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Climate Reality, issue one

Open publication - Free publishing - More obama

http://issuu.com/iwishart/docs/climatereality?viewMode=magazine

Global Governance on climate agenda

MISSION INCREDIBLE
Clark tasked to pave the way for World Government

Media commentators missed the big story in Helen Clark’s appointment to the United Nations Development Programme. As bestselling “Air Con” author IAN WISHART explains, she takes the helm in the UN’s number three position just as the UN pitches to become an overarching world government, with real executive powers and effective control of the armies of all UN members. Clark didn’t join the UNDP to concentrate on third world charity work, but with a much bigger brief:

“What is at stake is to launch a reform process of the general UN system in view of fostering a new global agenda and building a New World Order.”

They could be the utterings of a raving conspiracy nut. Or perhaps the writings of one of those intellectual villains from any one of a dozen James Bond movies. But they aren’t. Instead, these are the words of one of the world’s major lobby groups – a collection of world leaders and left-wing politicians who meet each year for global conferences and policy initiatives. They call themselves Socialist International, and that paragraph kicked off a major 40 page briefing document that appears to set the stage for a new role for the United Nations: turning it into a full-fledged world government.

Socialist International is not a small-fry organisation. Affiliated to the controversial and secretive Bilderberg Group, its membership list includes heavy hitters – New Zealand’s Helen Clark co-chairs the Asia-Pacific Committee of Socialist International for example, and her predecessor in the UNDP role, Kemal Dervis, also has links to Socialist International. President Obama’s climate change ‘czar’ Carol Browner was listed as a senior official on the Socialist International website on January 2nd this year, although that reference has mysteriously disappeared following her appointment to the US administration. The organisation’s use of ‘climate change’ as an excuse to introduce world governance has been backed by no less a figure than British Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

“The first meeting of the SI Commission for a Sustainable World Society – the body established to address the global environmental agenda, climate change and the issues of governance required to deal with these common challenges - took place at 10 Downing Street on Monday 19 November, 2007 hosted by Prime Minister Gordon Brown,” begins one news release on the SI site.

But it’s the contents of a document entitled “Reforming the United Nations for a New Global Agenda” that appear to contain a blueprint for the future of the United Nations, and it appears no coincidence that Helen Clark, a Socialist International member since 1976, has just been appointed with an agenda to reform the United Nations.

In her interview with the Listener’s Ruth Laugeson this month, Helen Clark hammered the point home:

“The Secretary-General, when one reads his speeches and comments, he’s looking for a fresh face for the UN…As I see it, he’s very reform-minded about the organisation. One of the questions I got asked at one point along the way was ‘New Zealand’s had a tremendous amount of public sector reform, haven’t you?’.”

Clark would know. Laugesen writes in her preamble to the interview that Clark’s role will be bigger than people realise:

“Her brief will extend well beyond the UNDP’s US$5 billion budget. During her four year term she will also chair the UN Development Group, an umbrella group for the 33 UN agencies, funds and departments that play a role in development around the globe.”

What you can expect to see is a new, streamlined UN, with a prototype already being trialled at country level:

“There’s been a pilot [programme] going on that,” says Clark, ‘the One UN pilot.”

“The One UN” will see “one leader of the UN in a country, one programme, one budget…My job will be to be rolling that out further,” Clark says.

But the UN Reform briefing paper prepared by Socialist International in 2005 signalled exactly what Clark was talking about:

“The UN Funds and Programmes should be streamlined and merged in order to avoid overlappings, increase the efficiency and enhance the role of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).”

Another item on Socialist International’s agenda is a cleanout of senior UN staff in favour of those capable of ushering in the New World Order they talked about:

“There should be a one-time review and replacement of personnel, including through early retirement, to ensure that the Secretariat is staffed with the right people to undertake the tasks at hand.”
Socialist International boasts that its extensive global networks make it perfectly placed to help the United Nations usher in unprecedented global change, “provided… that socialist and progressive governments in advanced countries show the political courage to both explain and honor their internationalist commitments.”

If you weren’t aware that Labour and other socialist governments had “internationalist commitments” that transcended loyalty to their people well, now you are.

Funding the United Nations as a de-facto world government won’t come cheap, and the Socialist International briefing paper makes this clear when it talks about raising US$100 billion for development aid each year:

“The mobilization of these resources may require … some forms of international taxation such as a carbon tax or a tax on the production or sale of armaments, or a small profit tax surcharge on the income of large corporations.”

