use crisis well i'm going to try and understand it because it's it's a real mess and i'm really please you can mean it's good very good to see you again well thank you welcome to you in the audience and it's a pleasure to distinguished professor of i would say middle eastern history at bru college of the cuny and the ender stands well the situation in that part of the world which probably many of  us in the in the united states or new york are curious about and he's here to help and lightness and welcome once again very much to the program around abraham ian thank you my great good pleasure maybe you could introduce just in a brief kind of where your background and then we want to get into a discussion of your take on the situation that is so before all the world now you know  states and i consider myself a historian of the middle east but the middle east like everywhere else is very complex so i don't claim to know everything about the  just ask you again we've done a program with you two or three months ago which was very good and thank you very much what's your take on what's going on now the situation is obviously got much worse in the last few weeks and  it can even get worse from what it is now of what i think is for me very warring is we've had a lot of middle east crisis before during the cold war  but paradoxically during the cold war because the superpowers were involved and the two superpowers were at loggerheads they actually intervened at crucial points to cool down the crisis in the middle east because they realized the middle east crisis could escalate and bring in the superpowers against each other in a nuclear holocaust and that acted as a way of restraining  middle east crisis from getting out of control with the cold war that not there you don't have this external pressure to come in it's all one sided now it's one sided and you know that over but the problem is the local problems in the middle east and got worse and right now they're only four separate middle east crisis there is the core one which i would call the palestinian israeli east are very concerned what's going to happen to a few weeks from down the line because it could get even worse than it is now could get even worse we did a program three months or so ago exactly you know fast on camera but whether you could have predicted what happened or as happened in lebanon or in gaza for the from then to then it do you think there was that there was a thing in place that was ready to have an iq chance to take advantage or was it in to supply did this sort of thing with happened the thing over a couple of soldiers or something like that or were you surprised i was surprised but looking basically over doing it because after a few soldiers were kidnapped one that doesn't just involve massive aerial attack on a lab and then displacement of issue is so high the u s or israel is going to try and bomb the nuclear installations you think that in the cards for the short term you know you do in the next few months i mean the next few months yeah to will probably carry out air attacks and the israeli thinking therefore would be that if that happens what iran would do for sed would be a tel has bought a lot to carry out attacks on israel they've been doing that well but the fear was was with this along the line that would happen now if israel preempts that attacks with their incursion what yes you think they have the capability to nobody said let's have a desiring of the israeli our city and why is that that they don't some people must think that or there are some questions being raised in some international circles that israel's superpower and there ought to be some questioning of their  role of historical legitimacy in that part of the ruhr but i think just because the group get support from somewhere else doesn't mean they're actually the op order bang there or do this and has been law is very much an independent organizing action it is independent of iran you say yeah it ready has it what about some people the connection as far as syria or times connections with syria and their connections with a lot of people and i and i saw some people saying with the bombing that they're now the the because you've got a number of people that are lebanese that the number of people who support hezbollah as some people would have said don't be  attacking israel with rockets or doing anything of that sort of thing but now virtually eighty in the vast majority of people in lebanon eighty percent i saw think that they are in support of hezbollah against israel even in the  st attack coming from israel and the problem and is not only in lebanon i would say in a good deal of the war muslim arab and maybe the muslim world and a good deal of the world who questions the supposed hyper power ability of the united states of america and their ally israel that's being questioned by a greater numbers of people so the more they kill the more they do that the more an anti israeli slash american attitude there will be manifest in the world and american stature in the world is at an all time low and going south it's yeah but this the you things to add one is american and are anti american ninety israeli and that intensification has repercussions down the road ok so we might the chickens will come to roost much to nature in a few years time but i don't think politicians usually right to war supporters of more intransigent position right and that another problem which i think they don't take into account is hitting hard takes the premise the other side has no ability to hit hard too and that's beginning to be questioned i think increasingly with the i can remember if i may i can remember when mr arafat's was held up in rome allah and there was some sort of in thing and they  his building and knocked out everything and they had complete and utter control in the west bank over complete military control and a couple of people had a stone they could hold up from the ground and there was no resistance able to be manifest thousands of them into haifa and there is a resistance that there is a cost and there's an actual resistance which could could