Retfærdighed for landene i Sydvestasien (Mellemøsten). Tale af Hussein Askary,
Schiller Instituttets Sydvestasien koordinator den 22. maj 2021

På engelsk:

This sections starts at 24:20 in the video above:

Regarding Palestine: We have a major presentation which will be done by Hussein Askary in just a few minutes on this.

But I just want to point out the following to you concerning Lyndon LaRouche. Back in 1983, looking at and anticipating the kinds of problems that we’re seeing today in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, Lyndon LaRouche wrote à proposal with respect to Israel. I think we have a view of that. “A Proposal to Begin Development of a Long-Range Economic Development Policy for the State of Israel.” As I said, that was back in 1983. Subsequent to that, we’ve done much work from both Executive Intelligence Review and from the Schiller Institute to promote this conception of development that he puts forward. A bit about the subject and why this segues us into talking about the real issue of Palestine and the real issue of Israel.

We’re talking about an area which is about 27 miles long and about 7 miles wide. We’re talking about an area that has 2 million people inside of it, in which you have the borders completely controlled. Nothing can move in or out. On one side is Egypt, on the other side there’s Israel. You’re talking about 96% of the drinking water being unusable; 50% unemployment; 75% youth unemployment. 50% of the people are under 18 years old. The internet is controlled; electricity is controlled. Movement of food or any other commercial capability is controlled. And some Israeli activists have referred to Gaza in particular as the largest open-air prison in the world. Baruch Kimmelman, who is I believe deceased now, back in 1983 wrote a book called Politicide in which he talked about this as being a form of concentration camp. And he knew what he was saying; he was very clear about what he was saying. He was a professor at a university in Israel at the time when he made those statements. People found him very controversial then, but the fact of the matter is, that when you’re looking at this issue of the control of population, whether we’re talking about Mark Carney in the case of Africa, or we’re talking about the case of Palestine, or we’re looking around the world in other ways, this matter of the Great Reset so-called, the great First Global Revolution as Alexander King called it, this takes us into a different province. And it’s this province that we are going to discuss with you today concerning both the issue of Southwest Asia as a whole, not merely Israel in particular, but more importantly, this concept of the method of the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites.

With me today are Hussein Askary, who is the Southwest Asia director of the Schiller Institute, and also Diane Sare, who is a candidate for United States Senate, running in 2022 against Chuck Schumer of New York. So, we’re going to go right to Hussein, whose presentation is called “Justice for the Nations of Southwest Asia.”

HUSSEIN ASKARY: Thank you very much, Dennis. Hello to Diane. I’m very happy to be with you, and thank you for the nice introduction you just made.

As Lyndon LaRouche said in the clip you saw, you don’t have any problem in this region especially which is not created by the British Empire. This is a classic case of geopolitical manipulation of religion and politics and geography to pit nations against each other, peoples against each other. Before the British Empire got its nose into this region in 1917, we didn’t have any problems between Jews and Arabs and Christians and so on. This is a very classic case, but also it’s a tragic situation in which, as you just mentioned, the situation in Gaza, for example, is a horrendous situation where the living conditions are similar to an open prison. Now you have the lying Western media talking about Xinjiang in China being an open-air prison and a concentration camp, which is a complete lie, but they are completely blind to the fact that what the Palestinian people—especially in Gaza—have been subjected to is prison camp or concentration camp conditions.

The thing with tragedies is that the people who are inside the tragedy are not able to solve the problem per se, because they are locked into a dead end. Both Hamas and the current Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu are into a game which they believe has nothing to do with anything else than their own goals. The reality is that there is a much bigger picture in which we, who are outside the tragedy so to speak, can situate this problem and find a solution to it. So, the problem does not come from the Palestinians or Jews or anybody, although they are now in the news media the major players. The Israelis are shooting rockets, so the Palestinians are shooting rockets and so on and so forth. But that’s not really the real story.

