Nearly 2000 years have passed since the “Prince of Peace” died on the cross and the firm belief of some of his followers in his physical resurrection has made precious little impact towards the prevention of wars. There exists a story of a tumult in the streets of Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday and when a rabbi asked what it was all about he was told that “the Messiah has come!” The rabbi looked around, shook his head, and said: “I see no change.”

When one contemplates the state of our world today one is bound to agree with him. Lip service is paid to love thy neighbor and Christians are exhorted in church services to joyfully await the return of Jesus. Yet, when one views the representatives of the Church marching in solemn procession through St. Peter’s Cathedral, on festive occasions, one sees mainly old men some of whose faces seem to reflect bitterness rather than the joy they are supposed to demonstrate. Deep down they know that the Master’s teachings are incompatible with worldly success and they have made their compromise. Dostoyevsky, who has looked deep into the heart of man, was right in his appraisal of what would happen if Jesus were indeed to return to this world. In The Brothers Karamazov he recounted a dream of Ivan to that effect. The people flocked around Jesus but when hauled before the Holy Inquisition he was told to please go away because an image has been created in which he no longer has a place.

Sad to say this is true. If Jesus were indeed to come back and visit the Vatican, the Pope, who is trying to meet his dual obligations of serving God and the Institution of the Church, would probably welcome him.  But the same cannot necessarily be said for the Curia and certainly not for the State. Since he would draw huge crowds, indict our cherished democracy as a sham and say things such as “woe to you hypocrites” he would create uproar. For speaking out against the three wars we are currently conducting the good Catholic Bill O’Reilly from Fox News, who divides the American people into “pinheads” and “patriots,” would surely put him in the former category. Sooner or later the authorities would step in. Jesus would be arrested again, there would be a trial and since he hasn’t murdered or defrauded anybody, but regarded as dangerous to the established order, he would be declared legally insane, remanded to a State Hospital and supplied with a hefty dose of tranquilizers to cure him of his delusions.

Yet, what he would say would be the truth. The fact is that we are lying to each other and are being lied to by our government on a massive scale. Take the latest and most glaring example: our intervention in Libya. We are currently sending drones with “precision guided rockets,” to support one side of a civil war in order to “protect civilians.” Although the goal of the enterprise is to get rid of Qaddafi we deny it and when we bomb his headquarters in Tripoli this is not in order to kill him but merely to attack the “command and control center” from which he terrorizes the country. I have no use for the Israelis’ “targeted assassinations” but at least they are honest about it, something that cannot be said for our leadership. We try to imitate the method but do it safely from the air with unmanned vehicles so that nobody gets hurt except the people on the ground. Since “precision guided rockets” can’t distinguish between civilians who don’t carry a weapon from those who do it is hard to see how this method advances the cause of “protecting the civilian population,” which is supposedly our sole reason for engaging in these practices.

I have tried to find out what is really behind our Libyan involvement but to date information is rather sparse and we may have to wait for Wikileaks to provide us with the  true answer. As mentioned last month President Obama was only reluctantly dragged into the fight which the French President had, for reasons of his own, gotten involved in. Human rights abuses and potential civilian massacres were clearly only the excuse rather than the reason. If this had been the case Sarkozy, as well as we and the Brits, would have had ample opportunity to intervene in any of the numerous African tribal wars of the past and present. We would also have done away with the North Korean regime long ago. But since Kim Jong Il knew us quite well he got himself the bomb which produced the respect we denied to Saddam Hussein as well as the Afghans. Qaddafi probably now rues the day in 2003 when he gave up on his atomic ambitions and tried to enter into the good graces of the West. The message is obvious: if you are in charge of a poor country you are relatively safe from Western intervention, especially if you have the bomb, but if you are sitting on oil and gas better watch out.