question the supposed invincibility of that model that israel has  wanted to project in that part of the world and with the big brother united states behind them and that's maybe being questioned now do you think i don't know it's also i mean much of this year go much to the destruction of lebanon and the palestinian people which have been constant for a long know i was voted in and i think they've taken exception to a democratic election it's too bad the people that are supposed to win the democratic election won and they may be trying to disqualified the whole electoral process by the palestinian people in order to reassert east they call them wogs they call them groups in you know and that kind of thing i'm so i'm just saying that that is a traditional colonial attitude of the tommies in india would send them in with the gatling gun and keep them under control and they're going to assert that kind were of a or the influence of hezbollah and lebanon with breaking bones in lebanon and tearing up to destroy the infrastructure and so what do you think i don't know well longer term i mean i would say doesn't work but if you tell the government in tel won so it's an argument in a contrail and if we don't remember dear do you remember the napalm that they dropped on children in vietnam and oil so yeah they got that yellow orange instilled doing it and they got i think four million people were dead as a result of our activity there and i notice is sort of in your historian collegial ending you're getting this story i noticed for what mr mcnamara finally said you made a mistake it was a national thing when interesting with killed four million people that's a lot of people were killed as a result of our incursion and i know this no one ever went in the dock for war crimes in the case of that mr bernard you know a tribunals that he tried to put together to read but it never got anything so if you're above the law if you can win and stay on that winning curve of having the power balance in your favor you can most do whatever you want and just say what we saw  nationalism is never you really and says they fit doesn't exist but in fact the middle east convert understood without nationalism they're different nationalism talking a lot of nationalism israeli nationalism iranian nationalism potent dynamite that's why they haven't been able to ready solve policy stinney an issue that's why it's going to be very hard to deal which the lebanese the issue of and in iraq too even though this sectarian divisions in iraq itself the arabs in iraq are also very nationalistic if you think they are nationalistic there seems to be what's going on there now is just heart rending i mean that they're tearing each other apart there doesn't seem to be a rallying around the idea of a nationalistic rallying against let's say what the united states tried to well there's no they are both people understand they're killing each other over the shia sunni thing or so it seems on the reading of the problem there is that both of them are competing to see who's going to be a moron to america and how and why it's very it's as if for america it's very dangerous because so far which of the collaborators going to be seen as the identity america and activity and in the midst of bushes flying over there trying to say we're bringing democracy to it it's it's like an absurd thing it's like theater of the absurd but it's so hard rending lead disastrous it's a mess and it's the thing that we're going to have a great deal of time difficulty extricating at what do you think is going to happen there it becomes not of absurd with more than it's tragic when rice says this is the birth cracks of the new middle east yeah i mean i'm i think people in the middle east literally scratch their heads and wonder where american leaders are because here whole continent is ready of being devastated you but you said in what seems is there doesn't seem to be much recognition of the iraqi miss of what it is they're a part of i mean it's hard to understand that the kurds are different because they the kurds are a different nation and rightly so they have their own language history culture and to have their own separate state which they want but you see the kurdish nationalism then runs counter not just against our up nationalism in iraq but is a threat to turkey identity because that's a big i don't know we've got something i guess at the u n with some like one hundred and ninety one countries and probably heading for more kashmir is going to be end of it how do we get it understand just the social scientists all at what is this thing what is this thing called nationalism it's based upon language tradition and so what there is religion you know there is it but we're still wrestling with how do we define that and what does meaning in the real world  that that's important and shift yeah it can change but there is some sort of resonance for instance if you're an arab yeah it depends on whether if you are in morocco or in libya it doesn't i'd imagine iraq morocco or saudi arabia watch television yes and they're doing it and they see people being killed they don't say they don't say well these  so in those areas the united states is seen as supporting local nationalism in the arab wall yeah that the united states is seen as supporting the enemy of the arab but anyway it was there but then and then you got yeah abdulnasser and they had the pan arab notion that would be that there should be uniting of the arab nation all of the countries in because those nations there were those states were impose and do something in a pan arab world against let's say israel or the united states if they're perceived as an enemy well the the states the governments have a vested interest to preserve their own states so the average person in the street also feels that their have an attachment to the arab cause as it is stronger at the street to the of the monk the people he up and the leadership of the world can be a ball work among the elites of the world in order to safeguard the interests of the elites of the world of which they are a member part by virtue of the