We spoke too soon, it turns out, about the Dr. Vladimir Mentus, the young Serbian sociologist, being released from prison and charges against him being dropped. At one point several days ago the appellate chamber did vacate the of the misdemeanour court judge’s decision sentencing Dr Mentus to thirty days for participation in the protests, specifically for “insulting” the police, and remanded the case to the lower court for reconsideration in line with its analysis. So is Dr Mentus now back home with his family? Not at all, the lower court has resentenced him to 30 days in prison, but on slightly altered grounds that he participated in acts of disorder which resulted in damage to public property. That is the way the travesty known as the “justice system” operates in Vučić’s “European Serbia.”
But unenviable as the position of Vučić’s political prisoner Vladimir Mentus may be, the tyrant Alexander Vučić is in a far worse jam. He is caught in a pincer between the demands of his Western sponsors to sign off on the recognition of Kosovo, and the swelling internal discontentment which delegitimizes him. At present, but for its disgraced president Serbia does not have any legally functioning institutions. The cabinet’s mandate ran out over a month ago. Since constitutionally the President’s role is ceremonial (although additional powers belonging to other branches of the government were unlawfully seized by the usurper) if a legally binding decision on Kosovo were to be taken, it could be done only by the prime minister and the cabinet, which are currently in a lame duck, caretaker capacity. As for Vučić’s fraudulently elected “parliament,” which needs to change the constitution for the separation of Kosovo to be legally possible, it has not been constituted yet and diehard protesters have vowed to make sure it never is and are demanding the annulment of the phony elections. Without parliament to approve it, the new government cannot be legally constituted nor can the act of treason Vučić has obligated himself to commit be performed with an appearance of constitutional regularity. So those who engineered Vučić’s installation eight years ago must deal with their puppet’s meltdown just as the task for which they installed him – recognition of the narco-state of Kosovo – is going into high gear and approaching its projected climax.
Dr Vladimir Mentus will very likely be out of the pokey in thirty days, but will Alexander Vučić by them still be around?
Ultimately, that decision will not be made by the usurper, or even by the leaderless and unorganized Serbian people, but by Western power centers and their intelligence services. They are now assessing Vučić’s overall usefulness in light of the bloody mess that his stupid and inept conduct has created. They must, of course, also calculate into their equations the impending crash of the Serbian economy, with projected one million unemployed roaming the streets. Not to be forgotten is another significant category of victims, the 1,700,000 pensioners facing a drastic reduction in their monthly allotments as government income shrinks and foreign loans, taken out under even the most usurious conditions, become increasingly difficult to arrange. Faced with the obligation of paying off billions of euros in soon to mature debts due to international creditors, with the hefty interest that those loans carry, and looking after his jobless subjects or the pensioners whom Vučić has already fleeced with impunity on numerous occasions, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what the cornered tyrant will do. The result will be a renewed explosion of social unrest compared to which the recent turmoil will seem no more than a minor bump in the road. These are huge factors shaping the hard-nosed assessment of Vučić’s viability by whoever is assessing his usefulness, and the folks doing the assessment right now as I write this are nothing if not hard-nosed.
Sidebar: The persistent rumor that a desperate Vučić, anxious to ingratiate himself with his Western masters, is ready to appoint the chief NATO lobbyist in Serbia, head of the Russophobic Soros NGO CEAS (Center for Euroatlantic Studies), Jelena Milić, to the post of foreign minister or some other high position in the new cabinet, gained credence today. The main regime rag, “Informer,” published Milić’s letter to Tania Fajon and several other EU officials who were rather mildly critical of police brutality in Serbia, telling them that everything is fine and warning them not to interfere in the regime’s internal affairs. The odious Milić is ingratiating herself with Vučić, who may have decided already to use her to try to ingratiate himself with his Western NATO masters. If the despised Milić is appointed to any government position, even cleaning lady in the foreign ministry, in the long run that will not be the factor that could save Vučić, but it will be a slap in the face for Russia and clear proof that it miscalculated completely when it bet, however grudgingly, on the Serbian tyrant.
To this dismal picture should be added ominous warning signals that the same people who invented Vučić and put him in place are now busy reinventing him in the form of a resurgent Western financed “civic opposition,” ready to jump in and take over, possibly in a palace coup, should Vučić try to weasel out of the treasonous commitments made to his foreign masters.
These characters are, to be sure, just as despised as Vučić. As we pointed out in earlier sit-reps, they were booed off the stage and physically chased away by protesting patriotic citizens when they tried to mingle with the crowds to profit from the photo-op and misrepresent themselves as popular tribunes. They are, however, being organized by Vučić’s masters, persistently and with considerable fanfare, as Serbia’s potential shadow government in waiting. After a suitably arranged “color revolution,” they would be ready and able to complete their predecessor’s job. If the usurper is on sleeping tablets, there are sound reasons for his distress.
To sum up, Vučić is the man that absolutely no one is happy with. The population loathes him for his disastrous and injurious policies and sees through all his lies. His Western backers have good cause to be upset and impatient, while harbouring serious doubts about his further utility. Their problem, as well as Vučić’s, is how to neutralize popular discontentment, which so far has not shown the concerted strength required to overthrow the rotten system, but has nevertheless proved seriously disruptive. Most concerning of all, its potential for further radicalization, especially if the unstable tyrant again overreacts and creates a catalyst for popular mobilization, presently is a “known unknown,” but still very much on the minds of all concerned.
Vučić’s ultimate fate will be unpleasant, but it will most likely be decided by his obviously dissatisfied foreign sponsors, not by anything he does. A new team eager to prove its loyalty and plunder the little that is left of Serbia is waiting in the wings and the condemned, lonely man in the presidential palace knows it.
If Vučić’s fate is not settled in Serbia (which for him would be the most unpleasant option), he will have to look for a corner of this earth where his pestilential presence would still be tolerated and where he and the remnants of his criminal entourage might have access to the fruits of their immense plunder. Since deposed and no longer useful puppets of the globalist system, after being discarded, with remarkable regularity become global fugitives, finding a safe haven will be an incredibly complicated challenge.
That is why with all his current travails, the young scholar Dr Vladimir Mentus is in far better shape than Serbia’s pathetic Ozymandias, the “great” bumbler and nincompoop, Alexander Vučić. The bright young man at least has a future, and the prison time he can simply chalk up to life experience. Who knows, it may even result in a brilliant sociological dissertation.
There are two names which often trigger a very strong and hostile reaction from many Russians: Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Rezun aka “Viktor Suvorov”. The list of accusations against these two men usually includes:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: he made up numbers about 66 million people killed by the Soviet regime, he spoke favorably of General Andrei Vlasov, he was a CIA stooge, he was an anti-Semite, a Russian nationalist and a monarchist. Finally, there is a popular saying in modern Russia: “show me an anti-Soviet activist(“антисовечик”) and I will show you a russophobe” (which makes Solzhenitsyn a russophobe).
Vladimir Rezun: he is a traitor, he is the creator of the theory that Hitler only preempted a Soviet attack which Stalin was about to launch, he is a MI-6 front to spread russophobic theories.
What I like to do when I hear these opinions is to ask a simple question: how many books by Solzhenitsyn and/or Rezun have you actually read?
The answer is typically rather nebulous. They mostly refer to either one or two books (at most) and a number of articles (often articles not even written by either author, but paraphrasing, often rather “creatively”).
This reminds me of an old Soviet joke: “a Party official comes to some factory or office to deliver a political lecture and absolutely tears into Solzhenitsyn’s famous “Gulag Archipelago” calling it an ugly collection of lies. One of the workers present asks the Party official whether he read the entire book to which the Party official replies “I don’t read such anti-Soviet filth!”
There is much truth to that as I have rarely encountered Solzhenitsyn-haters who actually read at least a few books by him.
Well, it just so happens that I discovered Solzhenitsyn when I was 16 and that I continued to study his writings for the rest of my life. Over the next years and decades, I read every single book and article Solzhenitsyn wrote several times (at least twice, if not more). As for Rezun, I read all his non-fiction books (I don’t like his fiction at all), so I want to chime in here and share with you, the reader, my strictly personal opinion about these two authors and men.
First, I will begin with a couple of general comments.
For one thing, both Solzhenitsyn and Rezun are terrific writers and it is a crying shame not to read them! Their styles are, however, dramatically different: Solzhenitsyn is often compared to Dostoevskii, and rightfully so, even if this applies more to contents and worldview than style. I would say that Solzhenitsyn’s style is unique and very uneven. His masterpiece is, at least in my opinion, the “Gulag Archipelago” (the worst being his poems). Yes, I know, this is a non-fiction book and not one of his purely literary masterpieces (say like “The Cancer Ward” or “In The First Circle“), but I personally happen to find the Gulag Archipelago his most powerful book not only on contents, but also on style and language. His other masterpiece is, again in my totally subjective opinion, his immense cycle “The Red Wheel“, especially “August 14” and “October 16“. On the other end of the spectrum, I also love his short stories (“Крохотки”). By any halfway objective measure, the man is a literary giant on par with Tolstoy or Dostoevskii.
Nobody would say that about Rezun. His style could be described as “pedestrian” if not outright “yellow” (in the meaning of “yellow journalism”). But that is not a problem. What Rezun lacks in elegance and academic rigor, he more than makes up for with a very lively and entertaining writing style, some really catchy ideas and a lot of “creative nonsense”. I have no problem with somebody hating Rezun as a person and traitor, or hating his vulgar style, but don’t tell me that he does not write well: millions of people read his books with immense fascination and appreciation. The man has undeniable talent.
The above is just to point out that those who say that they have not read these authors because they hate their style are most likely not being very honest and it is much more likely that they did not read these authors because of the contents of their books. That is what we shall look into next. Specifically, I will look at Alexander Solzhenitsyn first, he is the more complex one of the two, and then at Rezun.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The very first thing we need to remember is that Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918, which means that he was raised by a generation of Russians which remembered pre-1917 Russia. The second thing which we need to also keep in mind is that he was raised by a generation which remembered the chaos of the Kerenskii regime followed by the bloodbath of the Bolshevik coup which itself was following by the bloody orgy of the Russian civil war.
Why is that important?
Because his brand of anti-Sovietism was much more similar to what we would see in the White Guard or the First Generation Russian emigration (those roughly 2 million Russians who left Russia following the Bolshevik coup). For example, this is why Solzhenitsyn wrote so much about the role of Jews in the first Bolshevik governments: this is a topic which was central to the wordview of White Guard and First Generation Russian emigres.
It is also pretty clear that while Solzhenitsyn already had anti-Soviet feelings before he was arrested, it is nonetheless obvious that his incarceration first in a labor camp and, later, into a special jail for scientists exposed Solzhenitsyn to even more anti-Soviet individuals and ideas.
Of course, none of that excuses any false figures (or misguided political opinions) Solzhenitsyn might have had, but it does explain where they came from and why Solzhenitsyn deemed them as credible. Speaking personally, I was raised in exactly that “White Guard” and “First Emigration” political culture, and I can assure you that Solzhenitsyn’s views were really very much “mainstream” amongst those Russians who still remembered pre-revolutionary Russia.