Although the real cause of the Libyan involvement is still unknown two aspects have come to attention since last month’s installment. They have not been properly aired by our media but can be gleaned from the Internet. One is Operation Mistral and the other Libyan money. Ask anyone here what Operation Mistral was all about and you’ll get blank stares, but Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who blasted our involvement in Libya in the House, knew about it. As such it is neither a secret nor a fantasy but a fact which has been hushed up. It is indeed a curious affair and here is the gist of it as it can be found on the Canadian site http://www.globalresearch.ca.

Under the title, “When War Games Go Live” one can read that on November 2nd 2010, more than four months prior to the onset of Operation “Odyssey Dawn,” France and the UK announced the conduct of war games called “Operation Southern Mistral" against an imaginary country "Southland", living under a dictatorship, which allegedly was responsible for an attack against France's national interests. It was to be carried out as a Franco-British air operation pursuant to a UN Security Council Resolution 3003. The war games were scheduled to start on March 21, 2011. They never took place, instead we got the real war on March 19, 2011, two days prior to the scheduled date in accord with Security Council Resolution 1973. Our media never told us anything about these “games” but, as mentioned, they were known to Rep. Denis Kucinich who said on the floor of the House:

"While war games are not uncommon, the similarities between ‘Southern Mistral’ and ‘Operation Odyssey Dawn’ highlight just how many unanswered questions remain regarding our own military planning for Libya.

Scheduling a joint military exercise that ends up resembling real military action could be seen as remarkable planning by the French and British, but it also highlights questions regarding the United States’ role in planning for the war. We don’t know how long the attack on Libya has been in preparation, but Congress must find out. We don’t know who the rebels really represent and how they became armed, but Congress must find out.” (Kucinich: President Had Time to Consult with International Community, Not Congress? | Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich, Press Release, March 29, 2011).”

Has Congress stepped up to the plate and started an inquiry? Of course not. Democrats and Republicans are much too busy to win points for re-election by debating how to cut the deficit without raising taxes.

In regard to money, Libya had considerable foreign assets which were seized and are “held in trust for the Libyan people” by the US and Western European countries. The sums are sizable; at least $ 30 billion were taken by the US and additional billions by various countries of the EU. But who are the Libyan people for whom we ostensibly hold this money? Obviously, only when they are represented by a government of which the West approves. At this time we have no idea who is in charge of the rebel forces. As we were told last week at least one of the commanders is an ex-Guantanamo jihadist who had been released to Libya and whom Qaddafi, who had no taste for these ideas, had promptly imprisoned again. Since Col. Qaddafi obviously had his uses in the “War on Terror” it is difficult to see what our motive is for removing him all of a sudden, unless we were forced into this adventure by the French and Brits which seems increasingly likely.

            While the theoretical Operation Mistral never took place, the real “Operation Odyssey Dawn” soon presented a problem for NATO when the US tried to stay aloof. They ran out of “precision guided” missiles and instead bombed the civilians they were supposed to protect. That’s when the plea for help and the request for the drones arrived in Washington which forced Obama, probably against his better judgment, to comply. But all this mendacity, which hides the real causes for a given war, is nothing new and has been the rule throughout history.

It is, therefore, instructive to read an honest book written by Francis Neilson on “The Makers of War.” Neilson was a Member of Parliament in 1914 but resigned his seat in 1915 when he found out how his country had really been maneuvered into entering the war against Germany. We may regard this as “ancient history” and irrelevant but as noted in a previous installment nations also are subject to the law of Karma from which there is no escape (January 1, 2011). The way the book is written indicates that Neilson had been thoroughly fed up with the lies the Parliament as well as the public were told and he was eager to expose them for posterity. He was an exceedingly colorful person of whom more will be said on other occasions, mainly because of useful quotes from knowledgeable personages. When one looks at the dust cover of the Second Edition of the book, which was published in 1950, one is immediately impressed with a quote which substitutes for a subtitle,

“We are in the hands of an organization of crooks. They are politicians, generals, manufacturers of armaments and journalists. All of them are anxious for unlimited expenditure, and go on inventing scares to terrify the public and to terrify Ministers of the Crown.”

