Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises

Probably the best journalist on the Middle East today, Robert Fisk, is writing a book, "The Great War for Civilisation'':

"It quite takes the breath away; the British thought they could fix the Middle East in 14 days. And so we laid the borders of Iraq and laid out the future for what Churchill would, much later, refer to as the 'hell disaster'' of Palestine. I'll always remember the way that Macdonald, talking to me in his Sevenoaks home 26 years ago, turned to me during our conversation. 'In Palestine, I failed,'' he said. 'And that is why you are in Beirut today.''

And he was right, of course. Had we really 'fixed' the Middle East, I wouldn't have spent the last 29 years of my life travelling from one bloody war to another amid the lies and deceit of our leaders and the surrogates they appointed to rule over the Arabs. Had we really 'fixed' the Middle East, Ken Bigley would not have been murdered in Iraq last week.

Can we escape? Can we one day say--both the West and the peoples of the Middle East--'Enough! Let us start again!'' I fear we cannot. Our betrayals and our broken promises--to Jews as well as Arabs--have created a kind of irreversible disease, something that will not go away and cannot and will not be forgiven for generations."

Read the full article atCounterpunch.