Next, Solzhenitsyn himself described how he asked all his fellow prisoners (the “zeks” he speaks of in the Gulag Archipelago) to send him all the historical documents, memoirs, academic papers, etc. possible for him to write the history of the Gulag. Needless to say, the Soviet archives were not made open for this purpose, nor did the KGB offer to write an amicus brief to help Solzhenitsyn.
Thus, just to recap: what is important here were Solzhenitsyn’s sources of information:
Pre-1917 Russians who remembered the horrors of the revolution and civil war
White Guard & First Wave Emigre memoirs and articles
Exposure to those arrested for anti-Soviet activities (the famous Art 58), whether guilty or innocent, and who were incarcerated with Solzhenitsyn
Articles by western scholars, political figures, think tanks (aka “western propaganda”).
Is it a big surprise that Solzhenitsyn did get a lot of things wrong, especially when the Soviet state offered very little in terms of credible historical information?
Here I have to insert a rather lengthy side bar about the nature of the Soviet state. It is my opinion that over its history the Soviet regime changed rather often and rather dramatically. Personally, I would offer the following chronology:
The early years: (1917-1922). The Bolshevik coup, then the civil war followed by the great Jewish terror of Iagoda, Frenkel, Ezhov, etc. the years of the so-called “war communism”, the NEP, and the collectivization, famine and “dekulakisation” (1932-1933). This period ended with the so-called “Stalin’s purges” (1936-1938).
Stalin’s preparation for WWII: (1936-1941). During this period most of the Bolshevik “old guard” was either executed, or jailed or demoted and a completely new generation of commanders (“Stalin’s generals”), were put into all key military and civilian positions.
The Great Patriotic War: (1941-1945). This dramatic period which saw the Russian nation fight for her very survival also saw a truly dramatic change in political culture: the former Bolshevik russophobia was replaced with praise for the heroic Russian nation, military ranks were fully reestablished (along with traditional Russian epaulets), churches were reopened and the repressions dramatically reduced.
The post-war period and Stalin’s last years: 1945-1961. This period saw a quasi-miraculous rebirth of the Soviet Union from the ashes of WWII and a period of prosperity and stability. While Stalin was probably murdered by his entourage in 1953 and his main executioner (Lavrentii Beria) executed soon thereafter (also in 1953), their legacy of prosperity and stability lasted well beyond the 22nd CPSU Congress which saw Khrushchev make a 180 and suddenly denounce Stalin, the cult of his personality and the rehabilitation of millions of innocent Russians.
The Great Betrayal (1961-1964): Khrushchev was the worst, most immoral, incompetent, hypocritical, inept and otherwise despicable Soviet leader ever (Eltsin was in the same league, imnsho). He was also a bloody tyrant. Yet, possibly to conceal his own incompetence and his rabid hatred for Stalin, he did liberalize the Soviet Union to a not-insignificant degree, yet just like in the case of Gorbachev’s “glastnost’” – his “new openness” did not help the Soviet Union, far from it. Eventually, Krushchev himself was overthrown by Brezhnev but by then it was already too late: while until 1961 most (or, at least, many) Russians did believe in the ideal of Marxism-Leninism and trusted their leaders, after the shock of the 22nd CPSU Party Congress a period of deep disillusionment gradually set in. (It would only really stop in 2000!).
The slow-motion deconstruction of the Soviet state, followed by the inevitable collapse: 1964-1991. Most of us remember Brezhnev. Some probably also remember Andropov. Does anybody even remember Chernenko? Then came “Gorbi” and, for a few hours, Ianaev (of the GKChP 1991 coup) and then the Soviet Union was declared dead.
What is crucial to understand here is that each of these six periods generated a very different popular and political culture. Thus, while in the West you often would hear generalizations about “the Soviets”, the truth is that there never once was any one single monolithic Soviet culture. The perfect example of sharp contrast would be to compare the generation which went through the horrors of the Early Years period with the generation which defeated the Nazi war machine and then put the first man in space.
In the case of Solzhenitsyn he was very much a product of the Early Years and should be evaluated against this historical background and not under the kind of criteria a modern professional historian with full access to many preciously secret archives would have.
Next, we need to take a look at the accusation that Solzhenitsyn’s was an apologist for General Vlasov.
The short answer is that yes, Solzhenitsyn did justify General Vlasov’s betrayal of his oath by saying that the Soviet Union had betrayed Vlasov long before Vlasov betrayed the Soviet Union. Furthermore, there is no doubt that Solzhenitsyn did absolutely hate Stalin whom he considered as a vicious mass murderer. How could he not approve of somebody taking up arms against Stalin? Solzhenitsyn’s conclusion was that if the Russian people had not seized this opportunity to overthrow the Soviet regime, then they really would have proven to the world that they are passive slaves.
One of the goals Solzhenitsyn set for himself when he wrote the Gulag Archipelago was to debunk a popular western theory which goes something like this: “Russians have never known freedom and they don’t care about it. Russians have a slave mentality and all they want is some kind of dictator (Czar or Commissar – makes no difference to them) to rule over them with an iron fist“. One of the things which Solzhenitsyn set out to prove was that far from being passive or slave-like, the Russian people resisted the Bolshevik regime at least until 1946! What does he mean by that? He refers to the fact that between 1917 and 1941, the Soviet regime was constantly threatened by all sorts of enemies (from monarchists to Trotskysts) and that following the Nazi invasion of the USSR, the Russian people simply seized this opportunity to rise up again against the Bolsheviks. From this point of view, the entire Vlasov phenomenon is nothing else but a continuation of the civil war. To summarize, when western russophobos liked to gloat about Russians having a slave mentality (they did a lot of them, especially the so-called “Russian/Soviet area specialists” Solzhenitsyn’s intention was to debunk this calumny and reply “oh yes, we did resist, for all of 30 years! You (meaning the folks in the West), in contrast, not only presented very little resistance to the Nazis, most of you became faithful and obedient servants of Hitler! The reality is that we, Russians, are far more freedom loving than you are, this is why we cannot be occupied and why it is so hard to rule over us.
While I personally cannot justify Vlasov’s betrayal of his oath, I do fundamentally agree that the Soviet regime only achieved full power and security for itself after the end of the war.
Whatever may be the case, does that really surprise anybody that Solzhenitsyn had such views? Such views were, in fact, quite common amongst those who still remembered pre-1917 Russia. In many ways, Solzhenitsyn was a pure product of the political culture of the Early Years of the Soviet regime and I personally see him as culturally much closer to the pre-1917 Russians than to the Russians which were raised already under the Soviet regime.
That does not mean that Solzhenitsyn did not get some facts, even crucial ones, very wrong.
It is all well and fun to comfortably sit in our chairs and criticize those who have been wrong in their past, but fundamentally this is both logically wrong and morally hypocritical. The truth is that history, ALL history, very much including our recent history, is chock full with myths, generalizations, simplifications, rumors and, most of all, lies. We all know about 9/11, but that is hardly a unique example. Does anybody remember the “Timisoara massacre” or, even better, the “Srebrenica genocide”? Speaking of Srebrenica, how about the no less fake “massacres” in Markale or Racak? How about Colonel Gaddafi giving Viagra to his men to rape Libyan women? Or this innocent young nurse from Kuwait who reported about the Iraqis tossing babies out of incubators?
These were all lies.
And then, there are the much more serious cases, including the historical truth about the so-called “Holocaust”. Or, who carries the responsibility for starting WWII? How about the Nuremberg Trials which some hailed as a huge victory for civilized mankind, while many others called it a “kangaroo court” of victors. What about the Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia? Do you feel that this was a superb example of justice, or a crude Serbian-nation bashing PR operation?
If we can’t even agree on our recent history, do you really expect people from very different time periods (as all Russians today are, depending on their age), to agree on history, even crucial history?
Of course not!
So what we need to do now is not “smoke out” this or that personality and accuse them of lying (that would be a typically *Soviet* thing to do: to denounce a supposed enemy and demand that he be punished and silenced). We first need to consider what this person knew and did not know at the time that he/she wrote/said what we now consider lies. To err is human, and is therefore excusable. To deliberately lie is something quite different.
In the case of Solzhenitsyn, there is absolutely no evidence of deliberate deception on his part. In fact, the 66 million number is not even his. As I already pointed out in the past:
According to estimates by exiled professor of statistics IA Kurganov, from 1917 to 1959, and excluding war losses, only from terrorist destruction, suppression, hunger, the high mortality in the camps, and including the subsequent low birth rate, cost us 66.7 million people” (” The Gulag Archipelago “, part 3, Chapter 1). And in an interview in 1976 Solzhenitsyn said: “Professor Kurganov indirectly calculated that from 1917 to 1959 only from the internal war of the Soviet regime against its own people, that is, the destruction of its famine, collectivization, peasant’s deportation to prisons, camps and simple executions – just from these causes we lost, together with our civil war, 66 million people”. These figures INCLUDE the bloody Civil War, the so-called “War Communism“, the numerous anti-Bolshevik insurrections (such as the one in Tambov), the deaths resulting from the so-called “Collectivization” and “Dekulakization“, the “pure” political repression under the infamous Article 58of the RSFSR Criminal Code and even the subsequent low birth rate. So we are talking about a “grand max” estimate.
The first thing we can note here is that while Prof Kurganov tried to arrive at a “grand max” figure, the Soviet archives (which show dramatically lower numbers of people arrested and/or executed) only dealt with the number of people actually sentenced under Soviet law and does not include the specific events Kurganov chose to include.
Thus, directly comparing Kurganov’s figures with official Soviet documents is a case of apples and oranges.
Still, Solzhenitsyn clearly loathed the Bolsheviks and the Soviet regime and that most likely made him willing to accept facts and figures which he should have checked much more carefully.
There is also a lot of evidence that, ideologically speaking, Solzhenitsyn was a monarchist in the general line of Fedor Dostoevskii, Lev Tikhomirov or Prof. Ivan Ilyin (whom Putin seems to also quote very often…) and that he had an intense dislike, not only for Marxism or Leninism, but even for “moderate” social democracy (which he saw as unable to stand up to the Soviet Union and its allies). We also know for sure that Solzhenitsyn had nothing good to say about western democracies or the capitalist worldview. However, Solzhenitsyn was hardly a typical “reactionary” since he had very little good to say about the pre-1917 Russia, including its last Czar. In truth, Solzhenitsyn was a typical Russian idealist who combined rather liberal, and even modernist, views about the Russian Orthodox Church with a rather strong dislike of the political system put in place by Peter I (often called “The Great” by westernizers). In fact, I would argue that there are at least three different “Solzhenitsyns” which need to be considered separately:
Solzhenitsyn the author: here it is a matter of personal taste. He did get a Nobel in literature, but we all understand that the Nobel Committee is just a front for the AngloZionist PR machine. Personally? He is one of my favorite Russian authors along with, in a totally different style, Sergei Lukianenko.
