Dialogue, not diatribe, needed in Middle East

In 1947-48, the state of Israel was founded by the UN General Assembly, passing Resolution 181 supporting the establishment of a Jewish state at the expense of a separate and unequal Partition Plan disenfranchising the Arab citizenry. Defending hard-liners in Israel at all costs, the US has since 1982 vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, and blocked Arab states’ efforts to inspect Israel’s top secret nuclear arsenal while demanding strict compliance from developing nations seeking to further their suspect nuclear power ambitions, violating the principles of open debate and free speech upon which democracy depends.

The religious lobby dictates US foreign policy by using intimidating exploitative tactics to advance oily vested interests through pressure and propaganda, organising boycotts and blacklists while gagging censorship to dispel criticism. Presidents Truman and Kennedy both candidly acknowledged that they owed their election victories to the all-powerful Israel lobby, which is once again flexing its military muscle, loudly banging the “Attack Iran” war drums, intent on sucking America into the Middle East quicksand pit, making Washington appear complicit in human-rights abuses and further demonising President Obama’s good intentions, credibility and impartial, fair-broker stance.

Now, after more than 60 years of humiliated suffering under bullyrag occupation, expansion, colonisation and repression, the misled obstructionist right-wing extremism of Binyamin Netanyahu is leading the hypocritical double-standards charge to smother the legitimate Palestinian quest for self-determination, applying strong-arm pressure for a threatened US Security Council veto, and ultimately jeopardising any chance of a negotiated two-state solution over a military one, proposing multilateral rather than unilateral approaches, cooperation vis-a-vis confrontation, dialog not diatribe.

The perception seen through the warped lens of diminishing American hegemony and imperialist primacy calls for better informed public information technology communication networking and improved well-educated awareness, along with more conciliatory policies that dispel fears of excessive power and resentful distrust, and which are multilaterally decided and applied. 

Charles Frederickson

Bangkok