If this sounds like Eisenhower’s warning in regard to the “military-industrial complex,” it simply shows that mankind is immune to change, especially when it comes to greed. The quote came from Lord Welby (former head of the British Treasury) who said it in relation to the 1908 panic, precipitated by Austria’s annexation of Bosnia Herzegovina, which nearly led to war as described in War&Mayhem and in the January 2008 issue (2008 Outlook). Although papered over at the time, it paved the way for WWI, the aftermath of which we are battling with today in the Middle East. The “War to end all Wars” had spawned the “Peace to end all Peace.”

Neilson’s book is of interest because he looked “Behind the Scenes,” one of his chapter headings, to find reasons for the war rather than the common excuses. He dates the beginning decay of the British Empire to the now practically forgotten Boer War which started in 1899. Its obvious aim namely to seize the gold and diamond mines from the Dutch settlers, the Boers, was hidden under the pretext that the British miners, Uitlanders, were oppressed and had not been given a vote. No one in Europe believed this ruse and when it became known that in their fight against the Boers the British had installed concentration camps where the women and children of Boer fighters were kept under inhumane conditions, there was universal revulsion. For a time Britain became a pariah among nations; a situation which reminds one of how the US was viewed in 2003 after the Iraq invasion and which was compounded by the Abu Ghraib scandal.

In the first decade of the twentieth century Britain found herself in a precarious position. Not only because of the drawn out war, which ended in 1902, but her industrial base had been shrinking, while Germany’s had been growing. The British Empire was about to lose its role as the primary world power and German ship building even began to cast doubt on the proud slogan of “Britannia rules the waves.” While everybody acknowledges that the German Hochseeflotte (military navy) was a thorn in the British side, it is less well known that Germany’s commercial fleet, which carried the transatlantic traffic, was also in ascendance. For instance, the passenger liner Deutschland had made the crossing from Cherbourg in the then unprecedented time of five and a half days. For Britain to retain the leading role in Europe, Germany had to be fought and an ally on the Continent was needed. Since France, wanted revanche for her defeat in 1871, centuries old enmities against the “Frogs” were set aside and the “Entente Cordiale” was signed in 1904. The public portion settled their colonial differences in Africa but a secret addition divided the military responsibilities between the two countries. This became the real reason why Britain had to enter the war regardless whether or not Germany invaded Belgian territory. The German violation of Belgium’s neutrality was the excuse for Britain’s entry into the war rather than the reason. Germaniam esse delendam; Germany was Carthage in British eyes which had to be destroyed. Not necessarily because of its potential military threat but because of its industrial success. The destruction was realized in the Versailles treaty, which as everybody knows, was not a treaty between partners but only signed by the Germans under extreme duress.

Poor President Wilson had no idea as to the rats’ nest of secret diplomacy and treaties that had been made among the Allies during the war, when he went to Paris to preside over what he thought would be a just settlement of all grievances. The Memoirs of the Peace Conference by David Lloyd George give us an official British view how the current Middle East and its troubles came about. Lloyd George was British Prime Minister at the time and the chapter on Palestine is most revealing in regard to our current predicament. Although I have referred to it previously (January 1, 2007; The Year of the Middle East) more extensive direct quotes are important in view of the situation we find ourselves in today. The first one provides the mindset,

“The intentions of the Allied Powers regarding the future of Palestine up to the end of 1916 are practically embodied in the Sykes-Picot agreement. The country was to be mutilated and torn into sections. There would be no more Palestine. Canaan was to be drawn and quartered. But 1917 saw a complete change in the attitude of the nations towards this historic land. . . . It was a historic and sacred land, throbbing from Dan to Beersheba with immortal traditions, the homeland of a spiritual outlook and faith professed by hundreds of millions of the human race and fashioning more and more the destinies of mankind. . . . In 1915 and 1916, Britain massed huge armies to check the menace of the Turk on the Suez Canal. At first they crawled drearily and without purpose across the desert towards the land of the Philistines. But in 1917, the attention of her warriors was drawn to the mountains of Judea beyond. The zeal of the Crusaders was relumed [sic] in their soul. The redemption of Palestine from the withering aggression of the Turk became like a pillar of flame to lead them on. The Sykes-Picot Agreement perished in its fire. It was not worth fighting for Canaan in order to condemn it to the fate of Agag and hew it to pieces before the Lord. Palestine, if recaptured, must be one and indivisible to renew its greatness as a living entity.”