Solzhenitsyn the historian: here every single word he wrote needs to be revisited and carefully evaluated in light of what we now think that we know. This is especially true of his Gulag Archipelago which Solzhenitsyn referred to as an “An Experiment in Literary Investigation” thus clearly indicating that this was, by definition, a work in progress, an experiment, and an investigation. As I recently wrote, there is no worthwhile history which is not revisionist, and with Solzhenitsyn being both so famous and so wrong, it is only natural that his writings are the object of a concerted barrage of criticisms and reevaluation.
Solzhenitsyn the philosopher: yet again a case for personal taste. I would argue that Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a giant standing on the shoulders of other giants such as Khomiakov, Dostoevskii, IlIlyinyin, Solonevich, Leontiev, Tikhomirov, Rozanov and many others. Right now his philosophical legacy is completely obfuscated by the historical discussions, but that pendulum will eventually swing the other way, and then his moral philosophy will be studied on its merits.
Right now, these are not good times for “Solzhenitsyn studies”, to say the least. In the West he is hated as Great-Russian nationalist and an anti-Semitic monarchist while in Russia is hated like a russophobic CIA stooge who calumniated his own people and who defended a traitor like Vlasov. These beliefs are ingrained way too hard for me to even bother trying to discuss them here. That discussion will happen, but only once the stridently anti-Solzhenitsyn haters will give way to folks with a better personal knowledge of what Solzhenitsyn actually wrote and what he actually meant. Right now most of his detractors are busy simply flaming the man, everything he wrote and all those who read him.
While he was in exile in Cavendish, VT, Solzhenitsyn once told a visiting friend of mine the following: “right now, we don’t have our own country under our feet, this is why it is too early to write on this topic (he was referring to a then still secret book of his which he eventually published after his return to Russia under the title “200 Years Together“), but as soon as Russia recovers her freedom, I will publish this book“. I will paraphrase this by saying that I believe that as long as the former Soviet elites and their off-springs occupy most of the key positions in modern Russia, no serious discussion about Solzhenitsyn will be possible, the level of emotional involvement is simply too high. But that too shall pass. There is already a generation of young Russians out there which does not even remember the Soviet era or the Cold War. It is *their* kids, and even grand-kids, who will, one day, give a fair historical evaluation of this intellectual giant. Right now, modern Russia still lives “in the shadows” of the former Soviet Union. But, sooner or later, Russia will come out from this shadow – that is when Solzhenitsyn’s views will become front and center again.
There is one more thing about Solzhenitsyn I want to share with you: in his pamphlet “Our Pluralists” Solzhenitsyn concludes his essay against Russian “liberals” and “democrats” (in the Russian meaning of the word) by the following words: “we thought you were fresh, but you are still the same“. I often think of this sentence when I read the writings of the Solzhenitsyn haters. During the Soviet period the Solzhenitsyn haters liked to refer to him as “Solzhenitser” (hinting that he might be a Jew). Nowadays, Solzhenitsyn haters in Russia refer to him as SoLZHEnitsyn (the letters “lzhe” means “lie” in Russian, suggesting that he is a liar). That tells you all you need to know about the degree of sophistication these folks are capable of…
Now let’s look at our other traitor,
Vladimir Rezun aka “Viktor Suvorov”
Vladimir Rezun, who writes under the pen name “Viktor Suvorov”, also wrote a lot of books, but that is where his similarity to Solzhenitsyn ends. For one thing, Rezun is from a much later generation, he was born 30 years after Solzhenitsyn, and his formative years were in the 1960s, during Khrushchev’s “Great Betrayal”. Obviously, Rezun did not live through the war, nor during the glorious post-war years. The other big difference between the two men is that while Alexander Solzhenitsyn was forcibly sent into exile, Rezun defected and that defection was officially voluntary (there are some indirect signs suggesting that he was kidnapped in Geneva by the British – I consider both versions equally credible). Then he became a typical defector, let me explain what I mean by that.
I have met quite a few defectors in my life (and quite a few potential defectors who eventually decided not to defect). Here is the typical chronology of what happens to defectors (and here is the reason why I always strongly advised all Soviets against defecting):
First, you are a “hot potato”. Usually, nowhere nearly as hot as you like to pretend as defectors all need to “sell” themselves to their new masters (that is, indeed, what western officials become for them) so they almost always grossly over-state their opposition to the Soviet regime, how important they were before they defected and how useful they will be now. This does not work very long as western debriefers pretty rapidly can establish who and what the new defector really was in the past and what he/she really knows. After that, these defectors are typically provided with some means of living and typically forgotten.
Next, you try to impress the general public. The best way to achieve that is for you to write a best seller. Then another one, then one more. That very rarely works for a simple reason: whatever of interest the defector had to say typically comes out in the first, rarely in a second book. After that, the “publicity shock value” imagination tank is empty and defectors typically begin to make up nonsense. That nonsense typically gets worse with each subsequent book. Except for a few diehard commie-haters nobody takes these silly books seriously and the once “hot potato” defector becomes a total nobody, forgotten by all (here I think of that SOB Kalugin for example).
Eventually, defectors experience a mental collapse, followed by years of substance abuse and, very often, suicide. They realize that nobody needs or cares about them; they realize that their former bosses have long forgotten about them, as have their new bosses too. They have no friends, mostly deeply dysfunctional love affairs which end in disaster, their families often turn away from them and, last but not least, they miss the people and country which they have betrayed and left.
In the case of Rezun he wrote his first best-seller in 1982 entitled “Inside the Soviet Army” which was very entertaining (he had another book before that, “The Liberators” 1981, but it was not that successful). Then, in 1985, he wrote “The Aquarium“, a rather bad and sensationalist book about the Soviet military intelligence service, the GRU. Then came 1987 and one of Rezun’s worst books: Spetsnaz, a collection of nonsensical invented stories which was a flop. By then, Rezun clearly had a problem. But being a very intelligent man, Rezun came up with a brilliant idea.
It all began with a short 1985 article followed, in 1988, by the Russian edition of his most famous book, “Icebreaker” (“Ледокол”) in which Rezun, writing as “Viktor Suvorov” claimed he has had evidence that Stalin was about to attack Nazi Germany and that Hitler had no choice but to strike first. His evidence? Lots of things, hundreds of claims, ranging from the somewhat credible to the outright silly. I won’t go into all of them here (lots of excellent historians have already done that – I think of Col. Ret David Glantz’s superb books). I will just mention one which I find particularly galling: Rezun claims that the Soviet military had plans to attack Germany and that various Russian units had even received special glossaries to allow them to speak to the folks they were planning on attacking: the Germans.
I am quite sure that the Soviets had plans to attack Germany. In fact, I am also sure that the Soviets had plans to attack most, if not all, of their neighbors. If not, the entire Soviet General Staff ought to have to been shot (again!). Why? Because that is what the military does in peacetime: prepare for war: including both defensive and offensive operations. Think for yourself: what if you were a Soviet general and you were suddenly summoned to Stalin’s late night working sessions and Stalin asked you “what are our plans to liberate the German workers and peasants from the Nazi regime and how long would such a war last if we attack first?“. Can you imagine yourself replying, “C omrade Stalin, we have no such plans!“? I think that you would die of shame, and possibly fear, even before meeting “your” firing squad. Remember the Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1920 or the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940? They are not exactly known for being stunning successes (though Rezun does have some very interesting views on the latter, but they are not within the scope of this article). So, OF COURSE, the Soviets did have plans for war against Germany, just as Russia today has a plan to destroy the US (which also has such a plan of its own!). The existence of such plans does most emphatically NOT prove that the leaders of Russia or the US have the actual intention to attack each other! As for “Russian-German” pocket glossaires, that is just what military linguists mostly do when not at war. Trust me, I used to be one such a linguist – a Sprachspezialist in German – and I even saw “German-Chinese” glossaries! Yet these hardly indicate that Switzerland was planning to invade China, right?!
Did Rezun successfully prove his case? Depends whom you ask, of course. I am not a military historian and I think that this issue should be researched by professional historians, not amateurs like myself. What I do emphatically state is that I think that Rezun’s books should be read and discussed. What I find plain stupid, is what a few Russian TV news shows have done: first, they denounce Rezun as a traitor which he probably was (unless he was kidnapped, of course), but which is also a total non-sequitur. Then they interview his former colleagues who describe his horrible personal character (incompetent, alcoholic, generally disliked) but they fail to explain how such a terrible person, and an incompetent one to boot, managed to get a position in one of the most prestigious GRU “rezidenturas” in the West (the Soviets also did exactly the same with Oleg Kalugin who was assigned to the KGB rezidentura in Washington, DC, no less!). Then, in what they probably imagine as a coup de grâce, they get on a soapbox and proclaim that Rezun’s views are extremely offensive and that he must be a MI6 agent which, whether true or not, is also entirely irrelevant as a book or a historical theory ought be judged on its intrinsic merits, or lack thereof, not on the character of its author.
This is especially true of Rezun for another, special, reason. Long AFTER he wrote his books about how Stalin wanted to attack Germany, Rezun wrote an absolutely amazing historical book entitled “The Purification” (“Очищение”) in which he not only revisits Stalin’s purges but in which he brilliantly defends them. If you understand Russian I urge you to read the book (you can download it in Russian and for free here). The key thesis of the book is as follows: Stalin understood that the first generation of Bolsheviks were superbly skilled at massacring innocent civilians in huge numbers, but as military commanders they were big fat ZEROs (including Marshal Tukhachevskii whom folks in the West always present as some kind of military genius – which he sure was not!). Furthermore, by the mid-1930s Soviet Russia was really cracking and almost collapsing due the hatred most Russians have for their persecutors and torturers, thus while the bloody purge of the Secret Police and Party was seen by these elites (and their Trotskyst supporters abroad) as a “horrible purge”, for most common people this purge must have looked like a liberation and justified execution of the worst of the worst of the Bolshevik monsters. Furthermore, Rezun makes very interesting comparisons between Stalin’s generals and Hitler’s – and he concludes that Stalin had a much better lot (towards the end of the war, Hitler agreed, by the way). I find that thesis very compelling and I hope that one day “The Purification” will be translated into English.
None of the above should be interpreted as a defense of Rezun or, for that matter, Stalin. In the case of Rezun, I am not defending him at all, I am only deploring that he is vilified and dismissed, rather than critically read. As for Stalin himself, I described my personal feelings about the man in my essay “The Controversy About Stalin – a “basket” of Preliminary Considerations“, so I don’t need to repeat myself here.
Conclusion: Vladimir Putin as an example to emulate?
Vladimir Putin is often accused of being nostalgic of the Soviet Union and of wanting to recreate it.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
It is true that Putin declared several times that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” (“крупнейшая геополитическая катастрофа века”). What Putin was referring to was not some kind of nostalgia for the Soviet Union, but an acute realization of the unspeakable suffering the collapse of the Soviet Union meant for millions of people.
In fact, Putin has exactly *zero* nostalgia for the bad old USSR and he is not shy about speaking his mind about it, especially when he is confronted by those who now idealize the Soviet era. Not only that, but Putin has very publicly shown his immense respect for Solzhenitsyn. And the feeling was very mutual as we can tell from this photo:
Contrast this with Putin’s often publicly expressed disgust with defectors!
