handlers had instructed him to entrap his potential target and told him that "Islam is a threat to our national security".
Yesterday, as details of his efforts to persuade Niazi to blow up buildings became public, leading US Muslim organisations said they have suspended all contact with the FBI in protest against the excesses of agents who are secretly, and in some cases illegally, monitoring mosques.
"The community feels betrayed," Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques, told The Washington Post. "They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques... It's like a soap opera, for God's sake."
Monteilh, who had previously served time in prison for forgery, says he was recruited on his release in 2006 by FBI agents, who he met in doughnut shops and Starbucks outlets. After being given the code name "Oracle", he was told to root out radicals among the region's 500,000 practising Muslims.
Read more: FBI plant banned by mosque – because he was too extreme