On Arab Chutzpah, Kurds and Kissinger

Posted by Barry Lando, AlterNet at 12:03 PM on December 19, 2007.

From our "Plus ca change" department

--Some 90 nations met in Paris this week to pledge more than seven billion dollars in aid to the Palestinians to help the relaunched peace process. Analysts have pointed out that the new aid promised to the Palestinians, will be of little use if Israel continues to throttle the Palestinian economy with border crossings, checkpoints and the huge barrier wall.

But you’ve got to admit the Europeans who joined the Paris aid effort have to be some of the most masochistic donors on the planet. They’ve already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into various projects in the West Bank and Gaza, only to see them blown to smithereens over the past couple of years by Israeli bombs and rockets.

But why should Europeans even be raising new funds?

If the Arab states really wanted to set the Palestinian economy back on its feet they could do it all by themselves—with both hands tied behind their backs. They’re rolling in new wealth. Right now, just in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, there are more than two trillion—that’s trillion--dollars worth of hotels, condominiums, sky scrapers, artificial ski slopes and islands being built. The Emirates are spending hundreds of billions of dollars more so that each sheikh can have his own airline. At the same time they’re snapping up banks and businesses around the globe—particularly in the United States – at bargain basement prices. .

Instead of buying a chunk of Citi Bank they could have bankrolled all of Gaza.

--Attacks by the Turkish Air Force and artillery against targets in Northern Iraq have provoked a mini crisis between the two countries. The villages hit were supposedly bases of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK. Since the U.S. totally controls that airspace, Washington had to have given Turkey the go ahead. The U.S. also provides the Turks with satellite information on PKK guerrilla positions. But that makes sense, right? After all, the U.S. has branded the PKK a “terrorist” organization.
Yet, just a few hundred miles away, that very same U.S. is at best, quietly encouraging; at worst, actually aiding, a related branch of the PKK, which is carrying out the same kind of bloody attacks against Iran that the U.S. condemns in Turkey .
It’s called the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK. Both it and the PKK share the same goals: fighting to win new rights for Kurds in Iran and Turkey. They also share leadership, logistics and allegiance to the same PKK chief, who is currently locked up in Turkey.
Despite denials from Washington, reliable reports are that the PJAK is being secretly armed, trained and encouraged by Israel and the United States.

Different strokes for different folks.
--Henry Kissinger recently issued one his impeccably reasoned analyses of the Iranian nuclear problem and how the U.S. should handle the threat of proliferation.
An interesting stand from Kissinger—since more than thirty years ago, he played a very different role.

Proliferation in the region, of course, began not with Iran but with Israel—which developed the bomb in the 1960’s . Back then—and ever since--as Seymour Hirsch described at in “The Sampson Option,” American leaders have closed their eyes to what Israel was up to. When alerted by his intelligence agencies, for instance, Eisenhower, made it clear he simply didn’t want to know. Official knowledge would require official action.

Kissinger went further. According to Hirsch, Kissinger, like Nixon, “shared a contempt for the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty.” Though publicly supporting it, they actually worked behind the scenes to undermine it. Hirsch quotes Morton H. Halperin, one of Kissinger’s closest aides on the National Security Council staff: “Henry believed that it was good to spread nuclear weapons around the world. I heard him say that if he were the Israelis, he would get nuclear weapons. He did not believe that the United States should try to talk them out of it.”

Tagged as: kissinger, kurds, palestinians

Barry Lando, a former 60 Minutes producer, is the author of "Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush." He also blogs at Barrylando.com.