This was the view of the devout Protestant and I don’t doubt that he was sincere in holding it. It is also, without doubt, today’s view not only of the major portion of Israel’s Jewish citizens but of a highly influential segment of US evangelicals, including former, and possibly future, presidential contender Mike Huckabee. Finally, it is, also without doubt, the major stumbling block towards genuine peace in the Middle East. But in addition to the high flown rhetoric we must ask ourselves what had changed in 1917 that roused the British army, which was bogged down in Gaza, to its “crusade.”

Ever since the start of the war the British were eager to enlist the help of the Arabs in evicting the Turks from Syria-Palestine thereby safeguarding the Suez Canal. There were a series of promises made in the so-called McMahon correspondence with the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali. In it the latter was given to understand that he would be recognized as king and sovereign over Arab lands up to somewhere north of Damascus and in the East Mesopotamia. This was an example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing because the mentioned Sykes-Picot agreement had parceled out the Middle East into five zones. The northern portion of Syria was to go to France; Mesopotamia to the Brits; while the Arabs were to have received two zones in the middle; one under French and the other under British tutelage. The Mediterranean littoral between Haifa and Gaza extending to the East to include Beersheba and Jerusalem, but not Amman, was regarded as a “Brown” zone for which some form of international administration was envisaged. This understanding between the British and the French was a closely held secret and the British administration in Cairo may or may not have known of it when it negotiated with the Arabs. Hussein, who ruled over the Hejaz (the major portion of the Arabian Red Sea Coast from south of Mecca to Aqaba in the north) under Turkish suzerainty, initially dragged his feet but was subsequently galvanized by Captain Lawrence to throw in his lot with the British against the Turks.

Who can forget the dashing Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia who practically single-handedly forged an Arab striking force to harass the Turks? After taking Aqaba from them he crossed the Sinai essentially by his lonesome to bring the news to his superiors in Cairo and begging for money to pay his troops. Well, it wasn’t quite that way because he did have a party of eight to accompany him, but his bedraggled entry into British headquarters in Arab garb was factual. It was Lawrence’s good luck that the former rather ineffectual Sir Archibald Murray had just been replaced by the more seasoned General Sir Edmund Allenby who now saw the potential of a breakthrough with his forces going north from Gaza and Lawrence’s Arabs doing so likewise in parallel from Aqaba. The plan worked and by December 8 of 1917 Allenby was in Jerusalem.

The year 1917 was, however, otherwise a rather grim one for the Allies. The fate of the war seemed to hang in the balance and at this point the thought of enlisting the help of the Jews became official policy. Lloyd George had previously met Chaim Weizmann, a Manchester chemist and leader of Britain’s Zionist movement, “one of the greatest Hebrews of all time,” who had provided a valuable service to the British munitions industry by developing a better process for cordite production. Not only did the Prime Minister feel gratitude but since he and Weizmann’s goals for returning the Jews to their ancient homeland were in full accord, he introduced the latter to the leading members of the War Cabinet including the Foreign Secretary, Sir Arthur James Balfour, after whom the Declaration, which proclaimed the establishment of a “national home” for Jews in Palestine as one of Britain’s war goals, is named. But apart from religious motives there were more substantial ones. To quote from Lloyd George’s Memoirs,