See, for example, what Putin declared during an interview with the British Financial Times: (emphasis added)
As a matter of fact, treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished. I am not saying that the Salisbury incident is the way to do it. Not at all. But traitors must be punished. This gentleman, Skripal, had already been punished. He was arrested, sentenced and then served time in prison. He received his punishment. For that matter, he was off the radar. Why would anybody be interested in him? He got punished. He was detained, arrested, sentenced and then spent five years in prison. Then he was released and that was it. As concerns treason, of course, it must be punishable. It is the most despicable crime that one can imagine.
By the way, this suggests that Putin does not share Solzhenitsyn’s sympathy for General Vlasov proving, yet again, that a critical mind can always separate the chaff from the wheat.
Vladimir Putin lays flowers on the grave of Ivan Illyin
Then there is the way Putin likes to mention Ivan Ilyin in his speeches. It is pretty obvious to me that in terms of his personal views on history and politics, Putin is clearly an avid reader of both Ilyin and Solzhenitsyn (which creates a cognitive dissonance amongst Solzhenitsyn-haters who support Putin). However, that in no way implies that Putin endorses or agrees with everything Solzhenitsyn or Ilyin wrote or said. But it does show that not all minds in Russia are still “under the shadow of the Soviet Union”.
But change is inevitable.
First, the pendulum of history will swing the other way, and a lot of ideas which seem popular today are bound to gradually fade out, replaced by hopefully a much more careful evaluation of historical figures like Solzhenitsyn. Second, a lot of people who were raised in a blind hatred of “traitors” will simply pass away, while their descendants will not have the same knee-jerk reactions. Last, but most definitely not least, the future Russia will have to rediscover her historical, philosophical, spiritual and cultural roots, at which point the ideas of philosophers like Solzhenitsyn or Ilyin will automatically get center stage once again (though not necessarily be uncritically endorsed).← Understanding Why They Lie and Why They…
A Bahraini man’s biggest crime was that he burned a flag of the nation’s enemy.
A court in Bahrain sentenced a man to three years in prison for burning an ‘Israeli’ flag, local media reported Monday.
The Supreme Court of Appeal refused to hear a petition from the Bahraini man, who was convicted of allegedly organizing an illegal gathering and rioting, among other charges.
At a pro-Palestinian demonstration last May, the defendant along with 10 other people blocked streets at the entrance to the village of Abu Saiba by setting a fire in the middle of the road and then burning an ‘Israeli’ flag, Bahraini media reported.
Several local news outlets noted that the sentencing sparked outrage among dozens of Bahrainis on social media, who accused their government of seeking to appease the Zionist entity amid Manama’s warming ties with the Tel Aviv regime.
Though only two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan are publicly normalizing ties with the Zionist entity, there has been an opening with Bahrain and other Gulf states in recent years.
The leader of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council is headed to Uganda, where the Zionist PM Benjamin Netanyahu is currently staying for a day-long visit, according to Haaretz.
Sudan’s Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is expected to meet Netanyahu later today, Haaretz added.
After Netanyahu visited Chad in 2019, it was reported that ‘Israel’ was working to formalize ties with Sudan, and Israeli officials spoke about it publicly on several occasions.
منذ اليوم الأول لتوقيف جزار الخيام العميل عامر فاخوري نشطت الحركة الديبلوماسية الأميركية للتدخل والحؤول دون توقيفه أو محاكمته منتهكة سيادة الوطن وقوانينه. ورغم عدم وجود أية اتفاقيات او بروتوكولات تسمح لأيّ محام أميركي بالدخول إلى المحاكم اللبنانية حصل فريق المحامين الأميركيين الموكل من السفارة في بيروت على إذن من نقيب المحامين السابق للدفاع عن العميل فاخوري دون تقديم أيّ مبرّرات قانونية تبرّر تدخل فريق الدفاع الأميركي في القضية. لم يأت هذا التدخل الأميركي السافر من فراغ بل إنه يحمل دلالات كثيرةً ويطرح تساؤلات كبيرةً. لربما يبرّر البعض هذا التدخل كون العميل فاخوري يحمل الجنسية الأميركية وبالتالي من «حق» حكومته الدفاع عنه وهو متاح ضمن القوانين المرعية الإجراء ومن خلال وكلاء لبنانيين وليسوا أميركيين.
وإذا سلمنا بعدم تفريط الحكومة الأميركية بمواطنيها وحرصها عليهم لماذا لم تبد الولايات المتحدة هذا الحرص على مواطنيها وعملائها السبعة عشر الذين اعتقلتهم الاستخبارات الإيرانية في شهر تموز الماضي أيّ قبل توقيف جزار الخيام بشهرين تقريباً. ولماذا لم تتجرّأ على إرسال فريق دفاع للدفاع عنهم رغم تصنيفهم كمصادر ممتازة في جهاز ال cia، ورغم ذلك لم نشهد تحركاً سريعاً للديبلوماسية الأميركية للإفراج عنهم كما حصل في لبنان بالرغم من أهميتهم بالنسبة إلى الاستخبارات الأميركية ورغم الحكم على بعضهم بالإعدام لم نلحظ سرعة التدخل الأميركي كما لحظناه في قضية العميل عامر فاخوري، وهذا إنْ دلّ على شيء فإنه يدلّ بوضوح على أنّ العميل عامر فاخوري بالنسبة إلى جهازي “الموساد” و”سي أي آي” هو الأهمّ بين جواسيس وضباط الاستخبارات الأميركية والإسرائيلية الموقوفين في طهران، بل هو جزء مهمّ وكبير من منظومة التجسّس الأميركية “الإسرائيلية، في لبنان والمنطقة، وهو يشكل كنز معلومات كبيراً في قبضة الأجهزة الأمنية اللبنانية، وإلا ما معنى منع استكمال التحقيق معه؟ وما هي دلالات عرقلة حضوره إلى المحاكم للشروع بمحاكمته؟ وما هو الثقل الذي يمثله كي يبادر وكيل وزارة الخارجية الأميركية للشؤون السياسية ديفيد هيل لطرح ملفه للمفاوضات وطرح عملية مبادلته بالمواطن اللبناني قاسم تاج الدين؟ ألا يشير الأداء الأميركي وتعاطيه في القضية إضافة إلى ما طرحناه من أسئلة إلى مدى أهمية العميل عامر فاخوري بالنسبة إلى الأميركيين والإسرائيليين؟
ثمة تفسير واحد لكلّ تلك التساؤلات يقول بأنّ العميل عامر فاخوري دخل إلى لبنان بمهمة أمنية واستخباراتية ومعه أمر عمليات لا سيما في ظلّ ما تشهده الساحة اللبنانية من سيناريوات أُحبِط بعضها، وتوحي بأنّ لهذا العميل ارتباطات ربما يكون على مستوى شبكات عملاء يتواصل معها وأسّس لها في المجتمع وعلى كافة المستويات لا سيما بعد ثبوت اتساع دائرة علاقاته السياسية وعملية تسهيل مروره. وما يؤكد ذلك هو الإصرار الأميركي الكبير على إخراجه بأيّ ثمن دون امتثاله للمحاكمة، وقد تبيّن أنّ العميل عامر فاخوري من أهمّ الجواسيس وفاق بأهميته الأمنية والاستخباراتية الجاسوس الأميركي شيوي وانغ، البالغ من العمر 38 عاماً، والذي كان معتقلاً لدى طهران منذ عام 2016. وأطلق سراحه في مقابل إفراج الولايات المتحدة عن العالم الإيراني مسعود سليماني منذ مدة وجيزة، إذ لا يمكن تفسير الإصرار الأميركي وخلفه “الإسرائيلي” على إطلاق سراح جزار الخيام إلا لأهميته الاستخباراتية وكونه صاحب إنجازات تجسّسية لصالح الكيان الصهيوني تتخطى جرائمه السابقة وما ارتكبه بحق الأسرى والمقاومين ويخفي الكثير من المهمات الجديدة والمزيد من المعلومات.
وإذا كانت الولايات المتحدة تبدي اهتماماً بالغاً بمواطنيها المدانين والموقوفين بتهم مختلفة لماذا لا تبدي الدولة اللبنانية اهتماماً بالشهداء والأسرى والجرحى المقاومين الذين كانوا ضحايا جزار الخيام والذين صنعوا مجد وعزة الوطن. وإذا كان لا بدّ من التفاوض بعد إدانة العميل فاخوري لماذا لا تحاول الدولة اللبنانية أن تجعل من هذه الفرصة انتصاراً تضيفه إلى انتصارات الوطن من خلال تحرير مواطنيها في السجون الفرنسية والأميركية والإماراتية وغيرها كالمناضل جورج عبد الله االمعتقل في السجون الفرنسية منذ العام 1984 بطلب أميركي “إسرائيلي”، إضافةً إلى الموقوفين في السجون الأميركية والإماراتية؟ثمة عين واحدة تنظر بها الدولة اللبنانية ترى فيها الجاسوس الأميركي نزار زكا الذي أفرجت عنه طهران العام الماضي بعد إدانته بالتجسّس لصالح الولايات المتحدة الأميركية مواطناً لبنانياً ولا ترى جورج عبد الله وغيره من المحتجزين المقاومين منذ سنوات طويلة في السجون مواطنين. فرفقاً بسيادة لبنان وبمن صنع مجده من الشهداء والجرحى والأسرى والمقاومين، وتقديراً لهم ولتضحياتهم قليلاً من العدل أيها السادة لأولئك الذين افتدوا الوطن وخطوا صفحات عزّه من أجل أن نكون أحراراً لا عبيداً.
فيديوات متعلقة
محاولة جديدة لتهريب العميل عامر فاخوري- حسان الرفاعي
سالم زهران يكشف بالتواريخ والتفاصيل القصة الكاملة للعميل الفاخوري والبرقية 303
اعتصام جنوب لبنان للمطالبة بإعدام العميل عامر الفاخوري
الاستماع إلى إفادات عدد من الأسرى المحررين في قضية العميل الفاخوري
لا شك عندي في أنّ لعبة رفع الأسعار هي التي قادت السيد علي الأمين إلى هذا النشاط الإيحائي المثير الجديد. وأظنّه بارعاً في مسلكه هذا. عاش عمره في الأوهام، يحاول أن يقترب من التاريخ لكن لم يجد في آخر العمر إلا لعنة التطبيع مع كيان يَعبر إلى زواله.
لمشاركته في مؤتمر البحرين أكثر من سبب ودافع، وعادة هو يجد أهميته القصوى في هذا النوع من الاقتحامات الإعلامية والدينية، والتي بالطبع يجد لها مبرراتها في عقله، حيث يجاور فيه السرابُ الحقائقَ.