Last week on your show, Harley Schlanger did a fantastic job of explaining the historical background for this. I’m just going to touch on a very few things on that issue, because as I mentioned, there is this British game which continues up to today. The people who planned this knew it was going to continue. But the thing which is important for us today is to situate these events in Gaza of today and in Southwest Asia in the larger context. When and where these things are happening. This is something we have learned from Lyndon LaRouche, because we cannot understand any event by itself without looking at the larger context. And we won’t be able to find a solution for that. Now, these attacks, and I wrote a few weeks before this on Facebook that there are very interesting moves in the region, that can point to a different direction than what we have seen in the past six—we count the years by how many American administrations there have been—so we had two Obama administrations and one Trump administration. That’s the diary, and during these three administrations we had a terrible situation in the region, but recently we had very important developments taking place concerning countries in this region. But also it involves Russia and China. The new Biden administration, if you remember the first foreign policy declaration by President Biden is that the United States is back. Now, that was a terrifying message as I recollect when I heard it. The thing is that what Biden means is that what the Trump administration did in this region by disengaging from many issues there, for example, regime-change wars and launching new wars, that made the United States to lose its leadership in the region and in the world. And therefore, the United States should take the leadership in this region back from whom? From China and Russia, because according to the Biden administration, the vacuum created by the lack of U.S. leadership was filled by Russia and China, but it was filled by Russia and China for a good reason with a good policy.

Recently we had the possibility of the 5+1—the 5 permanent members plus Germany—reopening the negotiations with Iran for the nuclear deal, the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Lifting the sanctions against Iran and having Iran cooperate with the international community so to speak, on its own nuclear program to limit Iran’s possibility to produce a nuclear weapon, although Iran never had that intention. In any case, these negotiations were going well, it was also still going on in Vienna, and at the same time, Iran and China signed a very strategic and economic joint agreement for 25 years, mostly on economic development along what the Chinese now call the Belt and Road Initiative, the New Silk Road. Iran and China will work intensively to build infrastructure, develop industry, technology transfer, and other strategic and military cooperation. We had at the same time Saudi Arabia and Iran, who are rivals in this region, the big Sunni-Shi’a rivals, starting negotiations in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital to ease the tension and find ways of ending their so-called proxy wars in other parts of the region. We had the prospect of Syria re-entering the Arab League again, and ending the war there in which Russia has played a key role. We also the prospects of a possibility of having a new Yemen envoy to the UN instead of the British diplomat who has been actually playing a dirty game in Yemen in the last few years. A new envoy who will start negotiations. The Iran-Saudi negotiations will have a positive effect on solving the horrible situation in Yemen, which you have discussed many times in your shows, and Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche has made an issue of lifting the blockade and sanctions on Yemen, which is genocidal. At the same time, we had the Libya situation becoming calm due to interventions by many nations, but especially Russia, Egypt, and Turkey working together to stabilize the situation. Egypt and Turkey which have been rivals for the past 10-12 years are now re-approaching each other diplomatically.

So, you had a situation in the region where things were going in the right direction, and suddenly we had the increase of tension in Palestine and Israel, with East Jerusalem first with the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood, which was about to be taken over by Israeli Jewish settlers from its Arab inhabitants. But the core decision was delayed, but then you had all the rioting and the treatment by the Israeli police of the Palestinians. And Hamas, from Gaza, intervening with its rockets. So, we had this development which everybody saw on the news.

The problem is, there are people who, if we don’t look at the general context, if we don’t look at the history of this conflict, there are certain fallacies which people push out. For example, that Israel and Palestine are treated as equal, but Israel is one of the strongest military powers in the world. It’s backed by the most advanced military power in the world—the United States. They have the most advanced weapons and intelligence and everything. The Palestinians don’t have that. The other thing is that the Palestinians don’t really have a state. So, you cannot demand from the Palestinians to take certain actions when they are living in a state-less condition and being oppressed both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. People say, “Why can’t the Palestinians live in peace with the Jews and the Israelis?” The problem is, the Palestinians are not treated as equals, they are not treated as humans, even. Also, what they are seeing—and this is something which Harley Schlanger discussed last week—that we have an ideology in Israel, especially in the right wing like Netanyahu’s party, the Likud and other extreme so-called Zionist political parties and religious groups, who really don’t consider the Palestinians or the Arabs as somebody whom they should live with and exist there. We remember Ariel Sharon’s old slogan that “Jordan is Palestine.” His idea was that the Palestinians should be moved, transferred to Jordan where they can have their Palestinian state, but not on the so-called Holy Land. Therefore, we have many issues that are not resolved; but solving them could become easier if we look back at the history of the situation. There are UN resolutions that can give the Palestinian people and the Arab countries a fair solution to this problem, and make sure that the moderate forces in the Arab world and in Palestine are the ones who have the upper hand, not the extremists.

