In the wake of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) landmark ruling in a case brought by South Africa against Israel, which found the Jewish state could be committing genocide in Gaza and must immediately cease its indiscriminate, industrial-scale slaughter of unarmed, innocent Palestinians of all ages, many Western journalists, politicians, pundits and influencers have changed their tune on the savagery. Or at least gone eerily silent, having previously whitewashed, legitimized, or even outright endorsed a twenty-first-century Holocaust.
This abrupt volte-face cannot be attributed to any moral qualms about Zionist actions since October 7. A far more likely explanation is that, given numerous statements of Israeli officials that the ICJ has found to indicate genocidal intent, they are worried their past advocacy and amplification of as yet unindicted war criminals could, in the future, be in itself legally actionable. Yet, some Zionist propagandists and apologists have not been deterred by the ruling’s ramifications.
Among the most vocal figures continuing to celebrate and encourage the Gaza genocide is Lee Kern, a self-described comedian who served as the lead writer for numerous high-profile cinema and TV projects led by Sacha Baron Cohen, including the sequel to “Borat,” and “Who Is America?” On a daily basis, since the Israeli Occupation Force carnage erupted, he has posted disgustingly Islamophobic statements while cheering and justifying Zionist bloodshed.
An Instagram post by Lee Kern, lead writer for multiple Sacha Baron Cohen films during his “Israel we F*cking Love You,” tour
At the end of 2023, Kern also visited Tel Aviv to co-host an event, “Israel we F*cking Love You,” alongside Michael Rapaport, a failed actor and convicted harasser turned wannabe culture warrior. The Zionist entity has attracted numerous Z-list celebrities to its stolen land in recent months, including unrepentant pedophile Jerry Seinfeld, in a lame attempt to boost its PR. Given Cohen’s ardent Zionism, it is rather conspicuous he has not made the journey.
Nonetheless, Cohen has been playing an active role behind the scenes in the genocide. In November 2023, he was among several high-profile figures who lobbied TikTok in private to block content and comments critical of Israel. He had good reason to believe this intervention would be decisive. In September 2020, he suspended his Instagram account to protest purported “hate speech” on the platform and Facebook. The Anti-Defamation League-sponsored action prompted over 1,000 businesses to suspend their Facebook ads for a month.
Cohen has, in recent years, significantly upped the ante of his public Zionist activism under the aegis of fighting anti-Semitism. He has claimed his “comedy” output, often coordinated with the CIA and Pentagon, is concerned with the same objective. This work almost universally features racist, crude stereotypes of Muslims, whom he portrays wearing makeup and wigs reminiscent of blackface. One might reasonably ask whether his true purpose all along has been to dehumanize Muslims everywhere in order to justify Israel’s genocide.
‘KAZAKH CENSORS’
Perhaps the most well-known – or infamous – segment of Cohen’s 2006 smash hit movie Borat is a scene very early on, in which he and a vast crowd spectate “the running of the Jew,” a purported annual Kazakhstan tradition. Easily the movie’s most impactful and memorable visual setpiece, standalone clips have garnered millions of views online since 2006. A virtually unique example of the film not featuring an “undercover” stunt, who were Cohen’s ultimate intended victims and audience here?
Giant, grotesque constructions of a Jewish man and woman replete with green skin, claws, devil horns, and pronounced hooked noses race down a dirt track after Kazakhs waving wads of money. When the female “Jew” stops mid-chase to spawn a gigantic “Jew egg,” Borat cheers on a gaggle of children who abruptly arrive to “crush that Jew chick before it hatches!” This scene is central to the film’s plot – if one can even refer to it as such.
A scene from “Borat” portrays a Muslim caricature cheering on a crowd at a fictional “A Running of the Jew” festival
Innate Kazakh anti-Semitism is the very inspiration for Borat’s “cultural learnings” tour around the U.S. As he explains immediately after the scene, his country faces three major problems – “social, economic, and Jew.” Throughout the movie, Borat invokes numerous hideous anti-Semitic tropes – Jews are greedy, secretly control international finance, governments and the media, and were responsible for 9/11. At one point, he even sings a supposedly popular Kazakh folk song titled “Throw the Jew down the Well.”
In all of Cohen’s in-character public appearances at the time, Borat made his visceral loathing of Jews abundantly clear. In November 2006, he was a guest on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” an interview subsequently included on the film’s DVD edition. When asked by the host whether he thought his film was homophobic and anti-Semitic, Borat gleefully replied, “Thank you very much!” Meanwhile, at an advance screening of the movie in Manhattan, he declared to the assembled press and paparazzi:
At first, Kazakh censors wouldn’t let me release this movie because of anti-Semitism. But then they decided that there was just enough.”
The Amazon-produced “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” in 2020 dialed up the main character’s rabid anti-Semitism even further. In one scene, he attends a synagogue dressed in anti-Semitic clothing, including a giant fake nose, and announces he saw a Facebook post claiming the Holocaust never happened. Judith Dim Evans, a Holocaust survivor present, greets him warmly, invites him to touch her own “Jewish nose,” and then proceeds to politely educate him about the realities of Nazi genocide while highlighting her personal history.
Understandably, many viewers effusively praised Evans’ dignity and grace. Cohen has claimed that before filming the scene, he broke character in private with her to explain he was himself Jewish, and his objective was to highlight anti-Semitic attitudes and the correct way of challenging them – supposedly the very first time one of his “victims” had been in on the gag all along. Evans herself was unable to confirm this version of events, as she sadly passed away before the film’s release.
Her daughter begged to differ, however, and filed a lawsuit against Amazon, seeking an injunction to remove the scene from the film. She contended her mother was duped into appearing in the movie and pointed to a release form allegedly signed by Evans featuring a “scribbled line” that did not match her actual signature. Amazon’s lawyers successfully argued this was a simple accident and that her signing of the document had been independently witnessed.
‘VIBRANT JEWISH COMMUNITY’
Whatever the truth of the matter, clearly, Cohen is extremely keen for his creation to be perceived by the everyday people he meets and global film audiences alike as a raging anti-Semite. This has prompted some observers to question whether, in attempting to highlight and challenge anti-Semitism, Borat might, in fact, inadvertently reinforce anti-Semitic public attitudes. A far more prescient question is whether Borat consciously legitimizes Islamophobic perspectives globally in service of the Zionist cause.
The release of the first “Borat” movie sparked public and state-level outrage in Kazakhstan for its portrayal of the country and its people. Ironically enough, a common grievance was the character’s anti-Semitism – for Kazakh Jews have a long and rich history, and Almaty has no record of religious strife or discrimination towards Jews whatsoever. During World War II, Joseph Stalin created a haven for Jews there, evacuating thousands from other parts of the Soviet Union to prevent their slaughter by the Nazis.
While Kazakhstan’s Jewish population was much reduced by emigration following the Soviet Union’s collapse, thousands still live in peace and harmony there today. A Hasidic synagogue in Almaty, named after widely respected Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, buried at a nearby cemetery, attracts Jewish visitors from all over the world, who come to pray at his grave. Anti-Semitic incidents of any kind are vanishingly rare; the country is home to over a dozen Jewish schools, and the government electively provides land and buildings for creating new synagogues.
As a National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry factsheet notes, “Kazakhstan has long embraced its Jewish community.” During “Borat’s” year of release alone, a new synagogue big enough to accommodate the capital’s entire Jewish population – and also Central Asia’s largest – was opened, Almaty’s first-ever Association for Hebrew Speakers formed, and the Kazakh government issued a postage stamp featuring a historic local synagogue. The factsheet went on to record:
In the wake of the widely released and successful 2006 comedy film Borat, which portrays Kazakhstan as a hot-bed of anti-Semitism, Kazakh officials are expanding outreach efforts to explain to the world that Kazakhs are in fact very tolerant of Jews.
As part of these “outreach efforts,” prior to the release of “Borat,” the government of Kazakhstan took out full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers such as The New York Times, and placed commercials on CNN and other mainstream news channels, at some expense. They sought to challenge and debunk the movie’s misrepresentations of Kazakhs, and Borat’s anti-Semitism loomed large. As a spokesperson for Almaty’s Washington D.C. embassy said at the time:
[Borat] claims the Kazakhs are very anti-Semitic people and running of the Jews is the famous pastime. That is, of course, ridiculous. Kazakhstan has a very vibrant Jewish community.”
AN ‘ALREADY ISLAMOPHOBIC CLIMATE’
The lack of wider pushback against Borat from the world’s Islamic community almost two decades ago surely reflects how the film was released at a time when Islamophobia was rife in the West due to the then-ongoing War on Terror. Systematic, institutionalized discrimination against and demonization of Muslims was unashamedly and openly normalized, advocated, and practiced by European and North American governments under the aegis of battling “extremism.” Muslim civil society voices were thus very effectively silenced in the mainstream.
Fast forward to the sequel’s release, and Cohen’s victims were finally positioned to fight back. In November 2020, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Kazakh American Association fired off strongly worded letters to the Directors Guild of America, Oscars, Golden Globes, and British Academy of Film and Television Arts, demanding they bar Cohen, his movie and its cast and crew, from consideration for awards that year.
Sacha Baron Cohen dressed as a Gaddafi-esque caricature in the film, “The Dictator”
Commenting, Kazakh-American film professional and Hollywood Film Academy CEO Gia Noortas said:
“The Kazakh community worldwide is underrepresented and inherently vulnerable. Sacha Baron Cohen understands this fact and exploits the Kazakh people by hijacking our ethnic identity, whitewashing us, and inciting harassment toward us. Considering today’s socially aware political climate and the new diversity policies adopted by film associations worldwide, it is unbelievable that a film which openly berates, bullies, and traumatizes a nation of people of color is still an acceptable form of entertainment.“
As a fiery contemporary op-ed in The New Arab noted via “Borat,” “Cohen racially abuses, culturally appropriates, and mocks the Kazakh culture, traditions, and people for the purpose of crude laughter and monetary gain” – actions “not only offensive,” but directly harmful, as “Kazakhs know from personal experience.” It went on to record how since the release of the first movie:
“Many Kazakhs have experienced psychological turmoil and ethnic-based humiliation. Many Kazakhs have had to explain to others that Cohen’s portrayal of Kazakhstan and its people as bigoted and backwards is a vile misrepresentation. Many Kazakh children have been bullied at school, and Kazakh women have been exposed to distasteful sexual jokes or harassment.“
Again, we are left to ponder if Cohen explicitly intended these dire consequences. A 2016 academic paper published by Brunel University explored how audiences perceived the portrayal of Muslims across his oeuvre based on an extensive focus group study. Overwhelmingly, respondents expressed dismay at the content and volunteered their view that the assorted movies and TV shows Cohen produced throughout his three-decade-long career are, universally, intensely Islamophobic.
For example, one respondent asked to comment on the “Running of the Jew” clip, said it “enforces this opinion that Muslims are anti-Semites.” The study noted that “The Dictator” was “replete with signifiers that are stereotypic of Islam and Muslims – from the name ‘Aladeen,’ his long beard, misogyny, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism,” and “the film also displays minarets and thus typical Islamic architecture.” Another respondent observed:
“If you look at all his movies, he does portray himself as a Muslim. So, I think there is an element of Islamophobia. The Dictator, Ali G, these are all Muslims and so he’s portraying them in a bad light, in an already Islamophobic climate.”
AN UNSAFE SPACE
Such adverse reactions are striking, for they would be music to the proverbial ears of Israel and the international Zionist lobby’s countless assorted components. Perpetuating the narrative that all Muslims worldwide are possessed of virulent anti-Jewish hatred has been a core Zionist propaganda objective since before Israel’s 1948 founding.
The purpose is to frame Palestinian opposition to Zionist oppression, and anyone Muslim or otherwise united in solidarity with them, as motivated by surging anti-Semitism rather than reasonable and legitimate condemnation of oppression, brutality, and mass slaughter in service of a fundamentally colonialist, genocidal, and deeply anti-Semitic endeavor. Accordingly, Israel has, ever since its founding, actively sought to create a hostile environment for Jews elsewhere in order to cynically cement itself as the world’s exclusive safe space for Jews.
Following Israel’s creation, a Mephistophelian feat achieved by murderous conquest, land theft, and the clandestine use of chemical and biological weapons, Zionists engaged in wide-ranging efforts to compel Jews elsewhere to migrate to Tel Aviv. This effort included covertly bombing synagogues throughout West Asia, encouraging anti-Semitism the world over through a variety of means, and infiltrating and funding Amnesty International to amplify and exaggerate anti-Semitism in Muslim lands from the 1970s onwards while concealing its criminal erasure of Palestine and its indigenous people.
The necessity of such actions from Israel’s perspective couldn’t be clearer. It is barely known today that a majority of world Jewish opinion actively opposed Israel’s creation. The 1917 Balfour Declaration, which pledged London’s commitment to creating a “national home for the Jewish people” and is widely considered the Zionist state’s foundational document, was vigorously condemned by Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in a senior British government position at the time:
“The policy of His Majesty’s Government is anti-Semitic in result and will prove a rallying ground for anti-Semites in every country of the world.”
Montagu’s concerns were well-founded. Zionists, professing to be inspired by ubiquitous Western anti-Semitism, were and remain committed to building an ethnonationalist homeland for Jews in the Arab and Muslim world – the one place on Earth where Jews have always been safest. It is widely unknown that the only European country, bar Britain, to boast a bigger Jewish population following World War II than before was Muslim-majority Albania. It provided a sanctuary for Jews fleeing the Holocaust elsewhere in Europe.
Many Albanians are considered “Righteous Among Nations” for risking their lives to protect Jews during the genocidal Axis occupation of the Balkans, 1941 – 1944. A great many Jews had for centuries resided in the region by that point, having been invited to relocate there under Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II’s personal protection following the fall of Al Andalus to Christian crusaders in 1492. They flourished, free from the routine pogroms, discrimination, and punitive taxes inflicted upon them everywhere else in Europe.
Since the Gaza genocide began, shocking scenes reminiscent of 1930s Germany, in which Israeli security forces storm areas of Jerusalem, physically attacking Hasidic Jews and tearing down Palestine flags, have spread like wildfire on social media. Meanwhile, Jews can consistently be found in profusion at every major anti-Israel protest in Europe and North America, very vocally denouncing not only Tel Aviv’s relentless atrocities but the entire “Godless and merciless” ideology of Zionism.
Sacha Baron Cohen’s canon should be viewed as a modern-day manifestation of the perpetual Zionist drive to distort and conceal reality and turn Jews and Muslims, natural and historic comrades, against one another. Now that he and close collaborator Lee Kern have so amply exposed their guiding mission quite so publicly, a liberal media apparatus that enthusiastically promoted them and their repulsively racist, genocidal output must not be forgiven or trusted ever again.
The Palestinian presidency expresses strong rejection of the Israeli plot to forcibly displace Palestinians in a plan to be executed by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The Palestinian Presidency warned of attempts to “complete the Balfour Declaration” after reports that the Israeli occupation entity delegated former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to convince Arab countries to receive forcibly displaced Palestinians from Gaza.
This follows Blair’s recent visit to occupied Palestine last week, during which he reportedly engaged in undisclosed meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz.
The discussions centered around the possibility of appointing the former UK Prime Minister as a “mediator” between “Tel Aviv” and some Arab governments to persuade them to “take in Gazan refugees” in post-war planning developed by the occupying entity.
In a statement, the Presidency expressed strong rejection of this measure, announcing that Blair is considered to be “an unwelcome person in the Palestinian territories.”
“We will demand that the British government not allow this meddling with the fate and future of the Palestinian people, and we will also demand that the Secretary-General of the United Nations do what is possible in order not to allow such actions that violate international law and international legitimacy, which is considered an interference and an endeavor that only serves Israel’s interests and harms the Palestinian people and their rights by pushing them to abandon their land,” the statement read.
“It seems that Tony Blair is completing the Balfour Declaration issued by the British government with American involvement, which led to the catastrophe of the Palestinian people and started dozens of wars in the region,” it added.
The Ministry said in a statement that it “is following with great interest what was reported by the Hebrew media regarding Tony Blair heading a team to work for the voluntary evacuation of Palestinian citizens from the Gaza Strip, and holding meetings and consultations with some countries to explore their position regarding receiving Palestinian refugees, which was greatly welcomed by the fascist Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and other extremists.”
It added that it “hopes that Tony Blair will not be involved in committing this crime, which falls within the framework of the Israeli government’s plans to intensify genocide and forced displacement of the Palestinians.”
The statement emphasized that should these reports prove accurate, it views this action as “hostile to the Palestinian people and their rights in their homeland, a flagrant violation of international law, and hostile to humanity.” It cautioned that those responsible for this action will be subject to accountability.
Consequently, the Foreign Ministry declared its intent to discuss this significant matter with Arab, Islamic, and friendly nations, seeking to address it through various means, including legal avenues.
Selling illusions
Since day one of the war on the Strip, the occupation entity’s top officials publicly declared that one of the objectives was to forcefully displace its residents to other countries, most notably Jordan and Egypt.
This plan saw the Israeli army carry out the bloodiest aggression since WW2 on the besieged Strip, which included the killing of nearly 22,000 Palestinians, most of whom were children and women, and the mass destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, and other vital infrastructure necessary for survival.
Netanyahu claimed last week that the occupation is in contact with countries to persuade them to agree to take in Palestinian “refugees from Gaza,” Israeli media reported, citing the premier as telling members of his Likud Party.
At the time, Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas commented on the Israeli Prime Minister’s remarks, saying his plan to pass a “voluntary immigration” scheme for the people from the Gaza Strip is ridiculous and aims to compensate for the Israeli war failure.
“Netanyahu is trying to sell illusions to prolong the aggression after he and his army failed to achieve their goals,” the party said.
“Our Palestinian people affirmed their decisive stance by rejecting deportation and displacement, and that there is no emigration and no choice but to remain steadfast on our land.”
Nevertheless, every effort to execute this plan encountered the resilience of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands among them steadfastly declined to vacate the northern Strip, opting instead to stay in their homes, even in the face of the catastrophic conditions imposed by the entity and the daily ongoing massacres.
Furthermore, the plot to forcefully displace Palestinians was criticized by “Israel’s” main allies, including the United States, and countries that are supposed to “host the refugees” such as Jordan and Egypt.
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Even though this article is the writing of an anonymous author, it is so well detailed and supported by historic facts which Zionist-controlled historians and media have erased from public knowledge, that it should be made known to the world populations at large.
For starters, it may be telling to illustrate the characters of Palestine and Israel, by presenting the lyrics and songs of two contrasting school choirs, the one from The Ramallah Friends School Choir, hailing Peace and Harmony – see first video below; contrasted by “Annihilate Everyone”, Israeli’s Children’s Choir’s “Friendship Song”, promoting outright genocide in Gaza; see second video below.
In essence, the terror to eliminate Palestinians from their own territory started way before the creation of Israel, a colonialist idea by the Brits. This summarizes what Wikipedia has to say:
“The Israeli Declaration of Independence, formally the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, was proclaimed on 14 May 1948 by David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization, Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and soon to be first Prime Minister of Israel. It declared the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, which would come into effect on termination of the British Mandate at midnight that day.”
The establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been the goal of Zionists since the lates 19th Century. In 1917 British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote to British Jewish community leader, Lord Rothschild, that:
“His Majesty’s government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
This letter became known as the Balfour Decaration, upon which British government policy officially endorsed Zionism. After WWI, the UK was given the mandate for Palestine, conquered from the Ottomans during WWI.
This colonial spirit prevalent to this day, instead of conferring independence to Palestine after freeing it from the Turkish Ottoman Empire, is largely responsible for the mess and political instability in the Middle East, notably the apparent everlasting conflict between Israel and Palestine, now always fueled by Zionist Israel.
According to the Balfour Declaration, a Jewish national home was to be established in Palestine while civil and religious rights – but not political and national rights – of non-Jewish Palestinian communities may prevail.
Palestinians wanting their political rights and autonomy as a sovereign state, resented continued Jewish immigration into Palestine. They disapproved of the British mandate and by 1936 their dissatisfaction had grown into open rebellion.
The so-called Peel Commission, named after its head Lord Robert Peel, was established by the UK in 1936 to study the conflict situation. The Commission’s report of July 1937 admitted the mandate was unworkable because Jewish and Palestinian objectives were incompatible.
The Commission proposed the partitioning of Palestine into three zones, an Arab-Palestine state, a Jewish state, and a neutral territory containing the holy places like Jerusalem. This was the equivalent of a two-state solution.
The Peel Commission’s recommendation was eventually rejected by the British Government as “unworkable”.
The reason for the rejection was most likely the interpretation and possibly pressure by the Jewish-Zionist leader Lord Rothschild that the establishment of Israel in Palestine would give Zionist Israel unlimited rights over what he, Lord Rothschild, considered henceforth their land.
The British rejection of the Peel Commission’s “reasonable” two-state solution gave rise to the 1936 – 1939 Palestine revolt.
Nevertheless, the partition of Palestine – 57% to 43% for Israel and Palestine respectively, rejected by Palestine, was presented to the newly established United Nations as Resolution 181 – and largely approved by 33 to 13 in favor and 10 abstentions.
This background is necessary to understand the Holocaust-like long-term cruelties by Israel over Palestine; the Zionists devastating atrocities in the years before Israel was officially established. This report bears testimony to Zionist-Israeli oppression for almost 100 years.
The Zionist terror attacks, largely silenced by the media, were to intimidate and weaken Palestine, before the creation of Israel in 1948 – an Israel which way before she officially existed, had already plans for Greater Zionist-Israel for the “Chosen People”.
Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
The Hamas statement says that the UK should have “corrected its historically negative stance towards the Palestinian people,” and “atone for” the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
The United Kingdom has been condemned by Palestinian Resistance group Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in separate statements for carrying out surveillance flights over Gaza, which they described as military involvement in the “genocidal war.”
In Hamas’ statement, it read, “Britain’s intention to carry out surveillance flights over the Gaza Strip makes it an accomplice to the Zionist occupation in its crimes, and responsible for the massacres which our Palestinian people are experiencing.”
Britain confirmed that five UK citizens went missing after the Palestinian Resistance’s operation on October 7, some of whom it suggests are being held captives in Gaza by the Resistance.
“Surveillance aircraft will be unarmed, do not have a combat role, and will be tasked solely to locate hostages. Only information relating to hostage rescue will be passed to the relevant authorities responsible for hostage [captive] rescue,” the ministry claimed.
The Hamas statement added that the UK should have “corrected its historically negative stance towards the Palestinian people,” and “atone for” the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
‘Colonial and offensive’
The Balfour Declaration is commonly regarded as the precursor to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba which saw the forcible expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.
The Hamas statement called the Declaration “the sin of the century,” and called out the UK for “making another mistake” and showing the world yet again its “colonial and offensive” past.
Britain’s surveillance flights over the Gaza Strip will “put the British government at enmity with Palestinians and all freedom-loving people worldwide, who reject the Israeli aggression,” it added, as it urged the UK to “rescind its decision” in direct support of the “genocidal war against Gaza.”
On its part, the Islamic Jihad designated the UK’s decision as “direct involvement in Israel’s aggression against Gaza.”
The UK’s Junior Defense Minister, James Heappey, mentioned on Monday that Britain has increased its military presence in the Middle East by deploying an additional 1,000 personnel since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, The Guardian reported.
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The Palestinian people have the right, given 75 years of massacres, ethnic cleansing, land theft, torture, and abuse, to fight their occupier through any means necessary.
Palestinians should enjoy the same rights and standards as the rest of humanity. This statement seems self-evident, but many who would proclaim to believe in just that, in reality, do not actually support this notion. The Palestinian people refuse to remain as victims, and the only way for them to achieve justice is through armed struggle.
In the West, the Hamas-led operation of October 7 has been presented as an act of unjustified terroristic violence, one that happened in a complete vacuum. The shock of what occurred had even put many well-meaning people who have campaigned for Palestinian rights into a trance, one where they allow the event to be analyzed as a stand-alone atrocity and something to be condemned. Others have scrambled to condemn the Palestinian Resistance for its actions on that day, while concocting a narrative to try and work to maintain the popular idea of Palestinians, that they are the eternal victim, one that should always be treated as a victim and remain as such. This idea, while it may come from well-intentioned people in the West, is inherently racist, patronizing, and fits into a Western-savior complex.
The Palestinian people have the right, given 75 years of massacres, ethnic cleansing, land theft, torture, and abuse, to fight their occupier through any means necessary. Although an argument can be made to justify this notion, using international law, I will argue this through common sense and an appeal to the humanity of all people.
Throughout history, oppressed groups, whether suffering under settler colonialism, systems of enslavement, apartheid, or colonial domination, have used armed struggle as a strategy to free themselves and restore their human dignity. Often, after failing to make an impact with non-violent strategies, such as boycotts, general strikes, and appeals to the goodwill of their oppressors, violence becomes the natural tool of the oppressed.
Western media pundits pose the question of a need for a Palestinian Nelson Mandela. Although this question is often asked in bad faith, it is a great place to begin explaining the predicament of Palestine. Just like in South Africa, Palestine is under a system of apartheid, a form of injustice that the African National Congress (ANC) fought against using various forms of struggle, including armed resistance. Nelson Mandela, who is widely praised across the Western world today, was considered for some time a “terrorist” in most Western capitals. Why was Mandela considered as such? Because the ANC, of which he was an active member, used armed struggle and killed South African Whites who were indeed unarmed. In fact, when Mandela was arrested by the apartheid authorities, he had just arrived back in his homeland after traveling to receive military training.
Despite it being a somewhat hidden event, the Haitian revolution, which led to the abolishment of slavery on the island nation, was not free of violence and indiscriminate killings. In fact, when the French deposed and arrested the Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture in 1802, the revolutionary stated the following, “In overthrowing me you have cut down in Saint-Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty; it will spring up again from the roots, for they are numerous and they are deep.” Less than two years later, Jean-Jacques Dessalines had taken over the revolution and signed a decree for all whites to be put to death; this was only months after Dessalines had declared Haiti an independent nation on January 1, 1804. Although there were moments when peace prevailed and the Haitian people, who had revolted violently to end slavery, spared the lives of non-combatant whites, there were also times of great bloodshed.
In the case of the Algerian struggle for independence, it is also true that the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) used violent tactics that directly targeted the European settlers, who were known as the Pieds-noirs. Thousands of settlers were killed in a variety of attacks, leading to around 1 million of these Europeans fleeing the country, following the war of independence. Although tactics like shooting at settlers in their privileged communities and planting bombs in packed areas are objectively unpleasant, they were not committed without reason and in a vacuum.
The immense suffering of the Algerian people had pushed them toward the only options that were available to free themselves of French occupation.
Violent Resistance in Palestine
To go through the entire historical record at this point would be too steep of a task for a singular article, however, we need to understand the historical legitimacy of the armed struggle against the Zionist entity.
Dating back to the days of the British Mandate in Palestine, the only times that the Palestinian people were able to sway the UK toward granting them any favorable solutions was through violent uprisings. The British Mandate authority encouraged Jewish settler immigration from Europe, and the leadership in London was clearly committed to upholding the promise that was issued, through the Balfour Declaration of 1917, to create a so-called “Jewish State” on the land of Palestine. It was therefore necessary for the Palestinians to organize, educate, and push for strike action that would pressure the Mandate authorities into adopting a more favorable position to their plight. In the end, the violent uprising of 1929, and later the Arab Revolt of 1936-9, proved enough for the British to cede ground on their previously held solutions for the Zionist-Palestinian struggle.
Despite the British having inflicted a brutal defeat against the Palestinian Resistance by the end of the Arab Revolt, the White Paper of 1939 was issued, a document that pledged to limit the number of Jewish settlers to Palestine, along with reneging on the idea of partitioning the land or creating an exclusively “Jewish State” in all of Palestine. This document is what inspired Zionist terrorists to begin committing attacks against civilian targets affiliated with the UK, which again swayed Britain’s stance on the future of Palestine.
After 78% of historic Palestine was occupied and what was left of the Arab Resistance was defeated in 1948, the Palestinian cause was in a state of disarray, before it was re-ignited through the Battle of Karameh in 1968. This battle was technically a military defeat for both the Palestinian resistance parties – most prominently Fatah – and the Jordanian army that had joined the fight, yet it inflicted damage on the Israelis in a way that no one could have believed would be possible. Throughout history, the Palestinian Resistance, whether it be the Arab Nationalist Movement, Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), or others, has all been labeled “terrorist” by the Israelis and their Western backers. The above-mentioned groups are all secular nationalist, or Marxist groups, while the Palestinian Islamic resistance groups didn’t become a major factor until the 1990s.
When Egypt gained back the Sinai Peninsula from the Israeli entity, it only did so following the October War of 1973. When South Lebanon was liberated from Zionist occupation in 2000, this was because of the Lebanese Resistance’s decades-long armed struggle. Even when the Gaza disengagement occurred in 2005, this was because the Palestinian Resistance was relentless in its attacks on soldiers and settlers, making the Zionist entity fed up. The Israeli entity has never given back land out of the good of their hearts, never made an agreement that hasn’t been driven by violence, and always worked in their best interests to manage that violence. There is no reasoning for this racist settler-colonial apartheid entity.
The people of Gaza rose non-violently in 2018-19 in what was known as the Great March of Return, where hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians protested for their rights under international law; their right to return and to the end of the illegal siege. The answer from the Israeli army was to slaughter 310 innocent people, while the Western leadership claimed that the Zionists were “defending themselves”.
On the question of violence: Everyone is a supporter of violence, even the most devout preacher of non-violence and pacifism will make exceptions. If you disagree, imagine the following scenario: An Al-Qaeda suicide bomber is preparing to detonate himself in a packed crowd of innocent civilians. There is a police officer with a gun who can shoot the would-be attacker in the head and save hundreds of lives, is the officer justified in using a firearm?
Another thought experiment is this: If you see a man beating a woman profusely, is it justified to hit him in response? And if the woman who is being battered fights back and severely hurts her attacker, is she without justification?
The above-noted questions will demonstrate that the majority of people do support some form of violence but only in limited and defensive manners. When we observe the plight of the Palestinians, why is it that they overwhelmingly support armed struggle against their occupier? Is it because they are savages who love blood and violence, or is it because they see armed struggle as a legitimate form of self-defense and a tool with which they can restore their dignity and attain freedom? Any fair-minded person who takes the time to study the struggle would conclude the latter.
Palestinians should not be obligated to sit down and take their suffering so that they can be viewed as victims. This may make some Westerners more comfortable with supporting their plight but will ultimately lead to their complete elimination as a people. The Zionist entity is predicated on Jewish supremacy and creating a “state” that only serves Jews, meaning that the ethnic cleansing and/or genocide of Palestinians is an inevitable by-product of their ideology as a regime. Unless you are a Palestinian that is suffering under the Apartheid regime, you are not in the position to lecture them on how they fight back against their oppressor. Like all oppressed peoples, the Palestinians will use all means necessary to achieve the right to live in dignity and to be free. You are not obligated to agree with every tactic, but there is no moral equivalence that can be drawn between the reactionary violence of the oppressed and the violence of the oppressor.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
The US-Israeli strategy of attempting to tie the destiny of the Arab world with Tel Aviv and to crush the idea of Palestinian resistance to occupation failed on October 7.
There are some governments that are so cruel and unjust that people have no choice but to resist by force. After 16 years, the steel and concrete wall constructed by Israel to imprison Palestinians in Gaza was breached by Palestinian resistance forces on October 7.
The current challenge is to break through the wall of US-Israeli myths and lies that have been carefully constructed over the decades to maintain Israel’s long history of oppression and injustice against the Palestinians; fabrications that have been used to sustain US-Israeli hegemony in West Asia.
Eleven minutes after Zionist leaders declared, without UN Security Council approval, “independence” on 14 May 1948, President Harry S. Truman became the first world leader to officially recognize the self-proclaimed “Jewish” state. The lies that began on that date have never ceased; nor has Palestinian resistance to the racist, settler-colonial “state” being built on their land.
There has also been no break in America’s complicity in financing, protecting, and sustaining the Zionist colonial project in the heart of the Muslim world – a relationship that has exacted an unimaginable price on the Palestinians and on all the people of the region.
The United States sees itself in Israel. For it too was founded on racism and built on indigenous land. US history is replete with examples of resistance and rebellion that mirror the attack of that fateful day.
The indigenous people have never ceased resisting US policies of expansion, removal, and extermination. And the more than 250 acts of resistance by enslaved blacks have been well documented. The most violent of these slave rebellions took place on 21 August 1831 in Southampton, Virginia. The Nat Turner Revolt and the reaction to it are uncannily similar to October 7 in terms of the causes and reaction.
Today, historians look back on that August day differently. The slaughter of over 55 white enslavers, their wives, and children is called a rebellion, insurrection, or revolt. Although the insurrection gave northerner abolitionists a black hero and a martyr for the movement, most newspapers of that era, especially in the South, denounced Turner’s revolt as a massacre. The event further radicalized American politics and moved the country closer to civil war.
Like the corporate media of today which has accepted Israel’s narrative as fact, editors in 1831 rushed to report news, merely reprinting articles that appeared in Virginia newspapers. And analogous to events unfolding currently, the failure to check facts led to the publication of inaccurate, prejudicial, and harmful misinformation.
Akin to the Israeli regime, which has been conducting genocide in Gaza and the West Bank under the guise of eliminating Hamas, revenge-minded white vigilantes lynched blacks who played no part in the uprising. Southern writers talked of retaliation, calling for ethnic cleansing and pogroms against the enslaved and free blacks of Southampton County, expressing a willingness to conduct a “final solution” for Virginia’s black population.
There were few, especially in the South, willing to accept that slavery was the root cause of Turner’s revolt. Similarly, in 2023 the corporate media has drowned out the voices of those contending that the attack by Hamas was inevitable, that it was an act of resistance to 75 years of settler-colonialist violence and Israel’s never-ending war against Palestinians. The media have instead eschewed context, either ignoring or discounting the severity of the Israeli apartheid regime.
The regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv believe they can crush Palestinian resistance by exterminating the Palestinian political and military organization, Hamas (Harakah al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah), an Arabic phrase meaning Islamic Resistance Movement. It looks as if Israel’s objective is to kill as many Palestinians as they can until the moral conscience of the Western world is stirred.
Israel has never observed international and humanitarian laws demanded of an occupying power. Its occupation of Palestine is illegal. Therefore, all Israelis living on Palestinian land are colonizers, regardless of whether they live in Tel Aviv or in the occupied West Bank. Also, all Israeli citizens over the age of 18 have been soldiers, since national military service is mandatory (Palestinian citizens of Israel are exempt).
Under international law, Palestinian resistance, even armed resistance, to occupation is legitimate. Conversely, Israel’s claim that it has a “right to defend itself” is illegitimate. According to international law, it does not have that right as long as it illegally occupies Palestine.
Not only does Israel not have the right to defend itself, Miko Peled, Israeli-American peace and human rights activist, has made the case that Israel as an apartheid state—which it is—does not have the right to exist. And that dismantling the apartheid state and replacing it with a true democracy, one person-one vote, is the only path to peace and security in the region.
In the midst of the current tragedy, it is important to know that before the introduction of Zionism by the imperial powers following World War I, Palestinian Jews lived peacefully with their Muslims and Christian neighbors; harmony that was shaped by a millennium of openness and coexistence.
Continuing the Muslim tradition of tolerance, Muslims, Christians and Jews lived and thrived together under Ottoman rule (1516-1918). In the 1500s, the gates of Palestine were opened to Jews fleeing persecution in Spain and other parts of Christendom. The inscription on the Jaffa Gate (the main western gate into the Old City) reflects that spirit, reads: “There is no God but God, and Abraham is his friend.”
The forceful importation of European Zionist ideology and settler-colonialism into Palestine destabilized Palestinian life and the region. The current tragedy in Gaza can be traced directly to the arbitrary partition of West Asia and the British mandate of Palestine (and Iraq) at the end of the war. In November 1917, the British government, with no regard for the indigenous population, publicly stated its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” on Palestinian land. The Balfour Declaration, as it came to be known, set in motion Israel’s 75-year genocidal war against the Palestinians. And since 1948, the United States has financed and abetted Israel’s war.
Washington’s hegemonic plans for the region, dependent on its garrison regime in Tel Aviv, have begun to fall apart and pretenses of “honest broker” exposed. From all appearances, the United States has lost control of the Frankenstein monster it helped create.
On October 7, Palestinian freedom fighters did what the United States and Israel thought unimaginable, they dared to leave the “reservation,” to escape their imprisonment. Until that pivotal event, Washington and Tel Aviv believed they were on a clear path to controlling the region and erasing the Palestinian cause by brokering normalization agreements between Israel and authoritarian Arab Gulf regimes.
Resistance movements in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Iran were considered marginalized and contained. The US-Israeli strategy of attempting to tie the destiny of the Arab world with Tel Aviv and to crush the idea of Palestinian resistance to occupation failed on October 7.
At present, the Biden administration has made Israel’s war on Palestinians its war. Without the consent of the Congress, it has given the Netanyahu regime the green light to continue bombing, slaughtering and starving the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and murdering, imprisoning and terrorizing the over 2 million Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank.
The Biden administration has also refused to support life-saving UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. From 1954 to the present, the United States has used its veto power 34 times to block Security Council resolutions critical of Israel and that have attempted to hold it accountable for its violations of international law in Palestine. Israel has consistently ignored all resolutions pertaining to its crimes against Palestinians and keeps bombing UN institutions and personnel in Gaza today.
Additionally, President Biden has submitted a request to Congress for additional military aid for Israel amounting to $14.3 billion to complete its genocide in Gaza (and the West Bank), a request that is in violation of US law. Twenty percent of Israel’s military budget is currently financed by US taxpayers. The Leahy Law, named after its sponsor, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and first enacted in 1997, prohibits the US government from providing military assistance to foreign security forces when there is credible information of human rights violations.
Like Israel, Washington is not playing by the “rules-based order” it demands of others and it is not observing the international laws it helped established. The United States is on the wrong side of history, and its decisions are jeopardizing America’s national security and what is left of its standing worldwide, endangering Muslims and Jews in the United States and in every country, fueling violence at home and in West Asia.
History is replete with acts of violent resistance to oppression. Apartheid is violent, and resistance to it is morally required. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that “To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber.”
– Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Russian-brokered Syrian-Turkish rapprochement will bury prospects of a divided Syria, with the potential for opposition factions to be co-opted into the armed forces.
The newly-initiated Syrian-Turkish rapprochement talks are headed in Damascus’ favor and the “Turkish concessions” derided by opponents are just the start, insiders tell The Cradle.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already abandoned his dream of “praying in the Umayyad Mosque” in Damascus. But sources say this will be swiftly followed by further concessions that will throw a wrench into the ambitions of Syria’s opposition factions.
An undivided Syria
There will be no “federalism” or “confederation” – western codewords for the break up of the Syrian state – at these talks, but rather a “Turkish-Russian” acceptance of Damascus’ conditions.
For starters, Ankara plans to open the strategic M4 highway – which runs parallel to the Turkish border and connects all the vital Syrian cities and regions – as a prelude to opening the legal border crossings between Syria and Turkiye, which will re-establish trade routes between the two countries.
This move, based on an understanding between Damascus and Ankara, will essentially close the door on any opposition fantasies of breaking Syria into statelets, and will undermine the “Kurdish-American divisive ambition.”
It is not for nothing that Washington has sought to thwart communications between Ankara and Damascus. Under the guise of “fighting ISIS,” the US invested heavily in Syrian separatism, replacing the terror group with “Kurdish local forces” and reaped the rewards in barrels of stolen Syrian oil to help mitigate the global energy crisis.
Now Turkiye has closed the door to that ‘federalization’ plan.
A Russian-backed proposal
The Syrian-Turkish talks in Moscow on 28 December focused mainly on opening and establishing the necessary political, security, and diplomatic channels – a process initiated by their respective defense ministers.
While resolving the myriad thorny files between the two states is not as easy as the optimists would like, it is also nowhere as difficult as the fierce opponents of rapprochement try to suggest.
The Moscow discussions centered on mild, incremental solutions proposed by Russia. The Kremlin understands that the minefield between Ankara and Damascus needs to be dismantled with cold minds and hands, but insists that the starting point of talks is based on the political formulas of the Astana peace process that all parties have already accepted.
On the ground, Moscow is busy marketing satisfactory security settlements for all, though those on the battlefield appear to be the least flexible so far. The Russian plan is to “present security formulas to the military,” intended to be later translated into the integration of forces – whether Kurdish fighters or opposition militants – into the ranks of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
This will be achieved via committees led by both Syrian and Turkish intelligence services, a Russian source involved in coordinating the talks tells The Cradle.
Occupied areas of Syria, in 2023
Co-opting the Kurds
The Russian proposals, according to the source, rely on two past successful models for reconciliation on the battlefield. The first is the “Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood model in northern Aleppo,” an area once controlled by Kurdish forces who began to coordinate with the SAA after the sweeping 2016 military operation that expelled opposition militants from the eastern neighborhoods of the city.
The Russian source says that the “Sheikh Maqsoud” model succeeded because of “security coordination,” revealing that “Syrian state security is deployed at the entrances to the neighborhood with checkpoints that coordinate with the Kurdish forces inside – in every way, big and small.” This security coordination includes “arresting criminally wanted persons, and facilitating administrative and service services” in coordination with Damascus.
The second reconciliation model used by Russian forces in Syria succeeded in bringing together the SAA and Sheikh Maqsoud Kurdish militias in a joint military maneuver conducted near the town of Manbij in the countryside of Aleppo last August.
While the Russian source confirms that the experience of “security coordination” between the SAA and the Kurdish forces was “successful,” he cautions that these models need “political arrangements” which can only be achieved by “an agreement in Astana on new provisions to the Syrian constitution, which give Kurds more flexibility in self-governance in their areas.”
Opposition amnesty
A parallel proposal revealed to The Cradle by a Turkish source, approaches ground solutions from a “confederation” angle, anathema to the Syrian authorities. According to him, “Damascus must be convinced of sharing power with the qualified factions of the (Turkish) National Army for that.”
While the Turkish proposal tried to move a step closer to Damascus’ aims, it seems that Russian mediation contributed to producing a new paradigm: This would be based on the tried-and-tested Syrian “military reconciliation” model used for years – namely, that opposition militants hand over their arms, denounce hostility to the state, and are integrated into the SAA.
Turkiye’s abandonment of its “demand to overthrow the regime” applies also to its affiliated military factions inside Syria, as the latter’s goals have dwindled to preserving some areas of influence in the north of the country. This is the current flavor of Turkiye’s reduced “confederation” ambitions: To maintain Turkish-backed factions within “local administrations” in northern areas where Turkiye has influence. This, in return for giving up on Ankara’s political ambition of “regime change” in Damascus and redrawing Syria’s northern map.