This echoes a call in a previous 1994 UN Development Programme report, cited in Chapter 16 of Air Con, which also calls for a world carbon tax to fund a bigger, stronger United Nations, and a tax on all financial transactions in the world, known as ‘the Tobin Tax’.

Overhauling the UN will also be accompanied by overhaul of the World Bank and the International Monetary fund, with more of a focus shifting wealth from the West to the Third World:

“Social and redistributive policies should form an integral part of IMF and World Bank financed reforms and that the measurement of growth and economic welfare should take into account environmental effects and the use of finite natural resources.”

All of this ties into the climate change scare, and is part of the real agenda behind global warming publicity – transferring wealth under the guise of a planetary emergency. The proposed reforms being thrashed out for this December’s new climate change treaty at Copenhagen would see multinationals encouraged to close down factories in the West and re-open them in Asia and Africa, where carbon restrictions won’t be as harsh for the developing countries.

In effect, millions of jobs in New Zealand, Australia, the US, Britain and other OECD countries will vanish as manufacturing is moved elsewhere, and the carbon taxes and emissions schemes will be used to incentivize multinationals to invest in the third world.
Helen Clark, in her Listener interview, hints at this:

“The climate change talks at the end of the year in Copenhagen: the developing countries’ needs are going to have to be paramount. Because whether we can bring developing countries into the framework will make or break our efforts to deal with the climate change problem.

“That’s going to mean funding, and it’s going to mean technology transfer.”

But that’s just a tiny part of what’s looming around the corner. The UN Development Programme has been pushing for a world government structure since 1994, and now Socialist International is weighing in with its vision of “one person, one vote” across the globe:

“The question of legitimacy is at the heart of the ‘international system’. Legitimacy requires a certain degree of ‘global democracy’ that would gradually increase over time. At the same time, realistic global governance cannot ignore existing power relations in both the economic and military sense. A blueprint that ignores the resources controlled by various actors and their relative weights in the world would not be feasible. The reform agenda must try to balance three divergent requirements:

1. Global democracy, which in some fundamental sense must give equal weight to each human being;
2. Recognition of the endurance of nation states which do have ‘equal’ legal status as sovereigns and remain fundamental ‘units’ of the international system; and reflection of the divergent economic and military ‘capabilities’ of nation states. It is obvious that India, Japan, Sri Lanka and Barbados, to take four examples, while being “equal” sovereign nation states, have very different economic and defense capabilities which must be reflected in the architecture of the international system.
3. It is important to stress that a United Nations adapted to the needs and realities of the 21st Century should be the overall institutional setting for both the political and the economic sphere. The current arrangements need to be replaced by new ones, changing from the post World War II representation to constituencies, weighted votes and universal participation, and adjusting the policies of those institutions in favour of the actual needs of today’s world.”

Precisely how the United Nations can turn itself into a “legitimate” global democracy when more than three quarters of its member states are totalitarian or undemocratic regimes, remains to be seen. And a simple “one person, one vote” would effectively become a global government ruled by communist China. So if “reform” of the United Nations does indeed include this move to become “the overall institution”, some pretty tough challenges lie ahead in terms of working out the structure.

Socialist International’s briefing paper alludes to the problems of existing standing armies and military capabilities of nation states, but as part of the reform process it anticipates the UN ordering the transfer of military capability from nation states to the UN, via “peacekeeping” allocations, an idea first mooted in a UN global governance paper in 1994:

“The international community must provide increased funds for peacekeeping, using some of the resources released by reductions of defence expenditures. The cost of peacekeeping should be integrated into a single annual budget and financed by assessments on all UN member countries--with an increase of the peacekeeping reserve fund to facilitate rapid deployment.”

Essentially, as nations reduce their militaries the extra money is provided to the UN to enable it to maintain a rapid deployment force of soldiers. Over time, the UN military capability and readiness could allow it to intervene almost instantly anywhere in the world.

Under the blueprint already being used at the United Nations, it will become illegal under international law for countries to have large armed forces unless those forces ultimately report to the United Nations as Commander-in-Chief:

 “Military force is not a legitimate political instrument, except in self- defence or under UN auspices;
 The development of military capabilities beyond that required for national defence and support of UN action is a potential threat to the security of people.
 Weapons of mass destruction are not legitimate instruments of national defence.
 The production and trade in arms should be controlled by the international community.”