Just to recall, one thing we have discussed and developed, the LaRouche movement and Executive Intelligence Review, that Hamas, for example, has its own agenda. It’s part of the international Muslim Brotherhood movement, and it does not do things just for national interest. The problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is they have been the creation of the British Empire, and have been manipulated, including by the CIA, to oppose the nationalist anti-imperialist forces in the whole Southwest Asia region and the Arab world. So, Hamas itself, and I’m making myself unpopular now in the Arab countries, has its own agenda; exactly as Benjamin Netanyahu and his people have their own agenda.

I just want to share with you a few things on the historical background to understand how the British manipulated the situation. While World War I was going on, you had young people dying on the Western Front so to speak. Germans, French, and even Americans were involved later, by the tens of thousands. The British were planning, together with the French, other things somewhere else in the world. We have described it as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The British and the French would divide the territories of the old Ottoman Empire, which also includes what is today Palestine, Israel. It was still under control of the Ottomans, the Turks, until that point. So, they were planning that, and then they had also at the same time—November 1917—the British presenting what is historically called the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration was a letter sent by Lord Arthur Balfour, the Foreign Secretary of Britain, to Lord Rothschild, who was the head of the UK-based Zionist organization. In that letter, the British, as you see in the text, are willing to have a Jewish Zionist state in Palestine. This is an admission that there was a such a place called Palestine, but the British wanted to offer that as a homeland for the Jews in Europe.

The thing is, what the British set up is actually a trap, both for the Jews and for the nations of the region. Because prior to that—it’s a bit humorous how some of these Jewish organizations in the 19th Century and even the early 20th Century were thinking where their future Jewish state should be. And you can find it on the internet if you look for proposals for a Jewish state. There are about 10-11 proposals, none of them include Palestine. These are places in the U.S., there is a place in Uganda, there was one in Russia, Japan, Madagascar, in Guyana, Ethiopia, and so on. But the British chose to have Palestine because they had their own plans how to divide and conquer this region and also use it because it is the crossroads of the continents and the oceans. So, the British can control that region forever. Or manipulate others like the United States is being manipulated now into supporting Israel in whatever Israel does so that the conflict continues. There is no way out of such a conflict. This is one of the sinister things the British created like you have in Kashmir and so on, which is a big problem.

So, the problem is now, how to get out of that situation. We cannot get out of that problem by rolling back history. You cannot negate the existence of the Israeli state; you cannot either ask the Palestinians to leave for Jordan as Sharon wanted to do to have their own state. We should follow certain steps, make certain compromises to allow the Palestinian people to have their own state. Because without the Palestinian state, you would have this continuous problem where the Palestinians continue to lose territory and power, and they will have to resort to either rioting, or as we have seen now recently, rocket attacks on Israel. Hamas knows it cannot defeat Israel with military means, but what they want to show Israel is that they cannot be safe being there and exerting that kind of force and policy against the Palestinians. Which is correct. It’s not only the Palestinians. You cannot exist in that region where you have 100 million Egyptians, you have 40 million Iraqis, millions of Jordanians, 30 million Syrians, 5 million Lebanese, and so on. And you think you can live like an island of peace and tranquility in the midst of a hell you are contributing to create. Like Israel played a key role in the war on Syria in recent years; also in Lebanon. So, there are certain ways of getting to diplomatic ways of resolving the Palestinian issue. We have United Nations resolutions, which clearly mark where the Palestinians could have their own state, and the Israelis could have their state. There is UN Resolution 242, which came after the 1967 War, in which Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza and Golan Heights and other parts and the Sinai Peninsula. This is a resolution which was voted unanimously by the United Nations Security Council, including the United States. But people have been dragging their feet on that.