fact they're recognised by the other elites of the world  sentiment so if i do you find it quite a lot of geographical mobility among professionals because the language is the same you'll find for instance palestinian engineers working why because it had in syria then you could live a normal life that i have in your throat caught a ride so here again religion isn't that important because here these are christians fleeing and syria although tanks armored vehicles they got a conventional weapons system but israel doesn't and then but now you've got this thing where you've got to hamas it is set me straight because i don't understand they did it wouldn't bomb the in you know mosse was elected by the palestinian people in the face of this awful situation that there are and then you got hezbollah in lebanon and hamas was not able to lob a rocket into  allies been able to do that to a way that they've got a capability to stand up to that and in both cases most of those to it and set me straight they both in a certain sense do not recognize the right of the state of israel to exist at least as a part of the literature and the president of iran has made statements along those terms to where does all that factor in and is there a challenge to the basic premises the result of that draft of the whole zionist proposition being made in sufficient amount in a fishing with sufficient capability and is it because of that that you're saying they're going to make and that an attack upon iran some of these things good can you understand what i'm trying to get that understand when he drove from kuwait into iraq right off to the so called liberation he knew the war was lost the st place he stopped and most st place to stop he looked at the graffiti the american troops adrift and on the process you have these cultural clash so literally and much of the world has lived under the boot of colonialism and i think people that are from the west don't understand how much that resonates in terms of their get a good sense of identity and they just got out from under it and design is just an enterprise is perceived as being aashiq banaya european colonialism coming in to take over control in the way that the western powers had and i don't know if that's in the conjuror they see that as a colonizing power hello neal islam was represented in the opposite to the movement of history with the one exception of israel when for encounter with israeli penetration in that part of the world establishing western colonial attitudes to the return of imperialism right therefore it's really continuation of the struggle against foreign us front but it's not limited to that strangely enough i think in the west to the perception is that they're trying to are yeah i don't even know official mate united states will say we're not an imperial power from israel will say we're not a colonial power but if you sort of deconstructing the emmanuel goldstein in all of that nearing and another book i always read or try to get to is the biography of the roads and the racism that was so thick yeah is just incredible and the only good engine the dead and they're out on the front i don't think fit into the jewish perception but they do have this see themselves in the tradition of manifest destiny and the little sort of change in that is that the power one hundred and thirty dollars countries have permanent bases and they're going to say they're going to do it in space and they've got a consensus the washington consensus that is suppose when they say the international community they're talking about their view and the thing is being realized the increasing numbers of people is that their view is not adequate to what the historical development the historical condition either perhaps allows for the masses of the people of the world and liberating way much less requires if we're not going to destroy ourselves the washington consensus that claims legitimacy is darkly is not adequate to what's required something else is required and maybe the dynamic that's emerging now is going to challenge that as the of the institution of the united states with this hyper power gave ability is asserting is there for all time the idea of the end of history that mr if will be obvious then that kind of thing is not adequate what the world reporters maybe there's a reaction with a challenging of that do you think possibly or is that again tonight you know i think what what's on realistic about the sort of recreating th century imperialism is that the w does very different specially the middle east so the british could go into egypt or iraq and sort of clobber people and create the states and say off trip of suppressing the rebellion  they could set top their sort of puppet states but in the st century their society is much more complex than internet now but internet but it's also the opposition is much greater on so that here we have a major superpower united states spending five hundred and fifty billion dollars a year on the military and three hundred billion dollars a year going to israel that is seen by much of the world as a they've come up with a beautiful thing and democracy and all that and all that kind of stuff imposing our view on it which may be outdated like an on john regime we have a commitment to a certain idea that isn't what the future requires is outdated  wasn't seven hundred and eighty nine france and there was a new thing coming and we don't have a model is rather to do it and what if it had been everybody they threw a crew they threw the dice and this come a cropper and is going to have consequences in terms of the ability for them to impose that legitimacy notion upon the world with their hyper mauer possibility maybe the thing that's going to happen is are the challenging of israel at the very root is going to come back and have repercussions on the world challenging the assume legitimacy of israel by its superpower status in that part of the world and the united states so some of the things that mr ahmed in and is that his name and iran is saying might make more sense through that kind of a prism of historical development state the