A Kodak Moment: The Not-So-Historic
Talabani-Barak Handshake
Posted By Ramzy Baroud
July 11, 2008
Most people would not have even realised that the 23rd
congress of the Socialist International was being held near
Athens were it not for the moment when Israeli Defence 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 1 July 2008. Centred in a photo, featuring a
widely grinning Barak and Talabani, is Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas, who was credited for introducing the
two.
The three individuals involved 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 sovereignty 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, which enjoys a more equitable relationship
with the United States, normalisation with the Arabs is
something it covets and tirelessly promotes, granted that such
normalisation doesn't involve ending its occupation of the
Palestinian territories, or any other concessions.
One might suggest the happenstance 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 Israel's ever-careful leaders could
make no such major political announcement without intense
deliberation and consensus in the Israeli government prior to
the "accidental" handshake.
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 starting in 2005. Indeed, over time,
pointing the finger at Israel's leading role in the Iraq war --
as it's now being replayed in efforts to strike Iran -- has
morphed from being a recurring discussion of writers and
analysts outside the mainstream media, to US government and army
officials.
In a recent commentary, US writer Paul J Balles brings to the
fore some of these major declarations, including those of
Senator 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 favour 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 as saying.
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] criticises,
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, an ex-CIA agent 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."
Not only is Israel directly and indirectly responsible for a
large share of the war efforts (needless to say media propaganda
and hyped "intelligence" on Iraq's non-existing nuclear
programme), but it also had much to say and do following the
fall of the Iraqi government in March 2003.
In a comprehensive study entitled "The US War on Iraq: Yet
Another Battle To Protect Israeli Interests?" published in the
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs in October 2003,
Delinda C Hanley discussed Israel's involvement following the
invasion of Iraq. The article poses an important question, among
others: did Bush's Israel-first advisers invade Iraq in order to
assure that Israel would have easy access to oil? -- a question
that is not predicated on a hunch, but rather statements made by
top Israeli officials, including the country's national
infrastructure minister at the time Joseph Paritzky, who
"suggested that after Saddam Hussein's departure, Iraqi oil
could flow to the Jewish state, to be consumed or marketed from
there." A 31 March 2003 article in Haaretz reported on plans to
"reopen a long-unused pipeline from Iraq's Kirkuk oil fields to
the Israeli port of Haifa."
Israel's interest in Kirkuk's oil, and thus Iraqi Kurds,
didn't merely manifest itself in economic profits, but extended
far beyond. Seymour M Hersh wrote in The New Yorker, 21 June
2004: "Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government decided... to
minimise the damage that the war was causing to Israel's
strategic position by expanding its long-standing relationship
with Iraq's Kurds and establishing a significant presence on the
ground in the semi- autonomous region of Kurdistan... Israeli
intelligence and military operatives are now quietly at work in
Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and,
most important in Israel's view, running covert operations
inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria."
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 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. Ought one to understand the Athens handshake as a
public acknowledgment and approval of that role?
To suggest that the Barak-Talabani handshake was "historic"
is completely unfounded, if not ignorant. What deserves scrutiny
is why 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?
-- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and
editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in
many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The
Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle
(Pluto Press, London).
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