Hat tip to Pulse Media and M. Shahid Alam for uncovering this fascinating tidbit
from Time magazine, 1952, announcing the selection of newly elected Iranian
prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh as Person of the Year for 1951. This sobe-
ring analysis is striking because of the way in which it speaks from the perspect-
ive of Arabs. It’s exactly the kind of analysis we simply don’t see anymore in the
MSM (mainstream media) here in the United States, thanks, in no small part, to
the growth of the Israel lobby which obscures not just Israel’s responsibility, but
even more damning, the United States’.
Here the Time magazine writer makes the case for why the Palestinian “problem”
is the United States’ problem.
“The word “American” no longer has a good sound in that part of the world
[the Middle East]. To catch the Jewish vote in the U.S., President Truman in
1946 demanded that the British admit 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine,
in violation of British promises to the Arabs. Since then, the Arab nations sur-
rounding Israel have regarded that state as a U.S. creation, and the U.S., there-
fore, as an enemy. The Israeli-Arab war created nearly a million Arab refugees,
who have been huddled for three years in wretched camps. These refugees, for
whom neither the U.S. nor Israel will take the slightest responsibility, keep alive
the hatred of U.S. perfidy.
“No enmity for the Arabs, no selfish national design motivated the clumsy
U.S. support of Israel. The American crime was not to help the Jews, but to
help them at the expense of the Arabs. Today, the Arab world fears and exp-
ects a further Israeli expansion. The Arabs are well aware that Alben Barkley,
Vice President of the U.S., tours his country making speeches for the half-
billion-dollar Israeli bond issue, the largest ever offered to the U.S. public.
Nobody, they note bitterly, is raising that kind of money for them.”
Arab fears that Ben Gurion’s real plans were to expand were not unfounded. In 1937,
before he became Israel’s first Prime Minister, Ben Gurion wrote to his son:
“A partial Jewish state is not the end, but only the beginning. The establis-
hment of such a Jewish State will serve as a means in our historical efforts
to redeem the country in its entirety….We shall organize a modern defense
force…and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in
other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neig-
hbors or by some other means….We will expel the Arabs and take their places…
with the force at our disposal.”
Of course, the US did much more to win the Arab and Persian world’s enmity than
simply support the creation of the State of Israel. Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s
valuable oil industry and paid the price with his freedom thanks to a US CIA spon-
sored coup which led to his imprisonment. He was later put under house arrest
until his death in 1967. Iran, or more accurately, Iran’s citizens, have been paying
the price ever since.