هل يا سيد علي، ترى أنّ فلسطين لن تعود، والقدس ستغدو يهودية، وأن التاريخ يتراجع أمام خرافات نتنياهو، والدين سيتحوّل إلى أساطير؟
هل يُغريك هذا الملك الذي يُحيط نفسه بهالة المنتصر على شعبه الأعزل، لتقف هذه الوقفة الملعونة؟
إنّ السياسة قد تسمح بتفوّق شخصٍ على شخصٍ، وبلدٍ على بلدٍ، ولكن ليس إلى الأبد.
يمكن لها أن تغيّر في موازين القوى، ولكنها أبداً لن تبدل الباطل إلى حق، والحق إلى باطل.
كنت أتمنى أن تنزع الغشاوة عن عينيك، خصوصاً بعد إنجاز التحرير عام 2000، فتقف من جديد على جادة المقاومة مع أخوةٍ شاركتهم الدرس والتوعية والتبليغ الديني بين بيروت والجنوب.
أتدري، يا سيّد علي، أي منزلقٍ انزلقت إليه بعمامتك السوداء؟
أتدري أي ضرر ألحقته بهذه العمّة التي تمثل في يومنا رمزاً للمقاومة والحق في وجه الصهاينة الإرهابيين العنصريين الدمويين؟
أتدري أي إساءةٍ أسأت للجنوبيين الذين كانوا يرمون الزيت المغلي
على جنود الاحتلال ويرشقونه بالحجارة ويردّدون مقولة شيخ الشهداء: “الموقف سلاح والمصافحة اعتراف”!
أتدري أي عمّةٍ شوّهت، وأي إيحاءٍ أُريد أن ينتشر من صورتك واقفاً إلى جانب هذا الصهيوني المتطرف؟
أذهلتني صورتك حقاً، في وقت كنا نتمنى أن تعود رفيقاً وأخاً كما كنّا في النجف الأشرف، نرتاح إلى العلم والإيمان الذي لا يُقاس به مجد.
نجح العرب المنبطحون والصهاينة الأشرار في جرّك إلى أهدافهم. زيّنوا لك المناصب والأماكن والولائم وهي من حطام الدنيا. غامروا بك في تاريخهم لكن تاريخ المقاومة لن يتغيّرَ أبداً!
فإن ما توهّمته مخرجاً لعزلتك ما هو في الحقيقة إلا مأزق جديد، ما كنتُ أتمنى أن تقع فيه.
فهذاالكيان الذي فشل أن يأخذ حقا لله في هذه الأرض المقدسة بالعدوان والدم والاحتلال، لن يأخذه بالتطبيع ولو كانت تلك التي تغطي الرأس، بيضاءأو خضراءأ وسوداء!
الرئيس الإسرائيلي رؤوبين رفلين، يستقبل رجل الأعمال السويسري من أصل لبناني عبد الله شاتيلا، الذي اشترى مقتنيات الزعيم النازي أدولف هتلر، وتبرع بها لمؤسسة “ياد فشيم” لتخليد ذكرى “ضحايا المحرقة”.
تحدث موقع صحيفة “معاريف” عن استقبال الرئيس الإسرائيلي رؤوبين رفلين، اليوم الأحد، رجل الأعمال السويسري من أصل لبناني عبد الله شاتيلا، الذي اشترى مقتنيات الزعيم النازي أدولف هتلر، قبل أسبوعين، ومن ثم تبرّع بها لمؤسسة “ياد فشيم” لتخليد ذكرى “ضحايا المحرقة”.
وقدّم الرئيس رفلين، الشكر لشاتيلا، وقال إن مساهمته “تعتبر مساهمة عظيمة للغاية خصوصاً أنها تأتي في وقت يحاول فيه أشخاص إنكار الحقائق التاريخية”. مشيراً إلى أن “منح هذه المقتنيات لمؤسسة ياد فاشيم، سيساعد على نقل تراث الكارثة التي لحقت بأبناء الشعب اليهودي إلى الجيل الجديد”.
وأضاف الرئيس الإسرائيلي أن “عبد الله شاتيلا بعث رسالة واضحة للعالم أجمع، تبين كيف يجب أن نكافح عمليات الكراهية والتحريض ضد الآخرين، إنه عمل إنساني حقيقي”.
وإذّ أعرب شاتيلا عن شعوره بانفعال بالغ لزيارة “إسرائيل”، قال إنه “جدّ مسرور لذلك، وإنه لشرف عظيم بالنسبة له أن يتواجد في القدس”، مؤكداً أن هذه “الخطوة تبعث برسالة كبيرة للعالم، مفادها أن محرقة كهذه لن تتكرر ثانية”.
After the Lebanese-American journalist Hanin Ghaddar testified before a Congress Subcommittee on Lebanon protests, Lebanese lawyers considered her testimony violates the penal code because it provokes a foreign country to attack the nation.
The lawyer Foad Matar stressed that Ghaddar’s crime which abuses the national sovereignty and independence is an act of treachery and exposes her to a life-term sentence.
Ghaddar provoked in her testimony the United States against the Lebanese state and its institutions, including the Lebanese army.
She also urged the US to intervene in Lebanon in order to undermine Hezbollah influence, accusing the Lebanese army intelligence of working in favor of Hezbollah.
Filed under: Hezbollah, Lebanon, treason, USA | Tagged: Hanin Ghaddar | Comments Off on Lebanon: Lawyers Confirm Ghaddar’s Testimony before Congress Exposes Her to Life-term Sentence
Few days ago, Amer Elias Al Fakhoury, the former military commander of Al Khiyam detention center, arrived in Beirut through its airport.
Al Fakhoury was responsible for a battalion of Antoine Lahad militia agents who guarded Al Khiyam detention center, suppressed the detainees and tortured them brutally.
Al Fakhoury, 56, is from southern Lebanon. He claimed that after a dispute with his bosses, he left Lebanon to the United States in 1998 through Palestine. He was known for his abduction, incarceration and torturing at the Center. Al Fakhoury was the head of the Center with the Chief of Security and Investigation Jean Al Homsi (Abo Nabil) who were directly supervised by the Israeli Intelligence.
Last week, the General Security Commander, checking Beirut arrivals’ passports at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport, observed that the American passport holder Amer Elias Al Fakhoury has been wanted for arrest. However, audits showed that the detention order was withdrawn. In a default judgment, Al Fakhoury was sentenced to 15 years in jail with hard labor, in addition to the arrest warrants in abduction and rape crimes and non-judicial arrest warrants issued by the Lebanese Army (in the cable no. 303). All the aforementioned provisions were withdrawn, which means that the General Security is unable to arrest Al Fakhoury since there’s no judicial decision. What should be done? The General Security chief has the power of anyone’s papers. Al Fakhoury was allowed to enter the country after keeping his passport.
Who mended Al Fakhoury’s status whom Al Khiyam detention center freed detainees say he’s responsible for all the torture they were subjected to at the center, not to mention their arrest. Who is the secret authority who allowed the withdrawal of all the arrest warrants issued against him? “Al Akhbar” newspaper was told yesterday that due to the passage of 20 years on issuing them, the verdicts against him had been dropped.
Well, what about the arrest warrants the Army issues? Who ordered annulling them? The answer may carry a scandal. Yesterday, Al Fakhoury was escorted with a Brigadier wearing his military uniform to the General Security office in Beirut!
Did the Brigadier volunteer by himself to help Al Fakhoury without the knowledge of his commanders? Why is they dealing with leniency with such security, humanitarian and legal dangerous issue? Despite of the inability to be issued by judicial decision, the cable number 303 forms an “above-legal” protection of national security in the issues of dealing with the Israeli enemy. So, why is the wavering when dealing with this case particularly?
Many questions are raised with no specific answers. An enough evidence that indicates the significance of Al Fakhoury is that when asking about the facts of his return to Beirut, a security official wanted to know his place to detain him, then discovered that the former agent returned legally by a ‘superior’ decision.
The law in Lebanon doesn’t allow the detention of Al Fakhoury 20 years after his sentence was issued. But, why couldn’t he been prevented from returning to the country he betrayed? Why wasn’t he expelled? This should be the least thing to be done in honor of his victims instead of the ‘honor’ he bestowed.
– تسقط السياسة عند أبواب الوطن، وتنتهي المجاملة وحملات العلاقات العامة عند دماء الشهداء. والعمالة لن تتحوّل إلى وجهة نظر. وما جرى في قضية تسهيل عودة جزار الخيام وجلاد المعتقل العميل الذي لا تزال صرخات الأسى ودماؤهم وأمراضهم وإعاقاتهم، شواهد على أفعاله، ليس مجرد خلل إداري بل هو عمل سياسي أمني خطير يكشف الوضع الهشّ للتعامل القضائي والأمني مع ملف العملاء، وسهولة التلاعب به، والنفاذ من بين ثقوب اللعبة السخيفة للطائفية المريضة، لجعله قابلاً للتساكن. وهذا ببساطة لن يحدث، لأن تلكؤ الدولة عن واجباتها سيعني شيئاً واحداً، أن تتشكل فرق الموت لملاحقة العملاء كما حدث في فرنسا بعد تحرّرها من النازيين قبل أن تتولى المحاكم القيام بواجبها. ومَن يريد أن تكون الدولة مرجعاً حصرياً للعقاب يجب أن يأخذ ذلك في الاعتبار.
– القضية الآن في عهدة القضاء العسكري، الذي يستعدّ لتوجيه الاتهامات المناسبة للعميل عامر إلياس فاخوري، وستكون عيون الناس مفتوحة على كل تفصيل في القضية، وسيكون أهل المقاومة وأسراها المحررون مجندين قانونياً وإعلامياً كي لا تسهو عين عن سانحة، وصولاً للحكم العادل الذي لا يجب أن يكون دون الإعدام. فهذا العميل مجرم قاتل، سقط على يديه عشرات الأسرى مضرَجين بدمائهم، منهم مَن استشهد ومنهم من لا يزال يحمل ندوب جراحاته. والدعوة مفتوحة لمئات المحامين للتطوع للمرافعة في القضية التي يجب أن تشكل دعاوى مئات وآلاف الأسرى المحررين وأسر الشهداء منهم موضوعاً لها، والدعوة لكل الأحزاب والشخصيات المؤمنة بلبنان وطناً لا مكان فيه للعدو وعملائه للاستنفار لتصويب مسار الأداء القضائي والأمني الذي تقف وراء سقطاته السياسة بكل وضوح، لكشف الجهة التي حضرت ورتبت وسوقت لهذا الاختراق القذر والقبيح لصورتنا كوطن ودولة.
– الفارق كبير بين الحديث عن مبادرات لاستعادة الأسر التي فرت إلى فلسطين المحتلة خلال التحرير لاعتبار الخوف من حسابات طائفية، أو بعض الذين كانوا مجنّدين في جيش العملاء وليس في سجلهم ارتكابات، وبين الدعوة للصفح عن القتلة المأجورين من العملاء وعلى رأسهم جلاد سجن الخيام وجزار غرف التعذيب فيه، ومَن مثله من المرتكبين الذين لا يملك أحد لا في السياسة ولا في القانون حق الدعوة لاعتبار تجاهل تاريخهم، دعوة مشروعة تحت شعار استعادة الإبن الضال، أو منح فرصة ثانية للمخطئين، أو التلطي وراء قناع الطائفية والحديث عن الوحدة الوطنية في سياق تبرير العمالة وتقديمها كخطأ عابر، أو زلة قدم، أو تعبيراً عن انقسام أهلي. فالعمالة في عرف الوطن والقانون هي العمالة وليست لها شفاعة، لا طائفية ولا سياسية ولا حزبية ولا عائلية.