The solution here will require amending the Syrian constitution, a process that began several years ago to no avail.
From the Syrian perspective, officials are focused on eliminating all opposing separatist or terrorist elements who do not have the ability to adapt to a “unified” Syrian society.
Therefore, Damascus rejects military reconciliation proposals for any “sectarian” separatist or factional militias. Syrian officials reiterate that “the unity of the lands and the people” is the only gateway to a solution, away from the foreign interests that promote “terrorism or secession” – a reference to the Turkish and American role in Syria’s war.
Reconciliation on Damascus’ terms
There is no “confederation” in the dictionary of the Syrian state, and it is determined to stick hard to the principle of Syrian unity until the end. Damascus is intent on one goal: Reconciliations based on surrendering arms in the countryside of Latakia, Idlib, Aleppo, Raqqa, Hasakah, Qamishli, and al-Tanf, which are the areas that are still outside the control of the state.
According to the Turkish source, Syria refused to discuss anything “outside the framework of reconciliations and handing over weapons and regions,” which he says “makes it difficult for Ankara to undertake its mission,” especially in light of the fact that the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front controls large parts of these target areas.
A Syrian source tells The Cradle that the “Qamishli model” of military reconciliation is the closest one that applies to this case: Wherein “the SAA and national defense forces (the majority of which are pro-Damascus Kurds) coordinate fully.”
He makes clear that Damascus has already provided ample self-governance mechanisms for Kurds in the country’s north:
“The (Kurdish-run) Autonomous Administration in Syria already exists. It deals directly with Syria’s Ministry of Local Administration (in Damascus) and has multiple agencies that work through local representative councils to implement government plans in terms of security, tax collection, and services,” and of course it consists of the people of the region – Kurds.
The recent statement of top Erdogan advisor Yassin Aktay may throw a wrench in those works. His insistence that Turkiye should maintain control over the city of Aleppo – Syria’s second most populous, and its industrial heart – did not come out of nowhere.
Ankara considers that its repatriation of three million Syrian refugees should start from “local administrations run by the (Turkish-backed) Syrian National Army (a rebranded version of the opposition ‘Free Syrian Army),” says the Turkish source.
He is referring to Idlib, Aleppo, and their countrysides, and the areas in which Turkiye launched its “Olive Branch” and “Euphrates Shield” military operations. These locales in Syria’s north include the northern and eastern countryside of Aleppo, including Azaz, Jarabulus, al-Bab, Afrin, and its environs.
Turkiye may consider gradually handing over these strategic zones to its allied Syrian militias, he says.
“Call it confederation or not, these areas should be controlled by the Syrian National Army factions instead of the Al-Nusra Front – in order to ensure the safe return of the refugees.”
Steady progress
In short, the Russian mediation to bring Damascus and Ankara closer is moving slowly, but according to the Turkish source, “it is closer to reconciliation because the Syrian Ministry of Local Administration is beginning to take charge of regional affairs after holding new local council elections – in compliance with plans forged in the Astana process.”
Regarding Astana, the Turkish source says, “Let the Syrians treat the Kurdish and opposition areas as one, if the Kurds agree to dismantle their factions and join the Syrian army within a certain equation, the opposition factions will also accept.”
Regarding the complicated geopolitics of Syria’s east – currently occupied by US troops and their proxies – a high-ranking Syrian official who recently visited Saudi Arabia and Cairo, proposed “Arab intervention with the Syrian tribes to disengage tribe members in the Al-Tanf region from the US forces.” But according to the official, this would be subject to “the progress of relations between Damascus, Riyadh, Cairo, and possibly even Jordan.”
A few days ago, a video message was sent by Nusra Front leader Abu Muhammad al-Julani, in which he thundered: “Where are the armies of the Muslims?” It is a topical message from Al Qaeda’s Syria boss, who is angling to maintain his sectarian “area of influence” in northwest Syria – strategic Idlib on the Turkish-Syrian border. Julani’s destructive narrative may be the last barrier to break for Damascus, Ankara, and Moscow to strike a deal on the ground.
Among all of the events shaping post-civil war US economic development, one of the most prominent was the establishment of Standard Oil by John D. Rockefeller in 1870. Working with other US industrialists, along with domestic and international financial and banking interests, including the Rothschild’s London banking cartel, Standard oil decedents have dominated the fossil fuel industry and shaped US economic and social development and foreign policy to the present day.
Introduction
The current world security architecture arose following WWII, which established the US as the dominant global power. Since that time, US global supremacy has rested on unrivaled military and economic power, control of world’s energy reserves (primarily in the Middle East), and maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency [1]. There has been much current discussion about promoting ‘green’ policies, including sustainable development and increasing the use of renewable energy sources, clearly articulated during the UN Conference on Environment and Development (aka ‘Rio Conference’; ‘Earth Summit’), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Jun 3-14, 1992) [2], and Greta Thunberg’s speech to the UN on Sept 23, 2019 [3], where she accused world leaders of failing younger generations by not taking more aggressive actions to stop climate change. Despite this push for Green policies, fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) are still the dominant source of energy, currently supply over 80% of the world’s energy [4]. In addition, the dollar (aka ‘petrodollar’) is the primary reserve currency held by foreign central banks [5] and main currency used for commercial energy transactions [6] [7].
In 1863 John D. Rockefeller joined Maurice B. Clark and Samuel Andrews in an oil-refining business in Cleveland, Ohio, which was subsequently expanded and incorporated as Standard Oil of Ohio in 1870. Rockefeller was a shrewd and aggressive industrialist, acquiring additional refining capacity by “buying up and squeezing out of rivals by every device at hand—legal or illegal’ and as a result, Standard Oil would soon control over 90% of American oil refining capacity. Facing increasing resistance from the business community and the Ohio legislature, Rockefeller incorporated the Standard Oil Trust in New Jersey in 1982. This Trust consisted of seven subsidiaries- Standard Oil of Kentucky, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New York, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Standard Oil of Indiana, The Standard Oil Co (Ohio) and The Ohio Oil Company. In Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States (1911), the US Supreme Court found the Standard Oil Trust guilty of engaging in anti-competitive practices, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, breaking the company up into 34 separate entities, some of which the Rockefellers held major stakes [8] [9]. Ironically, decades after the Standard Oil Trust was ‘broken up’, these separate firms would subsequently merge into Chevron [10], ExxonMobil [11], British Petroleum (BP) [12] and Marathon [13], which are currently among the top 10 global energy companies [14]. The Rockefellers reach was vast- David Rockefeller, grandson of John D. Rockefeller, was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations (1970-1985) and Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank (1969–1981) [15] [16].
The geographic location of the US, circa 8000 km (5000 miles) from major war theaters in Europe and 9700 km (6000 miles) in Japan shielded the US from the massive devastation that took place in Europe and Asia during WWII. As a result, many large US corporations were able to profit handsomely by supplying the War Department with fuel, aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, armaments and ammunition to equip American soldiers and allied forces. Some of these firms were working both sides of the conflict, supplying Nazi Germany with financial backing and war material; some of these firms include Alcoa, Brown Brothers Harriman, Coca-Cola, Dupont, Kodak, Chase Bank, Dow Chemical, Ford, IBM, General Electric, General Motors, Woolworth, Random House and Standard Oil [17]. Prescott Bush, father of George HW Bush (41st President) and grandfather of George W. Bush’s (43st President), was a partner of A. Harriman & Co Investment bank and later served as Senator from Connecticut (1952-1963). Prescott Bush was directly involved with companies that profited from their commercial involvement with Nazi Germany [18] [19]. It should be pointed out the WWII is the most expensive war in American history, costing taxpayers more than $4 trillion, adjusted for inflation [20].
To the victor go the spoils
The US emerged from WWII as the world’s foremost military and economic power, the dollar was anointed the status of world reserve currency at the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) and established as the primary currency used for energy transactions following the meeting between US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, aboard the USS Quincy, in the Suez Canal on Valentine’s Day, 1945 [21].
Post-WWII US economic development saw the continued rise of the American economy which translated into robust corporate profits and better living standards for many working people. In 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act (aka National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956) described as the ‘Greatest Public Works Project in History’, allocating $25 billion (circa $274 billion in inflation- adjusted dollars) from taxpayers to develop a 41,000-mile system of interstate highways that Eisenhower promised would eliminate unsafe roads, inefficient routes and all of the other things that got in the way of “speedy, safe transcontinental travel.” [22] [23]. The Highway act would enrich the ‘pro-highway coalition of energy companies, automobile manufactures, truckers, bus operators, tiremakers, insurance companies, auto clubs, etc. It directly led to increased use of private automobiles for transportation and the systematic dismantling of energy- efficient public transportation, creation of suburbs, shopping centers, ‘strip malls’, and proliferation of McDonald’s and other ‘fast-food’ outlets, which have led to the current health crisis in the US- increased obesity, type II diabetes and related health problems [24] [25]. In addition, some of these highways were literally built through urban neighborhoods and frequently minority communities [26] [27], such as the Cypress Freeway in Oakland, CA, I95 in Chester, PA and the Cross Bronx Expressway in NYC [28] [29].
As a result, the functioning of the American economy and society has become very dependent on fossil fuel consumption (for more detail see [30]).
1. Energy consumption & generation– the US has 4.25% of world’s population (339 million people) but consumes ~17% of the world’s energy and has the highest per capita energy consumption and is the largest total energy consumer. In 2021, approximately 60% of US electricity was generated from fossil fuels- coal, natural gas and oil [31].
2. Suburban development– as described above, passage of the Highway act of 1956 [22], accelerated the development of low-density housing suburbs, which were only accessible by automobiles using fossil fuel.
3. Transportation– The average American relies on energy-inefficient automobiles and jet airplanes for transportation. Most US cities lack a comprehensive, energy-efficient public transportation system. Indeed, the US does not have 1 mile of high-speed rail lines. By contrast, China has 40,000 km (24,855 mi), Spain has 3,100 km (1,926 mi) and Japan has 2,830 km (1758 mi) of high-speed rail.
4. American agriculture is very energy-intensive, requiring 15 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food. The average food commodity transits 1500 miles from production to consumption point- e.g., California-grown produce, shipped to the US east coast, usually via diesel fueled trucks.
5. Information technology– US society is heavily reliant on information flow. This system encompasses local computers, the internet and fiber optic cables serving as data pipelines, computer server farms and “cloud” storage facilities, all of which consume lots of electricity.
6. Military– The Pentagon is the largest single consumer of fossil fuel and polluter in the world. To give this some perspective, on average, the US military consumes 12,600,000 gallons (48,000,000 L) of fuel per day. One F-16 fighter jet consumes over 20K gallons of Kerosene per hour (333 gal/min) [32].
American capitalism is dependent on fossil fuel consumption to function and serves as the lubricant for American power projection around the world. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have approximately 57% and 41% of proven oil and natural gas reserves, respectively (see Table 1 and [33]). Thus, it is not surprising that the US ruling elite have a major interest in this region and the energy reserves therein [34]. US attempts to control oil in the MENA region has been carried out in several ways. This has involved setting up client regimes in countries with vast energy deposits, such as the Gulf monarchies in the Persian Gulf (Figure 1), attacking and/or invading countries who attempt to follow an independent energy policy, such as Iraq and Libya or issuing frequent verbal threats, seizing assets and imposing economic sanctions on countries that the US has been unable to achieve regime change or are capable of defending themselves, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran [35] and Venezuela.
As part of this effort, the US has set up military bases in multiple ME countries including Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Turkey (Türkiye), UAE and Syria (See Figure 1 and Table 2) [36]. Due to its geographic location, Israel is crucial to US foreign policy goals. The ‘state’ of Israel/Zionist project was the creation of British imperialism (Balfour Declaration, 1918) [37], was driven, at least in part, by the desire of the British ruling elite to establish a reliable (read non-Muslim) proxy force that would assist the UK in controlling the region and its abundant hydrocarbon reserves [38]. The US emerged from WWII as the world’s leading military and economic power and assumed the role of Israel’s benefactor, providing $152 billion since 1949; $3.8 billion in 2020 [39] [40]. While Israel does not host a formal US base, she is a de facto appendage of the Pentagon, is fully integrated into NATO and serves as a reliable and well-armed US proxy in the region [41] [42], ranking 18th in global military power [43]. Israel conducts regular attacks on Syria [44] and estimated to have a stockpile of circa 90 nuclear weapons (likely a low estimate).
This effort has become all the more urgent as: the Russia-China-Iran axis has attained economic and military parity with the West, Iran is now a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) [45], has applied for membership to the BRICS [46] and recently announced that it has developed a hypersonic missile, that is ‘capable of penetrating all defense systems’ [47]. One would infer that Iran received technical help developing this weapon system. As Iran’s ties with Russia and China continue solidifying, they are becoming increasingly ambivalent about rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA; aka Iran nuclear deal) [46], which was negotiated during the Obama Administration [48]. Trump unilaterally exited the JCPOA in 2018, stating ‘We cannot prevent an Iranian bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement’ [49].
We hear a lot about ‘Green’ energy, the ‘Green new deal’, reducing our ‘carbon footprint’ and ‘sustainable development’, policies which are being promoted by a wide range of extremely committed environmental and conservation groups such as the Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Clean Air Council in the US and many international organizations and prominent politicians. ‘Green’ polices have been promoted by US Vice President Kamala Harris, encouraging Americans to purchase [expensive] electric cars and endorsed by the paper of record (NYT) and other corporate media outlets. Any policy that reduces the production of ‘greenhouse’ gasses, such as CO2, is certainly a noble and worthwhile objective, that should be supported. Unfortunately, most of these groups, at least in the US, where I live, are missing the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’. This includes:
1. The entire structure of American society has been built around fossil fuel consumption. This includes the use of automobiles and jet airplanes for transportation. The profits of very powerful corporate interests, including energy corporations, automobile manufactures and their suppliers, banks and insurance companies and law firms to name a few, are highly dependent on fossil fuel consumption and ‘greenhouse’ gas production. They are not about to give this up without a big fight, including going to war.
2. The military is a key pillar of a [declining] American empire, with the Pentagon serving as the ‘enforcer’ of US global power, but is also the largest of consumer of fossil fuels and largest polluter in the world [32]. The Pentagon is supported by all factions of the ruling elite, readily apparent from the near-unanimous bipartisan support for every military appropriation in Congress (appropriation for 2023 is $773 billion). Not surprisingly, most environmental groups, which are dependent on funding from corporate-backed foundations, such as the Ford Foundation, Home Depot Foundation, etc. [50] are not going to ‘bite the hand’ that feeds them. Likewise, US corporate media is controlled by 6 large corporations whose class interests reflect those of the petrochemical companies and other large corporations [51] [52] [53]. Any reporter who steps out of line- i.e., criticizes the functioning of the US empire, including fossil fuel consumption, is immediately reprimanded and/or fired. 1) Reporter Emily Wilder was fired from AP because she had posted pro-Palestinian material on social media [54]. 2) In 1996, investigative reporter Gary Webb published a series of articles entitled ‘Dark Alliance’ in the San Jose Mercury News, linking the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles with the Nicaraguan Contra rebels and the CIA. Not surprisingly, Webb’s story was met with outrage by MSM outlets such as the LA Times and Washington Post. Webb committed suicide in 2004 [55].
Concluding remarks
The survival of the American Empire is highly dependent on fossil fuel consumption and control of global energy reserves. This dependency has created irresolvable problems and led to a chaotic and at times, contradictory foreign policy. While there has been a lot of ‘whining’ about energy prices in the US and EU, the oil industry is reaping record profits. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter levied a “windfall” profits tax on the American oil industry in response to increasing gas prices and corporate profits [56]. While these taxes have had mixed results, no doubt a result of aggressive industry lobbying, there has been little discussion of taxing high corporate profits at the present time. Indeed, petrochemical industry profits were barely addressed in the recent US ‘midterm’ elections, as many candidates receive campaign contributions from energy companies. Fossil fuels still dominate US foreign policy. This can be seen from the enduring presence of military bases throughout the ME and maintaining generous financial support for Israel and the ruling families of Gulf Monarchies [57]. At the same time, these ruling families have watched the US/UK/NATO ferment coups in Iran (1953) [58] [59] and steal resources, invade and/or destroy Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen; impose crippling economic sanctions and/or confiscate the assets of countries deemed a threat to US global power such as Iran, Venezuela and Russia and sabotage energy infrastructure (see below). Not surprisingly, KSA and other Gulf Monarchies have been reaching out to Russia and China; multiple reports indicate that KSA is ‘eager’ to join the BRICS Bloc [60]. No doubt, this was a motivation for President Biden’s trip to KSA in July of this year, meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) at Al-Salam Palace in the Red Sea port of Jeddah. On Nov 18, the State Department recommended that MBS be granted ‘legal immunity’ for the brutal assassination of Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on Oct 2, 2018 [62] [63]. It should be noted that while campaigning for President, then candidate Joe Biden stated: he would “cancel the blank check” the Trump administration had given Saudi Arabia during its war in Yemen and during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) that “America’s priorities in the Middle East should be set in Washington, not Riyadh” and advocated making Saudi Arabia an international “pariah” for butchering Jamal Khashoggi [61]. Rhetoric notwithstanding, Biden’s polices towards the MENA region are largely a continuation of those of Trump and the ruling elite they represent. Biden has not rejoined the JCPOA and has continued Trump’s bellicose position towards the Islamic Republic of Iran. The US continues supporting Israel, the US Embassy in Israel remains in Jerusalem (Al-Quds in Arabic), which is not Israeli land and thus, a blatant violation of International law [64], US troops remain in Iraq and Syria while the Pentagon continues assisting KSA in their genocidal war on Yemen [65]. Trump continues his financial dealings with KSA, recently signing a $1.6 billion deal with a Saudi real estate developer [66]. It will be interesting to see how the US reacts when KSA joins BRICS [67].
On Sept 26, 2022, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany, under the Baltic Sea were blown up [68] [69]. Shortly after the explosions, erstwhile British Prime Minister Liz Truss allegedly sent a message to US Sec of State Anthony Blinken stating ‘it’s done’ [70]. While the actual perpetrators of this attack have not been identified, it is likely that the US at a very minimum was aware of this action, as pointed out by Professor Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University) during a Bloomberg interview [71]. The end result is that Germany and other countries in the EU will no longer have access to cheap and plentiful Russian energy, but will now be forced to purchase much more expensive liquified natural gas from the US or other countries. It should also be noted that nearly 8 decades following the conclusion of WWII, the Pentagon maintains circa 900 foreign military bases worldwide [72] [73]. Europe is still occupied by circa 100K troops [74], 35K in Germany alone [75]. Thus, Germany is not really a US ‘ally’ but rather a subordinate. This begs the question; will Germany and other countries in the EU continue serving as de facto US vassals or begin following a more independent foreign policy? One could argue their very survival as functional states depends on this.
9. John D. Rockefeller and the Oil Industry- John D. Rockefeller changed the oil industry forever with his company Standard Oil. but that was by no means the only interesting thing about him. By Burton W. Folsom Foundation for Economic Education Sat Oct 1, 1988; https://fee.org/articles/john-d-rockefeller-and-the-oil-industry/
18. How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power- Rumors of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today’s president By Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell The Guardian Sat Sep 25, 2004; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
35. Missiles of Iran- Iran possesses the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East, with thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, some capable of striking as far as Israel and southeast Europe. CSIS Aug 10, 2021; https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/iran/
48. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) at a Glance. Kelsey Davenport, Director of Nonproliferation Policy, Arms Control Association Mar, 2022;
52. These 6 corporations control 90% of the media outlets in America- The illusion of choice and objectivity. By Nickie Louise Tech Startups Sept 18, 2020;
61. Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia is the right thing to do, even if it feels wrong
The U.S. president has rightly come to the conclusion that a strategy of isolating the crown prince isn’t feasible. By Daniel R. DePetris NBC News July 15, 2022;
68. Who Attacked Nord Stream 2? Maybe it was Russia, though that doesn’t make much sense. There are better candidates. By Doug Bandow Cato Institute Oct 14,
69. A journey to the site of the Nord Stream explosions- Prosecutors in Sweden say explosions on a gas pipeline between Russia and Europe were the result of sabotage. The explosions in the Baltic Sea targeted pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Europe. Russia denies any involvement. Before the announcement, Katya Adler travelled to the site, and was separately told by Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg that the west could go to war if Russia attacked infrastructure providing critical energy supplies. By Katya Adler BBC News Nov 18, 2022; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63636181
70. ‘It’s done’: Putin fumes after Liz Truss ‘message’ to Blinken over Nord Stream attack ‘revealed’ Hindustan Times Nov 4, 2022; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxzBqghRs5k
The Palestinian Nakba began exactly 105 years ago with the release of a letter from then-British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to the leader of the Zionist movement in what became infamously called the Balfour Declaration.
The project to establish the Zionist entity was and still is based on a long-term joint program between the Zionist movement and some colonial powers, primarily Britain and the US
As someone who grew up and was raised in the city of Yafa after the occupation of eastern Palestine in the 1967 war – known as the Naksa – in the house of his late grandfather and under the auspices of a great educational figure such as my grandmother, known as Madame Khoury, who’s slogan “I’d rather die in my house in Yafa than become a refugee” became a mantra that engraved in our minds the effect of attachment to the land… and as someone who listened and read the successive enthusiastic political articles of his father, the political writer Naim Youssef Machool, about the Nakba, the land, agriculture and steadfastness, as well as the articles, plays, interviews, and lectures of his mother, writer and novelist Antoinette Adeeb El-Khoury, I thought that based on this extensive personal experience, I should support and base my claim, listed below, on journalistic observations from the 80s and 90s in Palestine in particular and on two decades of academic research on the Palestinian issue in Britain in particular, and present a contribution to an expanded project whose main idea I will briefly list below.