“The Balfour Declaration represented the convinced policy of all parties in our country and also in America, but the launching of it in 1917 was due, as I have said, to propagandist reasons. I should like once more to remind the British public, who may be hesitating about the burdens of our Zionist Declaration to-day of the actual war position at the time of that Declaration. We are now looking at the War through the dazzling glow of a triumphant end, but in 1917 the issue of the war was still very much in doubt. We were convinced–but not all of us– that we would pull through victoriously, but the Germans were equally persuaded that victory would rest on their banners, and they had much reason for coming to that conclusion. They had smashed the Roumanians. The Russian Army was completely demoralised by its numerous defeats. The French Army was exhausted and temporarily unequal to striking a great blow. The Italians had sustained a shattering defeat at Caporetto. The unlimited submarine campaign had sunk millions of tons of our shipping. There were no American divisions at the front, and when I say at the front, I mean available in the trenches. For the Allies there were two paramount problems at that time. The first was that the Central Powers should be broken by the blockade before our supplies of food and essential raw materials were cut off by sinkings of our own ships. The other was that the war preparations in the United States should be speeded up to such an extent as to enable the Allies to be adequately reinforced in the critical campaign of 1918 by American troops. In the solution of these two problems, public opinion in Russia and America played a great part, and we had every reason to believe that in both countries the friendliness or hostility of the Jewish race might make a considerable difference.” 

The Prime Minister then acquainted us with the difficulties the proposed Declaration had met in the Cabinet. I have covered these in Whither Zionism? but one of the objections of Lord George Curzon (notable to this day for defining the Eastern border of Poland, the Curzon line), who was familiar with the East bears repeating:

“I spoke earlier of the dreams of a Jewish state, with possibly a Jewish capital at Jerusalem. Such a dream is wholly incapable of realization by the conditions of Jerusalem itself. It is a city in which too many peoples and too many religions have a passionate and permanent interest to render any such solution even dimly possible. . . . next to Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem is the most sacred city of the Mohammedan faith. The Mosque of Omar, on the site of the Temple of Solomon is one of the most hallowed shrines of Islam. . . . it is impossible to contemplate any future in which the Mohammedans should be excluded from Jerusalem. Hebron is a site scarcely less sacred to Islam. . . .

His recommendation was to give Jewish immigrants full equality with the current population but one should not expect that Muslims will tolerate to be governed by Jews. This was also the opinion of the King-Crane Commission (likewise reviewed in the January 1, 2007 essay) which had been sent to Palestine after the Peace Conference in order to assess which country, Great Britain or the US, should become the mandatory power. Hands off, was the advice for America and it was heeded until after WWII when the US assumed the inheritance of the British Empire. The British had nothing but grief when they tried to administer the country. Eventually they threw up their hands in despair and left in 1948. We thought that we could do better by providing unquestioned support for highly questionable Israeli policies. It has not worked and cannot work because Arabs are telling us now that they will no longer tolerate regimes which do not have popular consent. The failure of British policy in regard to Palestine was pre-ordained. The British wanted to win the war and in order to do so vague promises i.e. a homeland instead of a State (although that was always implicit) were made to the Jews, while at the same time promising full sovereignty over Arab lands, which obviously included Palestine, to Hussein and his sons. Since neither Jews nor Arabs, then or now, wanted to live under the dominion of the other the ceaseless wars since 1948 had become inevitable.

There is one more point in the Memoirs which is worth recalling because it has direct bearing on WWII and the resultant Holocaust. It deals with Jewish help after the Declaration had been issued,

“Immediately the declaration was agreed to, millions of leaflets were circulated in every town and area throughout the world where there were known to be Jewish communities. . . . In Russia the Bolsheviks baffled all the efforts of the Germans to benefit by the harvests of the Ukraine and the Don, and hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian troops had to be maintained to the end of the War on Russian soil, whilst the Germans were short of men to replace casualties on the Western front. I do not suggest that this was due entirely, or even mainly, to Jewish activities. But we have good reason to believe that Jewish propaganda in Russia had a great deal to do with the difficulties created for the Germans in Southern Russia after the peace of Brest-Litovsk. The Germans themselves know that to be the case, and the Jews in Germany are suffering to-day for the fidelity with which their brethren in Russia and in America discharged their obligations under the Zionist pledge to the Allies.” 

