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Dialogue of Cultures

Schiller Institute—ICLC Conference
"Continue the American Revolution"

President's Day Weekend
February 16-17, 2002
Panel 2
The Aftermath of Sept. 11


Conference Program and Audio/Video Files


Panel I- Keynote

William Warfield --Musical Tribute

September 11, 2001

Amelia Boynton Robinson --Introduction:
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr
-Keynote Speech
Is Enron "Cluster's Last Stand?"
Next Comes the Cluster-Bust!
Dr. Simbi Mubako, Zimbabwe Under Siege

Dialogue with LaRouche


Panel II --Aftermath of Sept. 11 -
Brzezinski's and Huntington's Universal
Fascism: The Special Case of Sharon's Israel."
Jeffrey Steinberg
Harley Schlanger
Dialogue


Panel III -- 2nd Keynote:
The Dialogue of Cultures
Amelia Boynton Robinson --
Introduction
Helga Zepp LaRouche


Panel IV - Open Discussion:
Dialogue with Lyndon LaRouche

Panel V - American Intellectual Tradition: Key to Economic Recovery.
Nancy Spannaus
Graham Lowery
Anton Chaitkin
Richard Freeman



Israel and Sept. 11:
Is the 'Clash of Civilizations' Inevitable?

by Harley Schlanger

The following speech was presented as part of a panel on "The Aftermath of September 11," on Saturday, Feb. 16, 2002, at the ICLC/Schiller Institute's President's Day Weekend conference. The first speech of the panel was given by Executive Intelligence Review's Counterintelligence Editor, Jeffrey Steinberg, on the evidence that the attacks of Sept. 11 were an "inside job," a coup d'état, run as part of a bloody campaign to win the support of the American people for a global war, on behalf of the policy of a "Clash of Civilizations."

The terrorist actions of Sept. 11, and the subsequent media-run, psychological-warfare campaign, have succeeded, at least temporarily, in winning popular opinion in the United States to back the deployment of U.S. forces to Afghanistan and other nations, in a so-called "War on Terror." The brutal escalation, by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), against the Palestinian people, has been an additional, integral part of the efforts to convince Americans that a war against Islam, as prescribed by the madman Samuel P. Huntington in his diatribe, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, is inevitable. Huntington assumes that there is no common basis for peace among people of different "civilizations," that a dialogue among cultures is impossible. His thesis, that human beings from different cultural and religious backgrounds are equivalent to different, and competing, animal species, betrays his background as a product of the same Harvard University kennel which bred his co-thinkers, the Anglophile geopoliticians Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

All three are spawns of Nashville Agrarian William Yandell Elliot, and all three are promoters of the utopian doctrine which gives to the leading imperial superpower—in this case, the British-American-Commonwealth forces—the right to use their overwhelming firepower to impose itself as a new Roman Empire. Their doctrine, under the guise of "fighting terrorism," has been seized by their Israeli puppet, Ariel Sharon, as justification for fulfilling his lifetime dream of removing all non-Jews from "Greater Israel." Sharon has long been an advocate of driving the Palestinians into Jordan, and proclaiming Jordan the "Palestinian state." His imitation of the "cleansing" policies used by the Nazis against the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, against the Palestinians living today in "Greater Israel," demonstrates precisely why it is essential that this utopian faction be defeated, and that a genuine Dialogue Among Cultures must begin, simultaneously with the global financial bankruptcy reorganization and implementation of great infrastructure projects proposed by Lyndon LaRouche, in order to achieve a true, just peace.

Will the Heirs of Jabotinsky Ignite World War III?

I will identify two aspects of the Israeli side of the Sept. 11 coup to give more understanding to the background of the danger, right now, of an explosion of a full-scale war in the Middle East. As Lyndon LaRouche identified this afternoon in his Keynote ["Is Enron 'Cluster's Last Stand'? Next Comes the Cluster-Bust!"—See New Federalist, March 4.], a central feature of that coup, has been the unleashing of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Sharon is not just a butcher. It is absolutely accurate to describe the policies he is pursuing as Nazi policies. The Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, exposed on Jan. 25 of this year, that the Sharon/IDF policy for crushing the Palestinian Authority, and obliterating any hope for the Palestinian people, and the Israeli people, for a just peace has been lifted directly from the military tactics used by the Nazis in 1943, to smash Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto.

It should be noted that LaRouche had already made this connection between IDF methods, and those applied by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, as early as June of 2001. At that time, he said that this policy will not provide security for Israel. In fact, it will lead to the destruction of Israel, as Sharon has been unleashed by the same cabal of universal fascists, which is behind the ongoing coup attempt, precisely to initiate a "Clash of Civilizations."