We say that it is widely accepted that the Nakba of the Palestinians took place chronologically under the British mandate between the partition plan and Resolution of 29/11/1947 and the 1949 armistice with Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, although there was no agreement within the framework of an armistice or the like with the Palestinian people; whether those who were expelled from it or those who remained in their homeland.
Accordingly, the struggle involving the Palestinian people remains open: Zionist domination of Palestine and Palestinian resistance against the occupation.
This article, part of which was presented at the University of Freiburg in Germany in 2011 and the Bandung Conference in 2015 and 2022, argues that although the most catastrophic period of the Palestinian Nakba (lit. catastrophe) reached its peak between 1947 and 1949, the Nakba was neither the beginning nor the end of the Palestinian people’s catastrophe.
This article claims that the Nakba of the Palestinian people began exactly 105 years ago with the release of a letter from then-British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to the leader of the Rothschild Zionist movement in what became infamously known as the Balfour Declaration issued on 2/11/1917, which followed the occupation of Palestine by Britain that was involved in WWI, especially the occupation of Al-Quds by General Allenby in December 1917.
It also argues that the Nakba includes everything that has happened since then until now, but certainly, this catastrophe reached its peak between 1947 and 1949 – which witnessed the forced expulsion of half of the Palestinian people from their homeland and the destruction of the majority of Palestine’s cultural, commercial, and social structure – and is continuing deliberately according to a plan that has not stopped until achieving liberation and independence.
Apart from emotional slogans, the project to establish the Zionist entity was and still is based on a long-term joint program between the Zionist movement and some colonial powers, primarily Britain and the US. In addition, this article claims and warns that an attempt to implement a new chapter of the Nakba of the Palestinian people is very possible, including the expulsion of additional Palestinians from West and East Palestine because the goal is to seize Palestine as a whole and the Palestinian people are seen as an obstacle that must be eliminated to achieve this goal.
Since the peak of the Nakba between 1947 and 1949, Palestinians, whom I defined as the survivors of the Nakba – meaning those who were able to remain in their homeland and who were intended to be loggers and waterers, as per the Israeli occupation administration, for the ruling Zionist class and its Jewish Arab servants who were brought in from the Arab countries to colonize Palestine – consisted a “security problem” not only in Al-Jaleel, the Triangle Area, and Al-Naqab, but also in the Palestinian coastal cities, such as Akka in the north and Yafa in the south.
When late historian Dr. Constantin Zureik published the book The Meaning of the Nakba in 1948, a few months after the catastrophe and the peak of the Nakba, his description of the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people was accurate – due to what he witnessed personally and through his professional academic tools – being coupled with a resounding catastrophic psychological trauma.
However, examining what has happened to the Palestinian people, during the past 105 years, requires a new definition or at least an updated definition of the Nakba that has prevailed so far. What happened since 1917 onward shows the numerous and ongoing chapters of the Nakba of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration till now, including the decision to partition Palestine in 1947 and the occupation of the second part of Palestine in 1967, the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987, the Oslo Accords and their offshoots between 1993 and 1994 and the second Palestinian Intifada that began in Al-Quds in 2000, as well as the killing of the first official Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004, the repeated wars on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing aggression against the occupied West Bank and Al-Quds, in addition to a set of racist laws against the Palestinian people in western Palestine, specifically the so-called “National Law” of 2018, the continuous killing of the Palestinian people in occupied East Palestine and the arrest of more than a million Palestinian since the Naksa, including women, children and elderly, the expanding settlement that hasn’t stopped and the confiscation of lands, the so-called “Deal of the Century” and Netanyahu and Trump’s annexation scheme, which I called in a previous article the “third armed robbery,” and the economic and “military” occupation siege on the Gaza Strip by air, sea and land,
On December 16, 2016, exactly on the 99th anniversary of the issuance of the Balfour Letter, we launched the Palestine Initiative 100 to re-engage with the beginning of this catastrophe. We were determined to renew encouragement to open the Balfour file since the beginning of the Palestinian people’s Nakba in 1917 and held a publicity evening in London, the capital of the British Empire that issued the Balfour Letter to the Zionist movement. As part of holding Britain to its historical, legal, and moral responsibilities, we demanded three types of steps: apology, compensation, and correction. We believe that canceling any of these steps would be naive, incomplete, or deceptive.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
The theoretical and ideological origins of Zionism are European, not Semitic. Zionism is ideologically rooted in European imperialism, colonialism and racism.
Contemporary Zionism pursues its assigned role as an advanced military and intelligence base of Anglo-American, European imperialism – Part V
The theoretical and ideological origins of Zionism and its political construct in “Israel” are European and not Semitic. The Zionist movement dates back to the 1880s, and is predominantly a European movement transplanted into the Middle East and into the United States of America. The World Zionist Organization was founded in 1897 by Theodore Herzl, born in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. In 1896, Herzl, in a pamphlet, ‘Der Judenstaat’, written in German, and published both in Leipzig and Vienna, envisioned the formation of a “Jewish State”. This organization was later led by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who was one of those “central to the discussions” with Zionist organizations in the UK and the USA which led to the Balfour Declaration and very early proposed that a future Zionist state could safeguard the trade route of the Suez Canal among other such promises to protect Western strategic interests in the Arab heartlands then controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Dr. Chaim Weizmann was born at Minsk in Tsarist Russia in 1874, in the then region of Belarus; educated in Switzerland and Germany, and later worked and resided in the UK for many years teaching Chemistry at Manchester University in Britain and became a scientist. Zionism was an offshoot of the political conditions of Europe fostered by European monarchies over centuries, using the religion and ethnicity of minorities for frequent pogroms against minority populations, whether Christian or Protestant or Jewish, as a political diversion from the political failures of the monarchical political system, and by demonizing minorities to justify the autocratic and arbitrary rule, to ensure absolute control of their citizens.
The Zionist ideology was inspired both by the 19th Century monarchical and European concept of a dominant absolute militarist state based on religious loyalty, and the European Colonial project to establish settler societies in vast continents, initiated by the British in North America in the United States and Canada, in Australia, and New Zealand (now known as the five eyes); and in former apartheid South Africa and former Rhodesia; in the French colonial settler project in North Africa in Algeria and the Maghreb; the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Latin America; Portuguese Colonial territories in South America; Belgian territories in the Congo; Dutch settlements in the East Indies and South Africa, and German settlements in South West Africa and East Africa among others; for the seizure of resources and exploitation of colonial surpluses to fuel the European development project of global economic and political expansionism. Conquest and colonial settlements were accelerated by the technological developments of the Industrial Revolution, enabling rapid commercial exploitation of vast areas of the world.
“To remake immense stretches of terrain to suit the lifestyles of another continent inevitably entailed the undermining and elimination of ways of life of those who had inhabited those lands for thousands of years. The project of terraforming was therefore fundamentally conflictual, it was in itself a mode of warfare of a distinct kind”. * (Amitav Ghosh, ‘The Nutmeg’s Curse, Parables for a Planet in Crisis’, published in 2021 by Allen Lane, Penguin Random House India)
The British and European imperial, racist colonial-settler projects and the Zionist imperial colonial- settler apartheid project of “Israel” are both based on a similar theory of an exceptional or superior or ‘chosen people’ and race with the same strategies.
The important features of Zionism are identical to the settlement strategy of the British and European Colonial Settler Project in North America, to Spanish and Portuguese colonial settlements in South America; to French colonial settlements in Algeria and to Boer and British colonial settlements in South Africa, in Australia and New Zealand among European settlements in other regions of the world are :
a) The myth of a superior or exceptional race or ‘chosen people’ entitled to the seizure of land and resources;
b) The European narrative of a subhuman or inferior Indigenous or tribal or heathen population in territories to be seized, alleging underutilization or incompetent use of land, resources and water;
c) The right to kill, exterminate or ethnically cleanse the Indigenous population of territories forcibly occupied to re-settle European races for colonization with the settlers maintaining social, cultural and political linkages with European countries of origin;
d) To stealthily and by design adopt strategies to reduce the Indigenous population, to monopolize land and resources for the European settler community through military means, or the use of bio-weapons, or both, like the germ warfare on Native Americans and their elimination through war.
e) Prohibition of Inter-racial marriages;
f) Control of water reservoirs, lakes and river waters of the occupied land;
g) Cultural erasures directed at national identity, history, names of cities, towns, settlements and geographical sites and cultural expressions;
h) Military and political domination.
An examination of Zionism and its political entity “Israel” lays bare the reality that it shares all the above characteristics of the earlier Anglo-Saxon and European Imperial project of Settler Colonization, and is based on the Zionist myth of a ‘Chosen People’, in reality another theory of a ‘Superior Race’ or ‘Exceptional’ race similar to the Nazi theory of the superior ‘Aryan race’ with its pursuit of ‘Lebensraum’ in the territories of the Slavs; which in the case of the European settler colonization was also sought to be justified through the encyclical of the Pope conferring the religious right on European nations to exploit the world, though Christianity is an Asian or Eastern religious faith later re-interpreted and adopted by the Roman Empire with political objectives. It is time to roll back all these racial myths, which have led to barbarism and rivers of blood flowing across continents, to restore human civilization.
To dismantle the Israeli Apartheid State and its genocidal policies necessitates a united resistance in the region and worldwide support, adopting diverse strategies to roll back the racist and apartheid Zionist and NATO military and intelligence Israeli project in Palestine. The Palestinian National Liberation movement is one of the oldest national liberations in the world. Like the Hezbollah the National Resistance Movement of Lebanon, the people of Palestine have never surrendered and need wider support, as Zionism is a global economic and financial project integrated with Western Imperialism against peoples’ interests everywhere, in Asia, Africa, Eurasia, the United States of America and Europe.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
The British colonialists viewed the Zionist movement as a tool for their imperial designs and hence the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917.
74 Years of Historical Injustice: The Creation of “Israel”
“Al-Nakba” is the Arabic term used to commemorate the creation of the “State of Israel” on May 15, 1948. “Al Nakba” literally means “catastrophe”, which best describes how Arab peoples feel about the creation of the Hebrew “state” in Palestine at the expense of its legitimate owners; the Palestinian Arabs.
In 1948, the principles of right and justice were, literally, butchered at the hands of the Zionist gangs and militias known as Haganah, which later turned into the “Israeli Army”. The Jewish Zionists in Palestine, who emigrated mainly from Eastern Europe, were preparing for this day for decades. The Zionists knew very well that they were not welcomed in Palestine and will never be accepted by Arab nations, so conquering the land by force was their sole path to achieving their goals in Palestine. War with the Arabs, in the Zionists’ eyes, was inevitable. Extensive military planning and preparations were undertaken by the Zionists in Palestine since their early arrivals at the beginning of the 20th century and particularly after Great Britain took over Palestine at the end of World War I.
The British colonialists viewed the Zionist movement as a tool for their imperial designs and hence the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917, confirming Great Britain’s commitment to establishing a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine. The Zionists were receiving full support from the colonial power, which was true to its pledge. Waves of Jewish immigrants arrived from Europe to strengthen the Zionist project in Palestine, and by 1947, when the Palestine partition plan was passed at the UN, the Zionists had a 75,000 semi-army force, which was further aided by another 20,000 Jewish militants in the following year when they waged their war on the Arabs in Palestine in 1948. When the British withdrew their forces from Palestine in 1948, they handed their military installations, camps, and equipment to the Haganah, thus leaving behind them a fully armed and well-trained Jewish army ready to fight the Arabs in Palestine who were practically deprived of weapons and even the slightest means of defense.
The Zionists, who were owning a mere 6% of the land in Palestine in 1948, launched their “war of independence” against the Arabs, which ended in declaring their Jewish “state of Israel” after conquering about 80% of historical Palestine by force and bloodshed. The war was brutal, and the Zionists exhibited utmost forms of savagery and cruelty. Many massacres against civilian Arabs were committed in several cities and villages in Palestine. In one of the most horrible massacres, 254 civilian villagers, including women and children, were killed in cold blood at the hands of Zionist terrorists in the town of Der Yassin, near Jerusalem. Other brutal crimes were also committed in Haifa, Tantura, and Lydd, and the Zionist terror campaign resulted in about 800,000 Palestinian Arabs fleeing their homes and lands and becoming refugees in neighboring Arab countries, namely Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. Total destruction was inflicted by the Haganah on 531 Arab villages all over Palestine. About 85% of the Arabs who lived within the borders of the to-be “State of Israel” were forcefully expelled. It was ethnic cleansing in its ugliest forms.
The world was watching while these Zionist crimes were happening in Palestine and did practically nothing except some relief efforts and humanitarian aid. Even when “Israel” officially decided to confiscate the Palestinian refugees’ homes, lands, and properties in 1949, the UN did not bother to intervene. Actually, it was no surprise, as the UN was under the domination of the Great Powers of the post-World War II era, particularly the UK and USA, both supporting the new Jewish “state” which was planted in the heart of the Arab world.
After the 1948 war ended, “Israel’ firmly refused to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their country and demanded they be settled permanently in the other Arab countries. Furthermore, “Israel” refused to admit to the crimes committed by its troops and even declined to acknowledge its responsibility for uprooting the Palestinian Arabs and turning most of them into stateless refugees in miserable camps. The Israeli narrative about the Palestinian refugee problem is that they “voluntarily” left their homes and lands! And “Israel” refused to pay any financial compensation to the refugees whose properties were illegally confiscated and taken over by Jewish settlers. In 1967, another wave of displaced Palestinian refugees was added to the 1948 one to make the problem even worse. Again, the world did nothing apart from some expressions of sorrow for the humanitarian suffering of the refugees. With the help of its patron, the US, “Israel” escaped any accountability for its crimes and actions.
Seven decades have passed, with successive generations, and the status of the Palestinian refugees is still the same; not allowed to return to their historical homeland, not compensated, and not recognized as victims of historical injustice!
“Al-Nakba” will remain the term to be used to describe what happened on May 15, 1948, as long as the Palestinian suffering at the hands of the Israeli occupation continues. It’s a shame that the world allows such a tragedy to go on this long. It’s a shame that “Israel” is left without accountability.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
The British government’s discredited Home Secretary Priti Patel has once again emerged as Israel’s leading in-house lobbyist.
Though her credibility was severely dented when as UK Aid Minister she had to resign in 2017 following her scandalous unauthorized meetings with senior Israeli officials, Patel has made a comeback to yet again plunge the British establishment into a deeper foreign policy mess.
She has now announced dramatic plans to prescribe Palestinian liberation movement Hamas as a “terrorist entity”.
Previously only the military wing of Hamas, Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was proscribed under the UK Terrorism Act 2000.
In a statement released by her, Patel sounded no different to right-wing hawks in control of the apartheid regime: “Hamas has significant terrorist capability, including access to extensive and sophisticated weaponry, as well as terrorist training facilities. That is why today I have acted to proscribe Hamas in its entirety.”
Though her proscription order was introduced a few days ago and debating and voting were expected to follow shortly, the process will require approval by Parliament.
If approved, showing support for Hamas – including organizing events in support of them and flying the movement’s flag – could see punishments of up to 14 years in prison.
Not surprisingly, Israel has gleefully welcomed Patel’s announcement. Defense Minister Benny Gantz said it “sends a strong message of zero tolerance toward terrorist activities aimed at harming the State of Israel and Jewish communities.”
Absent from most media reports is the bizarre fact that Patel confirmed her moves in a speech on security and counter-terrorism in Washington.
BBC’S diplomatic correspondent James Landale suggested that the decision should also be seen through a domestic UK prism.
“Israel has been pushing for this for some time and the fact it is now happening reflects the deep contacts that Israel has within the Conservative Party.”
No newcomer to controversy, Patel is described by various British sources including Wikipedia as Eurosceptic. She “was a leading figure in the Vote Leave campaign for Brexit during the 2016 referendum on UK membership of the European Union.”
Reports indicate that following Cameron’s resignation, Patel supported Theresa May’s bid to become Conservative leader; May subsequently appointed Patel Secretary of State for International Development.
However, her breach of the Ministerial Code in 2017 when Patel was involved in a shameful political scandal involving clandestine meetings with Netanyahu and fellow government leaders in Israel, ended her tenure.
Though the unauthorized conduct of holding 12 separate meetings during a family holiday to Israel without notifying the Foreign Office or Downing Street had disgraced her, Boris Johnson ignored Patel’s violations by resuscitating her political career.
That the controversy surrounding her turbulent political career would expectedly have cautioned responsible leaders, Johnson chose to cave into the pro-Israel lobby by deploying her in one of the most powerful cabinet positions.
In making this outlandish move, Patel has selectively chosen to remain silent on the fact that Hamas, having engaged in Palestine’s political process and won the legislative elections in 2006, was rebuffed by the British government. In doing so, the UK defied and denied the political choice made by Palestinians.
As expected, Hamas has expressed its “shock and dismay” at the move.
It called on the government to apologize for the Balfour Declaration, which illegally set the stage for the creation of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine in 1917, during the month of November.
The statement added: “The Palestinian people, backed by the Arab and Muslim nations and the free people of the world, will continue their fight for freedom and return at any cost and will not be discouraged by those who failed to support them.
“We are confident that the Palestinians will fulfill their aspirations for freedom and independence sooner or later.”
Given the fact that Hamas espouses Islamic values and that its defense of Masjid al Aqsa is profoundly admired, it is widely believed that the overwhelming majority of Muslims across the world support it.
Britain’s four million-plus Muslim population would be no exception to this. It goes without saying that solidarity with Palestine’s freedom struggle is intertwined with support for Hamas.
But by Patel’s decree, Muslims and millions of British citizens of various faith groups, found to be pro-Hamas will face criminal charges and the prospect of long-term jail.
– Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the South Africa-based Media Review Network. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit: www.mediareviewnet.com
The Palestinian resistance factions unanimously agree that the recent British decision to classify Hamas as a “terrorist organization” is biased toward the Israeli occupation.
The factions pointed out that “the British decision exposes the pro-Zionist policy since the Balfour Declaration.”
The Palestinian resistance factions condemned the UK’s recent decision to consider the Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, a “terrorist organization.”
The factions pointed out that “the British decision exposes the pro-Zionist policy since the Balfour Declaration.”
They indicated that such decisions will encourage the occupation to commit more crimes against Palestinians under international cover.
Nonetheless, the “hateful” British policies will only increase the resistance’s determination to confront the occupation and defeat it, the factions affirmed.
The resistance factions called on Britain to retract the “unjust” decision, which they described as an attack on the Palestinians’ right to resist the occupation and restore their land.
PFLP calls on Britain to retract “biased” decision
For its part, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) denounced the British decision and said it targets the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people.
The PFLP also demanded Britain to retract the “biased” decision and urged the country to correct its mistake that led to the establishment of the Israeli occupation settlements on the Palestinian lands.
In the same context, the PFLP asked supporters in Britain and Europe to stand up to this decision and condemn it, stressing that Britain is biased to the Israeli occupation crimes, assaults, and land confiscation, which represent the “real terrorism.”
In the same context, the Mujahideen movement brigades strongly rejected the recent decision and considered that it is part of the continuous Western aggression against Palestinians.
The movement affirmed that the UK decision will strengthen the will of Hamas and its leadership in resisting the occupation, adding that the leaders of the occupation are the ones who should be included on the terrorism list.
The Palestinian embassy in Britain urged Britain to reconsider the decision
In a statement, the Palestinian Mission to the UK condemned the latest British decision classifying Hamas as a terrorist organization, and considered that “with this move, the British government has complicated Palestinian unity efforts and undermined Palestinian democracy.”
The head of the Mission, Husam Zomlot, urged the UK government to reconsider its decision and to adopt a more even-handed approach.
British Home Secretary Priti Patel: “We can no longer disaggregate the sort of military and political side.”
British Home Secretary Priti Patel announced Friday, that Hamas Movement was ‘outlawed’; a move consistent with the US and EU’s stance on the Movement.
Patel said, “Hamas has the significant terrorist capability, including access to extensive and sophisticated weaponry, as well as terrorist training facilities,” adding, “That is why today I have acted to proscribe Hamas in its entirety.”
“We’ve taken the view that we can no longer disaggregate the sort of military and political side. It’s based upon a wide range of intelligence, information and also links to terrorism. The severity of that speaks for itself,” the Secretary added.
Until now, only Hamas’ military wing was banned in the United Kingdom, while the Movement is blacklisted in the US and the EU.
If Britain adopts this designation after next week’s scheduled debate in Parliament, membership in Hamas or the promotion of the Movement will be punishable with imprisonment of up to 14 years, under the provisions of the British “Anti-Terrorism Act”, according to the Ministry of the Interior.
There will be no free and peaceful Arab-Persian world as long as the Israeli colonial Euro-Zionist regime exists.
I. By way of dialogue
1907
ABDALLAH: Mustafa, British colonialism prepared a scientific report (Bannerman), in order to prolong itself as an empire. The report says that the Arab world is an obstacle to the European colonial order, and for this, it is necessary to articulate our disintegration, division, and separation. Imposing politicians to serve imperial interests. To combat any movement of unity, whether intellectual, cultural, ethnic, historical, political, religious, economic, scientific, military, etc. And to achieve this it must be through the establishment of an “agent state”, with a foreign population affectionate to Europe and its interests.
MUSTAPHA: That is absurd, it is impossible to achieve that, and even less so within the Arab idiosyncrasy. It’s ridiculous, it’s nonsense.
