There were competing interests in the aaftermath of the First World War. The British would have preferred to set up Faisal as king of a Greater Syria (including Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan). The French wanted Lebanon and Syria, so the British made Faisal king of Iraq. And Abdullah king of Jordan.

Most of the Rothschild family opposed the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, prior to the First World War.

Thanks. I have a good biography of Sykes, but can’t find it just now! The fuidity of the situation in the Ottoman provinces toward the end of the war was remarkable. Some Armenians were trying to set up an independent Armenia in the province of Mosul, which of course became part of Iraq.

Also worth reading is Peter Beinart’s long NY Review of Books article cited in the Foreign Policy article you cited:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/?pagination=false

“Have you read much about Sir Mark Sykes, Bt.? He was very active during the First World War in planning what would be the shape of the post-war scene in the Middle East, expecially regarding provinces detached from the Ottoman Empire.”

I’m not entirely sure I’m remembering correctly, but I think I am. An excellent description of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the two men who negotiated and signed it, and the meetings and discussions that led to it, appears in “A Peace to End All Peace,” whose author I can’t recall now but I’m sure you’ve either heard of it or can quickly find it.

We Americans are ‘children’ of Mother England, but it’s not that easy to be proud of Mumsy; she’s done some pretty rotten stuff. I’ve just learned that London simultaneously financed the rise of Adolf Hitler AND manipulated credit and moneyflows to create hyperinflation in the Wiemar era. These are important facts of history to know and understand. Ahmadinejad was correct: ALL history should be fully open to research.

Have you read much about Sir Mark Sykes, Bt.? He was very active during the First World War in planning what would be the shape of the post-war scene in the Middle East, expecially regarding provinces detached from the Ottoman Empire. Britain was afraid the Germans would make a play for support of international Jewry, by promising a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine. To an extent, A. J. Balfour’s letter to Lord Rothschild was an effort to pre-empt a German move in the same direction.

More good points. One wonders whether Condoleezza Rice was chosen as G W Bush’s national security adviser because she had little knowledge or understanding of the Middle East. She was the perfect dupe or stooge of the warmongers setting up the illegal invasion of Iraq.

That said, clearly the fearmongering regarding Iran is based almost entirely on the claim that Iran is secretly building nukes, or soon will be doing so.

Looking back, Saddam Hussein definitely should have had Dan Rather, or pehaps a British journalist, into Baghdad for an open discussion of Iraq’s compliance with the UN demands in the wake of the Gulf War. Most Americans even today are not aware that Iraq destroyed its WMD in the 1990s.

Wawro gave voice and validity to the facts that more and more Americans are learning about the US-Israel relationship as he explains the history of how Israel came to be, claiming that the Balfour Declaration was a “play to detach Jews in central Europe from their countries, as well as to the bankers financing World War I.” He suggests that Great Britain may have schemed that Jews in Israel would act as a British vassal state, guarding access to transit routes and oil supplies required to sustain the British Empire (sound familiar?). Wawro discusses the King-Crane report, a topic usually dismissed as antisemitic, when it’s mentioned at all. Wawro also traces Iran’s shifting status and intertwined relationship to US influence in the Middle East.

Wawro’s latest book is massive — 700 pages; I hope to dig into it. I learned a great deal that helped shape my understanding of the role zionists played in the decades leading up to World War I from an earlier, and slimmer, Wawro history, “The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871.” In my opinion, most discussions of causal factors of World War II and the holocaust do not dig deeply enough; Wawro’s history of the Franco-Prussian war and the consequent seminal moment of German unification, provides a more accurate starting point.