-
- Reaction to my recent article, The Secrets Of The Golan
has been gratifying. My explanation of the Anglo-American/French race to
be the first to force Israel off the strategically vital Golan Heights,
which ultimately led to the Rabin assassination, was widely accepted. I
was gratified to see the piece translated into Hebrew within two days and
then widely disseminated in Israel through major Internet sites, including
that of the Golan residents themselves.
-
- However, many readers were left with one question that
I did not answer: why is there such an international push to pressure Israel
off the Heights and thus leave its northern flank exposed to a relatively
easy attack? The most important explanation, by far, follows.
-
- Let us begin with an event which occurred this week and
is less distantly relevant than one might think. A few days ago, Regional
Affairs Minister Shimon Peres was the driving force behind an agreement
between Egypt and Israel to build a natural gas pipeline over the Sinai
to supply a high percentage his country's future energy requirements. The
chief financial benefactor was an engineering company with longterm ties
to Peres called Merhav, and that is no coincidence since Peres has a strong
attachment to pipelines.
-
- In 1985 Iran blockaded the Persian Gulf and Iraq could
not transport its oil exports by ship. At the same time, Syria blocked
its overland route to the Mediterranean. Since 80% of Iraq's GNP came from
its oil exports, the situation was dire, costing the Iraqis some $80 billion
annually. To overcome the Iran/Syrian chokehold, Iraq sought to build a
pipeline to the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba. The Bechtel Corporation
in America was contracted to construct the multi-billion dollar project
but would not take the risk unless the pipe would remain secure even in
war.
-
- So, Bechtel contacted Attorney-General Edwin Meeese to
bribe Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Eventually, Peres agreed to sign an
agreement commiting Israel never to attack the pipeline, even in a war
between Jordan or Iraq. The price was a generous $70 million a year for
ten years, to be deposited in the accounts of the Israeli Labor Party.
When word of this expensive insurance policy cum bribe was leaked in Washington,
Meese was forced to resign as Attorney-General. But, as usual, in Israel,
scandal escaped Peres.
-
- With this pipeline blocked, Iraq still found itself totally
dependant on Syria and Iran to secure safe passage for its oil. But there
was an alternative route, and a most practical and lucrative one at that.
However, ultimately it could only be opened if Israel left the Golan Heights
for good. Within six years, Iraq was launching SCUD missiles at Israel
to this end.
-
- Still, the Iraqis are just a minor element in the Golan
squeeze. The major elements are the Bechtel Corporation and the French
government.
-
- First Bechtel. This is a huge engineering corporation
which long ago decided that its most profitable strategy was to combine
earnings with global politics. In order to secure the lushest building
contracts the world had to offer, it was deemed essential that the American
government have free access to any part of the globe where leaders could
be compromised and natural resources could be looted. Thus Bechtel has
always been a vocal supporter of the rubric, "free trade," which
in essence means American and European corporations are free to drive local
companies out of business worldwide. For the first half-century, Bechtel
VP Cordell Hull was assigned the task to selling, first The League Of Nations
and then the UN to the American people. Needless to say, his unfortunate
legacy lives on.
-
- As does Bechtel influence over American foreign policy.
The means to this end is a 3000 member think tank in Manhattan called The
Council On Foreign Relations (CFR), which has sent the majority of Presidents
and Secretaries Of State to Washington for the past two generations. Some
recent examples: Caspar Weinberger was a VP at the Bechtel Power Corporation,
while George Shultz served for a time as president of the company. When
Bechtel is short of executives to directly run American policy, it recruits
them with promises of wealth. For instance, when Henry Kissinger left public
service for the private sector, Bechtel became one his first and most munificent
clients.
-
- Now we step back in time to the Cordell Hull era. In
1917, British forces overcame the Ottoman Turks and took over their empire.
In 1923, the British divvied up the Middle East, giving its ally the French
some leftovers. After surveying Syria and finding oil only in the northern
Mosul region, Britain ceded the "worthless" Golan Heights to
the French. Had they employed some geological foresight, the Brits would
have been far more reluctant to give away such a valuable prize.
-
- We jump to 1942 and with the prompting of Hull and Bechtel,
Roosevelt draws America into World War Two.
-
- It takes a lot of oil to win a war and for the past decade
American and European surveyors had discovered that as much as half the
world's reserves were buried under the sands surrounding the Persian Gulf,
with the lion's share situated in Saudi Arabia. With the Nazis threatening
the Suez Canal and, supertankers unthought of, getting this oil to the
Allies in Europe was a risky business in the extreme.