1915
ABDALLAH: Mustafa, the French and British colonialists are making a secret agreement called Sykes Pico. Creating borders to divide our Arab lands between them.
MUSTAFA: Let’s abolish any colonizing savage.
1917
ABDALLAH: Mustafa, you remember when in 1907 I told you about the Bannerman Report. British colonialism has just passed The Balfour Declaration. It is for the establishment of a Jewish “Home” here, in our Palestine.
MUSTAFA: Home? It’s a trap and they will never, never achieve it. The Arab spirit will never allow these Europeans to impose colonialism under the mantle of the Jewish religion in our Palestine. Today we must free ourselves from this British colonial yoke and our Palestine will be free.
1947
ABDALLAH: Mustafa, do you remember when in 1917 I told you about the Balfour Declaration? A newly created international organization, I think it’s called the UN, the United Nations. It has voted a resolution for the creation of the “State of Israel” in our Palestine. They gave it 64% of our homeland.
MUSTAFA: I don’t believe that a newly created international organization has that power. It is absurd and impossible.
May 14, 1948
ABDALLAH: Mustafa my love, I knew your sister was beheaded. The European Zionist movement has proclaimed, The Declaration of the Creation of the “State of Israel”. Terror, panic, macabre killings, this is genocide, Al-Nakba. The British handed over our Palestine to the Jewish Europeans.
MUSTAFA: We will go to war, we will liberate our Palestine. The Arab world will rise up. Long live Arab love.
1967
ABDALLAH: Mustafa, Israeli colonialism in 1948 took away part of our Palestine, and today, they have colonized all of our historic Palestine. And they have also taken territories from Egypt and Syria.
MUSTAFA: We must continue to fight my beloved Abdallah.
1978
ABDALLAH: Mustafa, the dictator of Egypt, Anwar El Sadat, has recognized the colonial regime of “Israel” in exchange for the return of the Egyptian territories in the Sinai that were taken by colonization in 1967.
MUSTAFA: Abdallah, Anwar El Sadat is a traitor and all these Arab dictators are traitors, that’s why they are in power. We must fight and we will win.
1987
ABDALLAH: Mustafa my love…The Intifada…how beautiful and divine is this popular uprising against colonialism. It’s a popular uprising, it has no leaders, it comes from the entrails of the people. It is magical, it is wonderful, it is loving… Mustafa my love. It must not stop, it must go on until victory until the liberation of our Palestine.
MUSTAFA: Yes, the Intifada must not stop. How divine is the Revolution, how sweet is this love, Palestine, Palestine, Palestine! My two great-grandchildren are imprisoned and they destroyed my brother’s house. The world is watching our pain. When Israeli colonialism falls, all the Arab dictatorships will fall, and above all the bloody Gulf dictatorships.
1993
ABDALLAH: Mustafa they have stopped the Intifada. The PLO in Oslo recognizes the colonial regime of “Israel”. They talk about two states. They do not talk about the right of return of Palestinian refugees. They only give us 22% of our homeland. It is a hoax, it is a trap.
2000
MUSTAFA: Abdallah, Israeli expansionist colonization has been defeated in Lebanon, it has had to withdraw from Lebanon. This is a victory for our Lebanese people. They withdrew without imposing any conditions. Long live Hezbollah and long live the armed resistance! This is the greatest victory we have achieved.
ABDALLAH: Yes Mustafa, it is a victory, it is the unquenchable faith and determination in the struggle. And thanks to the union, the union between Hezbollah and Iran, we Palestinians, in Oslo, accepted humiliating conditions. Colonialism was supposed to give us 22% of the territory and far from withdrawing, they have taken more of our homeland.
2003
ABDALLAH: Mustafa, the Zionist lobby is asking the United States to invade Iraq, they created the attacks of September 11 to justify this cruel invasion, slandering that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction.
MUSTAFA: It is about dismembering the Arab world bit by bit.
2010
ABDALLAH: Mustafa, there is a popular revolt in Tunisia against the tyrant Ben Ali, that puppet of France. This is going to have a domino effect in the Arab world. Oh, I have fear and hope.
MUSTAFA: Abdallah, remember that the Intifada was popular and then it was hijacked and now we are worse with this Palestinian Authority which is a collaborator of colonialism. We have to be very careful, we cannot be naïve.
2020
ABDALLAH: Mustafa, the Gulf monarchies already shamelessly recognize the colonial “state of Israel”, they do it to perpetuate themselves in power, they are making astronomical economic investments. The shedding of our Palestinian blood is the throne of these macabre Arab traitors. They are falsifying Islam and making it look like the enemy is Iran. These traitors do not see that by defending Palestine they are protecting their own nation, as colonialism will come after for them, they are putting the sovereignty of the Arab peoples at risk. I thought these traitors were smarter.
MUSTAFA: Yes, I also thought these miserable traitors were smarter.
2062
MUSTAFA: Abdallah, our noble cause of Palestinian liberation is no longer in the conscience of the international community, as it once was. Today we are a tourist attraction of the Israeli colonial regime. In Jerusalem we sell Tatriz (embroidery), we dance Dabke, we sell our typical culinary dishes, as typical of the colonial regime of “Israel”. Arabs come from the Gulf and say they are happy to be in “Israel”, in the land of their “cousins”.
2073
MUSTAPHA: Abdallah, “Israel’s” expansionist colonialism has occupied part of Jordan…
II. The Mutilated Arab-Persian History
Walking through the streets of Damascus, Syria.
– Uncle, uncle, Habibi, good morning, where is the train station? I have to go to Jerusalem for a few days. Then I have to go to Baghdad and Iran. By train, it is cheaper and I will be able to see all those landscapes and villages…
III. Zionism, radiography of the end of the Arab-Persian world. This is impossible, absurd, nonsensical, and ridiculous.
“When the truth is too weak to defend itself, it will have to go on the attack.”
– Bertolt Brecht
At this stage of the Zionist colonial process, in its advance to put an end to the original Palestinian people, there are two aspects that I want to point out in this article: the return to armed struggle as an alternative for national liberation and the end of “Israel’s” colonial regime.
After the imposition of “Israel’s” colonial regime in Palestine from Europe, which was seen and felt like an impossible, absurd, nonsensical, and ridiculous project from the point of view of logic; today, from logic, the same will be said when it is considered that the Arab-Persian and Kurdish world and culture can be plundered, falsified… modalities of dispossession for its disappearance.
It could be said that there will be no free and peaceful Arab-Persian world as long as the Israeli colonial Euro-Zionist regime exists. But that is not the point, the point is that the Arab-Persian world is threatened to disappear.
Since the Oslo accords, fewer Palestinians are talking about the liberation of Palestine, about the independence of historic Palestine. Fewer Palestinians are expressing their struggle against the colonial yoke and anachronism of “Israel”. And especially the Palestinians in the Diaspora, because Western repression is so strong. The Palestinians have submitted and are dragging themselves to the Western Euro-Zionist agenda by only debating on one or two states. While colonialism has it clear and is moving to put an end to the original Palestinian people.
There are honest Western souls devoted to solidarity with the Palestinian people, sincere beings, but I am opposed to them, I’m opposed to the ones who demand the right for “Israel” to exist in our historical Palestine. The concept of peace does not come from the comfort, fear, functionalism, immediacy, and naivety of a trade unionist, feminist, academic, intellectual, politician, student, artist, activist. There is implicit colonialism there, even if they act in good faith.
Every native people has the dignified right to abolish their respective colonizer and that is always a contribution to humanity.
This would be an artificial and dead struggle, if it is not fought from the raison d’être of the Palestinian cause, from the essence and root of the Palestinian cause, that is, the struggle of a native people against a colonial yoke, today, in the 21st century.
As anti-Zionists, we must be a philosophical and moral challenge to the obscurantism of the academic-intellectual priesthood.
I find it degrading, contrary to the spirit of the human thinking verb, to exclude, ban, censor, repress, and silence from the world of debate the end of “Israel’s” colonial regime in Palestine, on the pretext that we must think about peace. One has to be realistic, especially because of the fear of not being accused of anti-Semitism. Everyone has the right to express his or her belief that this colonial regime should exist in Palestine. What should not be accepted is that this point should be banned from the universe of debate.
In the liberation of the Palestinian people against the colonial yoke and anachronism of “Israel”, it is intrinsic to never, ever expel the so-called Israeli, otherwise, it would be a philosophical and moral betrayal. The figure known as an Israeli would become a Palestinian citizen. That is what the statutes of the extinct League of Nations demanded, where thousands of thousands of Jews applied.
If you tell me that this is impossible and that I must be realistic, I say: don’t be creative people with complex and articulate cowards. Let us be able to position justice, to transcend intellectuality. And as Ernesto Guevara said: Let’s be realistic, let’s do the impossible.The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
Six Human Rights Groups Shuttered and Still the Bell Tolls for Israe
Part I—Six Human Rights Groups Shuttered
On 19 October 2021, the Israeli Defense Ministry officially labeled six well known Palestinian human rights associations as “terrorist organizations.” Israel uses a definition of “terrorism” that is unreasonably broad. Just about any criticism as well as non-violent resistance to its evolving apartheid regime can and often is deemed “terrorism.” As this instance shows, this arrangement allows Israeli authorities to themselves terrorize groups that most sane people would recognize as having nothing to do with terrorism.
The six organizational victims of this strategy are Addameer, al-Haq, Defense for Children Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees. Applying the terrorist tag “authorizes Israeli authorities to close their offices, seize their assets and arrest and jail their staff members, and it prohibits funding or even publicly expressing support for their activities.”
There are only two classes of people who would fall for this deceit: (1) those embedded in the Zionist thought collective—the world of Israel “über alles” (my use of this specific term is explained below); and (2) those politicians and bureaucrats so firmly tied (financially or otherwise) to the various Zionist lobbies that they would be compelled to forgo reason and agree to anything the Zionists say. Much of the Washington power structure falls into this category.
Beyond those categories, people capable of independent thought and in knowledgable positions condemned the Israeli action:
The Israeli news magazine +972, which has obtained copies of the classified testimony providing “evidence” against the six groups, has characterized the charges as unproven. +972 describes it as a “political attack under the guise of security.” In their estimate the entire case is a hodgepodge of innuendo and assumption, some of it obtained by Israel’s security service, Shin Bet, by threatening witnesses and their families.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both of which have long interacted with many of the charged groups, condemned the Israeli action in harsh terms:
“This appalling and unjust decision is an attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement. For decades, Israeli authorities have systematically sought to muzzle human rights monitoring and punish those who criticize its repressive rule over Palestinians. … Palestinian human rights defenders have always borne the brunt of the repression. … The decades-long failure of the international community to challenge grave Israeli human rights abuses and impose meaningful consequences for them has emboldened Israeli authorities to act in this brazen manner.”
The often clear-sighted Israeli newspaper Haaretz also took exception to the government action.
“The government’s declaration of civil society organizations in the West Bank as terrorist organizations is a destructive folly that tarnishes all of the parties in the coalition and the state itself. The outlawing of human rights groups and persecution of humanitarian activists are quintessential characteristics of military regimes, in which democracy in its deepest sense is a dead letter.”
Besides its habitual and often sadistic persecution of Palestinians, Israel had immediate reasons to silence these six organizations. An analysis given byOpen Democracy noted that on 5 February 2021 the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled that the ICC had jurisdiction over events occurring in Israel’s Occupied Territories. Then, on 3 March the court opened up a criminal investigation into Israeli practices and policies in this area. Open Democracy then explained:
“All six banned organizations have for decades been critically involved in the documentation and monitoring of alleged Israeli human rights violations, war crimes and Apartheid in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories]. … All of this work has been a major evidential basis for the demand to open criminal investigations by the International Criminal Court (ICC).”
In other words, Israel’s “terrorist” canard is, at least in part, the Zionists seeking to obstruct justice. Like most organized groups of law-breakers they prioritize their own interests above those of the community—in this case the international community. In doing so they undermine inter-community standards of ethics and values enshrined in international law. Ultimately, they see such law as an obstacle to their ideologically driven goal of national expansion and Jewish (that is, the Zionist version of Judaism) supremacy.
Part II—Yet the Bell Still Tolls for Israel
None of this is new. The Zionists have always been this way. Driven by an ethnic-centered, settler nationalism, their incapacity to deal fairly with the Palestinians was recognized even before the Balfour Declaration was announced in 1917. Below are some of the earlier, prescient warnings of the danger to Judaism inherent in a Zionist state ideology.
Ahad Ha-am (the pen name of the famous Jewish moralist Asher Ginzberg) noted as early as 1891 that Zionist settlers in Palestine have “an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these deeds.” He warned that such behavior stemmed from the political orientation of the Zionist movement which could only end up “morally corrupting” the Jewish people.
Unlike the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, who famously desired that the Jews become a nation like all other nations, Ha-am believed that the return to Zion was worthwhile only if the Jews did not become like other nations. By 1913, Ha-am knew this was not to be, and he rejected the nature of Zionism as it was evolving. “If this be the Messiah,” he wrote, “I do not wish to see his coming.”
As the issuance of the Balfour Declaration drew nearer, other Jews voiced their worries. In the United States, a letter representative of the Jewish opposition to Zionism was sent by Henry Moskowitz to the New York Times on 10 June, 1917. Moskowitz was an Jewish activist and cofounder of the NAACP. He wrote the following: “What are the serious moral dangers in this nationalistic point of view from the standpoint of the Jewish soul? First, it is apt to breed racial egotism.”
In a 1945 essay, Hannah Arendt, one of the most insightful Jewish political philosophers of the 20th century, described the Zionist movement as a “German-inspired nationalism” (thus my use of “über alles” above). That is, as an ideology that holds “the nation to be an eternal organic body, the product of inevitable natural growth of inherent qualities; and it explains peoples, not in terms of political organizations, but in terms of biological superhuman personalities.”
In 1948, Arendt and 27 other prominent Jews living in the United States—including Albert Einstein—wrote a letter to the New York Times condemning the growth of rightwing political influences in the newly founded Israeli state. Citing the appearance of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut) led by Menachem Begin, they warned that it was a “political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.” Begin would go on to become one of Israel’s prime ministers. The contemporary Israeli party Likud is a successor of the “Freedom Party.”
Albert Einstein was also a person of moral sensitivity. As such, he turned down an offer to become Israel’s president and distanced himself from both Zionism and the Israeli state. The Zionist treatment of the Arabs had alienated him. In 1938, he observed, “I would much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain–especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our ranks.”
In August 2002, as a consequence of aggressive Israeli behavior in the occupied West Bank, England’s chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, warned that Zionist state policies, as they manifest themselves in the colonization process and the associated persecution of the Palestinians, are perverting “the deepest ideals” of Judaism.
Today, the American organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP); the British organization, Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JFJFP); and Jews for a Just Peace (JJP), a federation of groups in ten European countries, all keep up this tradition of admonition and critical analysis while promoting the “human, civil, and political rights” of the Palestinians.
Part III—Conclusion
Toward the end of his life, Albert Einstein warned that “the attitude we adopt toward the Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a people.” The conclusions drawn by every human rights organization that has examined Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians over the last 70 years, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israel’s own B’Tselem, and the Palestinian Human Rights Organization (PHRO), leave no doubt that the Zionists have failed Einstein’s test.
Yet that conclusion is just what the Zionists have never been able to face. Thus, any reminder of the movement’s failure in the form of contemporary critiques and documentation are not only denied, but condemned as anti-Semitic. Jews who express such concerns are systematically denigrated as “self-hating.” The U.S. media, still bound by the mythology of Israel as a democratic, modern, secular state that shares America’s pioneering tradition, have traditionally ignored or downplayed critics of Zionism. This leaves most in the West ignorant of Israel’s actual policies and practices.
Today, Judaism is now on the cusp of ethical collapse. The vehicle for this collapse is the purposeful transformation of the religion into an arm of Zionist-Israeli state ideology. Simply put, Ahad Ha-am, Henry Moskowitz, Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Jonathan Sacks, JVP, JFJFP, and JJP were and are correct in their criticism of Zionism and Israel. Thus, we confront an ironic situation. The survival of the Jewish people as a civilized group with a collective sense of ethical standards is not in the hands of the State of Israel, but in the hands of those Jews who oppose that state and support the humanity and rights of Palestinians.
Afghanistan is on many people’s minds lately, though the sentiment is rather mixed. Some think of it as a cause for celebration, others for deep concern, and then there are those who think it an utter disaster that justifies foreign re-entry.
Most of the western concern arises out of 9/11 and the Taliban’s supposed connection to this through Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, however, as Scott Ritter (who was the lead analyst for the 7th Marine Amphibious Brigade on the Soviet war in Afghanistan) wrote:
“The entire Afghan conflict must be examined considering this reality – everything is a lie. Every battle, every campaign, every contract written and implemented – everything was founded in a lie…
Admiral McRaven, when speaking of the operation to kill Bin Laden, noted that there wasn’t anything fundamentally special about that mission in terms of the tactics. ‘I think that night we ran 11 or 12 [other] missions in Afghanistan,’ McRaven noted. Clearly there was a military focus beyond simply killing Bin Laden. It was secretive work, reportedly involving the assassination of Taliban members, that often resulted in innocent civilians beings killed.
It should be noted that, as of 2019, McRaven believed that this kind of special operations activity should be continued in Afghanistan for years to come. So much for the US mission in Afghanistan being defined by the death of Bin Laden. The mission had become death, and the careers that were defined by those deaths.
The fact is the war in Afghanistan did not need to be fought. We could have ended the threat posed by Bin Laden simply by negotiating with the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11, providing the evidence we claimed to have linking Bin Laden to the terrorist attacks on the United States. Any student of Afghanistan worth their salt knows the fundamental importance of honor that is enshrined in the concepts of Pashtunwali, the unwritten ethical code that defines the traditional lifestyle of the Pashtun people. If, as we claimed, Bin Laden carried out an attack on women and children while he was living under the protection of Pashtunwali, then his dishonor is that of the Pashtun tribes. To clear their honor, they would seek justice – in this case, evicting Bin Laden and his followers from Afghanistan.
In fact, the Taliban made precisely this offer.
For America, however, this would have been an unsatisfying result. We needed blood, not justice, and we sent our troops to Afghanistan to stack bodies, which they did, in prodigious numbers. Most of these bodies were Taliban. We excused this by claiming the Taliban were providing safe haven to Bin Laden, and as such were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Which was a lie.”
Scott Ritter (who was a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq from ’91-98) had also played a leading role in bringing to the public’s attention the lies told to justify the illegal war in Iraq, which was based off of cooked British intelligence.
It was not just based on the illusion of “justice,” there was a deeper and much more disturbing agenda under the patriotic trumpet blaring.
In this light, Afghanistan is indeed an incredible American “failure,” not only in failing to install their puppet government; it has also failed the American people, however, not in the way most are talking about.
The 20 year, some say occupancy others say terrorizing, of Afghanistan, is estimated at $1-2 trillion. This is only for the case of Afghanistan, it does not account for the total cost thus far of the War on Terror. Such extravagant spending with really nothing to show for it but destruction, the slaughter of innocents, instability and chaos; you would think the United States must be a very rich country to afford such a budget with no clear goal or objective. Instead, what we find is that the American economy is tanking and the living standard is plummeting, while drug use and overdose rates are sky-rocketing and suicide is among the top causes of death in the United States, especially among their youth.
What is going on here? Have the Americans gone mad? Or is there something much much more sinister afoot?
This situation cannot just be explained away as incompetence or the money-making business of war, or even the crazed end-of-world ideologies of neo-conservatives or Zionists, although these are all major factors.
The reason for this is because there has been something operating within the Middle East for much longer, it is even the reason why we call the Middle East and the Far East by such a name, it is the reason for why many countries in this region have the boundaries they do, and was the originator of the Palestine/Israel conflict.
It is also found at the center of the origin and funding of Islamic terrorism as we see in its modern form today.
Whose “Arab Awakening”?
“The renunciation will not be easy. Jewish hopes have been raised to such a pitch that the non-fulfilment of the Zionist dream of a Jewish state in Palestine will cause intense disillusionment and bitterness. The manifold proofs of public spirit and of capacity to endure hardships and face danger in the building up of the national home are there to testify to the devotion with which a large section of the Jewish people cherish the Zionist ideal. And it would be an act of further cruelty to the Jews to disappoint those hopes if there existed some way of satisfying them, that did not involve cruelty to another people. But the logic of facts is inexorable. It shows that no room can be made in Palestine for a second nation except by dislodging or exterminating the nation in possession.” [emphasis added]
– the concluding paragraph of George Antonius’ “The Arab Awakening” (1938), graduate from Cambridge University, civil servant in the British Mandate of Palestine
Much of what is responsible for the war and havoc in the Middle East today has the British orchestrated so-called “Arab Awakening” to thank, led by characters such as E.G. Browne, St. John Philby, T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, and Gertrude Bell. Although its origins go as far back as the 19th century, it was only until the early 20th century, that the British were able to reap significant results from its long harvest.
The Arab Revolt of 1916-1918, had been, to the detriment of the Arab people, a British led rebellion. The British claimed that their sole interest in the affair was the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and had given their word that these Arab territories would be freed and allowed independence if they agreed to rebel, in large part led and directed by the British.
It is a rather predictable feature of the British to lie and double cross and thus it should be of no surprise to anyone that their intentions were quite the opposite of what they had promised and thanks to the Sykes-Picot Russian leak, were revealed in their entire shameful glory.
