Zionist Wash

Martin Gilbert, cheeky Zionist


Shock horror! the Chilcot investigation into the Iraq War will be a cover up! This was all very predictable of course, although the brazen way the state has gone about it is quite revealing of the ultra arrogance of the unchallenged ruling class. The story goes something like this: Lord Chilcot asked the government for some documents regarding the intelligence and legal advice behind the war. The government said not likely. Chilcot huffed a bit and relented. Result...we are at exactly the same point regarding knowledge of the forged intelligence as we were a year ago, before yet another expensive stitch up by the men in wigs.(1)

This cover up has the particularly sour after taste of Zionism, represented by not less than two ardent Zionists on the five person panel of enquiry into the war. Historians Martin Gilbert and Sir Lawrence Freemen, the former an adviser to Brown on Israel and in his own words 'a proud Zionist' (2), and the latter a foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair, both stand four square behind Israel's bombardment of Palestine, and were prominent supporters of the war.(3) Neither one has since backtracked on any aspect of this pro-war position. This is perfect. The inquiry has the usual worthies of the establishment, conservative and dependable, plus a couple of action intellectuals for a bit of backbone. If the media was anything other than a slavish yachting club for the terminally sycophantic, then the general public may be treated to something a bit more worthy of a war which has killed well over one million people, 99% of them poor and Muslim.

What is there to cover up though? Surely we already know the dossiers were 'sexed' up? The reality of intelligence being pseudo intelligence was clear to all with a basic capacity for reasoned thought way back in 2003. What can possibly be found out by a look at intelligence reports now, and why would the parachuting in of two effective Israeli agents be necessary? Answer: Israel provided pseudo intelligence to British and US Imperialism in the run up to the Iraq War. More than this, Israel has coveted historic Mesopotamia as part of a greater Israel since the genocidal foundation of the state in 1948. The Knesset's (Israeli Parliament) Defense and Intelligence Committee chairman Yuval Steinitz held hearings on the faulty intelligence about Iraq. Although the final report was secret, John K. Cooley recounts that one committee member told him that the report contained damning proof of the systematic exchange of false intelligence about Iraq between the Israeli and U.S. intelligence communities. This was merely a particularly atrocious case of Zionist meddling in the affairs of a target state. The actual history of Israel's attempts to undermine and destroy Iraq-a state viewed as the pre-eminent competitor with Israel for West Asian dominance-goes much further back, including the use of car bombings in Iraqi cities; support for right wing Kurdish irregulars; and most damningly the 1981 Israeli Air Force attack on an Iraqi Nuclear facility, which killed many Iraqi's as well as a French engineer.(see John K.Cooley, An Alliance against Babylon: The U.S., Israel and Iraq, Pluto Press, 2005)

Gilbert has made an academic career as chief hagiographer of Winston Churchill, not to mention his voluminous works on Israel, which has even been criticized by Israeli Zionist, Benny Morris, who describes Gilbert's works as 'propaganda', and condemned them for using inflated figures to support the Zionist case.(4) This contortionist-distortionist framework used by Gilbert has already come into its own during the inquiry. Responding to the charge he could not be impartial due to self proclaimed Zionism, Gilbert absurdly claimed that: “Well, apart from the fact, that as far as I can see, at that time Israel regarded Iran as a greater danger in March 2003, it is just appalling.” Appalling to make the reasonable claim his record of being a propagandist for Zionism could undermine his objectivity when judging the evidence! If anybody doubted Gilbert's commitment to historical accuracy, they have been doubley confirmed by the above statement. Such a pre-eminent historian of Zionism would surely know that Israel had a love affair with both the Shah AND the Islamic reaction which consolidated power after 1979. The convergence of first a secular dictator installed as an anti-Soviet client, and then an ultra conservative regime who saw its principal enemy as a secular-socialist Iraq's allies of Zionism is explainable by the mutual antipathy of both the Shah and the Islamic regime for the rights of the oppressed of the Arab world.. The conflict between Israel and Iran of the 00s cannot be reduced to some grand narrative, and should be rooted in the emergence of Imperialist blocks, in which Iran is coalescing with Russia and China.

Nobody is surprised by yet another whitewash. People should be slightly concerned that despite two years of economic crisis, with the attendant undermining of support for all the bosses parties, the government and state feel it so easy to establish not only a conservative panel, but one with such vocal war mongers and Zionists.

In unrelated news, Gordon Brown has set up a committee of inquiry to determine whether he was the best Chancellor in British history. The panel of judges will be Ed Balls, Sarah Brown, and Gordon Brown himself.






(1) 'Vital documents on Iraq War are held back from war inquiry', In The Daily Telegraph, January 28th, 2010,p.1

(2) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7006269.ece

(3) http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61704/lawrence-d-freedman/the-special-relationship-then-and-now

(4) http://books.google.com/books?id=YUthqHRF-m8C&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=bayit+vegan+border&source=web&ots=mAZ9dkmNCv&sig=jbCr1SB8Odgv4W8OuQP6BN9OfXk&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#v=onepage&q=bayit%20vegan%20border&f=false

(5)op cit, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7006269.ece