Who Care What Obama Says?

[georgephillip]

"While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed.

"Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America's new role in the region.

"It was pathetic. 'What is this "role" thing?' an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. 'Do they still believe we care about what they think?'"

Do you think the Arab Spring is coming to DC?

Who Cares in the Middle East What Obama Says? | Common Dreams

 

[georgephillip]

Matthew:

Your article "A Response to Robert Fisk" is well worth a read.
You apparently have devoted years to studying the Middle East.
I admire your insights but question one of your instincts:

"The problem is that Robert Fisk has bought into the same lie that all the Arab dictators were selling; that it is the Jews who are causing all the problems.

"For years, they have spread anti-Israel propaganda in the hopes of turning their own people’s anger and frustration against the state of Israel, rather than on their own repressive governments. The Arab people have seen through it, taking to the streets and chanting for democracy..."

I don't believe all Jews are the problem; however, creating a Jewish state in a land where Jews were less than one-third of the total population in 1948 displays the same commitment to democracy that Charles I brought to north Ireland in 1609.

"Following the absorption of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the British set about shoring up their rule by the tried and true strategy of pitting ethnic group against ethnic group, tribe against tribe, and religion against religion.

"When British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour issued his famous 1917 Declaration guaranteeing a 'homeland' for the Jewish people in Palestine, he was less concerned with righting a two thousand year old wrong than creating divisions that would serve growing British interests in the Middle East.

"Sir Ronald Storrs, the first Governor of Jerusalem, certainly had no illusions about what a 'Jewish homeland' in Palestine meant for the British Empire: 'It will form for England,' he said, 'a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism.'

"Storrs’ analogy was no accident. Ireland was where the English invented the tactic of divide and conquer, and where the devastating effectiveness of using foreign settlers to drive a wedge between the colonial rulers and the colonized made it a template for worldwide imperial rule."

Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules - IPS

While I agree with your insights into power politics, I don't believe the Arabs can hold a candle to the Brits and US when it comes to inflicting Empire upon others...be they Jew or Muslim.