Trump's War on Iran - a Better Understanding

March 24th - Over the years, I have made an effort to understand what is going on in the Middle East for a number of reasons, mainly because it has been a screaming headline so much of the time. We had the Gas crisis in the 1980's, the Iran Contra affair, death of the Great Leader, Golda Meir, in December 1978 and the superb film about her and about Israel and Palestine in 1982! That was such a masterpiece that I bought it on video back when we had video. Don't let me get sidetracked on my regret about the loss of a variety of old media forms - cd's and videos.

When Trump initiated the war with Iran recently, I became aware of a FRONTLINE report on it titled: Re-making e Middle East: The US, Israel and Iran (updated) documentary. I watched it and it was riveting. It was so fascinating but so complex that I watched it twice, two nights in a row. Then questions began swirling around in my mind, things I probably knew once but had forgotten, and things most people with loud opinions probably haven't asked themselves or looked into - like my nephew Archie. The guys he works with are firmly Pro-Palestine and anti-Israel and I suspect it is anti-semitism that propels their fervor rather than any deep understanding of the history of the regional conflict.

One of my earliest questions was about what existed in the Holy Land prior to the establishment of the Israel State in 1948. Briefly, what I call the holy land was a loose group of three kinds of settlements (villages/cities) Arab (Bedouin), Jewish (Judea), and Arab Palestinian. It had been that way from bible days (or 2000 years). First the roman Empire came along and drove out the Jews and enslaved them. A story with which you are familiar from the story of Jesus Christ who was, of course, born a Jew in Judea. When the Romans conqered the region, they destroyed the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, and suppressed and enslaved a good deal of the population and a greater number made their exodus to other lands, the great diaspora of the Jews. There were movies When I was a child that explained some of that: Spartacus, Kirk Douglas and Ben Hur.

The Ottoman Empire (the Turks) was the enemy of the British Empire during World War I and when the British won the War in the Middle East, the 'hony land' became a British Mandate or controlled territory which it remained through World War II for obvious reasons - the most important being a strategic hub to protect trade routes and petroleum resources with which the Middle East is rich.

After WWII, the Jewish survivors of the German Nazi Holocaust needed some place to go. The world felt both sorry for them and guilty for allowing such a crime against humanity to occur without helping them and they let the Jews go back to their biblical homeland in the Judea, the holy land (Zionism). The western Wall of such fame in the news, surrounded the original Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the heart of the Jewish homeland. The biblical lands of the Jews was called Judea. So the British allowed the traumatised survivors to return to their first homeland to settle and try to pick up their lives.

At first it was hoped that everyone would get along, the new settlers/survivors from Europe Jewry, the existing Palestinians as well as the old Judean community which still existed, and the tribes of Arabs like the Bedouins. As the Jews expanded and flourished and covered more land, usually through purchase at the start, the Arab speaking Palestinians became enraged and began to attaack the communes (kibutz) and the Jewish settlers fought back. It must be stated here that the Jewish settlers were infused with a zeal and driven to make a viable homeland again so they worked like crazy planting and building, and being a culture that had always both respected and pursued he portable wealth of education and knowlege, they brought a great deal of scientific and agricultural expertise to their settlements.

They studied how to enrich the soil, and to desalinate water and they studied hydro power and irrigation and all sorts of things which made their cities and settlements immensely successful and the neighbors steeped in a patriarchal stagnation became jealous.

The Palestinians became an underclass of workers for the increasinly successful and wealthy Israelites. As the desert settlements expanded further inot Palestinian and Arab lands tensions mounted and fights broke out and became larger and larger until the Arab neighbors banded together and made war on Insrael. Each time they made warn on the smaller, weaker Israeli nation, the Jews would win and take more territory including, for example the Golan Heights which were stragegically important because they looked down and over the cities of Israel.

The ancient Arabic neighbors took up the cause of the Palestinians but didn't take in the Palestinians. Every time a war was fought the 6 days war, the Yom Kippor War, the war of 73, more Palestinians became displaced into refugee camps on the borders of the neighboring countries: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. Their neighbors didn't want them, they wanted them to go back to territory now held by Israel.

The Palestinians were gathered into smaller areas of the orignally mandated territory set out by the British in 1948 - Gaza and the Golan Heights. In peace negotiations the Israelis would give back these territories, much shrunken, to the Palestinians but they became a pawn in a larger battle of Arab oil and Muslim patriarchies versus modern Imperialist nations. >p/> The modern imperialist nations like Britain, France, Germany, and the US having a great hunger for petroleum had invested in oil plants in places like Iran. British Petroleum in Iran was the largest petroleum processing complex in the world. They employed the native peoples as workers but never properly shared the Industrial expertise or the huge profits, preferring instead to buy off the ruling regimes, make a small number of Arab rulers filthy rich while the people languished in poverty and rage. The anger of the impoverished people was manipulated and directed toward the Israelis and the US. Iran used the rage of the disposesed to create 'proxy' armies in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt-the Hezbollah, Hamas, and the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization). Their goal became to estroy Israel entirely (another holocaust) and give the land to the Palestinians and their false narrative was that the land had always belonged to the Palestinians and it had been invaded and stolen by the Jews.

All the third world countries which had been colonized and exploited by the European powers began to revolt and nationalize the industries - take control and drive out the Europeans. The British were driven out of Iran (British Petroleum) and the Iranian oil manufacturing complex, largest in the eworld was confiscated and put under Iranian power. Now began the war for petroleum. That war had already existed when the Nazi's were trying to get control of the Middle Eastern Oil fields during World War II. Tanks and trucks and automobiles all run on petroleum.

The latest development centers around Iran trying to develop nuclear weapons which they would use to destroy Israel at the first opportunity. The rest of the world doesn't want that. Even the Arab neighbors do not want this to happen. In fact, Iran is not really Arabic. It is Persian and speaks a Persian language (Farsi) not Arabic. The religion is Shiite not the Sunni religion of the Arab nations, the Arabs are suspicious of Iran too and that is why in this recent conflict they have not sided with Iran. Nobody wants Iran to have nucleear weapons. Nobody trusts them.

So our support for Israel is largely over their hold in the Middle East and our greed for petroleum and it is also the cause of our invasion recently of Venezuela.

There is also a great FRONTLINE Report on Venezuela well worth your time to watch. But back to the movies on the Middle East. Aside from the Frontline special report noted above: R-making the Middle East: The US, Isreal and Iran (update) available on YouTube, you might want to watch Exodus with Paul Newman which is a masterpiece of film that covers the first years of resettlement of the Jews into their ancient homeland of Judea. Then watch A Woman named Golda for the following years and it brings you up to The Re-Making Frontline documentary.

I don't know how much good it does to understand the situation we find oursselves in, but I am compelled by my very nature to learn and know as much as I can. When I see the protestors on college camposes or the corner of nearby streets with "Free Paestine" signs, I wonder how much they really know about the history. Do I think what Israel has done to the Palestinians in Gaza in recent years is right? No, I do not. I think they should have tried harder and harder and still harder. Netanyahu is a stubborn old man and that brings me back to my heroes Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two psychologists who won the Novel Prize on how judgements/decisions are made. They talk about the role of emotion versus information in making decisions and it is enlightening and explains how we got where we are in the Middle East - they did a study on the 6 Days War and how leaders made strategy based on gut instinct instead of incoming intelligence information and almost lost the war by not being prepared. Hubris over knowledge. I understand that so well.

Happy Trails wrightj45@yahoo.com