‘Stop writing about the Mideast or we will throw acid in your and your son’s faces.’

Such was the threat shouted through the front door of our New York City apartment where my mother and I lived in the 1950’s. Then there was frequent pounding on the door at 3 am with further threats and obscenities.

My mother’s offense? Being one of the first female journalists to cover the Mideast, a region barely known at that time to most Americans. My mother, Nexhmie Zaimi, was born in Albania, a former province of the Ottoman Empire. She was the first girl in Albania to go to high school which was run by Presbyterian missionaries. She was also a natural born rebel. She scandalized the capitol, Tirana, by refusing to wear a veil and speaking of emigrating to the United States.

She managed to get to the US and somehow was enrolled at the prestigious Wellesley College. There, she wrote a stellar book, ‘Daughter of the Eagle,’ about growing up in semi-feudal Albania. It became a national best-seller.

Mrs. Zaimi then attended Columbia University Journalism school – when it was still a bastion of free speech. She met my father, a New York City attorney, married before the war, and soon became a journalist and lecturer. She also worked with the predecessor of the CIA in early post-war years, then began reporting on the Mideast for the US State Department. In the 1950’s, she warned Washington that unless the Palestine problem was resolved with justice that the Mideast would erupt in fury against the United States. That came in 2001.

My mother was a star journalist despite her grave eye problems. On her own, with no support, she managed to interview Egypt’s ruler, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jordan’s King Hussein, King Farouk, Egypt’s old ruler, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, Gen. Naguib and Iraq’s strongman, Nuri al-Said.

While traveling in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, Mrs. Zaimi was shocked to discover hundreds of thousands (750,000 in total) Palestinian villagers who had been driven from their villages at gunpoint, or by premeditated massacres by Jewish regular and irregular forces. These refugees were living in cardboard boxes or metal sheds, many starving and ill.

My mother began writing and lecturing about their plight. What had become Northern Israel (the Arab region of Galilee and Haifa) ‘was a land without people for a people without land’ as the Zionist party line went. A catchy phrase to be sure but wholly untrue. Israeli historians have amply chronicled the ethnic cleansing of Northern Palestine. Many of its people ended up in the open-air prison camp of Gaza where they are today victims of brutal ethnic terrorism.

Pro-Israel advertisers in the newspapers and radio stations that carried my mother’s reports threatened to stop their ads unless she was silenced. She refused to be quiet – until the threats came to throw acid in my face.

I’ve had my columns and broadcasts black-listed by major US and Canadian newspapers, radio and TV for my heretical pro-peace views on the Mideast – and my life threatened numerous times. By now, after sixty years of threats and intimidation, I have learned to live with the threats and being blacklisted.

Even many former right-wing partisans of Israel are beginning to re-evaluate their thinking as the world turns against Israel’s Final Solution to Palestinians. They have become a martyr people. I am firmly in the camp of those Israelis who understand that they must some day manage to live with their Palestinian neighbors. I salute the great Israeli journalist Uri Avnery who advocated this peaceful course for decades.

The partisans of ever Greater Israel are on a road to nowhere. They have managed to get their strongest supporter, Donald Trump, into the White House, but where does he go from there?

My mother died in 2003 in Santa Barbara, California where she had retired. At that time, she was nursing Bosnian children wounded in the Balkan War. Many hailed her as ‘the first lady of Albania.’

Some two decades ago, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at a major Islamic conference. Instead of uttering the usual platitudes about Muslim unity, I rebuked the Muslim World for doing nothing to prevent the massacre of Bosnians by Serb forces and the mass rape of Bosnian Muslim women.

The only Muslim nations who had done anything to help Bosnia’s terrorized Muslims were Iran and Albania. Then military-ruled Turkey, the second largest power in Europe, did almost nothing to help Bosnia. If Jews were being raped or murdered, Israel’s armed forces would have gone into action to rescue them, I asserted.

Not surprisingly I was never invited back to address another Islamic gathering – except for one proud moment last year when I was made a member of Afghanistan’s Pashtun Bangash tribe. A taxi driver refused to take money from me last week and said, ‘you are now an Afghan.’ For me, that is a badge of honor.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a possibly important accord this week. Possibly, I say, because recent history is replete with empty security agreements between the Saudis and Pakistan.

Israel’s recent air attacks on Doha have clearly jolted the Saudis into fearing they might face more Israeli attacks similar to the ones recently suffered by Iran. Israel appears determined to crush the feeble Arab powers of the region and impose its pax Judaica there. To many in the Mideast, the power-drunk Trump administration appears to have become an arm of Israel’s extreme right-wing government.

The immensely rich but militarily feeble Saudis are clearly taking shelter with the terribly poor but militarily powerful, nuclear armed Pakistan – which they should have done long ago. Looking back, we recall when the late President Zia ul-Haq (whom I wrote about last week) commanded a division of crack Pakistani troops tasked with protecting Saudi Arabia’s royal family.

