In Gaza, they're called the The Tunnel Kings. Israel just calls them terrorists. Whether its weapons and nuclear components, drugs or people, the traffic is global, the money is big and when linked with peacekeeping, food aid and protecting human rights, it's the new war.
Because Israel has become so proficient at destroying weapons tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, extremists are opting for sea routes. Peace flotillas linked to human rights groups are now seemingly unwitting propaganda assets for Islamic interests who, like Zionists, employ the same public relations tactics the Davos crowd uses to buy buzz and political currency in the world economic order.
Human rights and sanctions weren't part of the political landscape when Arabs, Christians and Jews were battling over Jerusalem a thousand years ago. Jewish scholar Maimonides got off his mule and served as physician and adviser to Saladin in his campaign to defeat the Christians and win back the Holy Land. Saladin won.
These three cultures have been whacking each other since the start of the Christian era and now the globalists, who seek to weaken the power of nation-states, aren't generating enough growth to cover the economic and social costs of the Middle East conflict. World Economic Forum favorite Zbigniew Brezinski, who served as President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser during the Iran hostage crisis, argued that the nation-state model of social organization was no longer viable back in 1969.
The media is reporting more deaths due to the the mini-Tienanmen Square protests in Bangkok than in the peace flotilla operations. But the fact that flotillas are getting more coverage on Twitter and other streaming public diplomacy platforms is an indication that the human rights business is not always an equal opportunity employer. You don't see serial Nobel Prize contenders like Sting and Bob Geldof saying much about White House offers to water down Miranda rights for suspected terrorists with links to Palestine and Iran, a key component of Team Obama's strategy to win conservative support in the November mid-term elections.
Human rights that enable a jailed Jewish billionaire in Russia to criticize the wisdom of sanctioning Iran and its nuclear program are different than the human rights the Israelis sometimes deny to Palestinians. Writing from prison somewhere in Russia, oil magnate Mikhail Khodorovsky argues that corruption is the overarching issue. Corruption facilitates the proliferation of dual use technologies and Washington, the Kremlin and Riyadh and its friends should be doing more to root it out. In today's crisis-facing global economy, bribes cause nuclear weapons and guided missile technology to get loose a lot faster than cries for holy war. Just days before Germany's president Horst Koehler suddenly resigned, ostensibly for his comments advocating German military power protecting trade routes and supporting globalism, his government arrested German businessmen working for a still unidentified German company seeking to sell to Iran what Berlin suspects is "dual use" nuclear technology with a Russian pedigree.
Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Israel is not. Amidst all the bluster, those who have concerns over Iran developing the "Islamic bomb" seem to forget that it was the United States, during the Cold War "Atoms for Peace" program, that helped get Iran's nuclear program started.
Non-proliferation expert David Albright, who worked closely with former CIA director William Colby when at the Federation of American Scientists, will find it difficult to deny that Washington provided the Shah with uranium enriched to levels far greater than what Iran is able to enrich. While sanctions mavens amp up the noise to volume level, it is helpful to keep in mind that 64 kilos of 80 percent enriched uranium was required to produce and detonate the "Little Boy" device that helped bring a faster than anticipated end to the Pacific component of World War II. The Pentagon's "fearsome foursome" of Ed Teller, Admiral Hyman Rickover, Herman Kahn and General Curtis LeMay had no qualms over the fact that French and Israeli experts worked with the Shah's team on nuclear projects. Nobel Prize winner Henry Kissinger watched from the sidelines while the Islamic Republic of Iran toppled the Peacock Throne and took the nuclear program as spoils of war. Having let the genie out of the bottle a generation ago, the U.S. is now discrediting efforts by Brazil and Turkey at the UN to mediate Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Both nations have achieved a modicum of trust and respect with Iran's current political culture which continues to view Washington with extreme, and justifiable mistrust.
Considering the level of uranium Iran can enrich now and what is required to build an explosive device, blocking efforts by Lula and Erdogan, who have been good friends of Israel, from reducing Middle East tensions will only generate more terror and violence in the Middle East and elsewhere and is no different than African-Americans being refused service at a "whites only" lunch counter a generation ago. This should resonate with Hilary Clinton, a longtime supporter of the civil rights movement, and Susan Rice, an African-American and current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
If Team Obama needs inspiration in the Middle East it can look to Ralph Bunche, the African-American UN diplomat who won the Nobel Prize for mediating the Palestine issue half a century ago with Moshe Dayan as his Israeli counterpart. Bunche predicted correctly that in the 21st century the major conflicts would turn not on race, but on culture and class conflict.
Israel, thanks to its globalist support network and the policies of central bank governor Stanley Fischer, who served as First Deputy Director of the International Monetary Fund for seven years, has a robust economy that insulates it from the global crisis. And while Saudi central bank director Muhammad Al Jasser puts a positive spin on the European sovereign debt crisis he could do more to encourage his allies in the wealthy Arab oil states to find more effective ways to engage with Hamas, whose community work hasn't been able to raise living standards that keep 45 percent of Palestine living in abject poverty that Islamicists blame on Zionists and the peace flotillas think they will help eradicate.
Before the economic crisis, Washington would have had more clout and trust inside Hamas and Fatah and with the regional powers to assuage the Palestinian Authority and help reconcile its interests with Israel. But the half-measure diplomacy one sees now from the White House on human rights and nuclear issues are reminders that the social contract democracy model between nations and citizens that made the U.S. into the great society is becoming less sustainable.