For “international community”, read “United Nations”.

Reform of the UN Security Council is also proposed, with the European Union expected to take a seat as a permanent member of the UN SC, replacing Britain and France. That would mean the EU, USA, Russia and China would become the permanent members with powers of veto, leaving the US potentially isolated.

“The EU should speak with one voice both at open and closed Security Council meetings. The medium-term goal should be to have a permanent EU seat in the Security Council, replacing the nation states,” says the Socialist International report.

Additionally, Socialist International proposes widening the Security Council to include more Third World and Arab nations.

The biggest proposed change to the Security Council, however, is the removal of the power of veto entirely:

“The UN should aim at a veto-free culture in the Security Council. There is no doubt that the veto-based decision-making structure has a number of negative features. Sensitive matters often trigger repeated vetoes, which means that the Security Council is unable to act in areas that are in fact clearly within its area of competence. One example of this is the Israel-Palestine conflict, in relation to which the Unites States has exercised a veto on several occasions, thus blocking any real decisions by the Security Council concerning the conflict.”

The briefing paper from Helen Clark’s Socialist International overlooks the reality that, without the power of veto, nuclear war in the last 50 years would have been a certainty.

This 2005 document preceded the global economic crash by three years, but it contains in its pages details of a proposed new global economic administration to coordinate the entire global economy:

“Hence there is a need to establish on a global coordination level a new United Nations Security Council on Economic, Social and Environmental issues [UNESEC] - a Council for Sustainable Development.
b) This Council should be composed and function in a manner that takes into account the difficulties facing the current UN Security Council. The eventual permanent members should be more representative of the world as a whole and of all the major economic regions, including the United States, Europe, China, Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia. In other words, it should reflect the world of 2005, not the world of 1945.
c) The Council for Sustainable Development should be independent of the Security Council and have the same standing with respect to international economic and social matters as the Security Council has in peace and security matters. It should be in a position to improve coordination between international economic, financial, social and environmental policies. It should be a deliberative forum aimed at contributing to world social and economic justice, stability and prosperity on the basis of the UN Charter. It should have the task of:

 continuously assessing the state of the world economy and ensuring macro-economic coordination;

 providing a long-term strategic framework for sustainable development;

 securing consistency between the policy goals and activities of the international economic, social and environmental institutions;

 producing common guidelines on the priorities of the global agenda, monitoring their follow-up and acting as a coordinating body for trade-offs between trade, employment and the environment.

“Once a year the Council should meet at the level of heads of state and government together with the chief executives of all main global agencies related to sustainable development.”

The plan will also see some kind of global control of financial markets, coupled with a “redistribution of wealth” agenda:

“Socialists and social-democrats agree that with increasing globalization and, in particular, increasing integration of financial markets, there is need for a global regulator of these markets as well as an institution that can help countries that experience financial crisis. Markets do need regulation and supervision, and when they have become global, these functions must also be global. Moreover, the developing countries generally, and even more so, the least developed countries, should have access to concessional resources, both, because they cannot cover the costs of providing for global public goods from which everyone benefits such as environmental protection, disease control and security and, as a matter of international solidarity, there should be some redistribution of income from the most fortunate to those most in need also across national borders.”

By now you should be beginning to appreciate how the new world order will work. The UN Security Council will become stacked with members undoubtedly approved by Socialist International, and the USA will lose its power of veto, substantially or even entirely. Because of new funding streams from carbon taxes and a global financial transaction tax, the UN will have its own revenue and be capable of putting its own “peacekeeping” military force into action. Meanwhile, the new Sustainable Development Council will have the same draconian powers to direct how the world economy should develop and how resources should be collected and spent. Countries wishing to dispute would get a hearing in the UN General Assembly, but if they didn’t have the political support they could be ordered to tow the line or face increasingly harsh sanctions from the UN community.

Voting rights on the new Sustainability Council would be based on “three main criteria: a country’s share in world population, GDP and contributions to the UN global goods budget.”

In other words, the more you contribute to the UN, the more say you have in governing the affairs of other countries.

“The voting powers that result from such a scheme must have two essential characteristics: they must appear reasonable and appeal to the demand for legitimacy present in world public opinion, and they must be acceptable to the nation states that would have to agree to the reform.”