– ما جرى خطير وخطير جداً، ولا يكفي لمسح سواده السير بمحاكمة الجلاد والجزار عامر فاخوري، فالمطلوب حملة متواصلة متصاعدة لكشف المستور في قضيته وجعل الحقيقة ملكاً للرأي العام، وجعل المحاكمة العلنية لهذا الخائن عبرة لسواه، تحت شعار الإعدام أقل القصاص للقتلة الذين باعوا وطنهم للعدو. ويبقى أن الأهم أن تصل بنا هذه الحملة لتأديب وردع من يظنّ أن هناك تبييضاً للعمالة، يشبه تبييض الأموال، ويمكن تمريره في ظل المنظومة الإجرامية المسماة قلب المفاهيم حيث يعاقب المقاومون بتهم الإرهاب والتبييض ويتم عبره تبييض صفحات العملاء.
In the course of shamelessly announcing additional steps towards normalization with the ‘Israeli’ occupation entity, several ‘Israeli’ speakers will appear at a business conference in Bahrain in the current month.
In further details, at least three ‘Israeli’ speakers, including the ‘Israel’ Innovation Authority’s deputy chief Anya Eldan, are scheduled to speak at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Manama, the forum’s website announced.
However, some members of the Bahraini parliament said Sunday they were against hosting ‘Israeli’ speakers in Bahrain, which — like most Arab states — does not recognize the ‘Israeli’ occupation entity.
“Parliament stresses its support for the just cause of the brotherly Palestinian people, and it will remain a priority for the Bahraini and Arab people,” it said in a statement published on its official Facebook page.
“The end of the ‘Israeli’ occupation and the withdrawal from all Arab land is an absolute necessity for the stability and security of the region and for a fair and comprehensive peace.”
Officially, the occupation regime of ‘Israel’ only has announced diplomatic relations with two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan.
‘Israel’ has, however, recently seen increased behind-the-scenes cooperation with some Arab countries.
Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheikh Khalid al-Khalifa, last year backed what he referred to as ‘Israel’s’ right to “defend itself” after its military claimed it struck dozens of Iranian military targets in Syria.
Also in 2018, Bahrain hosted a UNESCO conference attended by an ‘Israeli’ delegation.
Saudi analyst Abdul Hamid al-Hakeem has defended the appearance of Saudi and Arab leaders alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a recent conference in Warsaw, asserting that Saudi normalisation of ties with Israel was no cause for embarrassment. The two-day US-organised Warsaw conference on “peace and security” in the Middle East was widely seen as another major step by certain Arab and Israeli leaders to achieve a normalisation of ties. Al-Hakeem, the former director of the Jeddah-based Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies, suggested that by achieving peace with Israel, a new Middle East would be created free of the ‘Iranian threat’.
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With no stop, the monarchies of the Gulf run towards normalization with apartheid “Israel”.
And based on the Arabic proverb “if not shy, do whatever you want”, the officials of the Gulf chose to change the compass of enmity so that the “Israeli” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated the new direction: It’s Iran and not “Israel”
“The Arab ministers agreed that it is the right of “Israel” to defend itself against the Iranian “aggression”,” Netanyahu declared, as he revealed that he had secretly visited four Arab countries that have no official relations with “Israel”!
Quickly, the head of the Saudi diplomacy obeyed his master: “It is impossible to achieve stability in the region without peace between the Arab countries and “Israel”. Every time we go in this field we face bad behavior from Iran,” Adel Jubeir blatantly said.
Similarly, former Saudi intelligence chief and ex-ambassador to the US has given an unprecedented interview to an “Israeli” TV channel that was broadcast just hours after Netanyahu met with the Omani foreign minister in Poland.
In an interview with “Israel’s” Channel 13 news, Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud said that Saudi Arabia and “Israel” have the funds and political means to work together.
“With “Israeli” money and Saudi brains, we can go far. Yes, if there is peace.”
And following the traces of the Saudis, Emirate urged the “Israelis” to bet on them.
“Every country has the right to defend itself when it faces a challenge,” Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan said: “I do not have to invite you to bet on us, but if you do, our chances are greater to change the region.”
Meanwhile, the Bahraini representative chose to express more sympathy with “friendly” “Israel”!
“Israel” released a video of a closed session at the Warsaw security summit in which Bahrain’s foreign minister says Iran is a bigger threat to Mideast security than the “Israeli”-Palestinian conflict.
In the video, Bahrain’s foreign minister, Khalid Al Khalifa, tells an audience that he grew up believing that the “Israeli”-Palestinian dispute is “the most important issue” in the region. But later, he said, “we saw a more toxic one, in fact the most toxic in our modern history, which came from the Islamic Republic, from Iran.”
Predicting a ‘bright” future from “peace” with Arabs’ killers the Omani foreign minister hailed the meeting with Netanyahu:
“Indeed, this is an important, new vision for the future,” Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, claiming that “People in the Middle East have suffered a lot, because they have [been stuck in] the past. This is a new era for the future, and for prosperity for all the nations.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Thursday as ‘historic’ an anti-Iran meeting in Warsaw where he is joining Arab states, saying they stood ‘united’ against Iran and voicing hope that cooperation extends to other areas.
The opening dinner Wednesday night of the two-day, US-organized conference marked “a historical turning point,” Netanyahu told reporters.
“In a room of some 60 foreign ministers representation dozens of governments, an Israeli prime minister and the foreign ministers of the leading Arab countries stood together and spoke with unusual force, clarity and unity against the common threat of the Iranian regime,” he said.
“I think this marks a change and important understanding of what threatens our future, what we need to do to secure it, and the possibility that cooperation will extend beyond security in every realm of life.”
At the opening dinner at Warsaw’s Royal Castle, officials said that Netanyahu spoke around the same table as senior officials of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Netanyahu also met one-on-one in Warsaw with Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah of Oman, where he travelled late last year.
US Vice President Mike Pence and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are both attending the conference co-hosted with Poland.
But most European powers are sending low-level representation, wary of the hawkish line on Iran by President Donald Trump who withdrew from an international accord on Tehran’s nuclear program.
The act of celebration is very symbolic. Knowing what a people celebrate gives the spectator insight on what kind of society they represent, along with their values.
The Palestinians just celebrated repelling an offensive and avoiding another full-blown massacre against their families. They did not celebrate attacking the illegal settlers who continue to rape their land. Not that they don’t have every ethical right to do so; after all, those settlers are foreign elements who have displaced them by resorting to terrorist methods like the use of weapons and a mercenary army for the purpose of ethnic cleansing and the theft of ancestral land.
It just shows how genuinely pure their cause is – it gives indications of their social attitude. These are the same people who expressed sorrow for the many Jews who endured the unspeakable in Europe almost 80 years ago; they are the same people who opened their hearts and doors so innocently for those who barely made it with their lives. They did it under the belief in the Arabic saying “??? ???? ?????” which means God’s land can accommodate all.
Little did they know that the ships claiming to bring in refugees turned out to be transporting Zionists pretending to be Jews. Pretending, because humanity’s prophet Moses did not teach theft and is, by all means, exonerated from the criminal practices of these people. You are not a Jew if you do not follow the teachings and example of Moses.
The rockets shot at the occupied land were not an act of attack, they constituted a defense strategy. Terrorism could not have possibly been stopped with dialogue. God knows the Palestinians, with their natural social tendencies to peaceful approaches, had tried for decades, but words were always met with bullets and more extermination. Hence, the “Israelis” were met with reciprocation this time. It seems that a conversation in their own language is what yields results. Unleashing rockets back at them made them desist from leveling more buildings on children like they have done so many times before.
The Palestinians have celebrated the success of stopping another chapter in their holocaust.
Of course, what happened took its toll on an already divided and ailing “Israeli” political scene. The modern-day Heinrich Himmler of the Zionist entity decided to take a quick exit from the council of psychopaths they call government. Lieberman must have finally accepted the fact that being a bouncer at a nightclub does not necessarily qualify him to lead an occupying force. More reverberations took shape in the further plummeting of Netanyahu’s popularity among his people.
The footage that emerged this week of a beautiful symbol exploding while touched by impure hands carried immense significance. When “Israeli” terrorists tried to desecrate the great flag of Palestine with hands drenched in the blood of innocents, it exploded. A flag is the representation of a nation. It was a lesson; the nation will explode and engulf desecrators with fire just like its symbol did. They need to understand that regardless of how long they remain occupying the holy land, it will never be theirs just like it will never lose its real name, Palestine.
Next to the one dealing with the Palestinian resistance unifying in the face of terrorism, another great event took place during this same period. The Arab leaders who have been supporting Zionists in secret for so long have decided to come out in the open. As unfortunate as that may be, it does help put things in perspective. Now, the revelation that Palestine is not limited, as a cause, to Arabs has been confirmed. And now, those Palestinians who waited for the presumed Arab support know that they are not going to receive it.
The positive aspect is that the Palestinians are able to finally make better alliance calculations. The leaders who have always pretended to be supporters of this righteous central cause have made their reality public. The indisputable knowledge that they belong to the “Israeli” camp indicates that whomever they are against must be in the camp supporting Palestine.
The continuous bashing of the Syrian government, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Republic of Iran by the same people who welcome the oppressors of Palestinians does not require a great deal of analysis. The preposterous allegation that a Shiite geographical crescent is being formed to subdue Sunnis has been debunked by the same people who made it.
If there is a crescent in the making, it is one that includes Shiites, Sunnis, Druze, Alawites, Christians, and any other free soul who believes in Palestine.
It is high time to stop listening to the media funded by those who are too busy between offering “Israel” billions to strike Lebanon and turning their diplomatic missions into human slaughterhouses. Or, that of those who give a private mosque tour to the woman who compares the Islamic mosque Azan to dogs barking. People must focus on the deeds and not the words – contemporary history is sufficient to know whose compass is in the right direction, who is suffering from wars and crippling sanctions due to their dedication for Palestine.
May Palestine remain united and may it celebrate many more victories to come.
The file photo, taken on December 26, 2014, shows a Bahraini man holding up a placard reading in Arabic, “Your government and your parliament are without legitimacy,” during an anti-government protest in the village of Jannusan, west of the capital Manama. (Photo by AFP)
Fri Nov 9, 2018 03:47PM
The government of Bahrain has come under fire by Western lawmakers against the backdrop of a ban on an opposition party from contesting the upcoming elections in the Arab country.
Bahrain is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections on November 24.
A cross-party group of British lawmakers, including Conservative MP Peter Bottomley, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, and Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, said in a letter to the Foreign Office that Bahrain “effectively bans major opposition figures from holding political office.” They added that a countless number of Bahraini individuals have been “incarcerated on charges that criminalize free expression and assembly.”
