The following is a transcript of LaRouche's answer to a Jordanian diplomat in the question and answer period following LaRouche's July 24, 2001 international webcast.
Question from Jordan: Mr. LaRouche, what do you think of the fact that Ariel Sharon has announced an assassination policy toward leading Palestinians. He's spoken publicly of a list of 46 names, and they're already being killed, day by day. How is it possible that a democratic government can adopt a policy of executions, beyond any judicial system, and the whole world sits and watches?
LaRouche: Well, on the question of Israel on this thing: I have the advantage of many years' experience with people in this area, in negotiating, dealing with the issues in this area of the world. Now, to say that Israel is a democratic country, is nonsense; it's not a democratic country. The people of Israel, they are an abused state. These people of Israel today, are not the people who left Europe with Ben-Gurion, to join Ben-Gurion, in the immediate postwar period. These are not the representatives of the Reform Jew, from Germany. These are not the legacy of the Yiddish Renaissance, of Poland, of Galicia, of Ukraine, of Russia, and so forth. They're not! These are very poor people; very ignorant people; with no education, no education worth mentioning.
When I grew up in the United States, Jews, to me, meant my friends from Polish-Russian bankground, mostly Yiddish Renaissance, because that's the type with whom we sort of agree. Or German Jews, who were the Reform Jews. We got along fine. We understood one another. The Jew from Germany, and also in Eastern Europe, represented, after the reforms of Moses Mendelssohn, represented the highest level of culture in the countries in which they lived. The contribution of German Jews to German culture, from the time of Joseph II of Austria's giving of political rights to the Jew, was tremendous! Physicians, scientists, artists, so forth! Beyond belief! A similar thing was done in Eastern Europe, by the Yiddish Renaissance, which was a copy of this. These were the victims of Hitler: These are the ones, whom we have forgotten. We call them numbers; we don't call them people, any more. We don't remember their faces; we don't remember what they did; we don't remember what they were, what their contributions were.
We now have a faceless mob, of poor people; poor, ignorant, hysterical people, with no education. They are a mob — a maddened, frightened mob! Who had this terrible legacy of what the Israelis call the Shoah, this terrible thing haunting them, sitting on top of them, destroying them. And they have terrible leaders. The majority of Israeli leaders are nothing but gangsters. Oh, there are a few exceptions, here and there; but essentially, they think like gangsters. Sharon is essentially a gangster. He was a creature, who was practically owned by the late Katharine Graham, of the Washington Post, whose daughter managed him. He's not religious at all: He's just a gangster. His religion is gangsterism. And, you have others, who have similar characteristics; they may talk one way, at other times, but they're terrible.
Yes, we have to think about the future. We have worked, and others have worked, to try to bring peace in the Middle East, on the basis of an Israeli-Arab peace. We've tried, and we shall still try. We shall always try. As those, who understand the lesson of the Treaty of Westphalia, shall do: We must bring peace. We can not have ethnic and religious warfare. It always leads to Dark Ages. There must be no religious warfare. We must end it, any way possible. We must keep trying.
But, in the meantime, we don't have to sit back and put up with everything. The United States has the power and influence, to influence the situation in the Middle East, to stop this. I don't think the Israelis can stop themselves, by themselves. I don't think anybody in Western Europe, in the governments, has the guts to try, by themselves. I think that only from the United States, a resolute leadership from the United States, which could secure European and other backing, could intervene effectively, to persuade the government of Israel: We're not going to go with this.
Now, remember, that the issue is this. The danger is this. And, we have to look as statesmen — I mean, I know the passions of people involved in both sides of the shooting side of this event. People keep trying to think in terms of Israeli versus Arab, or Israeli versus Palestinian. It's not so simple: This problem is a problem of manipulation, geopolitical manipulation, by people who think like the RAND Corp. crowd. The RAND Corp. crowd that's running the United States government, right now, and not well, at all. The systems analysis people. Their view has been, ever since that crazy geography teacher Halford Mackinder, back at the end of the last century, is that you have to use geography, in a way to put people at each other's throats, so nobody in continental Europe, or continental Eurasia, can get together to create an order of peace, which could challenge the hegemony of the so-called "maritime powers," which, now, includes, nominally, the United States, as well as the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth.
That's the game. The game is not run from inside the Arab world; it's not run from inside Israel. The Israelis involved are nothing but puppets, who are manipulated by psychological warfare specialists, who know how to manipulate such merchandise. Their object in this, is not to do something for Israel. They know (as I know), that if Israel takes the course it's now taking under Sharon, and what might follow Sharon, Israel will cease to exist. It will be obliterated in the ashes of the conditions it creates. So, those who are pushing Israel into this war, are not pushing it for love or sympathy for Israel. They're using Israel as a puppet, as a golem, to destroy itself for the greater good of the people behind people like Brzezinski.
That's what they're doing.
What we have to do is, put the pressure on. We have to put the pressure on this. Remember the operations are of the following nature. RAND Corp., back in the 1960s and 1970s, was running around with what they called a "chicken game" scenario, a nuclear chicken game scenario. The idea is, that if you can get Israelis with nuclear weapons, and some Arabs with some nuclear weapons, or similar weapons, if they hated each other badly enough, you could get a war started that couldn't be stopped. And people are trying to say, "How do you get this kind of war started, that can't be stopped?" You have to use fanatics. In past history, we've seen this is in religious warfare: When Venice's power was threatened, by the emergence of the nation-state, Venice's response was to divide all Christianity into several parts, various kinds of Protestant, Catholic, and so forth. And, to set them into warring against each other. This became a period of religious warfare in Europe from 1511 until 1648 — the Treaty of Westphalia. This is the way the game is being played; this kind of game.
We in the United States, we know who these guys are! The gameplayers. It's not the Arabs. It's not the Israelis. It's the gameplayers, who are playing one against the other. And we have the ability to stop them. And we should do it. And I want your support for this.
Next: The Life and Character of Socrates