If you are wondering how Helen Clark fits into this massive reform long term, UNESEC will be the face of “The One UN”:

“The UNESEC would be the governance umbrella for all specialised economic and social agencies currently in the UN system, such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Environment Organisation (WEO) to be created, and so on, as well as the Bretton Woods Institutions and the WTO…What is proposed is a UNESEC which acts as a strategic board for the entire international system in the economic, social and environmental sphere.”

Socialist International adds that UNESEC “would be a source of strengthened legitimacy for all institutions, particularly the IMF and the World Bank and thus give multilateralism the necessary global support, desperately needed in order to efficiently tackle the global challenges we face.”

Much of Socialist International’s work on this concept, incidentally, was written by Helen Clark’s predecessor at the UNDP, Kemal Dervis. So it’s fair to say that this document has an excellent pedigree as a likely indicator of what Clark’s real role will be.

Every government needs its own judiciary to enforce its legality, and some kind of military strength to enforce its power practically. We’ve dealt with plans for UN militarisation, and the judicial power will come through the International Court of Justice, colloquially known as the World Court. Socialist International wants “Security Council enforcement of World Court decisions and other international legal obligations” to be incorporated as part of the reformed UN.
Climate change and other environmental issues will come under the global control of a new UN agency:

“A World Environmental Organization, grouping existing programmes, would be able to muster more authority and influence than the existing programmes (like UNEP) can do in isolation. This new body should be created with the authority to define and enforce laws, to establish the official data on environment and to develop a worldwide monitoring system.”

In a section of the report specifically addressing the proposed global government, Socialist International writes:

“New ways of enhancing democratic representation and citizenship at world level should be envisaged.”

Part of that process of gaining “legitimacy” is for topics being considered by the UN to be also debated in national parliaments, with your local MPs slowly becoming “global MPs” representing your interests directly at the UN – this quote taken directly from a 2004 UN document:

“Member States should make way for an enhanced role for parliamentarians in global governance. They should instruct the Secretariat to work with national parliaments and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, as appropriate, to convene one or more experimental global public policy committees to discuss emerging priorities on the global agenda. These committees would comprise parliamentarians from the most relevant functional committee in a globally representative range of countries. In an experimental five-year period, different organizational arrangements could be tested and, through periodic review, refined over time.”

Socialist International sees world government as inevitable:

“At some point, contemplation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly will be needed to complement UN General Assembly, where the states are represented. Such a development should be supported by the gradual emergence of truly global citizenship, underpinned by rights drawn from the 1948 declaration on Human Rights and the 1966 Covenants on civil and political rights and economic and social rights.

“International democracy is feasible and politically necessary. Such an Assembly should be more than just another UN institution. It would have to become a building block of a new, democratically legitimate, world order.”

Key players in drafting the self-proclaimed ‘New World Order’ include “NGOs, trade unions, women, indigenous groups, local authorities, academia and the business sector”, with the ultimate aim being a “Global New Deal” – a phrase now being used by British Prime Minister (and Socialist Internationalist) Gordon Brown:

“UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, called the G20 Summit in London a “Global New Deal” and solution to the current financial crisis,” reported the Jakarta Post this month, one of thousands of news agencies around the world carrying the new phrase. But here’s how Socialist International described the plan four years ago:

“Bearing in mind these two objectives of the UN reform process, the way forward is to develop new political instruments to mobilise more actors at international, regional, national and local levels in order to change the power relationships and force real and meaningful reforms. New global alliances are needed to strike a new Global Deal and to put a new global agenda underway.”

UN Development Programme head Helen Clark has confirmed British Prime Minister and global ‘New Dealer’ Gordon Brown is one of her backers:

“I sounded it out first with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They said, ‘You’d be terrific at that…you can get buy-in from very significant players’,” Clark told the Listener this month.

As a former vice-president of Socialist International, Brown would have been a key player in shoehorning Clark into the UN’s third most powerful position on a reform agenda driven by the organisation she’s been a member of since 1976 – Socialist International – and blueprinted by the previous UNDP head Kemal Dervis.

Despite her protestations to the contrary, it would be a fair bet that Clark’s ascension to such a role has been planned for quite some time.