“Free and fair elections can only take place if citizens are able to express their views.”
The British lawmakers also referred to the forcible closure of the only independent newspaper, Al-Wasat, back in 2017 and the detention of at least 15 journalists and Bahrain’s most prominent human rights defender Nabeel Rajab for comments deemed critical of the Bahraini state.
“Bahrain may be a key strategic ally to the UK but human rights and democratic values are fundamental pillars of our society and foreign policy”, the letter concluded.
In Ireland, a cross-party group of lawmakers involved in foreign affairs urged the release of all political detainees in Bahrain and permitting international bodies to observe the elections.
Members of the European Parliament also slammed the Bahraini regime for missing the opportunity of the elections “to ease tensions and allow space for open dialogue to take place.”
Some 40 members of the European Parliament composed a letter addressed to Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifah which is to be published next week.
The letter also points to “the enactment of increasingly repressive measures.”
“Under these conditions, Bahrain’s elections cannot be recognized by the international community as free, fair, or legitimate.”
Last week, US Congressmen James McGovern and Randy Hultgren, who are co-chairs of the bipartisan Tom Lantos human rights commission in the US House of Representatives, stressed that it would be difficult for the international community to recognize the upcoming elections as legitimate, noting that Manama “has dissolved two major opposition political societies, barred all members of the societies from running for office on an individual basis, and imprisoned a number of key figures, as well as writers and civil society leaders.”
“In addition, Bahrain’s electoral infrastructure inherently disadvantages the political opposition. There is no independent electoral commission and, to date, there has been no commitment by the government to permit either domestic or international observers,” the letter added.
In May, Bahrain’s parliament approved a bill barring members of the al-Wefaq from running in elections, the latest step in Manama’s political crackdown.
Thousands of anti-regime protesters have held numerous demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in the kingdom on February 14, 2011.
They are demanding that the Al Khalifah dynasty relinquish power and let a just system representing all Bahrainis be established.
Manama has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent. Scores of people have lost their lives and hundreds of others sustained injuries or got arrested as a result of the Al Khalifah regime’s crackdown.
الصورة المعلقة هي للسادات كنت أنوي ان انشرها في مناسبة أخرى لأسأل القراء سؤالا يستدرجهم الى الحقائق والدهشة .. من مثل ان يخمنوا أين هي هذه الصور .. واين هو هذا المقهى؟ .. هل هو في دمشق ام القاهرة ام بغداد؟؟
أحب قبل ان أكتب في شأن أن أثير في القارئ شيئا يجعله يقع في حيرة الفضول .. وكل سطر يأخذه الى سطر آخر وينزلق به كمن يسقط في شلالات وتيارات تتدحرج نحو الوديان .. دون ان يتمكن من التوقف في رحلته المثيرة الا في السطر الأخير ومصب النهر الأخير ..
ليست مهمتي ان أنصب فخاخا بين السطور تمسك بالقارئ وأنفاسه ويصبح كالطائر الذي علق على مصيدة الدبق .. فالكاتب الذي يمسك قراءه بمصيدة العسل له مشاعر صياد تجاه طرائده وطيوره .. أما أنا فلا أعرف كيف انصب الفخاخ ولااتقن هذا الفن المتوحش ولااحب ان استعمل العسل الا كي اغمس به كلماتي كما يغمس الخبز في العسل للجائعين وأطعمه لمن امتلأ فمه وحلقه بالعلقم والملح في زمن الكذب والنخاسة .. فأرسم للقارئ في كل سطر لوحة غريبة أو خارطة تثير فيه رغبة دفينة في البحث عن كنز مفقود لبحّار ضاع في بحار المعاني وكنزه مدفون في سطور قادمة ..
ولذلك عندما وجدت هذه الصورة القديمة (المرفقة) بالابيض والاسود لمقهى ورصيف وعلى الجدار صور الرئيس المصري انور السادات لم يخطر ببالي ان أنشرها في هذا الوقت .. وكنت أنوي ان انشرها في مناسبة أخرى لأسأل القراء سؤالا يستدرجهم الى الحقائق والدهشة .. من مثل ان يخمنوا أين هي هذه الصور .. واين هو هذا المقهى؟ .. هل هو في دمشق ام القاهرة ام بغداد؟؟ ولأسال عمن يمكن ان يكون الآن صاحب الصورة المعلقة على الجدران ..
ولكن المصادفات عجيبة .. فقد وصلتني رسالة من كاتب مصري تشرح المأساة التي نجح الاسرائيليون في زرعها في عقول الجمهور العربي .. فهذا الكاتب المصري يقترح في رسالته مبادئ – من وجهة نظره – لحل المأساة اليمنية .. ولاحظت ان مبادئه مشوشة جدا فهو كتب لي نشرة محطة العربية كاملة على انها الحل اليمني .. ولكن اخطر مافي رسالته هي مانجده من عقلية انعزالية ضيقة متناقضة مع الواقع والضرورة .. فهو قال
ان آراءه استقبلت ونشرت في الصحف العربية التي وصفتها بأنها لكاتب عربي .. ولكنه اضاف ساخرا .. يصنفونني عربي رغم انني مصري ولست عربيا (واتبعها بكتابة ضحكة استخفاف هههههههههه) ..
وهنا نلاحظ كيف ان هذا الكاتب – وامثاله – هو ثمرة ناضجة لكامب ديفيد التي حولت العقل عند شريحة لايستهان بها من المصريين الى عقل لايرى ابعد من حلايب ورفح والسلوم .. فهذا هو المدى المجدي لرؤيته وتصوراته وأمنه .. فيما يربي الاسرائيليون ابناءهم على ان حدودهم لاتقتصر على فلسطين بل هي:
من الفرات الى النيل !! ..
اي ان كامب ديفيد مسخت الطموحات لدى طبقة من المصريين وجعلتهم لايرون ابعد من رفح وحلايب فيما العين الاسرائيلية ترى الى مابعد الفرات والنيل .. ولاشك ان هذا الجيل الذي سجنته كامب ديفيد بين حلايب ورفح .. قد يجد نفسه يوما قد قصر نظره أكثر وصار بين جمهوريتي حلايب والسلوم المستقلتين .. وهذا ماتشتغل عليه الحملات النفسية التي تديرها مؤسسات اعلامية عربية مبرمجة في اسرائيل .. فهي تحاول حبس العراقيين في أوطان عراقية شيعية وسنية ضيقة .. وحاولت حبس السوريين في اقفاص دويلات طائفية .. وعندما فشلت صارت تحاول جعل المدى الفعال للبصر عن المواطن السوري لاتتعدى معبر المصنع والقائم ونصيب .. ومابعد ذلك لايراه ولايعنيه ولايطمح لمعرفة مايدور خلف هذه المعابر ..
وتذكرت وأنا اقرأ رسالة الكاتب المصري التي حبس فيها نفسه بحدود مصر التي رسمتها لها كامب ديفيد .. تذكرت هذه الصورة للرئيس السادات التي ارسلتها لي صديقة مصرية .. وهذه الصورة تشرح كل المعضلة التي صار فيها بعض المصريين والعرب .. فالصورة المعلقة هي للرئيس السادات في احد شوارع تل ابيب وليست في اي عاصمة عربية ..
والسادات يطلق عليه الاسرائيليون “السنونو الاول” الذي جاء لهم بالعالم العربي بعد ذلك .. ومعهم حق فهذا السنونو المصري كان اول سنونو يعلن عن وصول الربيع العربي .. منذ اربعين عاما ..
فهو أول من كسر حاجز العداوة مع الاسرائيليين وحولهم من اعداء الى اصدقاء .. وكان اول الواصلين الى أحضان الاسرائيليين وأقفاصهم التي زينوا بها بيتهم من الفرات الى النيل بقفص فيه سنونو مصري .. تلته بعد ذلك اسراب السنونو العربية .. سنونو الاردن .. وسنونوات لبنان وزمن آل الجميل الذين قتلوا انفسهم من أجل صداقة اسرائيل
وطبعا وصل السنونو الفلسطيني من اوسلو ..
وبعده وصلت اسراب السنونو الخليجية .. والتي لحقت بها جماعات السنونو الاسلامية والاخوان المسلمين والسنونو العثماني .. وعندما وصل الربيع العربي ومعه السنونو الاسلامي وجد ان اسرائيل صديقة وان اعداءه في مكان آخر .. ودخل نتنياهو الى عواصم كان لايقدر ان يدخلها الا بالحرب فاذا به يدخلها ضيفا عزيزا كريما وضيف شرف ..
واليوم فانني استغرب فعلا هذه الدهشة التي ملأت أفواه الناس من صور نتنياهو يتجول في مسقط مع زوجته سارة .. رغم ان نتنياهو في بلاد العرب انما يتجول في مستعمراته وكيبوتزاته ..
واليوم يستطيع نتنياهو وكل حكومته ان يزوروا عواصم لايقدر اي زعيم عربي ان يدخلها .. بل ان المجال الحيوي لنتنياهو أكبر بمئة مرة من المجال الحيوي للسيد حسن نصرالله قائد المقاومة وللرئيس بشار الاسد ..
نتنياهو يقدر ان يزور الآن مصر والاردن والسعودية ونصف لبنان والخليج كله من بابه الى محرابه.. ويقدر ان يزور ليبيا وتونس والمغرب وادلب التي لاتزال تحت سيطرة المسلحين الاسلاميين “العثمانيين” ويستطيع ان يزور شمال العراق حيث اقليم البرزاني الكردي .. وهو يقدر ان يزور تركيا من شرقها غربها .. وكلها مناطق مفتوحة امام اسرائيل ومغلقة على المقاومين وكل من لم يوقع اتفاق استسلام لاسرائيل ..
وبعد ان كان المهاجر اليهودي منذ عقود قليلة لايقدر ان ينتقل من كيبوتز الى كيبوتز في فلسطين الا ليلا وبحماية قوافل من السلاح .. فانه اليوم صنع من عواصم العرب كيبوتزات يزورها نهارا ويتسلى فيها ويتنزه ويلتقط الصور في مولاتها وحتى في الكعبة .. فيما تحول المقاومون الى مطاردين في العالم العربي ..
وصار الاسرائيلي يمنح فيزا تليق به فيما السوري والعراقي والفلسطيني يحول الى لاجئ في الخيام يتم تصويره لبيع صوره وصور اولاده وبناته وتتحول الى ملصقات انتخابية لاردوغان او لحملة تجنيد لمقاتلين جهاديين يقاتلون في كل مكان الا في فلسطين ..
