Manchester, England. 2nd November 2006. Alan Hart speaks at a public meeting of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). He speaks about his two volume book "Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews".
The original venue, St Peter's Chaplaincy, informed PSC that it was unwilling to host the meeting--2 days before the event--despite the fact that the booking had been paid for many weeks in advance. Anticipating this, the PSC booked a reserve venue--the Friends Meeting House.
Alan Hart, a young 63, has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications - the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews - for nearly 40 years: * As a correspondent for ITN's News At Ten and the BBC's Panorama programme (covering wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world). * As a researcher and author. (His first book Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker? was published by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1984 and subsequently in several updated editions over a decade). * As a participant at leadership level, working to a Security Council background briefing, in the covert diplomacy of the search for peace.
Alan Hart thus brings to the pages of his latest book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, and to the debating chamber, a deep understanding of why, really, the Countdown to Armageddon is on and how it can be stopped.
He's been to war with the Israelis and the Arabs but the learning experience he values most, and which he believes gave him rare insight, came from his one-to-one private conversations over the years with many leaders on both sides of the conflict. With, for example, Golda Meir, Mother Israel, and Yasser Arafat, Father Palestine. The significance of these private conversations was that they enabled Alan to be aware of the truth of what leaders really believed and feared as opposed to what they said in public for propaganda and myth-sustaining purposes.
It was because of his special relationships with leaders on both sides that, in 1980, Alan found himself sucked into the covert diplomacy of conflict resolution. President Carter had been prevented by Prime Minister Begin from involving the PLO in the peace process, an opening made possible because Arafat had signalled, secretly and seriously, that he was ready to make peace with an Israel inside more or less its pre-1967 borders. Carter was in despair and said, in private, that events had once again proved that it was impossible to advance the peace process by institutional diplomacy (because of the pork-barrel nature of American politics and the Zionist lobby's awesome influence). It was then suggested to AH that he should undertake an unofficial, covert diplomatic mission to get an exploratory dialogue going between Arafat and Peres, with AH initially the linkman. The assumption at the time was that Peres would win Israel's next election and deny Begin a second term.... The initiative was funded by a small number of wealthy British Jews led by Marcus Sieff (the Chairman of Marks and Spencer) with the approval of Lord Victor Rothschild.... It happened and enough progress was made to get Peres and Arafat into public dialogue in the event of Peres winning the 1981 election. Unfortunately, and against all expectations, he did not. (Full story of this initiative in Chapter 35 - The Blood Oath).
In the course of this mission AH learned two things. The first was the truth about the miracle of Arafat's leadership - his success in persuading his side (most of it) to be ready for unthinkable compromise with Israel for peace. (Which was why Alan wrote his first book). The second was why it is difficult to impossible for any Israeli prime minister, even a rational, well-motivated one, to make peace on any terms the Palestinians can accept.
A decade later, Alan's initiative became the Oslo process, which might have delivered peace if Prime Minister Rabin had not been assassinated by a gut-Zionist.
Alan has long believed that what peacemaking needs above all else is some TRUTH-TELLING, about many things but, especially, the difference between Zionist mythology and real history, and, the difference between Jews and Judaism on the one hand and Zionists and Zionism on the other. (The Zionism of the title and substance of Alan's latest book is, of course, political Zionism or Jewish nationalism as the creating and sustaining force of the Zionist state, not what could be called the spiritual Zionism of Judaism).
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