This should happen again. There is a small force of Pakistani troops in Saudi Arabia, and more across the Arab World. Pakistan’s military numbers over 600,000 men.

The question remains: will Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella be used to cover Saudi Arabia? That seems unlikely for now because Saudi Royal, with its seas of money and many airbases, remains a pillar of US government power. US arms sales to Saudi are a keystone of US military production and directly influence the rich but powerless Gulf states. Egypt, the only Arab power worthy of note, remains subservient to US demands.

But if Israel advances its interests in the Arab World, the Saudis might invoke support from Pakistan. But Pakistan might develop its own appetite for Arabian oil, as will surely Israel. So too could Turkey, which appears to have taken over much of Syria and deeply hungers for oil, of which it has none. There is also the huge question of India-Pakistan nuclear rivalry.

Zia-ul-Haq was a great leader of Pakistan, a tough tank general, and the man who defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan. He was murdered in August 1988 when the C-130 he was flying in was sabotaged and crashed near Bahawalpur, central Pakistan.

I spent a good deal of time with Zia, the last in his home at Army HQ in Rawalpindi. Gen. Zia had read a newspaper column I wrote about how Pakistan was defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He invited me to come to Pakistan and interview him.

I did so at a time when few in the West knew or cared anything about Pakistan or Afghanistan. My father, a New York businessman, was fascinated by Pakistan. I quickly became beguiled by Pakistan and its many peoples.

Zia revealed to me the inner workings of the war in Afghanistan and introduced me to his partner, Gen. Abdul Rahman, then head of Pakistan’s crack intelligence agency, ISI. Gen. Rahman held a major command briefing at ISI HQ for me on how ISI was secretly managing the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, complete with radio intercepts and field reports. The anti-Soviet Afghan mujahidin were heroic and effective, but key aspects of the war – telecommunications, logistics, weapons planning, munitions and medical services – were provided by Pakistan through the ISI.

Later on, I was invited by China’s military intelligence agency to Beijing to provide an opinion that China should open an arms supply line to the mujahidin. I urged the Chinese to back the Afghans. They did.

Zia’s C-130 Hercules aircraft was sabotaged soon after takeoff. Investigations by the US, Pakistan, China and India went on for years, but with no clear answers. Four decades later the consensus skirts the sabotage conclusion. But the official US position remains an accident, though a senior US diplomat and Brigadier General died in the crash that killed Gens. Zia and Akhtar. To this date, the US has never to my knowledge conducted a thorough investigation of the crash and even thwarted a US Air Force investigation.

There was, of course, speculation that rivals of Zia in Pakistan’s powerful military establishment were involved. This past week Zia’s son, Ijaz, claimed in a new book that two powerful generals of that period were behind the sabotage. They deny culpability.

I have been following this sordid story since 1988, shocked that the US government and media could so callously ignore the murder of a friend and key ally.

I have asked Zia foe Benazir Bhutto.
I asked former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
I asked two heads of ISI intelligence.
I asked former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
Former PM Shaukat Aziz.
None had any useful answer.

The majority of Pakistanis still believe that the US was behind Zia’s murder. He had become too powerful and independent and might interfere with US plans to dominate oil-rich Central Asia. As an American, I prayed this was not true. But after the US so-called ‘war on terror,’ invasion if Iraq and attempt to overthrow Iran, it became harder to believe in US innocence.

The most powerful Afghan leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, told me he was certain the US was behind Zia’s death.

But Russia wanted revenge for its Cold War defeat in Afghanistan and India was always ready to strike out at Pakistan. Many senior Pakistani generals were killed in the C-130 crash. Today, we would call it ‘decapitation.’

Most interestingly, a former veteran US ambassador, John Gunther Dean, claimed that Israel’s Mossad had murdered President Zia to thwart Pakistan sharing its developing nuclear technology. Gunther was fired from the State Department for this heresy and declared mentally unsound. But he may very well have hit the target. The assassination was a faultless operation, using nerve gas hidden in a crate of mangos that incapacitated the air crew, backed by what looks like a decades old cover-up by Washington. Add Zia’s assassination to the attack on the USS Liberty.

I salute Zia’s memory as a gallant soldier, brilliant statesman and courageous warrior.

The last American military parade that I saw was the inauguration of President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953 – not counting my days in the US Army. It was a hell of a show. What impressed me the most was the giant M65 203mm Atomic Cannon that was wheeled up Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue.

I was also deeply impressed by Gen. Eisenhower. There was no huff or puff with him, no wildly inflated claims, no bluster, no efforts to lay the groundwork for a military-run regime. None of what the Soviets used to call ‘Bonapartism.’ Just a real soldier who served America proud and became our finest president of modern times. I still like Ike.