Once the Arab Revolt was “won” against the Ottoman Empire, instead of the promised Arab independence, the Middle East was carved up into zones of influence under British and French colonial rule. Puppet monarchies were created in regions that were considered not under direct colonial subjugation in order to continue the illusion that Arabs remained in charge of sacred regions such as Mecca and Medina.
In central Arabia, Hussein ibn Ali, Sharif of Mecca, the puppet leader of the Arab Revolt laid claim to the title Caliph in 1924, which his rival Wahhabite Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud rejected and declared war, defeating the Hashemites. Hussein (British Cairo Office favourite) abdicated and Ibn Saud (British India Office favourite), was proclaimed King of Hejaz and Najd in 1926, which led to the founding of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Al Saud (House of Saud) warriors of Wahhabism were a formidable strike force that the British believed would help London gain control of the western shores of the Persian Gulf.
Hussein ibn Ali’s son Faisal (under the heavy tutelage of T.E. Lawrence, Cairo Office) was bestowed as King of Iraq and Hussein’s other son, Abdullah I was established as the Emir of Transjordan until a negotiated legal separation of Transjordan from Britain’s Palestine mandate occurred in 1946, whereupon he was crowned King of Jordan.
While the British were promising Arab independence they simultaneously were promising a homeland in Palestine to the Jews. The Balfour Declaration of November 2nd, 1917 states:
“His majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object…”
Palestine had been seized by the British during the so-called “Arab Revolt” on December 11th, 1917 when General Allenby marched into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate and declared martial law over the city. Palestine has remained occupied ever since.
Britain would receive the mandate over Palestine from the League of Nations in July 1922.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s violent confrontations between Jews and Arabs took place in Palestine costing thousands of lives. In 1936 a major Arab revolt occurred over 7 months, until diplomatic efforts involving other Arab countries led to a ceasefire. In 1937, a British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by William Peel concluded that Palestine had two distinct societies with irreconcilable political demands, thus making it necessary to partition the land.
The Arab Higher Committee refused Peel’s “prescription” and the revolt broke out again. This time, Britain responded with a devastatingly heavy hand. Roughly 5,000 Arabs were killed by the British armed forces and police.
Following the riots, the British mandate government dissolved the Arab Higher Committee and declared it an illegal body.
In response to the revolt, the British government issued the White Paper of 1939, which stated that Palestine should be a bi-national state, inhabited by both Arabs and Jews. Due to the international unpopularity of the mandate including within Britain itself, it was organised such that the United Nations would take responsibility for the British initiative and adopted the resolution to partition Palestine on November 29th, 1947. Britain would announce its termination of its Mandate for Palestine on May 15th, 1948 after the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14th, 1948.
The Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood
“We do not cut the head of religion except by sword of religion.”
– Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
In 1869, a man named Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, the intellectual founder of the Salafiyya movement, went to India where British led colonial authorities welcomed him with honors and graciously escorted him aboard a government owned vessel on an all-expenses paid voyage to the Suez. [1]
In Cairo he was adopted by the Egyptian prime minister Riad Pasha, a notorious enemy of the emerging nationalist movement in Egypt. Pasha persuaded Afghani to stay in Egypt and allowed him to take up residence in Cairo’s 900 year old Al Azhar mosque considered the center of Islamic learning worldwide, where he received lodging and a monthly government stipend (paid for by the British).[2]
While Egypt was fighting its nationalist fight from 1879-1882, Afghani and his chief disciple Muhammad Abduh travelled together first to Paris and then to Britain, it was in Britain that they would make a proposal for a pan-Islamic alliance among Egypt, Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan against Czarist Russia.[3]
What Afghani was proposing to the British was that they provide aid and resources to support his formation of a militant Islam sect that would favour Britain’s interest in the Middle East, in other words, Afghani was offering to fight Islam with Islam to service British interests, having stated in one of his works “We do not cut the head of religion except by sword of religion.”[4]
Although it is said that the British refused this offer, this is not likely considering the support Afghani would receive in creating the intellectual foundation for a pan-Islamic movement with British patronage and the support of England’s leading orientalist E.G. Browne, the godfather of twentieth century Orientalism and teacher of St John Philby and T.E. Lawrence.
E.G. Browne would make sure the work of Afghani would continue long beyond his death by lionising him in his 1910 “The Persian Revolution,” considered an authoritative history of the time.
In 1888, Abduh, the chief disciple of Afghani, would return to Egypt in triumph with the full support of the representatives of her Majesty’s imperial force and took the first of several positions in Cairo, openly casting his lot with Lord Cromer, who was the symbol of British imperialism in Egypt.
Abduh would found, with the hold of London’s Egyptian proconsul Evelyn Baring (aka Lord Cromer) who was the scion of the enormously powerful banking clan (Barings Bank) under the city of London, the Salafiyya movement.[5]
Abduh had attached himself to the British rulers of Egypt and created the cornerstone of the Muslim Brotherhood which dominated the militant Islamic right throughout the twentieth century.
In 1899, Abduh reached the pinnacle of his power and influence, and was named mufti of Egypt.
***
In 1902, Riyadh fell to Ibn Saud and it was during this period that Ibn Saud established the fearsome Ikhwan (translated as “brotherhood”). From the 1920s onward, the new Saudi state merged its Wahhabi orthodoxy with the Salafiyya movement (which would be organised into the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928).
William Shakespear, a famed British agent, forged the first formal treaty between England and Saudi Arabia which was signed in 1915, which bound London and Arabia for years before Saudi Arabia became a country. “It formally recognized Ibn Saud as the independent ruler of the Nejd and its Dependencies under British protection. In return, Ibn Saud undertook to follow British advice.”[6]
Harry St. John Bridger Philby, a British operative schooled by E.G. Browne and father to the legendary triple agent Kim Philby, would succeed Shakespear as Great Britain’s liaison to Ibn Saud under the British India Office, the friendly rival of the Cairo Arab Bureau office which was sponsoring T.E. Lawrence of Arabia.
In Egypt 1928, Hassan al-Banna (a follower of Afghani and Abduh) founded the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimeen), the organization that would change the course of history in the twentieth century Middle East.
Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood was established with a grant from England’s Suez Canal Company[7] and from that point on, British diplomats and intelligence service, along with the British puppet King Farouq would use the Muslim Brotherhood as a truncheon against Egypt’s nationalists and later against Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. (For more on this refer to my paper.)
To get the Muslim Brotherhood off the ground, the Suez Canal Company helped Banna build the mosque in Ismailia that would serve as its headquarters and base of operation.[8] The fact that Banna created the organization in Ismailia is itself worthy of note. For England, the Suez Canal was the indispensable route to its prize possession, India, and in 1928 the town Ismailia happened to house not only the company’s offices but a major British military base built during WWI. It was also, in the 1920s a center of pro-British sentiment in Egypt.
In the post-WWI world, England reigned supreme, the flag of the British Empire was everywhere from the Mediterranean to India. A new generation of kings and potentates ruled over British dominated colonies, mandates, vassal states, and semi-independent fiefdoms in Egypt, Arabia, Iraq, Transjordan and Persia. To varying degrees those monarchies were beholden to London.
In the half century between 1875 and 1925 the building blocks of the militant Islamic right were cemented in place by the British Empire.
Islamic Banking Made in Geneva/London
Islamic banking [that is the banking system dominated presently by Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States] was born in Egypt and financed by Saudi Arabia and then spread to the far corners of the Muslim world. Eventually the Islamic banking movement became a vehicle not only for exporting political Islam but for sponsoring violence. However, Islamic banking did not get off the ground on its own, as Ibrahim Warde (a renowned scholar of international finance) explains in his book “Islamic Finance in the Global Economy,” Islamic banking:
“…operates more out of London, Geneva, or the Bahamas than it does out of Jeddah, Karachi or Cairo…Ideologically, both liberalism and economic Islam were driven by their common opposition to socialism and economic dirigisme…Even Islamic Republics have on occasion openly embraced neo-liberalism…In Sudan, between 1992 and the end of 1993, Economics Minister Abdul Rahim Hamdi – a disciple of Milton Friedman and incidentally a former Islamic banker in London – did not hesitate to implement the harshest free-market remedies dictated by the International Monetary Fund. He said he was committed to transforming the heretofore statist economy ‘according to free-market rules, because this is how an Islamic economy should function.’ ” [emphasis added]
Perhaps the best case study to this phenomenon is the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
BCCI was an international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier. The bank was registered in Luxembourg with head offices in Karachi and London. A decade after opening, BCCI had over 400 branches in 78 countries in excess of $20 billion USD, making it the seventh largest private bank in the world.
In the 1980s investigations into BCCI led to the discovery of its involvement in massive money laundering and other financial crimes, and that the BCCI had illegally and secretly gained the control of a major American bank, First American, according to Robert Morgenthau (Manhattan DA) who had been investigating the bank for over two years.
BCCI was also to be found guilty for illegally buying another American bank, the Independence Bank of Los Angeles, using a Saudi businessman Ghaith Paraon as the puppet owner. The American depositors lost most of their money when BCCI was forced to foreclose since it was essentially operating a Ponzi scheme to fund illegal activity of all sorts.
According to Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald’s book “The Valediction”:
“Afghanistan offered the opportunity for BCCI to migrate the lucrative heroin business from Southeast Asia [Laos/Cambodia/Vietnam] to the Pakistani/Afghan border under the cover of destabilization. President Carter supported Brzezinski’s provocations into Soviet territory from the minute they got into the White House. He then sanctioned Brzezinski’s plan to use Afghanistan to lure the Soviet Union into its own Vietnam and lied to the public about it when they fell into the trap on December 27, 1979.
…The destabilization kills three birds with one stone. It weakens the Soviets…It acts as a cover for moving the heroin business out of Vietnam/Laos and Cambodia to a safe haven on the Pakistan frontier with Afghanistan – a trade that propped up the British Empire financially for over a hundred years.
…Afghan drug dealer and CIA asset Gulbuddin Hekmatyar…[then organizes] a deal with the renegade gangster, Afghan prime minister, and possible CIA asset Hafizullah Amin…to make Kabul the center of the world heroin trade…pays for the off-the-books operation with drug money brought in by Hekmatyar and laundered through a Pakistani bank…known as BCCI. Everything goes smoothly until the new US Ambassador Adolph Dubs launches a campaign against the destabilization…”
US Ambassador Adolph Dubs was assassinated, just seven months after taking his post, under an extremely suspect situation, on February 14, 1979, to which Gould and Fitzgerald do a superb investigation of, as well as what really happened in Afghanistan in 1979, in their book “The Valediction.”
Investigators in the United States and the UK determined that BCCI had been “set up deliberately to avoid centralized regulatory review, and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions. Its affairs were extraordinarily complex. Its officers were sophisticated international bankers whose apparent objective was to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection.”[9]
This is an incredibly sophisticated operation, and interestingly, uses the very same methods that the City of London has been using for centuries and presently operates to a diabolical perfection today. There is no way that a solo Pakistani financier, even if he was financed by the Sheik of Abu Dhabi, could rise in less than a decade, operating on the turf of ancient banking channels that go back several centuries, to rise to become the seventh largest bank in the netherworld of finance without a little help from the big boys.
On July 29th, 1991, a Manhattan grand jury indicted BCCI on twelve accounts of fraud, money laundering and larceny. Robert Morgenthau (Manhattan DA), who was in charge of the investigation, has described BCCI as “the largest bank fraud in world financial history.”
Through the Rabbit Hole and Out Again
Today, the actions of the United States can best be understood in the context of the Anglo-American Empire, with Wall Street operating as an extension of the ancient banking channels of the City of London and Geneva.
The disastrous foreign policy of namely Britain and the United States in the War on Terror Crusade has been exposed multiple times. That is, that the very governments who have been shouting the loudest against Islamic extremism and for stability in the Middle East, are the very ones who have been weaponising, training and funding such terrorist groupings. The Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, ISIS (and all its viral variants) would not exist today if it were not for namely Britain’s age old strategy.
So what is the goal?
Well, what does any empire seek? Global domination.
In this light, the War on Terror is exposed for what it truly is. It is meant to impoverish and destroy the national sovereignty of the people, not only of the Middle East (or more accurately Southwest Asia), but as we are seeing clearly today, it has also acted as a slow blood-letting of the western people, whose economies are much weaker today than they were 20 years ago.
While western countries are increasingly unable to provide a proper standard of living, with mass unemployment, lack of healthcare, increased crime and suicide rates, and increased overdoses and homelessness, and pretty much everything you would expect to rise during a Dark Age straight out of a Goya painting, these “first-world” governments are applying further austerity measures on the people, even after prolonged lockdowns, while openly pumping trillions of dollars into wars that not only fund the destruction of entire nations, but funds the global drug, arms and sex-trafficking trade. All of this dirty money then circles back into the London-Geneva fondi, benefitting a select class that has existed and thrived for centuries on this sort of backdrop.
Nobody has benefitted from this War on Terror except the global elite.
So stop getting sucked into the same old same old lies; stop being a slave to the system and let us finally unite and stand up against the true common enemy of the people of the world.
The proposal to London from Jamal al-Din al-Afghani was reported by a British Orientalist and author W.S. Blunt, a friend of Afghani’s. It is cited in C.C. Adams, “Islam and Modernism in Egypt.” ↑
Elie Kedourie, “Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam.” ↑
From Palestine and South Africa to the Americas and Australia, settler-colonists [have] violently fought to prevent the indigenous people, that were colonised, from fighting for liberation.
This article explores Palestine’s right to self-determination under “Israel’s” illegal occupation. This paper seeks to demonstrate that since the Balfour Declaration that was issued by the British Government in 1917, there have been politically driven strategies deployed to gradually liquidate the Palestinian people. The indigenous people of Palestine have been faced with systematic persecution, apartheid policies and brutal occupation; as such, it is submitted that the Palestinian people must be able to exercise their right to self-determination. I will begin with a discussion on self-determination as a right before outlining the historical background of the “Israel”-Palestine issue, and the political allyship of each entity apart.
Self-Determination in International Law
The principle of self-determination, as it is understood today, evolved from a principle to a right, triggering much debate over the years. It denotes the legal right to peoples to decide their own destiny in the context of international order.[1]There are two aspects to self-determination: internal and external. Internal self-determination is the right of the people to govern themselves without any other interference, this includes the independence to freely choose their own political, economic and social system.[2] External self-determination on the other hand is the right for peoples to determine their own status politically – this allows the establishment of an independent state. After the First World War, and specifically after his famous “Fourteen Points” speech, US President Woodrow Wilson declared that, “Peoples may not be dominated and governed only by their own consent. ‘Self-determination’ is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.”[3] The right of self-determination was introduced to the UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples in 1960, and subsequently adopted by the UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 in the same year. Additionally, the UN Charter stated that one of the purposes of the United Nations was “respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.”[4] Upon adopting the Declaration of Decolonisation, the UN underlined the necessity of ending colonialism and through this declared, inter alia, that the right to self-determination was not limited.
It is important to note that the right of self-determination has been cited extensively by the UN assembly, Security Council, and is enshrined in various treaties as well as in decisions made by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The following excerpt from the aforementioned declaration was subsequently introduced in Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) providing a detailed legal definition of self-determination, and this definition is used in various international and national treaties and documents.[5]
“All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.”
It is widely accepted that the right of self-determination is applicable to “peoples” in colonial territories, as well as others who do not fall in the category of being colonised or oppressed, the only difference is they have to exercise their rights internally. The right of self-determination is no longer limited to the conventional colonial independence scenarios, such that various ethnic and cultural groups of people within different states effectively rely on the right of self-determination in order to declare their independence.[6] A common argument often presented against the right of self-determination is that the principle of territorial integrity in relation to states is challenged by the principle of self-determination – as it is the will of the people that fundamentally leads to the legitimacy of a state. This indicates that people are not only free to choose their state but also their territorial boundaries. However, in accordance with the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, the United Nations and International Court of Justice demonstrated that there is no contradiction between territorial integrity and the right of self-determination.[7] In that context, it is necessary to add that Koskenneimi argued that “It is doubtful whether the statement of principle was intended to be taken literally… its revolutionary potential was tempered by the Final Acts strong emphasis on territorial integrity.”[8]
In the context of Palestinian self-determination, I submit that “Israel” is a colonial entity that has occupied Palestinian territory; thus, the Palestinian people must be able to exercise this right. It is imperative to note that under international law, only groups categorized as “peoples” have the right to self-determination. The interpretation of “peoples”, however, continues to cause confusion. For example, one may question do all “peoples” need to share one ethnicity or location? If so, where would be the place that gathers people who are a part of multi-ethnic states? With regard to Palestinians, “Israel” has already officially accepted the existence of the “Palestinian peoples” in the Camp David Accords signed with Egypt in the year 1978.[9]
Moreover, it is argued that the right of self-determination can heavily disrupt the essence of peace, such that political communities may resort to force if their demands are not met.[10] Violence was also exhibited in the case of Nigeria after the British authorities recognized three main groups, Igbos, Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba. These groups were legally recognized after seeking independence. These minority groups were effectively excluded from the political sphere and the impact of this devolution caused further ethnic divide and political strife[11]. It is claimed that the violence that erupted between 1965-1967 with Nigerians and Biafrans signified that exercising the right of self-determination leads to political and ethnic turmoil.[12]
In response to this argument, it is contended that despite self-determination struggles usually portrayed as violent and brutal measures, people should still have the freedom to exercise this fundamental right. It is important to understand that colonial settlers aggressively battled to preserve their right of conquest as their own right to self-determination. Till present day, “Israel” has committed war crimes, most notably in Gaza. From Palestine and South Africa to the Americas and Australia, settler-colonists [have] violently fought to prevent the indigenous people, that were colonised, from fighting for liberation, thus the argument that self-determination leads to violence and brutality does not hold much weight in this context considering it is no different to the measures taken by colonising entities.[13] Further to this, in the past, the UN has failed to sustain peace even with states that exercised their right to self-determination, as noticed with the case of Cyprus.[14] Conflicts among states exist irrespective of self-determination, therefore the premise of this argument is incorrect. It may be more suitable to look beyond the UN paradigm if we ought to find lasting solutions to such conflicts.
The Palestine-Israel Conflict
In order to better understand the Israel-Palestine conflict, it is necessary to present the issue within the historical framework of decolonisation struggles. Historically, the world has witnessed decolonisation struggles beginning with violence as a result of a people being denied independence and liberation by the colonising entity. The Palestinian struggle against the Zionist ethnonationalist entity has lasted since the 20th century; the story of Palestine is on political independence, liberation, and putting an end to the apartheid Israeli regime. Whilst Zionists argue that “Israel” has a historic right to Palestinian land, it is imperative to note that had it not been for the involvement of European imperial powers, most notably Britain, there would have not been any creation of “Israel”. In November 1917, Britain the de facto ruler of Palestine, issued the Balfour Declaration. The eighty-word statement by Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour announced support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
In 1922, five years after the Balfour Declaration, the “League of Nations” approved the British Mandate for Palestine and the establishment of a “Jewish homeland.” The decision of the mandate did not consider the will of the Palestinian people or their fundamental rights. Between 1939 and 1949, there were a series of mass protests that took place against Jewish immigration to Palestine as well as armed Zionist groups launching attacks against the indigenous people of Palestine[15]. It is necessary to note that in 1947, the UN adopted Resolution 181, a partition plan for Palestine which was subsequently rejected by the Palestinians. The UN General Assemblies plan was to partition Palestine between the native Palestinians and the Jewish colonial settlers. Throughout 1948-1949, the Palestinians were attacked by Zionist forces. Villages and hotels were bombed near Haifa demonstrating early signs of ethnic cleansing. In April 1948, one month before the State of “Israel” was created, Zionist forces massacred over 100 250 Palestinians in the city of Deir Yassin[16] which is in close proximity to Jerusalem. In December of 1948[17], the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 which allowed the right of return of Palestinian refugees. This is a brief explanation of how the state of “Israel” came into existence. In 1974, Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian Political leader stated:
“The [UN] General Assembly partitioned what it had no right to divide – an indivisible homeland.”
“Israel” consistently and tactically made use of Occupation Law to further acquire Palestinian land whilst simultaneously arbitrarily arresting and targeting Palestinian people through the use of apartheid policies. It is argued that “Israel” has used UNSC Resolution 242 to justify and legitimate these actions through “political framework shaped by U.S intervention”[18] as mentioned by Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and Palestinian activist. Erakat claims that the Occupation Law failing to regulate Palestinian territories effectively, is a result of a political, not a legal contest. It is asserted that “Israel’s” argument that the Palestinian territories are simply under their administration, would hold no weight were it not for the political powers involved in the region.
Furthermore, it is also argued that the United States has favoured “Israel” to such an extent that the US dismisses “Israel’s” violation of international law and allows the state to carry out war crimes without facing any repercussions besides blanket statements. As a result of the Occupation Law that “Israel” takes advantage of, Palestinian territories remain occupied, Palestinian people are systematically being ethnically cleansed[19], and their fundamental rights such as the freedom of movement are infringed.
The Human Rights Watch published a report in April 2021, in which it was made very clear that for the past 54 years, Israeli authorities have transferred Jewish Israeli’s to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OTP) and “granted them a superior status under the law as compared to Palestinians living in the same territory when it comes to civil rights, access to land, and freedom to move, build, and confer residency rights to close relatives.”[20] In 1970, the General Assembly Resolution 2625 added that “Every state has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provision of the charter.” Therefore, “Israel” and the international community as a whole should not be denying the Palestinians their right to self-determination. Palestine should be able to manage its own affairs without the interference of external and colonial entities. It is important to understand that the Palestinian people have witnessed the occupation of their lands, forced expulsions to neighbouring lands, military bombardment, and erasure of their identity. As such, the struggle for independence and self-determination should be welcomed by all.
