Politics: Mideast: Sen Gordon Smith states the US policy situation clearly and leanly

A Republican Senator, speaking at the World Economic Forum (the outfit the sponsors the Davos, Switzerland assemblies for the glitterati and politicians who loke to be seen with them), but this time in Southern Shuneh, Jordan, made clear that American policy is n-o-t even-handed in regard to Israel and Palestine. Israel and the US have an ethical bond of inter-state friendship, I would add to Sen Gord Smith's remark. I agree with the Republican from Oregon that American policy is and should be, in the words of AP's reporter Mariam Fam, "security for Israel first and justice for Palestinians 'if possible.' "

Smith's other reported major points was simply that Arab countries have a pattern of neglect of their own horrendous internal strife, injustice, exploitation, and corruption. I make an exception of Iraq, for obvious reasons, tho the internal strife there is the most greivous of all, due to the failure of the Sunni minority to work creatively and positively with their distinctly minority situation, now that Saddam Hussein has been disengaged from his compulsive practice of genocide. In Iraq, Kurdish Sunnis on the other hand have been for some time functioning creatively and positively with their minority situation, and have found elbow room to contribute alongside the Shi'ite huge majority to make mutual contributions to the larger Federal democratic society.

Aside from Iraq, we don't see Arab countries doing much to move along to greater democracy, and social peace. Every Arab-dominated society has miinorities which are oppressed, according to the Muslims of Darfur who made a study to point out how the case of Black people there in Muslim Sudan is no different than anywhere else among members of the Organization of Arab States. In OAS countries the prevailing panArabist ideology's greatest internal contradiction from land to land is Muslim-against-Muslim racism.

Now, this generalization has some siginificant ameliorating conditions - for instance, Saudi Arabia just had (all-male) elections; and Kuwait just passed a law to enfranchise women for the first time. But, from the Berbers in North Africa to the Shi'ites Saudi Arabia and the Sunnis in Syria: the Mideast has a whole lot of countries whose first task is internal repair of decency, and creative development of democracy. Egypt, the Arab state of greatest population which the US has supported with billions annually has an extremely long way to go in getting past dictatorship, without allowing rabid extremists hidden within the Moslem Brotherhood to sweek into power with a vengence.

The Palestinian Aiuthority which, under President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, has barely won a return to the truce in Gaza, where Hamas has been shelling Israeli settlements again, nevertheless have tolerated the publication on its webstie the hatemongering anti-Semitic screed, Protocols of the Elders of Zion. According to WorldNetDaily,

An official Palestinian Authority information website directly affiliated with President Mahmoud Abbas has published on its Arabic language section a copy of the ''Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' a classic anti-Semitic forgery, while the English section does not contain the work, WND has learned.

Abbas recently had been credited by the U.S. and Israel for fighting anti-Israel incitement.

Al-Nakba.com, the official Internet website of the Palestinian State Information Service, SIS, published an Arabic translation to the ''Protocols,'' a notorious forgery authorized by the anti-Semetic Czarist police in early 20th-Century Russia that purports to be minutes of a meeting of top Jewish leaders plotting world domination.

So, at this point, Abbas and Quereia seem to be rather duplicitous. Nevertheless, deomocratic gains have been made in Palestine, since the death of Yasser Arafat, and Hamas and Hesbollah are formidable foes to the PA's Fatah leadership. Still, the PAers of whatever party have a long way to go before they make evident any strong possiblity to answer Sen Smith's "if possible." If and when, then I would advocate that the US gradually reduce its financial allocations to Israel, and increase allocations to Palestine. Palestinians, increasing in democratic practices and civil rights in relation to their own régime and terrorist factions, should be helped to develop the economic infrastructure for the young men (and women) who otherwise have a tiny chance of remunerative work, in comparison with the population of Israel which has been helped to develop by multiplied billions from the US government over the last 50 years. And let's see the world's millionaires of Palestinian origin start giving to and investing in the emerging Palestinian state's agricultural, industrial, and commercial infrastructure.

But, in any case, the USA and Israel have a special bond, again a longtime inter-state ethical relation. This bond does not rest either on the Holocaust of which the US is not a guilty party, nor on Christian Zionism which is an ideology of only some Christians among whom I am not one, nor on a Jewish-athiest or Judaicist Zionism, tho there are many varieties of such Zionisms among Americans. The US government as a heritage of a 50-year inter-state ethical bond with Israel, and that will stand when the US turns to increase its support of a Palestine that cleans up its own house "if possible." Thankyou, Senator Gord Smith, Republican, Oregon. - Owlb

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