[To read more of the UN’s agenda for global government, the proposed new global tax and its direct relationship to the climate change scare, read Ian Wishart’s new book Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming, available from Amazon UK, Amazon US, Borders, and good bookstores everywhere, or grab it online at http://www.ianwishart.com ]

The Socialist International paper, referencing UNDP material, can be downloaded from the UN website: http://www.un-ngls.org/orf/UN-reform-Socialist%20International-%20Position%20Paper_%20240105.doc

Free preview of Ian Wishart's new book AIR CON

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The One seizes control in messianic style

Inaugural images designed to emphasize Obama's theme of populist social renewal

By Mike Dorning

Chicago Tribune

(MCT)

WASHINGTON - From lines of flag-waving Americans along the railroad tracks to a statue of Abraham Lincoln gazing down on a huge outdoor concert and hundreds of thousands filling the Mall for the inauguration, Barack Obama is projecting images designed to reinforce themes of his candidacy - and build his political strength in the Oval Office.

Along with a sense of historic moment and the possibility of renewed national unity, Obama's aides have sought to convey above all one idea: His presidency is not the triumph of an individual politician but the embodiment of a huge, bottom-up social movement.

Whether or not the choreography achieves its goal and Obama succeeds with his ambitious policy agenda remain to be seen. But throughout the inauguration, his aides have tried to build his political strength by shaping the pictures that will linger in the minds of millions of Americans.

In effect, they have seen the occasion as an opportunity to encourage viewers' sense of identification with the new president and his goals, and at the same time subtly warn potential opponents: Opposing Obama is to oppose a vast popular movement.

From the outset of his long-shot candidacy, Obama's political team has shown a clear understanding of the value of crowds in generating excitement and defining Obama in the public mind.

Nowhere will that understanding be more apparent than when the 47-year-old president-elect becomes the first black man to raise his hand to take the oath of office as president on Tuesday. The vista before him may be as striking as the one on the platform.

Amid the stone and marble monuments of the National Mall, authorities expect the largest-ever gathering of the American people, a populist moment in a hallowed place that will be broadcast around the world. Two million people may be present.

The size of the inaugural crowd is not serendipitous. Almost as soon as Obama was elected, his aides announced that the entire Mall would be opened to the public for the inauguration. They arranged for Jumbotron TVs and encouraged supporters to converge on Washington.

Thousands of chartered buses from around the country are bringing people to the capital.

And the days leading up to the inauguration buttressed the image of a broad-based movement. A train ride to Washington produced scenes of supporters along the right of way reminiscent of Robert Kennedy's funeral train in 1968, as well as Lincoln's journey to the Capital in 1861.

Similarly, several hundred thousand attended the outdoor concert at the Lincoln memorial that officially opened the three-day celebration. The stage was set up so that the giant statue of the Great Emancipator would dominate the background on millions of television screens.

Here the imagery sent a subtle mix of messages.

It connected Obama to one of his most revered predecessors. And it underscored with minimal racial overtones the historic nature of a president whose election can be viewed as the fulfillment of the long struggle for racial equality than began with Lincoln granting freedom to slaves.

Yet the venue also spoke subtly to those who saw his rise to the White House in terms of the civil rights legacy, evoking the Rev. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech."

For members of the committed Left, the memorial also recalled the massive protests there against the Vietnam War.

In both cases, the event offered memorable images of fellowship around the Reflecting Pool.

An inauguration presents a rare moment to shape public perceptions of a new president at the outset of his administration. Three out of four Americans plan to watch the event, according to an ABC News poll released Monday.

But a mass showing at the inauguration also serves as a demonstration of support that delivers a warning to those in Washington who would thwart Obama's agenda.

And with an eye to the future, the Obama team, which effectively used big events as organizing tools during the campaign, has used the weekend to gather e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers from supporters for updates on events. The contact information can be used later for other purposes.

Likewise, the Obama team has stressed events that could nurture its grass-roots organization and stir participation among those not in Washington by incorporating locally driven satellite events.

That included the National Day of Service that included events around the country and a "Neighborhood Ball" broadcast by ABC which the inaugural committee encouraged supporters to replicate with celebrations in their hometowns.

Synchronized with the train trip Saturday that began the inaugural festivities, Obama sent out an e-mail message to supporters asking them to join him in an organization that will work to "bring about the changes we proposed during the campaign."

That organization, which advisers have said will include paid staff in congressional districts around the country and will work on behalf of his legislative program, is a potential stick.

But the inaugural events have focused on promoting hope for unity.

Obama marked the eve of his presidency with a series of bipartisan dinners, including one honoring his campaign rival, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

In commemorating King's birthday, Obama marked King's legacy through the broad theme of national service rather than recalling the conflict of the civil rights movement.