            Lloyd George thereby validated part of the Dolchstoss Legende, that Jews were at least co-responsible for Germany’s defeat. The campaign against Hitler launched in the US with a call for a “Holy War,” already in 1933, aggravated the situation further and helped him to portray “the Jews” as the real culprit for Germany’s difficulties, which culminated in the war with the West, which he didn’t want. The measures taken, including the attempted extermination of European Jews, were from that point of view nothing else but a “Strafgericht [deserved punishment handed down by a court for offenses].” The topic is more fully covered in the installments on Understanding the Holocaust (February 2006).  

The revolts we are currently witnessing in North Africa and Middle Eastern countries are a belated echo of Europe’s 1848 and 1917-19 revolutions. They will pass, just as those in Europe did, but the Palestinian-Zionist problem will remain and require a constructive solution. The Israeli government prefers the status quo but it will become increasingly untenable. They banked on the disunity of the Arab world and especially that of the Palestinians but the latter have now adopted a new and better strategy. They have realized that armed struggle, while useful to attract the world’s attention to their plight, is now counterproductive and have opted for achieving the good will of the world through demonstrating that they have an organization in place which provides for a viable state. They intend to ask the UN General Assembly in September of this year to recognize their state within the 1967 borders, regardless of the expressed wish of the Israeli government to the contrary. It is now show-down time for the US, and the Obama administration knows it. Are we going to stand by our professed principles, i.e. freedom for the oppressed, for which we are supposedly carrying on all these wars, or will we cave in to the power of money, which controls our elections? This is the question current events force upon us and staying with principle over expediency would be the only correct answer.

Neilson’s book ended with a recommendation how to avoid future wars. Remarkably enough he found it in the Old Testament. “Perhaps if we take up the Bible and study it afresh, we shall find it is the most comprehensive work on political economy that was ever compiled. The whole basic problem which confounds politicians and trade unionists of every State is presented by the prophets of Israel, all the way from Deuteronomy to Malachi.”

It is surprising that a person with Neilson’s insights has not realized that the Old Testament is a book written by Jews for Jews and he has completely neglected the political doctrinaire problem which promises world government to the Jews. “… for out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem [Is. 2:3];” and “Thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD; for they will not be ashamed that wait for me [Is. 49:22, 23 King James translation; italics are in the original].”

The Christian world needs to fully realize the political dimension of the Old Testament which has no use for “the nations – goyim” except as servants of their god, whose will only Jews can interpret. I realize that this is not the stance of all Jews. As a matter of fact there is even in Israel a “Struggle for Israel’s Soul,” which is the subtitle title of a book published by Yoram Hazony. I shall return to him on another occasion, for now the important point he makes is that ideas and ideals, rather than armed forces, move this world and this is correct. It is, therefore, of utmost importance to study each other’s’ ideals for their compatibility with the modern world and when one does so the political legacy of the Old Testament will no longer do. In order to survive we will have adopt that of the New with the guiding light of the “Good Samaritan.” Once we Christians take that mental jump we will be in synch with the aspirations of the rest of the world’s people. Fear will be banished, greed limited, and the kingdom of God, which we have been told is within us, can be realized. Obviously this is a utopian fantasy at this time in history but unless it is regarded as a program to be worked towards it will never happen. What is required now is what the Greeks called metanoia and which has been inadequately translated as “repent.” Its original meaning could be regarded as “think again,” rethink what you are really doing and what the likely consequences of your acts will be. “The Deed returns to the Doer,” said the ancient Egyptians; or “As you sow will you reap.” The choice is ours: If we sow bombs we will get bombs! If we bring good will accompanied by good deeds the resulting harvest will benefit everyone. A preoccupation with the physical Resurrection of Jesus, on that first Easter Sunday should no longer concern and divide us; the Resurrection of his Spirit is the task for our time.