Arab Regime Credibility Hanging by its Last Invisible Thread

Obama and Israel

(LONDON) - On 25 September I wrote a piece headlined Obama speaks at the UN… Goodbye to peace. Since then I’ve seen no need for me to contribute to the debate about the farce that President Obama’s push for peace is and was always going to be. But the Arab League’s decision to give Obama a one-month deadline to rescue the direct talks between Abbas and his quisling administration and Netanyahu and his deluded coalition government demands a comment or two.

Arab leaders know that with America’s mid-term elections fast approaching, there is no way a humiliated, increasingly desperate and isolated Obama can even think about applying real pressure on Israel. (I am still of the opinion that he did not enter the Oval Office programmed to do Zionism’s bidding. His real problem was that he was too inexperienced and naive.

As a consequence of that he was bound to become the prisoner of the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress. At the time of writing, and given his counter-productive escalation of targeted assassinations by armed drones, I am beginning to wonder if Obama will go down in history as one of the worst presidents America has ever had).

So why are they, Arab leaders, going through the motions?

The short answer is that once again they are seeking to cover the ugly nakedness of their impotence.

The most relevant question, it seems to me, is what, in theory, could Arab leaders still do to give themselves a reasonable chance of countering Zionism’s influence on American policy for the Middle East?

Prefaced by a summary statement of all the initiatives the Arabs including the Palestinians have taken for peace on terms which any rational government and people in Israel would have accepted with relief, they could threaten to:

• Sever their diplomatic relations with the U.S.
• Withdraw their financial support for America’s broken economy
• Turn off the oil taps

As I have written and said on more than a few occasions in the past, Zionism’s key players know how to play the cards they were dealt and Arab leaders don’t.

Zionism’s four main cards were and are the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust for blackmail purposes; money (virtually unlimited funds) and the influence it buys; the organized Jewish vote; and, more generally speaking, breathtakingly, brilliant organization and co-ordination.

The Arabs have always had an ace that would trump all of Zionism’s cards. OIL.

Imagine what would have happened in the immediate aftermarth of the 1967 war if Arab leaders had put their act together and sent one of their number secretly to Washington DC to say something very like the following to President Johnson behind closed doors: “If you don’t get Israel back behind its pre-war borders, we’ll turn off the oil taps.”

If Johnson had believed that Arab leaders were united and serious, he would have replied with something very like the following: “I can’t guarantee swift action on Jerusalem but give me two or three weeks for the rest.”

If the Zionists had been in the Arab position, that IS how they would have played their hand. And that is not pure speculation on my part. Over the years I have been told so by a number of Israeli leaders including former Directors of Military Intelligence.

The main point I’m making is that if Johnson had believed that Arab leaders were united and serious, they would not have had to turn off the oil taps.

A secret, credible threat to do so would have been enough to cause Johnson (or any president) to put America’s own best interests first.

Will Arab leaders ever learn how to play their cards (if only to best protect their own longer term, real interests)? 

I fear not. 

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East. Author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Vol. 1: The False Messiah. He blogs on AlanHart.net, and tweets on twitter.com/alanauthor

See also:
President Obama’s opportunity to speak truth to power: Part 1
President Obama’s opportunity to speak truth to power – Rahm Emanuel does it for him – Part 11
Open Letter to President Obama: Change the Rules of the Game
An Appeal to the American People
Alan's arrival in America in mid May for a month will be on the heels of the publication of Volume 3 of the American edition of his epic book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. The sub-title of this volume is Conflict Without End?

It takes the story from the 1967 war and the creation of Greater Israel to the present and the question: Is Peace Possible?

Will President Obama be allowed to deliver an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians in order to achieve peace for all and, if not, what’s the most likely future for the region and the world?

"... immensely readable and a magnificent piece of work ..."
-- Clare Short, MP and Int'l Development Sec't in Blair Govt

"... elucidates the dangers involved in the unconditional Western support for Zionism and its oppressive policies against the Palestinians."
-- Ilan Pappe, Leading Israeli revisionist Historian

"... principled, ... historical, ... excellent, even heroic, in effort and scope."
-- Mark Bruzonsky, founder, MiddleEast.org; World Jewish Congress, first Washington Representative

Over more than four decades Alan Hart enjoyed intimate access to, and on the human level friendship with, leaders of both sides including Golda Meir, Mother Israel, and Yasser Arafat,Father Palestine. (Others included Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Nasser, Sadat, King Faisal, King Hussein—the list is long). He also participated at a leadership level in the secret politics of the search for peace in the Middle East (as an intermediary between Arafat and Peres when it was presumed that Peres was headed for leadership). ZIONISM, THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS is Alan Hart’s epic three-volume journey through the propaganda lies and the documented truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of what has come to be called the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.