But I also detest militarism and fake patriotic warmongering. Every spring I walk the blood-soaked battlefields of World War I in France and am sick at heart by the botchery and stupidity of the first great modern war. Having been a GI and covered 14 wars and conflicts as a news correspondent, I hate all form of militarism, flag-waving and patriotic oratory.

Except one! France’s Bastille Day Parade on 14 July. Much as I’m an ardent anti-militarist, few things thrill or move me as much as seeing France’s massed soldiers and fire-fighters marching down the lovely Champs Elysée, and the thunder of hooves of the armored cavalry of the Republican Guard. What a magnificent spectacle. It reminds me of what another great president, Thomas Jefferson, said: `every man has two homelands. His own, and France!.’ Who has a beating heart that cannot be moved by the mighty strains of La Marseillaise, France’s national anthem, which was originally called ‘the War Song of the Army of the Rhine.’

Bastille Day marked the beginning of democracy and human rights for the world. The French Revolution also brought the Terror and Napoleonic Wars, but it was still an epochal moment in mankind’s history. Without great amounts of financial and military aid from France, the United States might not have gained its independence. Today, it might still be ruled by the same bunch of nincompoops in London who have brought Great Britain so low. Ironically, France’s gross overspending on supporting the American Revolution led directly to its own revolution of 1789 that overturned its monarchy.

This week will see a newly minted military extravaganza in Washington whose real purpose is to glorify a president who avoided military service in Vietnam due to a questionable foot problem. As a veteran, this fake triumphal parade leaves me feeling unwell. Militarized politics – just what recent past presidents have avoided.

I had been accepted to do a PhD at Britain’s Cambridge University that would have kept me out of military service. But in an admittedly Quixotic act, I enlisted in the Regular Army to serve in the infantry in Vietnam. Fate kept me in the US, teaching senior officers strategy and tactics. But I had at least done my duty as a citizen. In retrospect, Vietnam was a lousy, unjust imperial war, but I had served my country which had given a new life to both my parents.
I limped through Army basic and advanced infantry training with a broken bone in my left foot. Unlike our current commander in chief.

I wish the government would spend the estimated $45 million ear-marked for this ego fest on wounded veterans.

Mutzig, France – First stop on my annual visit to France’s mighty Maginot Line forts is this lovely Alsatian town. Mutzig was built by the Germans 1893-1916 to defend against enemy approaches to the important city of Strasbourg. It was – and remains – the largest modern fortress in Europe.

The vast fortress, which covers over 800 acres, was never attacked during World War I by the Germans or French. But as Europe’s first important fortress made of concrete and fully electrified, it was eagerly studied by French engineers and served as a template for the Maginot Line forts two decades later.

Both world wars showed the vulnerability of fixed fortifications. An enemy will always find a way round them or discover a fatal weakness. In regard to the 200-mile-long Maginot Line, the forts did not fail. They held out to the bitter end. The reason for France’s stunning defeat in 1940 was the failure of its field army and its blockheaded generals. Interestingly, a French parliamentary deputy with the effervescent name of Perrier precisely predicted where the Germans would break through the Ardennes Forest in 1940.

Though vulnerable, the fixed defenses of the Maginot Line were hugely popular in France and wildly overestimated because they involved huge construction projects for many of the villages and factories along France’s eastern border with Germany. Just as New Deal make-work projects boosted the United States during the Great Depression.

We see a similar mania in the response to President Donald Trump’s plan to create a national ‘golden dome’ defensive shield to protect the nation from assorted nuclear threats. In many ways, it’s a re-run of President Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars missile shield which never got off the ground but was extremely popular among the public.

Frederick the Great of Prussia noted, ‘he who defends everything, defends nothing.’ As true today as it was in the 18th century.

A national missile defense system to cover the entire nation would be impossibly expensive for a nation already deeply mired in debt. The always powerful military-industrial complex will see Trump’s golden dome fantasy as a second Christmas though the basic technology has yet to be proven.

One wonders if the proponents of this defensive system have noticed that Russia has developed ballistic missiles that can alter course, change altitudes and switch targets? Or that China has ICBM’s aboard freighters in the Pacific. What about evolving electronic countermeasures that can fry enemy communications and guidance systems?

It would be far more prudent for the US to pursue disarmament talks and effective inspection regimes with its rivals than pie in the sky defensive systems that will certainly enrich military companies but fail to protect North America. What’s more, having even a partial anti-missile system will likely make the US more aggressive and prone to wars.

Better to spend the trillions on curing cancer or blindness than on space wizardry. Alas, we have a view of what awaits us. This week, Trump banned people from 12 mostly Muslims nations and imposed restrictions on 7 nations. Good work Mr. President. You and your New York City construction buddies have now made enemies of a quarter of the world’s population.