I wish to call your attention to two historical aspects of this operation. The first is the global context from which these policies emerged: the case of British geopolitics, which was the "intellectual" doctrine responsible for both World War I and World War II. The current conflict in the Middle East, and the danger of all-out war which may emerge from it, is not due to anything intrinsic to either the people of Israel or the Palestinian people. The ongoing war in the Middle East is not made in Israel or Palestine, but has been "made in London." And secondly, I will briefly identify a fascist force within the Zionist movement, called the Revisionist movement, which was created by a man named Vladimir Jabotinsky, whom Israel's most important founding father, and first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, referred to as "Vladimir Hitler."

British Geopolitics and Messianic Kooks

First, on the question of British geopolitics: Looking at this map (Figure 1), we see the area of Europe, Asia and Africa. This great landmass, which will become a complex, but integrated economy with the implementation of the Land-Bridge, was given the name, the "World Island," by a very strange character, credited with inventing "geopolitics," named Halford MacKinder, who was rewarded, for coming up with this new field, with a position as head of the London School of Economics.

Now, MacKinder's idea, based on British imperial theory, was that the intention to connect Europe with Asia by rail, would threaten the control Britain asserted over world trade, through its dominant position as a "sea power." The great fear of the British imperial faction at that time, at the end of the 19th Century, was that the development of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which would facilitate expanded trade and cooperation among the industrializing powers of Western Europe, with Russia and Asia, would eclipse the British, who were dependent on less efficient trade by sea. In order to preserve British domination of trade and, by extension, the global economy, by the sea-routes, MacKinder and others presented this theory, which was designed to provoke opposition, or friction, between Germany and Russia in particular, to prevent the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The strategy was successful, as British manipulations, and related operations in the Balkans, eventually led to World War I.

This same doctrine had a corollary in the Middle East, as the British intervened from the 1890s to the present, in such a way as to create a permanent state of religious warfare, pitting Jewish emigrés from Europe against native Palestinian Muslim and Christian populations living there already.

An additional aspect of British policy in the Middle East was the unleashing of a kooky Messianic factor. You cannot really talk about this current crisis without a reference to a crazy phenomenon known as the British Israelites. These are people, among the British oligarchy, who actually believe that they are direct lineal descendents of Jesus Christ, and, as such, are the lost tribe of Israel! And they must return to Israel to bring in the era of the Messiah, who may be Prince Charles, for all I know! This is immediately a real, strategic factor. It's kooky! It's wild! It's insane. And all of you have run into it in your organizing. We see it in the United States in this strange brand of, so-called Christian fundamentalists of the "Rapture" types, who are waiting to be "raptured," perhaps in hopes they can avoid mortgage payments and paying off their credit cards.

But it was this grouping, that has been deployed, and used as the shock troops, to carry out this British plan, to prevent, in the early 1900s, the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railroad, and, today, is deployed for precisely the same reason: to stop the developments for the Eurasian Land-Bridge which were initiated by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche.

Moses Mendelssohn vs. Jabotinsky

Now, today, the situation between Israel and the Palestinians is serving as a detonator for a Clash of Civilizations. How does this work within Israel? It operates by utilizing the split which has existed within Zionism from its very beginning. On the one hand, there is the tradition of Moses Mendelssohn, who addressed the problem caused by the oppression, separation, and isolation of the Jews in Europe. Mendelssohn's approach was to have a policy of integration of the Jewish community into the nation of Germany, where he lived, at the highest level philosophically, and in terms of language. This desire for integration came to fruition, largely through his efforts, with the emancipation of the Jewish community in Prussia in the early part of the 19th Century.

The effects of Mendelssohn's transformation of both Germany and its Jewish population was reflected among the Jews in Poland and Russia, with the development of the Yiddish Renaissance, in the last decades of the 19th Century. In particular, this was expressed through development of the trade-union movement among the Jews of Eastern Europe, with the idea that, it is not enough just to be integrated, but you have to, in fact, become a part of the society, and to fight for the improvement of that society, for every citizen.

It was this tradition that was brought to the United States by many Eastern European Jews, who participated in the development of the labor movement in the United States, who were supporters of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and who were active in the Civil Rights movement.

Unfortunately, there was another side to this issue, of how to solve the so-called Jewish question, and that was the poison within the Zionist movement associated with Vladimir Jabotinsky, who was an admirer of Mussolini. His movement, which was created in 1925, as a split-off from the mainstream Zionists, became known as the Revisionist movement. It modelled its youth movement, the Batar, on the squadristi of Mussolini. Its leaders were explicit in their support of Nazism, and Ben-Gurion attacked them directly for this.

For example, they engaged in an attempt to break a strike wave, launched by the Labor Zionists, in Palestine in 1933. Ben Gurion, the leader of the Labor Zionists, told his allies, who later founded the Labor Party, that it is necessary to fight against the man he called "Vladimir Hitler," i.e., Jabotinsky, and he urged them not to "underrate the severity of this Hitleristic peril in the Jewish Zionist street." Several days later, speaking at a rally, Ben Gurion reiterated this when he said, "We must declare war against our own Hitlerites. We face a war (against them) of life and death."

