Friday 11 September 2015

Israel's role in the Syrian refugee crisis

Ray McGovern on Wikileaks, Israel and the Syrian crisis


Via Facebook

On Sept. 8, RT International interviewed Ray on Julian Assange’s new book, “The WikiLeaks Files: The Way the World Sees the US Empire.”

The book relies largely on U.S. diplomatic cables shedding light on U.S. policy and actions in the Middle East, including Syria. So far, the book has been published only in Australia and the UK.

Ray hazarded a (pretty safe) guess with respect to what this new light that WikiLeaks shines on U.S. policy in Syria might reveal. He pointed to a NYT article of Sept. 6, 2013 in which bureau chief Jodi Rudoren, apparently inadvertently, gave the game way.



Asking prominent Israelis what Israel’s preferred outcome in Syria is, Rudoren was somewhat take aback to hear that, for the Israelis, the best outcome for Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, is no outcome. Rudoren quoted Alon Pinkas, former Israeli consul general in New York:

This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie ... Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.”

Rudoren commented that, for Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

Getting the neocons of Establishment Washington to go along with that? No problem. Did no one think there might be a mass exodus of refugees?

Here’s the YouTube link to the (taped) 12-min. interview of Ray on Tuesday.




https://www.youtube.com/watch

What Julian Assange said the following day, speaking to RT’s 'Going Underground' host Afshin Rattansi, supports (happily) Ray’s guess. Assange, basing his comments on U.S. diplomatic cables, indicated that the U.S. planned to:

...foster tensions between Shiites and Sunnis. In particular, to take rumors that are known to be false... or exaggerations and promote them – that Iran is trying to convert poor Sunnis, and to work with Saudi and Egypt to foster that perception in order to make it harder for Iran to have influence, and also harder for the government to have influence in the population.”

Assange stressed that this particular cable was “quite concerning,” adding that while you often have to read between the lines in cables, “its all hanging out” in that one. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.