Ali Abunimah, a policy adviser, argues that self-determination “must return to the center of the Palestinian struggle”[21]. To add, Abunimah asserts that the Palestinian right to self-determination can indeed be compatible with the coexistence of Jews. It is claimed that the United States has a long history of deciding the fate of the Palestinian people. For instance, as per the Clinton Parameters, “Israel” would get “Jewish neighbourhoods” and the Palestinians would get “Arab neighbourhoods”. In hindsight, this meant that “Israel” would be allowed to keep the land it has colonised and annexed since 1967, and the people of Palestine would be able to have what is left – which Israeli occupation forces and settlers continue to annex and occupy till today. America’s “peace process” has allowed “Israel” to aggressively maintain their illegal occupation of the Palestinian people.[22]
Professor Noam Chomsky in his book ‘On Palestine’[23] highlights that “Israel’s” policies are directly connected to the Zionist ideology that “both aim to establish a Jewish state by taking over as much of historical Palestine as possible and leaving in it as few Palestinians as possible.” Chomsky, a Jewish historian and activist, further claims that the international community has “never condemned” the Israeli entity which led to the enormous expulsion of 750,000 people and the destruction of hundreds of villages and towns. In addition to this, Chomsky states that “ethnic cleansing has become the DNA of Israeli Jewish society.” Erasing the Palestinian land and people should be enough of a reason for the remaining people of Palestine to exercise their right to self-determination. There are distinct similarities between Palestine and the apartheid in South Africa. The Israeli Knesset authorises legislation that separates, segregates, and discriminates against the Palestinians. A recent report by Human Rights Watch also backs up this claim:
“Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy.”[24]
The United States of America remains a close ally of “Israel”. The U.S provides financial and military support to “Israel” which has been used criticised by several human rights agencies as this funding is used to perpetrate human rights abuses against the Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza Strip. In the Ten-Year Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and “Israel”, $38 billion has been promised to “Israel” from the U.S beginning in 2016.[25] This includes $3.3 billion in Foreign Military financing and $500 million for missile defence programs. Several U.S politicians declare their support for “Israel” and do not shy away from mentioning “Israel has every right to defend itself” despite the fact that it is “Israel” that is committing heinous crimes against the Palestinian people. As mentioned by Chomsky, as a result of political power and close relationship with the U.S, “Israel” has been able to act with impunity since 1948. The U.S also has a history of blocking UN resolutions[26] against “Israel”. According to UN data, since 1972, the US has vetoed at least 53 United Nations Security Council resolutions that are critical of “Israel”[27].
Contrastingly, Palestine does not have such strong allies. Palestinian resistance leaders have announced receiving military and financial support from the Islamic Republic of Iran; however, I submit that as Iran is a sanctioned country, the support offered to Palestine may not be as much as the support offered by the U.S and the UK to “Israel”. The UK has consistently and repeatedly sold arms to “Israel” despite its illegal occupation of Palestine.[28]
In conclusion, the people of Palestine have every right to self-determination, and this can be understood just by investigating the crimes perpetrated by “Israel” against the Palestinians, and the systematic oppression they have faced as a people. Since 1969, the General Assembly has recognised the “inalienable rights of the people of Palestine”[29] In 1974, member states of the UN worked to restore the “Question of Palestine” on the General Assembly agenda, and as such Arab heads of states upheld the “right of the Arab Palestinian people to the return to its homeland and its right to self-determination.”[30] Some weeks later the General Assembly passed resolution 3236 which mentioned “Recognizing that the Palestinian people are entitled to self-determination in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations,” and (a) The right to self-determination without external interference”. It should be noted that the General Assembly condemned governments which failed to recognise the right to self-determination and independence of peoples under “colonial and foreign domination”. For the Palestinians to exercise this right, the Israeli entity must vacate from the occupied areas in order to establish an independent Palestinian state. The United Nations has again affirmed its commitment to the Palestinian right to self-determination. In November 2020, the UN General Assembly endorsed a draft resolution once again recognising “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including their right to an independent State of Palestine.”[31] 163 states voted in favour of this resolution, whilst 5 states voted against this, namely: “Israel”, The United States of America, Micronesia, Nauru, and the Marshal Islands. Tomis Kapitan eloquently argues that legitimate residents of Palestine include all Palestinians irrespective of where they are located in Palestine, including Palestinian refugees outside of the country. He states that “expulsion does not remove ones right of residency… Palestinians also retain residency rights in those territories from which they were expelled.”[32] Kapitan asserts that the Palestinian people, as a collective, have the “entitlement to being self-determining in that region [historic Palestine]… not qua Palestinians, but qua legitimate residents. The force used against them has not erased the fact that they are, and are recognized as being; a legitimate unit entitled to participate in their own self-determination.”[33]
Whilst some may argue that the Palestinian right to self-determination is an anti-Semitic stance, it should be duly noted that a Palestinian state would include Jews, Muslims and Christians. It is in fact the Zionist entity that remains anti-Semitic by expulsing and rejecting Jewish natives from enjoying their rights in Occupied Palestine. It should be remembered that the Palestinian right to self-determination is legal and in accordance with international law. For the state of Palestine to be completely independent, colonial settlers will have to return to the European countries they entered from and respect international law. To end, a group of academics including Palestinians and Israelis issued a One State Declaration in 2007, inspired by the South African Freedom Charter and declared: “The historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status; Any system of government must be founded on the principle of equality in civil, political, social and cultural rights for all citizens. Power must be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all people in the diversity of their identities.[34]
[6] Quane, Helen. 1998. “The United Nations and the Evolving Right to Self-Determination.” The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 47(3): 537–572.
[7] Johan D. Van der Vyer, ‘Self-Determination of the Peoples of Quebec under International Law’ [2012] 10(1) Journal of Transnational Law & Policy 38 [8] Martti Koskenniemi, ‘National Self-Determination Today: Problems of Legal Theory and Practice’ [1994] 43(2) The International and Comparative Law Quarterly <https://www.jstor.org/stable/761238> accessed 10 May 2021. [9] J Massad, ‘Against Self-Determination’ [2018] 9(2) Humanity 161-191 [10] M Evangelista, ‘Paradoxes of Violence and Self-determination’ [2015] 14(5) Formerly Global Review of Ethnopolitics <https://doi.org/10.1080/17449057.2015.1051811> accessed 3 May 2021. [11] B Ibhawoh, ‘Testing the Atlantic Charter: linking anticolonialism, self-determination and Universal Human Rights’ [2014] 18(7) International Journal of Human Rights 1-19
Nasser became the catalyst for an Arab Revolution for independence, a revolution that remains yet to be finished, Cynthia Chung writes.
In the 1950s the so-called enemy of the West was not only Moscow but the Third World’s emerging nationalists, from Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt to Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. The United States and Britain staged a coup d’état against Mossadegh, and used the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist movement and the grandfather organization of the militant Islamic right, in an attempt to remove Nasser, the leader of the Arab nationalists.
In the 1960s, left wing nationalism and Arab socialism spread from Egypt to Algeria to Syria, Iraq and Palestine. This emergence presented a threat to the old imperialist game of Great Britain, to which the United States was a recent recruit of, and thus they decided to forge a working alliance with Saudi Arabia intent on using Wahhabi fundamentalism as their foreign policy arm in the Middle East, along with the Muslim Brotherhood.
This paper will go through the carving up of the Middle East under Sykes-Picot, the British creation of Saudi Arabia and Israel and the British occupation of Palestine, the origin of the Muslim Brotherhood and Nasser’s fight for Arab independence. In a follow-up paper, I will discuss the role of the City of London in facilitating the bankroll of the first Islamic fundamentalist state Saudi Arabia, along with the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist apparatus.
An “Arab Awakening” Made in Britain
“The renunciation will not be easy. Jewish hopes have been raised to such a pitch that the non-fulfilment of the Zionist dream of a Jewish state in Palestine will cause intense disillusionment and bitterness. The manifold proofs of public spirit and of capacity to endure hardships and face danger in the building up of the national home are there to testify to the devotion with which a large section of the Jewish people cherish the Zionist ideal. And it would be an act of further cruelty to the Jews to disappoint those hopes if there existed some way of satisfying them, that did not involve cruelty to another people. But the logic of facts is inexorable. It shows that no room can be made in Palestine for a second nation except by dislodging or exterminating the nation in possession.”
– the concluding paragraph of George Antonius’ “The Arab Awakening” (1938)
Much of what is responsible for the war and havoc in the Middle East today has the British orchestrated so-called “Arab Awakening” to thank, led by characters such as E.G. Browne, St. John Philby, T.E. Lawrence of Arabia, and Gertrude Bell. Although its origins go as far back as the 19th century, it was only until the early 20th century, that the British were able to reap significant results from its long harvest.
The Arab Revolt of 1916-1918, had been, to the detriment of the Arab people, a British led rebellion. The British claimed that their sole interest in the affair was the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and had given their word that these Arab territories would be freed and allowed independence if they agreed to rebel, in large part led and directed by the British.
It is a rather predictable feature of the British to lie and double cross and thus it should be of no surprise to anyone that their intentions were quite the opposite of what they had promised and thanks to the Sykes-Picot Russian leak, were revealed in their entire shameful glory.
If the Sultan of Turkey were to disappear, then the Caliphate by common consent of Islam would fall to the family of the prophet, Hussein ibn Ali the Sharif of Mecca, a candidate which was approved by the British Cairo office as suitable for British strings. T.E. Lawrence, who worked at the Cairo bureau is quoted as saying:
“If the Sultan of Turkey were to disappear, then the Caliphate by common consent of Islam would fall to the family of the prophet, the present representative of which is Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca….If properly handled the Arab States would remain in a state of political mosaic, a tissue of jealous principalities incapable of cohesion…” (1)
Once the Arab Revolt was “won” against the Ottoman Empire, instead of the promised Arab independence, the Middle East was carved up into zones of influence under British and French colonial rule. Puppet monarchies were created in regions that were considered not under direct colonial subjugation in order to continue the illusion that Arabs remained in charge of sacred regions such as Mecca and Medina.
In central Arabia, Hussein, Sharif of Mecca, the puppet leader of the Arab Revolt laid claim to the title Caliph in 1924, which his rival Wahhabite Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud rejected and declared war, defeating the Hashemites. Hussein abdicated and ibn Saud, the favourite of the British India Office, was proclaimed King of Hejaz and Najd in 1926, which led to the founding of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The Al Saud warriors of Wahhabism were a formidable strike force that the British believed would help London gain control of the western shores of the Persian Gulf.
Hussein ibn Ali’s son Faisal (under the heavy tutelage of T.E. Lawrence) was bestowed as King of Iraq and Hussein’s other son, Abdullah I was established as the Emir of Transjordan until a negotiated legal separation of Transjordan from Britain’s Palestine mandate occurred in 1946, whereupon he was crowned King of Jordan. (For more on this history refer to my paper.)
While the British were promising Arab independence they simultaneously were promising a homeland in Palestine to the Jews. The Balfour Declaration of November 2nd, 1917 states:
“His majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object…”
Palestine had been seized by the British during the so-called Arab Revolt on December 11th, 1917 when General Allenby marched into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate and declared martial law over the city. Palestine has remained occupied ever since.
Britain would receive the mandate over Palestine from the League of Nations in July 1922.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s violent confrontations between Jews and Arabs took place in Palestine costing hundreds of lives. In 1936 a major Arab revolt occurred over 7 months, until diplomatic efforts involving other Arab countries led to a ceasefire. In 1937, a British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by William Peel concluded that Palestine had two distinct societies with irreconcilable political demands, thus making it necessary to partition the land.
The Arab Higher Committee refused Peel’s “prescription” and the revolt broke out again. This time, Britain responded with a devastatingly heavy hand. Roughly 5,000 Arabs were killed by the British armed forces and police.
Following the riots, the British mandate government dissolved the Arab Higher Committee and declared it an illegal body.
In response to the revolt, the British government issued the White Paper of 1939, which stated that Palestine should be a bi-national state, inhabited by both Arabs and Jews. Due to the international unpopularity of the mandate including within Britain itself, it was organised such that the United Nations would take responsibility for the British initiative and adopted the resolution to partition Palestine on November 29th, 1947. Britain would announce its termination of its Mandate for Palestine on May 15th, 1948 after the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14th, 1948.
The Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood
In 1869, a man named Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, the intellectual founder of the Salafiyya movement, went to India where British led colonial authorities welcomed him with honors and graciously escorted him aboard a government owned vessel on an all expenses paid voyage to the Suez. (2)
In Cairo he was adopted by the Egyptian prime minister Riad Pasha, a notorious enemy of the emerging nationalist movement in Egypt. Pasha persuaded Afghani to stay in Egypt and allowed him to take up residence in Cairo’s 900 year old Al Azhar mosque considered the center of Islamic learning worldwide, where he received lodging and a monthly government stipend (paid for by the British). (3)
In 1879, Cairo nationalists in the Egyptian Army, led by the famous Egyptian hero Ahmed ‘Urabi, organised an uprising against the British role in Egypt. Afghani was expelled from Egypt by the Egyptian nationalists that same year.
Ahmed ‘Urabi served as prime minister of Egypt briefly, from July 1882 to Sept 1882, however, his movement for Egyptian independence was eventually crushed by the British with the shelling of Alexandria in July 1882 followed by an invasion which resulted in a direct British occupation of Egypt that would last until 1956. It would be Gamal Abdel Nasser who would finally end British colonial rule of Egypt during the Suez Crisis, whereupon the Suez canal was nationalised and the British military bases expelled.
While Egypt was fighting its nationalist fight from 1879-1882, Afghani and his chief disciple Muhammad Abduh travelled together first to Paris and then to Britain, it was in Britain that they would make a proposal for a pan-Islamic alliance among Egypt, Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan against Czarist Russia (4).
In addition, the crisis in Sudan, was in the middle of a tribal religious rebellion against the British led by a man named Mohammed Ahmad a Sudanese sheikh who proclaimed himself the Mahdi, or savior, and was leading a puritanical Islamic revolt. (5)
What Afghani was proposing to the British was that they provide aid and resources to support his formation of a militant Islam sect that would favour Britain’s interest in the Middle East, in other words, Afghani wished to fight Islam with Islam, having stated in one of his works “We do not cut the head of religion except by sword of religion.”(6)
Although it is said that the British refused this offer, this is not likely considering the support Afghani would receive in creating the intellectual foundation for a pan-Islamic movement with British patronage and the support of England’s leading orientalist E.G. Browne, the godfather of twentieth century Orientalism and teacher of St John Philby and T.E. Lawrence.
E.G. Browne would make sure the work of Afghani would continue long beyond his death by immortalising him in his 1910 “The Persian Revolution,” considered an authoritative history of the time.
In 1888, Abduh, the chief disciple of Afghani, would return to Egypt in triumph with the full support of the representatives of her Majesty’s imperial force and took the first of several positions in Cairo, openly casting his lot with Lord Cromer, who was the symbol of British imperialism in Egypt.
Abduh would found, with the hold of London’s Egyptian proconsul Evelyn Baring (aka Lord Cromer) who was the scion of the enormously powerful banking clan (Barings Bank) under the city of London, the Salafiyya movement. (7)
Abduh had attached himself to the British rulers of Egypt and created the cornerstone of the Muslim Brotherhood which dominated the militant Islamic right throughout the twentieth century.
In 1899, Abduh reached the pinnacle of his power and influence, and was named mufti of Egypt.
***
In 1902, Riyadh fell to Ibn Saud and it was during this period that Ibn Saud established the fearsome Ikhwan (translated as “brotherhood”). He collected fighters from Bedouin tribes firing them up with fanatical religious zeal and threw them into battle. By 1912 the Ikhwan numbered 11,000 and Ibn Saud had both central Arabia’s Nejd and Al-Ahsa in the east under his control.
From the 1920s onward, the new Saudi state merged its Wahhabi orthodoxy with the Salafiyya movement (which would be organised into the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928).
William Shakespear, a famed British agent, forged the first formal treaty between England and Saudi Arabia which was signed in 1915, which bound London and Arabia for years before Saudi Arabia became a country. “It formally recognized Ibn Saud as the independent ruler of the Nejd and its Dependencies under British protection. In return, Ibn Saud undertook to follow British advice.” (8)
Harry St. John Bridger Philby, a British operative schooled by E.G. Browne and father to the legendary triple agent Kim Philby, would succeed Shakespear as Great Britain’s liaison to Ibn Saud under the British India Office, the friendly rival of the Cairo Arab Bureau office which was sponsoring T.E. Lawrence of Arabia.
In Egypt 1928, Hassan al-Banna (a follower of Afghani and Abduh) founded the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimeen), the organization that would change the course of history in the twentieth century Middle East.
Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood was established with a grant from England’s Suez Canal Company (9) and from that point on, British diplomats and intelligence service, along with the British puppet King Farouq would use the Muslim Brotherhood as a truncheon against Egypt’s nationalists and later against Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.
To get the Muslim Brotherhood off the ground, the Suez Canal Company helped Banna build the mosque in Ismailia that would serve as its headquarters and base of operation. (10) The fact that Banna created the organization in Ismailia is itself worthy of note. For England, the Suez Canal was the indispensable route to its prize possession, India and in 1928 the town Ismailia happened to house not only the company’s offices but a major British military base built during WWI. It was also, in the 1920s a center of pro-British sentiment in Egypt.
In the post-WWI world, England reigned supreme, the flag of the British empire was everywhere from the Mediterranean to India. A new generation of kings and potentates ruled over British dominated colonies, mandates, vassal states, and semi-independent fiefdoms in Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Arabia and Persia. To varying degrees those monarchies were beholden to London.
In the half century between 1875 and 1925 the building blocks of the militant Islamic right were cemented in place by the British Empire.
Nasser Leads the Fight for Arab Independence
In 1942, the Muslim Brotherhood would earn their well-deserved reputation for extremism and violence by establishing the “Secret Apparatus,” an intelligence service and secret terrorist unit. This clandestine unit functioned for over twelve years almost entirely unchecked, assassinating judges, police officers, government officials and engaging in goon squad attacks on labor unions and communists.
Throughout this period the Muslim Brotherhood worked for the most part in an alliance with King Farouq (and thus the British), using their clandestine forces on behalf of British interests. And throughout its entire existence it would receive political support and money from the Saudi royal family and the Wahhabi establishment (more on this in part 2 of this series).
The Secret Apparatus would be smashed into pieces by Nasser in 1954.
After WWII, the faltering Farouq regime lashed out against the left in an intense campaign of repression aimed at the communists. The Cold War was beginning. In 1946, prime minister Isma’il Sidqi of Egypt who was installed as head of the government with the support of Banna, openly funded the Muslim Brotherhood and provided training camps for its shock troops used in a sweeping anti-left campaign. Sidqi resigned in Dec 1946 after less than one year as PM due to massive unpopularity.
As King Farouq began to lose his grip on the Egyptian people, the Brotherhood distanced itself while maintaining shadowy ties to the army and to foreign intelligence agencies and always opposed to the left.
The Palestine War (1947-1949) resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel at the cost of 700,000 displaced Palestinian Arabs and the destruction of most of their urban areas.
The territory that was under British administration before the war was divided between the State of Israel (officially formed May 14th, 1948), which captured about 78% of it. In opposition to Israel, the Kingdom of Jordan captured and later annexed the West Bank, and Egypt captured the Gaza Strip, with the Arab League establishing the All-Palestine Government, which came to an end in June 1967 when the Gaza Strip, along with the West Bank, were captured by Israel in the Six-Day War.
The Egyptian people were furious over these developments, and the reign of British puppet King Farouq who had done nothing to prevent the dismantling of Palestine was on extremely shaky ground. In response to this, Farouq’s accord with the Muslim Brotherhood broke down, and in December 1948, the Egyptian government outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood. Weeks later a Brotherhood assassin murdered prime minister Mahmoud El Nokrashy.
Two months later, in Feb. 1949, Banna was assassinated in Cairo by the Egyptian secret police.
For Arab nationalists, Israel was a symbol of Arab weakness and semi-colonial subjugation, overseen by proxy kings in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
On the night of July 23, 1952, the Free Officers, led by Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, staged a military coup that launched the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, overthrowing the British puppet monarch. The Free Officers, knowing that warrants had been issued for their arrest, launched the coup that night, storming the staff headquarters in Cairo.
Cairo was now, for the first time, under the control of the Arab people after over 70 years of British occupation.
The seizure of power by the Free Officers in Egypt came during an era when the entire Arab world from Morocco to Iraq was locked in the grip of imperialism. Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia were French colonies; Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman and Yemen were British colonies. Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were kingdoms ruled by monarchies installed by London. And Egypt under King Farouq was the political and economic center of the Arab world.
A growing surge of Arab nationalism arose in response to the Free Officers’ actions in Egypt. The powerful Voice of the Arabs radio in Cairo was reporting to the entire Arab world that they had found their independence movement, and that Nasser was at its helm.
From 1956 to 1958 Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon underwent rebellions, Iraq’s king was toppled, and Syria united with Egypt in Nasser’s United Arab Republic, part of Nasser’s strategy to unify the Arab world.
In Algeria, moral and material support was given from Cairo towards the Algerian revolution that finally won them independence from French colonial rule in 1962.
That same year, Yemen underwent a Nasser-inspired revolt, triggering a proxy war pitting Saudi Arabia against Egypt, with Nasser stating in a 1962 speech, “Yemen’s fight is my fight. Yemen’s Revolution is our Revolution.”