This is an old map of the partition plan of 1947, before Israel was officially established. The first Arab-Israeli war, where in the blue you have Israel. The UN Partition Plan was supposed to solve the problem at the time. Remember, President Roosevelt was very active in the last year of his life, when he met with leaders of the region. In his discussions with the Saudi king, Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud, he suggested the king intervene with the other Arab leaders to resolve the problems created by the British in the region in this Palestinian area. Because Roosevelt was sensing that he had to stop this British game in the region, but also that there were moves inside the United States to entangle the United States into this conflict through what we saw later emerging, especially under Harry Truman; so-called election considerations forced the United States to side completely with the Israeli side. Roosevelt was trying to get the Arabs to accept a compromise to establish this so-called Two-State Solution and stop the British geopolitical manipulation. But that did not happen. Roosevelt died; the British continued to control there. But then the British pulled out and allowed the Israelis to take even more of the Palestinian land, as you see in the pink and green colors. These were taken in 1949, but also later the green zones, the West Bank and Gaza were taken in 1967, including eastern Jerusalem.

This is the United Nations demarcation plan after the war in 1967, which marks where the different territorial claims of the different parties would be. And then, what has happened since then is that the Israelis have been building illegal settlements in these occupied areas, like you have in the dark red areas. So, the Palestinians are living in these enclaves in the West Bank which are cut off by a series of settlements by the Jewish settlers, and also walled off. They had walls built between the different parts of the West Bank. The Palestinians see their land shrinking more and more, and their rights disappearing. The Palestinians are told they should stop complaining, and accept whatever they are offered. The problem is that the Palestinians having looked at this history, and their country shrinking, their water being stolen from them, and every other right. And they know that Netanyahu and his supporters have no intention of establishing a Palestinian state. Actually, even the Arab Israelis, there are Arabs inside Israel who are Israeli citizens, who are also being targetted right now. Last year the Israeli Knesset removed Arabic language from existence inside Israel; they decided there shouldn’t be any Arabic language. So, the Arabs in Israel also see themselves threatened. They are the ones who are making lots of demonstrations in the previous weeks. They are Israeli citizens, but they have Arab ethnic background.

Asking the Palestinians to stop complaining is like asking the woman who is beaten by her husband the whole time, that she should stop complaining so her husband stops beating her. The problem is, the husband continues beating her, because he’s a sociopath; he’s an insane person. Somebody comes with a statistical study like we see all the time—people like Jared Kushner is typical. The theory is that the more the woman complains, the more there is abuse. Therefore, complaining is counterproductive. So, the Palestinians should stop complaining, because that creates the problem. So, you have that enormous injustice, and the Palestinians can see that they are not being treated, that their future is threatened. There is no future in the view to see, and there are major powers who are against them, and they have no allies. That’s what creates the enormous frustration among the Palestinians who see no other way than fighting back. That’s really terrible.

The other thing which I think we should discuss, besides these diplomatic solutions I mentioned—either a two-state solution going back to the Oslo Agreement, going back to these United Nations’ solutions. We need to have a solution for the whole region, which is the issue which Lyndon LaRouche has been fighting for since the 1970s. The only way out of these wars is economic cooperation, economic development; especially in terms of water resources, transportation, power, electricity, education, and health care. I think this is the important issue to discuss now, because if we don’t take whole so-called Palestinian issue back to the big powers, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has mentioned, we should have a summit of the major powers. LaRouche called it the Four Powers—the United States, Russia, China, and India. We can also discuss the United Nations Security Council powers and others, to have a discussion about establishing peace in this whole region with economic development. I think the best solution which we have had, which has worked, is achieving things on the ground, is what China is doing with the Belt and Road Initiative, the New Silk Road. Building infrastructure, health care, and so on. Russia is also playing a key role in providing specific technologies like nuclear power to nations in the region; to Iran, now Egypt. We have also with other African nations. So scientific and technological cooperation, economic cooperation is the solution. It has been since LaRouche announced that in the early 1970s, and it continues to be in the future. I think this is one of the big issues that has to be put on the table for people, so we don’t get entangled into these ethnic, religious matters. There was no real ethnic or religious problems between Jews and Arabs before the British Empire stuck its nose into this region.

I stop here, and I allow more matters to be discussed in the discussion period.

SPEED: Thank you a lot for that Hussein. There are going to be several questions. There’s a lot of ways we can take this.