Most people would not have even realized that the 23rd Congress of the Socialist International was being held near Athens — were it not for the moment when Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak shook the hand of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
An Associated Press report, published in the Israeli daily Haaretz, dubbed the handshake “historic.”
History was supposedly made in Athens, on Tuesday, July 1, 2008. Centered in a photo, featuring widely grinning Barak and Talabani is Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who was credited for introducing the two.
The three are members of political establishments that are largely funded and sustained by the US government. Both Abbas and Talabani are at the helm of puppet political structures that lack legitimacy or political will of their own, and are entirely reliant on scripts drafted in full or in part by the Bush administration. As for Israel that enjoys a more equal relationship with the US, normalization with the Arabs is something that it covets provided such normalization doesn’t involve ending its occupation of the Palestinian territories, or any other concessions.
One might suggest the accidental handshake and very brief meeting was not accidental at all. This is what Haaretz wrote, rewording Barak’s comments on the handshake.
He “said that Israel wished to extend its indirect peace talks with Syria to cover Iraq as well.”
That was a major political declaration by Israel — one surely aimed at further isolating Iran, as Israel’s newest moves regarding Syria, Lebanon and Gaza clearly suggest. But the fact is no such major political announcements could be made by the ever-careful Israeli leaders without intense deliberation and consensus in the Israeli government.
But Talabani owes Barak, more than a reciprocal handshake — a heartfelt “thank you” is in order for his newly found fortunes as Iraq’s sixth president.
There was a time when Israel’s leading role in the Iraq war was discussed only by writers and analysts outside the mainstream media. Now US government and army officials openly admit it.
In a recent commentary, US writer Paul J. Balles brings to the fore some of these major declarations, including those of Sen. Ernest Hollings (May 2004) who “acknowledged that the US invaded Iraq ‘to secure Israel’, and ‘everybody knows it.’” Retired four-star US Army general and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark is another: “Those who favor this attack (against Iraq) now will tell you candidly, and privately, that it is probably true that Saddam Hussein is no threat to the United States. But they are afraid at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear weapon to use it against Israel,” he was quoted in The Independent.
In his recent review of Michael Scheuer’s “Marching Toward Hell — America and Islam after Iraq”, Jim Miles wrote, “It is not so much the Israeli lobby itself that he (Scheuer, an ex-CIA agent) criticizes, but the ‘Israeli-firsters,’ those of the elite who whole-heartedly adopt the cause of Israel as the cause of America. He describes them as ‘dangerous men...seeking to place de facto limitations on the First Amendment to protect the nation of their primary attachment (Israel).”
Scheuer who primarily worked on gathering information on Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda wrote in his book, “to believe that relationship is not only a burden but a cancer on America’s ability to protect its genuine national interests...equates to either anti-Semitism or a lack of American patriotism.”
Perhaps Talabani is the president of Iraq, but he is also the founder and secretary general of the major Kurdish political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). His advocacy for Kurdish political sovereignty spans over a period of five decades. Thus, it is also difficult to believe that the influential leader didn’t know of Israel’s presence and involvement in northern Iraq. Shall one understand the Athens handshake is a public acknowledgment and approval of that role?
What deserves scrutiny is why did the governments of Tel Aviv and the Green Zone decided to upgrade their gestures of “good will” starting in 2003, to a public handshake. Is it a test balloon or is there a more “historic” and public agreement to follow?
