Worth Reading - "NIGHT OF POWER - The Betrayal of the Middle East"

Written by: Ned K. on 26 December 2024

Some people are fortunate enough to find time over the Christmas - New Year period to read a book.

For those interested in the struggles in the Middle-East, the late Robert Fisk's book Night of Power - The Betrayal of the Middle East is well worth reading. It is well researched and covers the impact of the imperialist powers of USA, western Europe and Russia in the internal affairs of Middle-East countries, particularly Palestine and the settler apartheid state of Israel.

The book is written through the eyes of a westerner who spent over forty years in the Middle-East region. The clear message running through Fisk's book is that a pre-condition for the resolution of conflict and war in the Middle-East is that all imperialist powers exit the Middle-East. In the words in the book's foreword, Fisk "exposes the inescapable consequences of colonial oppression and violence in the Middle-East".

One chapter in the book, "The Dog In The Manger" exposes the attitude of the British imperialism during the British Mandate of Palestine from the Balfour Declaration days to 1948. Fisk exposes the real thinking of Winston Churchill and the British ruling class towards the Zionist "homeland" of Israel on Palestinian land. In Churchill's testimonial to the Peel Commission in 1937, Churchill is quoted as saying:

"I have a great regard for the Arabs, but at the same time you find where the Arab goes it is often desert...It is a lower manifestation the Arab". He goes on to say,

"It was for the good of the world that Palestine should be cultivated, and it will never be cultivated by the Arabs".

As I read these words I thought of how at school, we were told Churchill and the British rulers were heroes "protecting our way of life". 

I kept reading, keen to read the next words of Churchill quoted by Fisk and taken from Churchill's testimonial to the Peel Commission. Churchill goes on to expand on his views about Indigenous people generally, including in Australia. He says:

"I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly, wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

In more recent times, the imperialists meddling in the internal affairs and seeking to maintain their domination over the Middle- East and indeed Australia, may use different language than that of Churchill, but as Fisk makes clear in his book, their thinking is no different to that of Churchill's and they try to "educate" people in western countries to think the same way. 
  

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