Pale Horse Rider

... has an excellent review of the current Mideast crisis' players and their scripts at his blog, Ride a Pale Horse. While I don't agree with everything this blogger says, the recent posting on Israel is exceptional in several aspects. ...

First, its perspicuity is clear and it provides a wide-open lens on how the players and their different agendas calesce. He points out, for example, the relationship of Benjamin Netanyahu to Jablotinsky, an alleged fascist. EHud Olmert's assoication with Jablotinsky's heritage is also noted by this author.

Second, his selction of material is not only pinpoint and precise, but he unearths some documents not currently under discussion in the public sphere. I am particularly intrigued by the French letter of ben-Gurion.

Third, the reconstruction of events is inspired. Tying tog ether the ragged ends of everyday life, especially while we are in the midst of their occurring, is an art. The reconstruction has enough detail to support the connections that are made, although time will tell how well the picture stands up.

My favorite passage is the following:

That viewpoint concurs with that of the United States administration. The control of areas rich in hydrocarbons defined by Zginiew Brzezinski and Bernard Lewis as the “arc of crisis”, ie. the arc reaching from the Gulf of Guinea to the Caspian sea going through the Persian Gulf, demands a redefinition of borders, States and political regimes: a “remodeling of the Greater Middle East,” to use the expression of George W. Bush.
That is the new Middle East which Miss Rice claims to be the mid-wife of, and whose painful birth she is watching.
The idea is simple: substitute to the States inherited by the collapse of the Ottoman empire, smaller entities of mono-ethnic character, and neutralize those mini-states by setting up them permanently against each other. In other terms, the idea is to reconsider the secret agreements concluded in 1916 by the French and British empires, the Sykes-Picot agreements [6] and to establish rather a total domination of the Anglo-Saxons over the region. But in order to define new states, the existing ones must first be destroyed. That is what the Bush Administration and its allies have been doing since 5 years with the enthusiasm of a sorcerers apprentices.