It was not an exaggeration to refer to Jabotinsky and his movement as Hitlerites. The members of Jabotinsky's party were quite explicit. For example, an editorial in their newspaper on March 30, 1933, shortly after Hitler's takeover in Germany, said, "The various Socialists and Democrats are of the opinion that Hitler's movement is just a shell. But we believe it has both shell and substance." If that is not clear enough, an attorney tied to Jabotinsky wrote, in an editorial, "Were the Hitlerites to remove their hatred of Jews from their program, we too, would stand by their side. Had the Hitlerites not risen in Germany, it would have been lost. Yes, Hitler saved Germany." This, from someone who was a leading Zionist!

The 'Iron Wall'

Now, you can see this fascist current directly in the theory espoused by Jabotinsky for preventing the Palestinian population from interfering with the creation of the Jewish state. At the time Jabotinsky was writing, there were fewer than 50,000 Jews in Palestine, and more than 600,000 Palestinians. And yet, Jabotinsky, in a very important document in 1923 called, "On the Iron Wall," wrote the following—and when I read you the quotes, I want you to think about Sharon, today, and his justification for isolating Arafat, keeping Arafat under house arrest, destroying the Palestinian Authority ports, roads, headquarters, ensuring that the Palestinians are unemployed and hungry, with no medical care, and so on, employing methods used by the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto. Keep that context in mind when you hear what Jabotinsky wrote in 1923.

He wrote, of the relations between the Jews and the Arabs, "We cannot promise any reward to the Arabs of Palestine, or to the Arabs outside Palestine. A voluntary agreement is unattainable. And so, those who regard an accord with the Arabs as an indispensable condition of Zionism, must admit to themselves that this condition cannot be attained, and hence, that we must give up Zionism. We must either suspend our settlement efforts," that is, bringing Jews to Palestine, "or continue them without paying attention to the mood of the natives. Settlement can thus develop, under the protection of a force, that is not dependent on the local population, behind an 'Iron Wall' which they will be powerless to break down."

Later, in the same article he wrote, "I do not mean to assert that no agreement, whatever, is possible with the Arabs of the land of Israel. But a voluntary agreement is just not possible. And a living people," referring to the Palestinian Arabs, "will be ready to yield on such fateful issues as accepting Jewish domination, only when they have given up all hope of getting rid of alien settlers," that is, the Jews from Europe. Finally, he ended this article by writing, "It is my hope and belief, that once this has happened," i.e., that they have given up all hope, "then we can offer them guarantees that will satisfy them. And that both peoples will live in peace as good neighbors. But the sole way to achieve such an agreement, is through the 'Iron Wall.' That is to say, the establishment in Palestine of a force that will in no way be influenced by Arab pressure. In other words," he concludes, "the only way to achieve a settlement in the future is total avoidance of all attempts to arrive at a settlement in the present."

That is the policy of the "Iron Wall." And that is the policy which has been in place, even under Labor governments in Israel. It wasn't until 1992-93, that that policy was changed. And it was changed in a dramatic way by Yitzhak Rabin, who previously had been a supporter of this outlook. When the Intifada began in 1987, Rabin was assigned, as Defense Minister, to crush it. And his orders to the Israeli troops were to "break their bones. Just make sure you do it out of camera sight." It became clear, soon, to Rabin, that this policy would not work to get rid of the hopes of the Palestinians, but, as importantly, it would destroy the ideals of the Israelis. The belief in peace would be gone forever. It was at this point, that Rabin turned to Shimon Peres, and after being elected in 1992 as Prime Minister, began what became known as the Oslo process.

LaRouche and Oslo

The most important thing about Oslo was, not simply the rejection of the Iron Wall policy, but the recognition of something which Lyndon LaRouche has been writing about, going back to a trip to the Middle East in 1975; which is that the key, and the only key, to Middle East peace, is mutual economic cooperation among the Jewish population and the Palestinian population.

LaRouche had written numerous articles on how to do this, including communications with Shimon Peres in 1983, followed by an article in 1985, which outlined what became known as the "Oasis Plan." This plan was incorporated, almost intact, in the original economic protocols of the Oslo accords—economic protocols, I might add, that the friends of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brezinski at the World Bank and IMF, made sure they were never implemented.

And so, today, instead of the potential for peace with an economically developing Palestine, side-by-side with a safe and secure Israel, we see the Israeli Defense Forces carrying out a policy of genocide against the Palestinians. And the purpose of this, is to unleash a Clash of Civilizations, which was started, most recently, with the attempted Sept. 11 coup, by the friends of Brzezinski, Huntington, and others.

schiller@schillerinstitute.org

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Dialogue of Cultures

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