© UnknownBertrand Russell
This statement on the Middle East was dated 31st January, 1970, and was read on 3rd February, the day after Bertrand Russell's death, to an International Conference of Parliamentarians meeting in Cairo.The latest phase of the undeclared war in the Middle East is based upon a profound miscalculation. The bombing raids deep into Egyptian territory will not persuade the civilian population to surrender, but will stiffen their resolve to resist. This is the lesson of all aerial bombardment.
The Vietnamese who have endured years of American heavy bombing have responded not by capitulation but by shooting down more enemy aircraft. In 1940 my own fellow countrymen resisted Hitler's bombing raids with unprecedented unity and determination. For this reason, the present Israeli attacks will fail in their essential purpose, but at the same time they must be condemned vigorously throughout the world.
The development of the crisis in the Middle East is both dangerous and instructive. For over 20 years Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has appealed to "reason" and has suggested "negotiations". This is the traditional role of the imperial power, because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression. The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annexe foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate.
The refugees who surround Palestine in their hundreds of thousands were described recently by the Washington journalist I.F. Stone as "the moral millstone around the neck of world Jewry." Many of the refugees are now well into the third decade of their precarious existence in temporary settlements. The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was "given" by a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their number have increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.
We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering. What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number. of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.
All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does not contain the seeds of future conflict. Justice requires that the first step towards a settlement must be an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in June, 1967. A new world campaign is needed to help bring justice to the long-suffering people of the Middle East.
Reader Comments
No wonder Bertrand Russell wrote this on his deathbed, since taking a stand against Zionism is often fatal for prominent or powerful people.
Here's the story of British press baron Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe: [Link] .
James Forrestal, the first US Secretary of Defense had vehemently opposed US recognition of Israel by President Truman and found a strangely similar fate, dying in a sudden 'fall' from the 16th floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington, DC shortly after having suffered a 'nervous breakdown'.
Even earlier, Csar Nicholas II of Russia was the only European monarch who declined the Rothschilds' invitation to establish a central bank that they would control. He and his entire family including children and household servants were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 following his abdication during the Russian revolution. It's not too hard to connect the dots in that instance.
There are very many other examples too numerous to relate here.
Zionism is Organized Crime (yes, with capital letters) on a massive scale. It encompasses every form of despicable criminal behavior that can conceivably turn an illicit or immoral profit, from legal usury (i.e., banking) and loansharking through slavery including the forced prostitution of women and children, drug and gun running, human organ smuggling, all manner of frauds, right up to and including state terrorism, mass murder and genocide that continues to this very day.
To the '67 borders or back to their real homelands in Europe and elsewhere? But then should all the 'white men' be forced to leave the Americas as well? It seems bedfellows are found not just in the puppet show of politics but in every other facet of empire building as well. Birds of a feather flock together etc. Once you start where will it end? In truth? Isn't that the last thing the empire builders want?
It's simple addiction. Getting too much of what you want, like a hungry kid in a candy store whose just been the keys to the store, it won't stop with a simple stomach ache for a day, but later ulcers and cancers until death do they part.
It seems to me that Bertrand's last message is the same one we hear from anyone paying attention to the state of affairs in their own country as it goes into empire building mode, and the lies take hold of the people and goes into basic addiction mode. How many addicts are willing to admit their addiction? Isn't that the first step to recovery? So, shouldn't that be the first sign for a country that can recognize it's own problems? I can't remember any example in history of an empire willingly returning to the republican style of government of its youth, which is why idealism is for the young in heart, body or mind, and empire is for the old greedy bastards who have just gotten a taste of all the free candy in their new store, with no one there to stop them, the sickness from addiction is inevitable as Russell well knows. All he could do is point out the obvious for the very few ready to listen and able to hear.