In a nod to the environmental movement, planners promoted Obama's inaugural as "the greenest inauguration," boasting of valet bicycle parking, hybrid Lexuses, invitations printed on recycled paper and even one ball that will feature a green carpet made of recycled products.

In all these details, the scenes on the Mall echo signature Obama images of mass gatherings rare in American politics.

He accepted the Democratic nomination before 84,000 people at Invesco Field in Denver. He capped a tour of foreign capitals with a speech to 200,000 in Berlin.

And rock concert-like arena rallies characterized his campaign.

---

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TGIF is New Zealand's first fully digital newspaper, 20 pages of news from here and around the world delivered direct to your email inbox, but first you have to register on our website.

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Unholy War: May 02 issue

The roots of today’s Middle East conflict may have more to do with Hitler’s Nazi holocaust than many in the west realise. As Israeli forces pound Palestinian and Hezbollah positions on a sporadic basis, and suicide bombers wreak havoc in Jerusalem, it is difficult to reconstruct history’s divergent strands and work out where the conflict has its origins. Difficult, perhaps. But not impossible. IAN WISHART traces the background

As tank shells and machine gun rounds rip holes in buildings and people alike, it is easy to point the finger in the Palestine conflict and make moral judgements. But where did the battle really begin? Why is there such enmity between both sides?

Western news reports usually focus on the creation of the Israeli state in 1948 as the catalyst, but increasingly experts are dusting off old news clippings and government reports dating back to the First World War to get a handle on the problem. Why? Because it seems the popular view of heavily-armed Jewish settler/terrorists kicking Palestinians out of their homes in the late 1940s may be only half the story.

It actually traces back to the emergence of two men – one the uncle of current Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the other regarded as the father of modern Israel.

In 1893, in a dusty stone abode in what was then Turkish-controlled Palestinian Jerusalem, a baby boy named Haj Amin el-Husseini entered the world, oblivious to the course his life would take. That course was already being determined thanks to the work of Theodore Herzl, a Zionist who envisioned the return of the world’s Jews – scattered since the Roman times – to Israel.

Herzl was organising the return of Jews to the area, admittedly in small groups at first.

As a teenager El-Husseini began to resent the Jewish immigrants, but put his personal feelings on hold to fight in World War One as part of the Ottoman Imperial Army against the British. When the Turkish were defeated, Britain took control of the Palestinian area under a League of Nations mandate and, in accordance with its own stated policies, announced the creation of a Jewish National Homeland in Palestine (the Balfour Declaration).

The problem was, British officials governing neighbouring Egypt who sympathised with the Palestinians had previously indicated Britain would favour Arab interests above the Jews.

Although Jewish immigrants were at this point buying land and businesses, not seizing them, the immigration wave and growing political and economic power of the Jews was causing societal tensions, in much the same way but on a much larger scale to the Asian immigration wave to New Zealand of the nineties.

By 1920 tensions on the ground had risen to boiling point, and British officials on the ground gave 27 year old Haj Amin tacit approval to attack Jewish settlers. It came in the form of a meeting between British Colonel Waters Taylor and Haj Amin just a few days before Easter 1920.

According to official British records of what followed, the Colonel told him “he had a great opportunity at Easter to show the world…that Zionism was unpopular not only with the Palestine Administration but in Whitehall and if disturbances of sufficient violence occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both General Bols [Chief Administrator in Palestine] and General Allenby [Commander of Egyptian Force] would advocate the abandonment of the Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained that freedom could only be attained through violence.”

Haj Amin took it on board, but rather than adopting the traditional British technique of subtlety, he openly led the riot that followed. As part of what was supposed to be the secret arrangement, British soldiers and police were withdrawn from Jerusalem over Easter, which allowed Arab mobs to attack Jews and loot their shops without interference.

When Jewish settlers regrouped and counter-attacked, they were arrested by the British and received up to 15 years’ jail. Haj Amin, because of his public role, was also arrested but escaped, and was sentenced to 10 years’ jail in absentia.

It was a token punishment. Just one year later Haj Amin’s allies in the British administration had arranged for him to be pardoned, and promoted to Grand Mufti – the official Muslim leader of the territory. Within three weeks, forces loyal to Haj Amin massacred 43 Jews in riots, the first of many attacks. Again, Jews who fought back were often arrested as part of the nudge and wink agreement between the British authorities and Mufti Haj Amin.