Nasser’s leadership and the inspiration he stirred were so strong that even as late as 1969 the year before Nasser’s death, Libya’s king was overthrown and Sudan’s right-wing regime was eliminated by military leaders loyal to Nasser.
Nasser had managed to threaten the very heart of Anglo-America’s post-WWII strategy in the Middle East. Nasser understood, that if the vast oil fields in Saudi Arabia were under Arab control, the potential for an economic boom would be enormous for all Arab states, such that the old game of imperialism by Britain and France could no longer retain its chokehold on Arab independence.
Not only was Egypt a military rival to Saudi Arabia, not only did Cairo clash with Riyadh in a shooting war in Yemen, not only did Nasser inspire Arabs in Saudi Arabia with republican ideals but the Egyptian leader even won over some of Saudi Arabia’s royal family. This group was led by Prince Talal to form the ‘Free Princes’, which defected to Egypt demanding the establishment of a republic in Saudi Arabia!
What was really going on during the period of 1954 to 1970, under Nasser’s leadership, was a war between two competing visions for the future of the Middle East; an Arab world of independent but cooperative Arab republics utilising their natural resources to facilitate an economic boom in industrialisation vs a semi-feudal scattering of monarchies with their natural resources largely at the West’s disposal.
The real reason why the British and Anglo Americans wanted Nasser removed, was not because he was a communist or because he was susceptible to communist influence; it was because he refused to obey his would-be foreign controllers and was rather successful in this endeavour, bringing their shadowy actions uncomfortably close to the light and inspiring loyalty amongst Arabs outside of Egypt including those sitting on top of the oil.
What especially worried London and Washington was the idea that Nasser might succeed in his plan to unify Egypt and Saudi Arabia thus creating a major Arab power. Nasser believed that these oil wells were not only for the government of those territories to do with as they wished but belonged to all Arab people and thus should be used for the advancement of the Arab world. Afterall, most Arabs are aware that both the monarchies themselves and the artificial borders that demarcate their states, were designed by imperialists seeking to build fences around oil wells in the 1920s.
Nasser understood that if Cairo and Riyadh were to unite in a common cause for the uplifting of the Arab people, it would create a vastly important new Arab center of gravity with worldwide influence.
In 1954 Egypt and the United Kingdom had signed an agreement over the Suez Canal and British military basing rights. It was a short lived. By 1956 Great Britain, France and Israel concocted a plot against Egypt aimed at toppling Nasser and seizing control of the Suez Canal, a conspiracy that enlisted the Muslim Brotherhood.
In fact, the British went so far as to hold secret meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood in Geneva. According to author Stephen Dorrill, two British intelligence agents Col. Neil McLean and Julian Amery, helped MI6 organize a clandestine anti-Nasser opposition in the south of France and in Switzerland, (11) in his book he writes “They also went so far as to make contact in Geneva…with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, informing only MI6 of this demarche which they kept secret from the rest of the Suez Group [which was planning the military operation via its British bases by the Suez Canal]. Amery forwarded various names to [Selwyn] Lloyd, [the British foreign secretary].”
British prime minister Anthony Eden, Churchill’s handpicked successor, was violently anti-Nasser all along and considered a British coup d’état in Cairo as early as 1953. Other than such brash actions, the only political force that could mount a challenge to Nasser was the Muslim Brotherhood which had hundreds of thousands of followers.
Nasser’s long postponed showdown with the Muslim Brotherhood occurred in 1954, this was timed to add pressure during the rising frustration concerning the British-Egyptian negotiations over the transfer of the Suez Canal and its military bases to Egypt. The British, after over 70 years of direct occupation in Egypt, were not going to give up on one of their most prized jewels, their gateway to the Orient, so easily.
From 1954 on, Anthony Eden, the British prime minister was demanding Nasser’s head. According to Stephen Dorrill’s “MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations”, Eden had ranted “What’s all this nonsense about isolating Nasser or ‘neutralising’ him, as you call it? I want him destroyed, can’t you understand? I want him murdered…And I don’t give a damn if there’s anarchy and chaos in Egypt.”
Nasser would not back down, and in the first few months of 1954 the Muslim Brotherhood and Nasser went to war, culminating in Nasser outlawing them as a terrorist group and a pawn of the British.
On Oct. 1954, a Muslim Brotherhood member Mahmoud Abdel-Latif attempted to assassinate Nasser while he was delivering a speech in Alexandria, which was live broadcasting to the Arab world by radio, to celebrate the British military withdrawal.
Panic broke out in the mass audience, but Nasser maintained his posture and raised his voice to appeal for calm, and with great emotion he exclaimed the following:
“My countrymen, my blood spills for you and for Egypt. I will live for your sake and die for the sake of your freedom and honor. Let them kill me; it does not concern me so long as I have instilled pride, honor, and freedom in you.”
The crowd roared in approval and Arab audiences were electrified. The assassination attempt backfired, and quickly played back into Nasser’s hands. Upon returning to Cairo, he ordered one of the largest political crackdowns in the modern history of Egypt, with the arrests of thousands of dissenters, mostly members of the Brotherhood.
The decree banning the Muslim Brotherhood organization said “The revolution will never allow reactionary corruption to recur in the name of religion.” (12)
In 1967, there was a Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, which was started by Israel in a coordinated aerial attack on Egypt, eliminating roughly 90% of Egyptian air forces that were still on the ground, followed by an aerial attack on Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Israel then went on to conduct a ground attack with tanks and infantry, devastating whole Arab regions.
Despite the disastrous loss to Israel, the people of Egypt refused to accept Nasser’s resignation and took to the streets in a mass demonstration calling for Nasser’s return. Nasser accepted the call of the people and returned to his position as president where he remained as until his death in Sept 1970.
Five million people turned out on the streets of Egypt for Nasser’s funeral, and hundreds of millions more mourned his death throughout the world.
Although Nasser had devastatingly lost a battle, the Egyptian people along with their Arab compatriots understood that the fight for Arab independence was not lost. The dream of dignity and freedom, in forever opposition to the shackles of tyranny could not be buried now that it had been stirred to its very core. Nasser would be the catalyst for an Arab Revolution for independence, a revolution that remains yet to be finished.
After martyring more than 300 Palestinians, including 100 children and 80 women, injuring more than 3000 innocent civilians in Gaza Strip through airstrikes and ground shelling, Israel agreed on a ceasefire with Hamas, which ended the 11 days war.
Unmatched with Israeli arms, freedom fighters of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group Abu Ubaida had no option except firing rockets inside Israel.
Very tensions had started when Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and attacked the Palestinians. Thousands of Palestinians staged protests in the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex.
In an emergency meeting of the foreign ministers, the OIC had called for an immediate halt to Israel’s barbaric attacks on Gaza.
Earlier, called by China, the UNO Security Council held an urgent meeting on the unrest in Jerusalem. The three sessions of the UN body failed after the US’s moves to block a joint statement that would condemn Israel for the violence and call for a cease-fire.
Like the past administrations, the US President Joe Biden reiterated that Israel has the right to defend itself.
Biden also sent Linda Thomas-Greenfield—the US’s UN envoy to de-escalate tensions. However, it was part of the double game of Washington. When American President Biden seriously pressured Netanyahu to prevent a full-scale war, Tel Aviv agreed for ceasefire.
But, Israeli Premier Netanyahu has not accepted the two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute which was stressed by the US and some major Western countries.
In fact, international bodies such as the UNO Security Council, OIC and the US-led West failed to present a solution to end the Israeli state terrorism on the Palestinians, which have continued from time to time.
Notably, like the United States, Ottoman Empire of Turkey was a large multi-ethnic state. In order to maintain their control, one of the British strategies was divide and rule which was being practiced through various tactics like arrangement of rebellions, manipulation of ethnic and sectarian differences. The Britain provided soldiers, weapons and money to the Arab subjects against that Empire. According to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the British and French agreed to divide the Arab world between them. The Britain took control of what are now Iraq, Kuwait, and Jordan. The French were given modern Syria, Lebanon and southern Turkey. Thus, they brought about the end of the Ottomans and the rise of the new states, with borders, running across the Middle East, dividing Muslims from each other.
Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 which was a conspiracy of the American and the British rulers against the Palestinians was implemented. On May 14, 1948, the UNO acted upon the 1947 UN Partition Plan and established the state of Israel.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem and Syrian Golan Heights during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed the entire city in 1980 in a move that has never been recognized by the UNO and international community.
Once Henry Kissinger stated “legitimacy is not natural or automatic, but created.”
Under the cover of the 9/11 attacks, the US President George W. Bush started global war on terror. Occupation of Afghanistan by the US-led NATO, Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, like the creation of Al-Qaeda by the CIA, the Islamic State group (ISIS), proxy wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen, and elsewhere in the world were part of the same anti-Muslim campaign to continue old divide and rule policy.
Henry Kissinger had suggested the split of Iraq into three independent regions, ruled by Kurds, Shias and Sunnis. In this regard, the Asia Times Online reported in 2005: “The plan of balkanizing Iraq into several smaller states is an exact replica of an extreme right-wing Israeli plan…an essential part of the balkanization of the whole Middle East. Curiously, Henry Kissinger was selling the same idea even before the 2003 invasion of Iraq…this is classic divide and rule: the objective is the perpetuation of Arab disunity.”
Similarly, during the partition of the Sub-continent, the people of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) which comprised Muslim majority decided to join Pakistan according to the British formula. But, Dogra Raja, Sir Hari Singh, a Hindu who was ruling over the J&K in collusion with the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Governor General Lord Mountbatten joined India.
The Security Council adopted resolution of April 21, 1948, which promised a plebiscite under UN auspices to enable the people of Jammu and Kashmir to determine whether they wish to join Pakistan or India. On February 5, 1964, India backed out of its commitment of holding plebiscite. Instead, Indian Parliament declared Kashmir-an integral part of the Indian union.
Indian cruel actions against the Kashmiris reached climax on August 5, 2019 when Indian extremist government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the fanatic ruling party BJP revoked articles 35A and 370 of the Constitution, which gave a special status to the disputed territory of the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). New Delhi unilaterally annexed the IIOJK with the Indian Federation to turn Muslim majority into minority.
Implementing the ideology of Hindutva ((Hindu Nationalism), Indian prejudiced rulers have Issued over 1.8 million domicile certificates to non-Kashmiris to change the demographic structure of the IIOJK.
And deployment of more than 900,000 military troops in the IIOJK, who have martyred thousands of the Kashmiris through brutal tactics-extrajudicial killings—non-provision of basic necessities of life and medicines for the coronavirus patients prove worst form of India’s state terrorism. Now, almost 21 months have been passed. But, Indian strict military lockdown in the IIOJK continues.
Besides, the Indian Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) further exposed the discriminatory policies of the Modi-led government against the Muslims.
It is mentionable that Article 42 of the 1907—Hague Regulations states that a territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.
Moreover, in its resolution 3314, the United Nations General Assembly prohibits states from any military occupation. Article 2(4) of the UN charter explicitly prohibits the use of force.
In addition, General Assembly’s resolution 1541 adopted in 1960 accepts the legitimacy of the right of self-determination and opposes repressive measures of all kinds against the freedom fighters by the colonial powers.
Nevertheless, the US-led major Western countries continue old policy of divide and rule to create division among the Islamic countries.
In this respect, on the directions of the US ex-President Donald Trump, some Muslim countries’ various moves such as recognition of the state of Israel, opening of Israeli embassies in their countries, Shia-Sunni sectarian split, manipulation of Iran-Saudi Arabia differences, encouragement to Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, lack of practical action against the Modi-regime etc. might be cited as some instances. Undoubtedly, it is due to lack of unity in the Islamic Ummah that the Muslim countries have become easy target of this old policy.
Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations
No surprise to anyone, but there is no reliable history of the Jewish people. It isn’t just them, when it comes down to history, everyone lies. I have been on “government sponsored” tours of sites all over the world.
I have had French tell me a Roman ruin from 100AD was built by a French king 300 years ago. In Hungary, Roman ruins are dated a thousand years or more after they were built, to support a heritage that never happened.
Entire religions, entire historical epochs are erased, cleansed from history. History is a liar.
Roman Ruins are Commonly ‘Borrowed’
The lies of history are peddled by universities funded by more liars, liars and thieves buying more lies from more liars and thieves. In the last 20 years, television documentaries have debunked 75% of what we have accepted as history and done so with scholarship “above the norm.”
What is the “norm?” A historical fact is any lie that has more than two people agree to it. What historians call “fact,” any cop would call a “shaky alibi.”
There is no bigger historical liar than the history of Judea, the Roman province that now includes a state Jews choose to call Israel.
With a UN vote coming up that President Obama has already promised to veto, a vote giving what may actually be the majority from that region national rights they have been denied, we are talking about the Palestinians, there are suggestions for “talks.”
There can be no talks because there is no basis for talks. Talks are based on ideas and understandings and the history of the region, be it from 1948 onward on since Exodus and the Egyptian escape, is all total bull, invented mythology made up to support wild claims or simply entertain.
Follow the Israeli Attack Arrows
Jews are told Palestinians are terrorists because of a version of the 1948 war that Israel teaches their people and is taught in America because of Israeli influence. It is false.
The Suez Canal war of 1956 isn’t taught either.
Many incidents such as the Lavon Affair and the USS Liberty are simply erased because they don’t fit.
That Israel staged the 1967 war as a sneak attack on Egypt, done with considerable help from the US, Britain and France, is another historical secret as is the 1973 war when Israel was kept afloat by the entire military strength of the United States.
Why do you think the Arabs cut off America’s oil?
It was because America sent its military to defend Israel when the Arabs tried to get the land back that was stolen during the sneak attack of 1967?
If much of this is strange to you, you have an Orwellian education, meaning “no education at all.”
We could start with 1948. Palestinians owned Palestine along with some Jews and Christians. Europeans of Jewish faith, armed to the teeth by the US, France and Britain, invaded and pushed the Palestinians off their land. Fighting back is called “terrorism.”
The Zionist European Invasion Was Successful – American Intel Reported They Would Easily Defeat the Arabs
This is simple historical truth. Problem is, until Israelis and Americans are willing to accept the real truth, they can never talk to anyone. Who wants to talk to a deluded bigot?
It gets worse, not just for Jews. Muslims and Christians are ‘full of it’ as well.
Lost Tribes – MarkChagall
First of all, there is no historical proof that any “Israeli” kingdom ever existed anywhere. There is no proof, despite decades of “faith based” archeology, phony science, phony history and phony propaganda that Moses or Noah or Abraham ever existed.
In fact, the “holy texts” were long proven forgeries, invented to justify land theft, wild stories of angels and gods giving things away, wildly contradictory, childish in scope and unsupported by science, by evidence and even reason. “They made it all up.”
What is represented as the “tribes of Israel” was a minor group of largely polytheistic tribes at war with each other and anyone, one of dozens of such groups, who disappeared from the sands of time.
Wild stories that talk of magical beings giving them land and power, not entirely different from the writings of Homer, don’t change that. Homer wrote much better.
Things we know. When the crusaders came to Jerusalem in the 1096, there were no Jews there. There were lots of Christians, however. You see, until 650AD, Judea had been entirely Christian, meaning everyone who lived there was Christian.
This was part of the Byzantine/Roman empire which had, controlled the region for many centuries. Back in the early 300’s, Constantine legalized Christianity and, in the process, made it illegal for Jews to hold Christian slaves.
Lost Tribes – Salvador Dali
Why was this an issue? Try finding out. History erased all of that, the same history that parted the Red Sea.
Between 135AD and 350AD, Jews and Christians in the Middle East hated each other.
The Christians, most at least, had actually been Jews who converted. It is part of that “Christ’ thing we call “Christianity” today. You remember, the “messiah” thing?
History tells us that Jews fought the Romans during the first century, ending 73AD or so. Then they all got on boats and went elsewhere in the Roman empire with a few staying behind.
However, there are no records of any of this. No records of them leaving. No records of them arriving.
No records of them living anywhere else. No records of their traditions in the Roman empire, though, for instance, there were always Jewish settlements in each Roman city.
The old Jewish section of Rome is right off Via Arenula today.
What is a wild claim, however, is that Jews were expelled, moved to the Roman empire and ended up all living in Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Germany, Czechoslovakia and, mostly Russia.
You see, you couldn’t move there then. The Visigoths and even nastier people ran those places.
Visigoths – They Did Not do Neighbors Well
They weren’t part of the Roman empire, never were.
There is no record of Jews leaving Judea, no record of them arriving in the Roman Empire at the time claimed, no record of them living there and no record of them all heading out to Russia and Poland, where 90% of Europe’s Jews had lived for centuries.
There is no historical record of any of this.
There is, however, a historical record of a people from Russia called the Khazars who converted to Judaism and created a great empire nearly as large as the United States.
The “Jewish areas” of Russia and Europe were the eastern portion of Khazaria.
One could assume that all Jews in Russia or Poland, just as Helen Thomas said, were from there and had never been from Judea. We can prove Jews lived there as Khazars. We cannot prove Jews moved there from Judea.
Does this mean that Jews from that region who, after World War II, chose to move to Palestine were bad people? No, of course not. What it does mean is that they never came from there. Is that important?
Only if the wild and insane claim that a convenient mythology allows one people to steal from another. However, this is the nature of phony history, phony religion and mythology. Jews from Russia and Poland look pretty much like everyone else from there.
Byzantine Mural – When Jews were Christians – Before They Were Muslims
Other points. The most likely thing is that Palestinians were once Byzantine Christians and before that Jews. Why? There is no proof they came from anywhere else.
There is proof they have been where they are pretty much forever. There is also proof that people who lived there were, at one time, Jews, then Christians and eventually Muslims. Why change religions?
Governments created incentives for people to change religions, some involved taxes, others involved serious persecution.
This religious persecution in Judea went on for centuries, Jews persecuting Christians and, later, Christians persecuting Jews.
This was long before Islam existed. This is real history.
Before Muslims became “terrorists,” Jews claimed Christians were “terrorists.”
Then Christians said Jews were all “thieves” and “mongrels” and had killed Christ. Can we prove Christ existed? Actually no, we can’t.
However, the Gospels, such as they are, most burned, some horribly mistranslated, are something of a record, much more of a record than the wild discussions of Moses and “mana” and being lost in Sinai for 40 years.
Would any of it stand up in court? Not for a friggin’ minute!
So, where does this leave us?
Palestinians are probably, by genetic definition, if such exists, the only real Jews.
Most Jews are probably from ethnic groups pushed into Europe, no different than every other migration. The idea of claimed “immunity” to two thousand years of historical resettlement, religious realignments and the total lack of either archaeological or rational written records as a basis of decades of warfare is insane.
We could just as easily be talking about the Phoenicians or Philistines or Hittites or Babylonians, the Greeks, the Ottomans or even Egyptians as having historical claim to Palestine.
Lord Balfour (left of pitcher) – Reception at the Tel-Aviv Municipality in 1925
Something we can come closer to proving is that a corrupt British politician named Balfour, back in 1917, loaded with gambling debts, wrote a short document to a wealthy and even more corrupt banker offering some kind of deal on land that he didn’t control.
This was during World War I. Turkey controlled Palestine entirely, had for centuries. There were Jews in the Turkish empire. Turkey invited them there in the 15th century to help run things. These Jews were, however, Europeans mostly, persecuted in Europe, where they had come to from, not Judea certainly, and welcomed to the Middle East by Muslims.
This is real history.
Britain had no right to cut a “deal” more likely tied to the kind of political payoffs and blackmail used to push President Obama into his humiliating speech to the UN. The “Balfour thing” which is brought up continually had then and has now NO LEGAL STANDING WHATSOEVER.
Balfour could have been running the mortgage department at today’s Bank of America.
It is time that those that call themselves Israeli’s admit they are resettled Europeans like most of us here in America, taking advantage of a poorly armed and primitive population just as Britain, Spain and later the United States did in North America, like Europe did around the world during the colonial era, like one population did to another since time immemorial. A few classes in Hebrew, discarding Yiddish traditions, doesn’t change history, it only erases heritage.
Supposedly “mechanisms” and “organizations” are in place, since 1945, to prevent such things. A civil war in Libya was carefully orchestrated based on such mechanisms and organizations, an intervention under identical circumstances that exist in Israel or Syria.
Zionism in Action – Being a Light Unto the World ?
But the United States is defending Israel and Russia is defending Syria.
Thus, the great world powers, such as they are, have maneuvered the world through a century of atrocity.
This time the United States is attempting to justify prehistoric barbarism of the Israeli occupation of Palestine using language carefully crafted by “advisors” with the ethical and moral authority of the worst criminal elements of our time.
Use of force to dispossess a people is ethnic cleansing. Separating people by walls in apartheid. An armed enclosure filled with men, women and children is a concentration camp.
This is Palestine today, what is called the “State of Israel.” This is why an American veto is important because the rest of the world sees the truth.
We are asked to endure a century of warfare and economic chaos because of the desire by some to validate bizarre mythologies that are little more than a veneer for something darker.
Israel isn’t about Jews. Israel is just another issue, strong strangling the weak, the clever controlling the many through deception.
Because of Israeli control of media, a few square miles of sand, some stolen and built with senior citizen vacation condos, some farmed by Asian slaves, much still barren and inhospitable, land no American would park an abandoned tractor on, is costing America and Europe a century of economic survival, costing generations of lives, all based on, not just mythology but a continuing stream of carefully crafted lies.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. He is a disabled veteran and has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades. Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 