question is israel's power beyond its international borders are you sure they can be as towns but i don't think there's anything there it forever yeah i mean it's like saying you know i don't know beyond the realm of possibility because that's one of the things they want that it's in evitable there's no point in questioning the washington consensus there's no point in questioning the united states it is so powerful there's no what it's the end of history there's no challenge to the rd thing in place the assumptions of the way human society is going to be organized it can be challenging it might be challenged by a world that is not heard by that it serves only the interests of the few the plutocrat and the transitor you got a gang in china serving the interests of gated community people the system in place isn't rushes in tatters they haven't got a system in place they plan they need some sort of a vision might be challenged and intellectual levels because what they're offering is not relevant to what the future requires that it can be challenged rather than just accept that we have to get along with this big gorilla because got all this power but that may be caught in a maybe happening with the hezbollah in is so that you karen chalons david can challenge goliath and that might be something that's getting into the craw of some of the people who is who were the king of the world and we're going to be for the rest the world you just adjust to whatever we say in some sort of a way that superpower attitudes what i'm suggesting might be in the one well i think it is two different things one is the challenge of the consensus and the power you know israel united states outside is their vision but with what united states and israel can argue is that there it's an existential challenge this is the time that you and i if the these powers are actually threatening the very existence of israel right and i just said that's not in the books there's no way any of these powers that their existence is not a challenge but it's what the british said that's what they are lower the th or well there was something blowing in the wind that the guys required it was called you know it had a system in europe for eight hundred years where people got their identity it was an regime it's for ever it can't be challenged it was challenge then why is it a shot it was challenge from we did well aren't counted from say egypt or somewhere where there was a alan from scottish and lightman or something it came from somewhere it came from the united states of america we had an idea we had made and it had this system by which people got their sense of identity the assumption of what's in place  of the world rising up against and in adequate vision for how we're going to organize things politically economically socially culturally and the world it is not it's serving only the few and the trends of the technological requirements are s that it has to involve everybody in that kind of liberating way to offset the possibility that the weapon systems that can wipe out those existential though planets jalen and these supposed leaders do not have a vision worthy of being considered that's what i'm trying to say we can challenge that and not just accept that we will take whatever they give us like some sort of presence that they did and that's what i'm trying to suggest in the sense that i may be off the wall because everybody just assumes that this is forever and that we've got the end of history system and this is it and everybody else just adjust to that the world may be challenging through israel and the united states the very premises by which supposed legitimacy is assumed by those that are so comfortably in power for a system that's not adequate to what's required revolution may be in the wind well i don't see the sort of movements against united states over much as challenging as more defensive movements they don't have an whose time has come can we agree that the national consent of washington consensus and the vision that they prefer they present in terms of how the planet's going to be operating is not adequate to what's required or not we just going to stick muddle through with the american vision breaking bones all over the place breaking things down putting military this breaking that's it there's no new vision that's required or anything like that i don't think we have the luxury of just assuming that something a refusal to accept you know the real problem i'm very concerned we only got a couple minutes left as i've been ranting i talk too much i'm sorry but i've enjoyed just ranting and get it out but your statement that you think that there's actually things afoot and having the four nuclear cycle not necessarily weapons but for national prestige their own basically their put their own government in monaco the british didn't want to let the wogs have the even there i think iran has a trump card or the threat to the united states or israel but it's iran has a trump card what it is iraq in iraq and iran has a lot of support in iraq don't have a vision adequate to what the future requires and what i'm saying it is so called leaders more than vision discretion of who has power ok and i think if there is once there is an era tack on iran what  country and maybe they'll start rising up against this system is being imposed upon them and there could be a real thing happen to change things in this world well the thing is the media can be manipulated to us will present the case as if  in the future you're going to come back and bring us up to date because we've run out of time in regard to i don't have depressed i know i did this depressing yeah it really is and that's very worrying that is no way that can be staved off i mean what would be the campaign to try and that's already in the works do things right and just yeah yeah i've heard people say that the bombing of iran we can look for the bombing of iran what they don't say as usually they leave it as that as if that's going to solve the problem you know the bombing iran is going to just automatically lead to a much larger basically a blow up in iraq not only are