-
- But Hull had a solution: build a Trans-Arabian pipeline
from the Gulf to the Mediterranean and half the world's oil would flow
cheaply and securely to Europe. And who better to build the pipe than his
own company, Bechtel? With unusual haste, even for wartime, ARAMCO hired
Bechtel to build the pipe.
-
- There was one obstacle in the way of complete control
over the flow of Gulf oil: the French. To get the oil to the Mediterranean,
the ideal route was to the Golan Heights and then gravitationally to sea
level. However, the French had legal hegemony over the Golan and ARAMCO
and Bechtel had no choice but to cut them in on the profits. This agreement
was upheld as part and parcel of the French departure from Syria in 1946,
the very year when the pipeline was finished.
-
- Then came the Six Day War of 1967, which saw Israel liberate
the Golan Heights and the Arab states shut off the tap to the pipeline
until the day when no more Jews set foot on the land. Initially, American
policy took advantage of Israel's hold on the newly won Suez Canal and
Golan Heights by profiting heavily in the supertanker business but the
longterm policy was to get Israel out of both spots, no matter what her
security concerns.
-
- Bechtel's CFR member, Weinberger manipulated Israel out
of the Sinai for President Carter, while President Bush's Bechtel CFR member,
George Shultz was charged with getting Israel out of the Golan. In my previous
article, I detailed how the Persian Gulf War was created with this in mind.
In short, Syria joined the Bush fighting coalition in return for a promise
that America would press Israel off the Golan, while Iraq softened the
country up with missile attacks, proving territory means little in the
age of SCUDS.
-
- With Israeli Prime Minister Shamir refusing to budge
on Bush's postwar Golan withdrawal demands,Bush used all the powers of
his government to oust him and replace him with a more compliant client,
Yitzhak Rabin. Yet Rabin's rise to power was also a windfall for the French,
whose longterm factotem Shimon Peres was now second in command as Foreign
Minister. By September of 1992, Peres had promised the French that he would
arrange Israel's descent from the Heights. This promise spurred a shuttle
between Cairo and Damascus by French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, much
to the open disgust of Rabin.
-
- In my previous article I detailed the race between the
French and Anglo-Americans to get Israel off the Golan Heights but I did
not state that the primary reason was to get the Bechtel oil flowing from
the Saudi, Gulf and Iraqi fields to the Mediterranean. This is not a minor
diplomatic consideration: with Gulf oil flowing undeterred to the Mediterranean,
those with their fingers on the nozzles would be in a position to undercut,
thus control, the world's petroleum supply.
-
- There are no Israeli heroes in the sad sellout of the
Golan but it must be remarked that Rabin displayed great courage in holding
out for a compromise that would have left Israeli troops in place on a
strategic axis of the Heights. That cost him his life. With Peres willing
to sell out every inch of Israel's northern security, the French decided
to earn their percentage of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline profits by placing
him in power. Unfortunately for them, a bungled assassination has been
exposed and it is threatening, not merely their cut of the oil profits,
but the political future of Peres and of the entire Labor Zionist movement.
A cutthroat coverup is taking place in Israel to save the plotters but
it is relentlessly crumbling.
-
- Did the French act alone to remove Rabin? So far, the
trail to France is overwhelming. To name but two connections, the head
of the Israeli secret services, Carmi Gillon was in Paris the night of
the murder and the fatal rally where Rabin fell was organized and paid
for by Peres's French ally, the media tycoon Jean Friedman. But one must
not forget that Bechtel and the Americans benefitted greatly by the sudden
departure of the recalcitrant Rabin, and by the eventual ascendency of
their client Ehud Barak. At a minimum, the evidence so far indicates that
they did not stand in the way of the murder.
-
- Rabin refused to budge for Bechtel and he had to go.
Now no Israeli political leader stands in the way of the secret sellout
of the Golan Heights.
-
- _____
-
- Many readers asked me to cite my sources for the previous
article. They are found in my book Traitors And Carpetbaggers In The Promised
Land (Hearthstone Publishing, 1997). Copies are available by calling the
publisher at 1 800 6521144, over Amazon, or by writing the Zionist Book
Club at perkins@netvision.net.il.They also have a toll free number in
North America and Britain: 1 877 RABINYY
|