In 1929, rumours were spread by Haj Amin’s forces that Jewish religious ceremonies at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount would be used as a pretense by the Jews to attack Islam’s Dome of Rock. The huge Arab population were incensed and attacked the Jews, killing 133 and injuring 399.

An official investigation by British officials determined that the riots were caused by Arab fears about increased Jewish immigration, and the inquiry determined that Jewish immigration and land purchases should be restricted.

The Mufti, meanwhile, consolidated his status with the Palestinians by fundraising internationally for a refit of the Dome of the Rock, raising enough money to plate it in gold, but he was forced to flee Palestine after fomenting a rebellion in 1936 that finally put him offside with Britain.

Ironically, Haj Amin’s agenda was not the creation of a Palestinian state: he firmly believed Palestine was part of Jordan and Syria.

Haj Amin el-Husseini resurfaced in 1941 in Hitler’s Germany, meeting with the Fuhrer on a number of occasions and urging him to step up his ethnic cleansing against Jews, not just in Europe but in the Middle East.

The Grand Mufti formulated 15 drafts of declarations he wanted Germany and Italy to adopt, including declaring the Jewish homeland in Palestine illegal and giving Arabs free rein to adopt holocaust methods against the Palestinian Jews, by according “to Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, in accordance with the interests of the Arabs, and by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.”

Haj Amin knew the methods Hitler was using, having toured Auschwitz and, according to Nazi records, urging the gas chamber guards to work more “diligently” in wiping out Jews.

During his time in Germany, according to testimony to the Nuremberg Trials, the Palestinian leader was also instrumental in sinking a deal being brokered between Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann and the British that would have seen German POWs in Britain freed in exchange for the Nazis agreeing to release 5,000 Jewish children from concentration camps.

Haj Amin managed to torpedo the prisoner exchange, convincing the Nazi party to instead transfer the children from holding camps in Bulgaria to the main camps at Auschwitz and Belsen. Most are believed to have perished.

Speaking on Radio Berlin in 1943, Haj Amin el Husseini urged Muslims in Europe to join the Nazis in exterminating the Jews, “Kill the Jews wherever you find them – this is pleasing to Allah.”

The Palestinian leader also travelled to Bosnia in 1943, personally recruiting Bosnian Muslims to a special division of Hitler’s Waffen SS troops. The Bosnian division slaughtered more than 9,000 Bosnian Jews, and destroyed Serbian churches and villages. The seeds of much of the recent Serbian aggression against Bosnian Muslims were sown here.

Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler was so impressed with the Bosnian SS that he established a “Mullah Military School” in Dresden.

When Germany ultimately lost the war, Haj Amin was captured by French forces and indicted as a Nazi war criminal, but again managed to escape and fled to Egypt to continue his battle against Israeli Jews.

The creation of Israel was mandated by the United Nations in 1947. It split the region in half. Ironically, had the Palestinians accepted this settlement they would have been far better off than they currently are.

Instead, the Grand Mufti and the Arab nations decided to wage war for a reclamation of 100% of the Palestinian region and a desire, particularly on Haj Amin’s part, to finish the job that Hitler started. He didn’t want Jewish settlers captured. He wanted them dead.

What followed at the urging of Haj Amin can be directly blamed for the Palestinian refugee problem. On May 15, 1948, he appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their homes and leave the country, because Arab armies were about to come in to drive out the Jews. The Palestinians did leave, but their liberators didn’t bother to show up, as a Jordanian newspaper noted in February 1949:

“The Arab states, which had encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promises to return.”

As another displaced Palestinian lamented: “The Arab governments told us ‘Get out, so that we can get in’. So we got out, but they did not get in.”

One of the Grand Mufti’s most enthusiastic recruits was his nephew, Abd al-Rahman abd al-Bauf Arafat al-Qud al-Husseini, who set up the Palestinian resistance movement el-Fatah in response to the huge boost in Jewish immigration to the territory. Abd al-Rahman’s first troops initially greeted him and Haj Amin with the infamous Nazi salute.

Today, Abd al-Rahman is better known to the West as Yasser Arafat.

In 1956, after Egypt nationalised the Suez canal and Palestinian resistance groups stepped up attacks on Israeli settlements, Israel lashed out by invading Egypt, capturing the Sinai desert on the east bank of the canal. When the dust settled, a United Nations peacekeeping force was installed to act as a buffer and prevent further attacks on Israel from Egyptian insurgents.

