EXPANSION OF COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SPUTNIK
“Tryst in Tel Aviv:
Trump Tries to Unite Israel, Saudis With Anti-Iran Rhetoric”
God, Trump is a disappointment.
Israel and the Saudis have shared a hatred of Iran for
years, each for its own reasons.
After all, Israel and Saudi Arabia are virtually secret
allies now and both important supporters, now or in the past, of outfits like
ISIS and al Nusra.
Neither of them likes anything to do with change or social
reform or revolution or anything which could endanger their comfortable and
oppressive stability and the comfortable rule of wealth in the region.
Israel hates genuine liberals, for example, almost as much
as the House of Saud does, and that is because liberals are seen as important
critics of Israel’s ugly human rights policies.
In general, Shia Muslims compare to Sunni Muslims today very
much as Protestants did to Catholics in 16th century Europe.
In the light of the time, Protestantism then stood for progressive
matters, as for example education of people so they could read the Bible, an idea
Catholicism, representing the doctrine of Church authority interpreting the
Scripture for people, opposed.
Protestants also simplified many things about worship, again
things Catholicism opposed.
There are many parallels to today’s Sunni-Shia hostilities
in the Middle East.
Israel, of course, couldn’t care less about these issues
except to exploit them for its own purposes.
Israel’s key impulse is to be the leading state in the
region, serving also as a kind of chief lieutenant and enforcer for the American
empire there in a kind of symbiotic relationship in which Israel’s attention in
the region on behalf of the United States is repaid by the United States’ continued
support of Israel in the wider world.
Quite apart from immense financial and technical subsidies and
privileges America sends pouring into Israel, America’s active work of
suppressing criticism of Israel in everything from the United Nations and other
international organizations to the calculated, relentless bias of its corporate
press has been an important tool in making Israel’s often lawless behavior seem
legitimate.
Iran, by virtue of its size – 70 million people - and
resources, is destined, unless someone interferes, to itself become the
region’s dominant state. Israel will do anything to stop that natural progress.
And just so, Saudi Arabia for several reasons of its own, including the
religious differences which are used to disguise other social and political and
economic interests.
The Saudis once quite disliked Israel and acted in public
ways to make their dislike apparent, but since 9/11, things have changed dramatically.
The Saudis were terrified that America would invade and topple them, so they
have worked hard to become especially cozy and accommodating with the United
States and its colony, Israel.
They keep the close friendship secret because it would not
go down well with a great many Saudi Muslims who are largely very conservative
Sunnis, called Salafists. In the world of Islam, they might roughly be compared
to Israel’s ultra-Orthodox, a people who although a minority in Israel determine
many of its laws and policies because their parties always have the balance of
power necessary for a larger party to form a government. In the matter of being
almost violently intolerant of other religious groups or anyone intruding on
their community, Muslim Salafists and Jewish Ultra-Orthodox are close
relatives.
My great fear here is that Trump – now, by all appearances,
loyally on board with the very American imperial establishment of whom he
seemed, rightly, so critical only months ago – is going to prepare the ground
for another Mideast War such as the terrible one between Iraq and Iran in the
1980s. That war, given allowance for the size of the parties involved, was
about as bloody as the First World War.
America did everything it could to stoke and facilitate that
war, always hoping that both sides would be badly bled and weakened. It
supplied some terrible weapons, too, including the poison gas used by Iraq on tens
of thousands of Iranians. The American strategy much resembled that of America
in Europe during WWII. They dearly wanted Germany and the Soviet Union to both
be bled and weakened, and they didn’t truly invade until the conflict was largely
decided and they feared the Soviets might overrun all of Europe.
Israel would just love such a war. The typical view, if we
are to judge by public statements, of Israeli officials concerning Arabs and
Persians is pretty unpleasant, downright racist at times. And Israel is
ruthless enough to encourage just such a conflict to weaken all parties
involved.
From Ariel Sharon to Benjamin Netanyahu, there have been
countless calls and demands for invading Iran, one way or another. Netanyahu,
after being frustrated in his efforts to have the United States attack Iran,
made serious preparations for Israel’s doing so on its own. In one of the few
decent acts of his blood-drenched record in foreign policy, Obama prevented
that effort by telling Netanyahu he’d shoot his planes out of the sky. Iran, unfortunately,
has become a national obsession for Israel’s furious leaders.
Being a nation which has attacked no one in its modern
history and a nation which has suffered terribly under numerous American
policies – from the 1953 coup which destroyed a democratic government and put
the brutal Shah into office to the 1980-88 induced war with Iraq which saw
about a million people die – is not enough to save you if you stand in the way
of empire. There is no pity or even humanity in the works of imperial power.