اسرائيل اقامت دولتها على فلسفة تجاهل الشعوب العربية والتركيز على القيادات فهي استندت في قيامها على علاقات مع الاسر المالكة الهاشمية والاسرة السعودية والملك فاروق في مصر ولاحقا الاسر الحاكمة في الخليج المحتل .. ولكنها في مرحلة لاحقة انتقلت الى عملية تضليل الشعوب العربية وايهامها ان اسرائيل هي الهمّ الاصغر تجاه هموم الحرية والديمقراطية وحكم الشرع الاسلامي واحياء الخلافة و”الخلافات” .. وان مشكلة الشعوب العربية هي فلسطين وليست اسرائيل .. وان حل كل أزمات العالم العربي يمكن في تجاوز منطق الممانعة والانتقال الى منطق التطبيع وعفا الله عما مضى ..
على جدران تل ابيب يجب ان تعلق صور وجوه عربية وعثمانية كثيرة وصور ذات لحى ايضا .. وكل اسراب السنونو العربية .. ولكن جدران اسرائيل لم تعد تتسع لصور الطيور وللاعلانات .. لانها تزدحم بصور مشاريع توسيع المستوطنات والهيكل القادم في القدس .. والمفارقة ان الشوارع العربية ستزدحم جدرانها ولوحاتها بصور الناصر نتنياهو .. محرر القدس .. والأمين على الاقصى .. راعي العرب .. وشيخهم .. وحبيبهم .. انه عسل للجائعين ولمن امتلأ فمه العربي وحلقه الاسلامي بالعلقم والملح ..
Treason is not a perspective. Treason is an act of betraying one’s country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies. It is a crime defined in every state’s constitution and is punishable by death in many countries. Why should it be any different in Lebanon?
Well, it is not but as we all know by now, Lebanon is a special country in nearly every aspect of life. Whether it is a social, political or a military scandal, we tend to have multiple views around it and bicker until a new scandal starts to trend. This time however, I chose to write about it to make sure legal action is taken against the American University of Beirut [AUB].
It is not acceptable for a university within the Lebanese borders from whomever it is funded by to break the law blatantly and without any remorse while the Lebanese judiciary system sits and watches.
The screenshot you see below this Op-Ed’s title is that of an email sent to AUB students by the career center of AUB. The career center is a department within AUB and its role is to secure jobs for AUB graduate students and internships of AUB undergraduate students.
As clearly stated in the email, the job offer sent by the AUB career center is in a company called “Check Point Software Technologies.” Now, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. is an “Israeli” multinational provider of software and combined hardware and software products for IT security, including network security, endpoint security, mobile security, data security, and security management. Its headquarters are in Tel Aviv, “Israel” [occupied Palestine] and San Carlos, California, USA as shown in the table below which can be easily found with a little research. The company was founded by “Israeli” nationals Gil Shwed, Shlomo Kramer and Marius Nacht in 1993.
One can see this screenshot and ask why is AUB doing this? What motive do the people urging the students to take on such job offers bear in mind? It is quite simple to be honest; it is for the end goal of normalization with Lebanon’s enemy,
“Israel”. The same “Israel” that has carpet-bombed Beirut the capital of Lebanon, its suburbs, its southern districts, and the entire country’s infrastruction several times over the past 40 years. Apparently, what AUB still does not fathom is that normalization with the enemy is a crime.
Whether those running AUB acknowledge normalization as a crime or not is not the case and should not be the case. The case is simply AUB broke the law by offering this job because it is giving its students the chance to travel and work in
“Israel” while “travel, accommodation and training expenses are covered by the company.” Hence, it is not only encouraging normalization; it is tempting students to do it by securing full payment coverage as they go for it and betray their country.
We already know that AUB most probably will try to dodge this crime by saying the job offer is not for Lebanese students rather for foreign ones. However, what AUB seemingly refuses to acknowledge is that its campus falls on Lebanese territories and hence is within the jurisdiction of the Lebanese law and any crime committed shall be dealt with by Lebanese authorities.
Letting this one go this time, will permeate further violations of the Lebanese law by the same university of by other institutions operating inside Lebanon under the pretext of “it’s not for Lebanese students,” or “it slipped our minds” or “we are sorry, it won’t happen again.”
By exposing such behavior, we as Lebanese trust the Lebanese authorities will take the right legal actions against those who have committed this crime. I will not hide the fact that this also makes me concerned a lot for the future of my children’s education in this country if such acts of normalization are not dealt with swiftly and firmly. AUB is indeed a very prestigious and esteemed university at the level of the quality of education and knowledge it provides, but it seems those running it need a reminder that it is operating on Lebanese soil to provide education and knowledge to “Lebanese” students first before any other foreign student.
AUB already had several head turning decisions like that of terminating the job of Palestinian American professor Steven Salaita for no apparent reason other than stimulation a few Zionists back in the US and “Israel” for offering him a job to begin with. Another incident worth mentioning is when AUB banned independent political analyst Dr. Mohammad Marandi from participating in a BBC debate that was scheduled to take place on March 8, 2018 on AUB campus on the basis that he is “Iranian”. That was a decision made by the American University of Beirut, which hails itself as a sanctuary of freethinking in the Middle East and claims to provide a platform for freedom of speech.
Similarly, this new decision to offer such a job that seeks to normalize ties with Lebanon’s number one enemy was also made by the American University of Beirut which supposedly encourages in the about section of its website the “freedom of thought[…] personal integrity, civic responsibility, and leadership.” Maybe AUB’s board of trustees should reinstate the university’s mission if those employed in it have set their minds to include “normalization” within the university’s vision for their current and future students.
In April, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman declared his position on the normalization of ties with the Zionists during his tour to the United States. He openly told the US magazine, The Atlantic, “The “Israelis” have the right to have their own land. … Our country doesn’t have a problem with Jews. … There are a lot of interests we share with “Israel”.”
This is what is useful to the “young prince”; the gradual normalization of ties, which he actually intentionally expressed through meetings, statements and media platforms launched to promote his position. His various methods work and strive to create and convince public opinion of the usefulness of appeasing the enemy to the point of allying with it. The goal is to confront Iran and portray it as the greatest threat to the kingdom.
Bin Salman relays on a group of writers and broadcasters to spread the concepts of “peace” and harmony with the Jews. Some of those are former Al-Arabiya channel director Abdel Rahman Al-Rashed, as well as writers Ahmad Al-Arfaj, Ahmed Al-Faraj, Turki Al-Hamad, Mohammed Al-Sheikh, Hamza Al-Salem, Saud Al-Fawzan, Suad Al-Shammari and last but not least Daham Al-Enezi who called for the establishment of a Zionist embassy in Riyadh.
In addition there are those who are fluent in Hebrew. They compete on social networking sites to attract Zionist activists from within the occupied territories and interact with them under the title of “electronic peace”, at least until now. They have the absolute freedom to court figures within the usurping entity and its axis as long as they agree on attacking the Islamic Republic and inciting against it.
Because tweeting in Hebrew is not a crime in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi writer and programmer, Louay Al-Sharif, addresses the Zionists all the time through his Twitter account. He chooses to tweet in Hebrew to comment on local or even regional news. A few months ago, he recorded a video clip in which he said that “Saudi Arabia has never threatened any of ‘its neighbors’.” He also called on ” the ‘people of “Israel”’ to read the news accurately.” This message was well received by Tel Aviv, so much so that it took care of broadcasting it.
Al-Sharif, who is known for his strong relationship with the royal court and for his role in the Saudi Crown Prince’s “MiSK” Foundation, allocates his [Twitter] account to acquaint his more than 150,000 followers to the “people” of “Israel” and their history. He claims to interact with Zionist tweeters based on his interest in “Jewish heritage”.
Similarly, Abdul Rahman al-Qahtani, who presents himself as a person interested in Hebrew and is fond of Bin Salman, is also active. Al-Qahtani’s posts highlight his focus on attacking Iran and resistance movements in Palestine and the region. He even retweets Zionist and American activists who attack Hamas and glorifies the crown prince. He is keen to use the flag of “Israel” in most of his Tweets that are related to the usurper entity and Saudi Arabia.
In turn, the phenomenon of tweeting in Hebrew has begun spreading among Saudi activists on Twitter. One of them, Abu Omar, identifies himself as having a BA in Hebrew. His account might be real or fake. However, its content centers on his “easy” experience in learning Hebrew, the idea of “peace” with the enemy and criticizing the Palestinians. Another Saudi tweeter (the centrist) says: “The time has come to learn Hebrew!”
Meanwhile, Mohammad al-Ghalban pioneers the Saudi figures that master the enemy’s language. He has a PHD in Hebrew. He is a professor of Hebrew and Jewish studies at the Department of Modern Languages ??and Translation at the College of Languages ??and Translation at King Saud University in Riyadh. He has an MA and a PHD in Philosophy from the Faculty of Arts, the Department of Near Eastern Languages ??and its Cultures in the Indiana-Bloomington University, USA. His general specialization is Hebrew, and his secondary one is in Jewish studies. He has more than 20 years of experience in Modern Hebrew and translation. Not only that, but King Saud University presents him as someone who has extensive knowledge of what appears in Zionist media, is well-informed in “Israeli” and Jewish studies and abreast with the provisions of Jewish religious laws and cultures. He is even fluent in “Yiddish” which is the language of Ashkenazi Jews.
Al-Ghabban believes that the negative attitudes in Saudi Arabia towards the study of Hebrew will change, noting that “a decade ago it was seen as an enemy’s language, but now it is the language of the other,” as he puts it.
The Hebrew Language Program is one of the programs of the Department of Modern Languages and Translation at the College of Languages and Translation at King Saud University. It was activated when the Language and Translation Institute was transformed into a College of Languages and Translation at King Saud University under the 1994 Royal Decree. It is the only program in the Gulf region in general and in the Kingdom in particular that grants a bachelor’s degree in translation from and to Hebrew.
Saudi Arabia is not likely to stop these activities but rather expand them and perhaps open more institutes that teach Hebrew. In this context, Louay Al-Sherif spoke about the allocation of an educational platform for the teaching of languages, including Hebrew that will be launched soon in the Kingdom. Will Bin Salman be the first to join or will there be no need for it in light of the full understanding and harmony with the Zionists?
It can be said today that Saudi Arabia is unable to surprise Arab public opinion in general and the Saudi one in particular, as it placed it at the heart of its normalization policy. It is only concerned about its hostility towards Iran, and nothing else. Originally, it derives from the former Mufti Abdul Aziz bin Baz’s fatwa regarding reconciliation with the Jews. Justifications for the ratification of the upcoming agreement of humiliation with Tel Aviv derive from this fatwa. But the question is why was the announcement delayed, especially since the popular base is ready for it? What is the Royal Court waiting for following the secret meetings between Bin Salman and Zionist officials in the occupied territories and before that in the United States in March and April, according to leaks by “Israeli” and American media?
The Israeli media outlets considered that the statements made by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman on the Zionist right to establish a national state in Palestine resembles Balfour’s Declaration, adding that after 100 years, Balfour’s Declaration was redrafted by an Arab official.
Haartez said that Saudi is ready to cooperate with the Zionist entity before signing a peace treaty, noting that the Saudi and Israeli officials have met to set the security coordination between the two sides.
The Zionist entity also welcomed MBS’s statements, and media circles called for inviting him to attend the celebrations which commemorate the 70th anniversary of establishing ‘Israel’.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 