By 1967, however, after months of sabre-rattling on both sides, Egypt signed a military treaty with Syria and Jordan, re-invaded the Sinai desert and closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. Israel responded with a devastating pre-emptive strike, shattering the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armies in just six days and capturing huge tracts of new territory, including much of the now disputed West Bank.

In 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise counter-attack on the eve of a Jewish religious holiday. It was only through American intervention in the form of weapon supplies that Israel survived and was able to defeat the invasion forces.

Why did America become involved? A primary reason was the involvement of the Soviet Union behind the scenes in supplying Egypt and Syria with weaponry. In fact, Russia was preparing to send its own troops into the region to help finish Israel off, and was only deterred when the United States placed its armed forces on “full nuclear alert”.

At the end of the war, the US insisted that Egypt and Israel thrash out a workable peace deal. That peace process continued throughout the eighties and nineties, resulting in the creation of Yasser Arafat’s self-governing Palestinian Authority in 1993.

But always just under the surface have been competing agendas – from the Palestinian side the growing allegiance to Islamic fundamentalism based on the Koran’s instruction to “kill the infidels where you find them”, and from the Israeli side by right-wing governments continuing to allow Jewish settlers to build homes on captured Palestinian land.

The problem with modern journalism is that much of the past is being ignored. The new book by New Zealander Lloyd Geering, Who Owns The Holy Land?, for example, fails to mention the extensive Nazism of Grand Mufti Haj Amin, leaving readers with an arguably unbalanced picture of the passions at the heart of this conflict.

And Geering’s glaring omissions are typical, rather than the exception. One peace group, the MidEast Web for Coexistence, a joint Islamic/Jewish friendship organisation, has recently fired a number of bullets at zealots who deliberately hide the truth:

“What is not told is as important as what is told. The pen of the Jewish extremist makes the massacre of Deir Yassin disappear – over a hundred dead people are banished to nowhere. The pen of the Palestinian partisan erases the siege of Jerusalem and the Arab invasion of 1948. A writer in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, waves his magic pen and the Holocaust disappears. None of it happened. The Jewish extremist erases the Palestinian refugees. Reality is rearranged for convenience.

“Time and again, words create reality and programme actions. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic forgery of the Czarist secret police, is enshrined in the charter of the Hamas and propels Muslim extremists to their death. Osama Bin Laden wrote his Fatwas against America, and the words toppled mighty buildings. The Mufti of Jerusalem said ‘the Jews are destroying the holy Mosque of Al Aqsa’ and the riots of 1929 began. The same rumour started bloodier riots in 1997 and again in September 2000 [the start of the current uprising].

“At this moment, as is usual in our area, a battle is raging. The words are fighting alongside the tanks and bombs. Partisans are busy rewriting history. Suicide bombers are being written out by one side, civilian casualties are being written out by the other.

“Words are changing history, and people are being programmed to act on the words, never mind what happened. So the words help to create reality.”

Among the “words” being bandied around is the figure of 590,000 displaced Palestinians, turned into refugees by the creation of Israel in 1948. But a lesser known figure is the 850,000 Arab Jews who were forced to flee from their homelands in ten Arab states when the fighting broke out, also leaving behind homes and belongings, businesses, land and flocks. Those Jews were taken in by Israel. None has been compensated by the Arab states for the money and property they left behind.

In other words, it cuts both ways.

Strip away the rhetoric, and you are left with two men: Yasser Arafat, the one-time protégé of a self-confessed Nazi collaborator whose wish was to see all Jews gassed, and Ariel Sharon, holocaust survivor, Israeli terrorist turned military leader.

While you could point to Sharon’s involvement in the Deir Yassin massacre of Palestinian women and children in 1948, you could also point to Arafat’s uncle personally ensuring the deaths of thousands of Jews in Europe. You could point to the wave of Jewish immigration in the early 1900s, but you could also point to the Palestinian massacres of those same Jewish settlers.

Neither side is innocent in this conflict, but commonsense shows that had the Arab states accepted the UN fifty-fifty carve-up of Palestine in 1947, the Palestinians would have owned a lot more land than the 22% they currently occupy as a result of Israel capturing territory during failed Arab invasions. Having taken a gamble on the “might is right” option and lost, the Palestinians now seek to recover the territory they gave to the victors through a diplomatic solution.

Whilst there is an overwhelming pragmatism to such a solution, any Palestinian claim to occupy the moral high-ground is looking increasingly dubious.