Germany and the United States along with other Western powers are continuing deep-seated historical crimes by way of their proxy war against Russia.
The repeating of history might seem tragic, even farcical. One may wonder how such apparent madness can be repeated. But the explanation is straightforward when it is understood that the motive force is the same.
The charge against Germany at the International Court of Justice this week of aiding genocide in Gaza is truly shameful. Germany was brought to court by Nicaragua for facilitating Israel’s genocide in Gaza in breach of the 1948 Genocide Convention.
That convention was created in the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s mass murder of six million Jews during World War Two. Only 79 years after the end of that war, the German state is again in the dock for complicity in an ongoing genocide in Gaza committed by a self-declared Jewish state of Israel.
It seems a shocking and deplorable twist in history. Within living memory, Germany stands accused again of abominable crimes against humanity.
What is even more disgraceful, the German authorities are denying that Israel is committing genocide and that Germany is nobly defending Israel’s security out of a special obligation owing to its heinous World War Two holocaust.
Germany’s supposed rationale for supporting Israel is an astounding perversion of history.
The case against Germany this week is incontestable as was the earlier case brought against Israel by South Africa in January before the same United Nations court at The Hague. A definitive ruling by the court on both cases is pending.
Nevertheless, already world public opinion is in concurrence with numerous international legal and human rights experts that Israel’s military siege of the Gaza Strip amounts to genocide and incorporates multiple violations of international law. Ergo, Germany’s culpability.
Over the past six months, Israel’s wanton destruction of the Palestinian territory has resulted in over 33,000 deaths, including more than 14,000 children and 10,000 women among the victims. The actual death toll is probably more than 46,000 given that 13,000 people are missing under rubble or buried in unmarked graves. It is feared that there will be up to 100,000 dead in the coming months as famine and disease intensify.
Germany is the second biggest supplier of weapons to Israel after the United States. Germany accounts for nearly one-third of all Israeli arms imports.
Israel’s murderous, indiscriminate siege of Gaza involving a deliberate policy of mass starvation of more than two million people would not be happening if it were not for crucial military support from the United States and Germany.
But just as important as the killing machines and ammunition is the unwavering political support provided by Germany, the United States, and all of their Western allies. Unbelievably, Berlin, Washington, London, Paris, and other Western capitals continue to assert that Israel is not committing genocide. Like U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz repeats the cynical and mendacious mantra about Israel’s right to self-defense.
What is going on in Gaza is a bloodbath enabled by Western imperialist powers. The U.S. and all its Western allies are accomplices in egregious war crimes. Live on television every day, and yet the contemptible Western media assiduously sanitize and mitigate the horror. In any sane world, the Western governments and their corporate-controlled “news media” should be irredeemably condemned for their complicity.
However, Germany’s culpability takes on a profoundly disturbing and disgraceful significance, as does the Zionist regime’s. In the name of millions of victims of Nazi Germany, the genocide in Gaza is being perpetrated with a truculence and self-righteousness that is despicable beyond words. It is utterly diabolical that the historic mass murder of Jews by Germany is now being repeated on others by a state that claims to be Jewish – and enabled by Germany. You could hardly make this obscenity up.
It should be understood too that the horror being perpetrated in Gaza is but one element in a toxic eruption of imperialist crimes currently underway across the globe.
In Ukraine, the Western imperialists in the NATO axis are waging a proxy war against Russia utilizing a corrupt NeoNazi regime headed up by a nominally Jewish puppet president who is up to his eyes in money laundering, fraud, and swindling. Germany is the second biggest supplier of weapons to the Ukrainian regime after the United States.
Eight decades ago, Nazi Germany deployed Ukrainian fascists to exterminate Jews and Slavs with a death toll of up to 30 million Soviet citizens. The contemporary Ukrainian regime glorifies these Nazi collaborators. The United States deployed the same Ukrainian fascists after the Second World War to wage covert war against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Thus, Germany and the United States along with other Western powers are continuing deep-seated historical crimes by way of their proxy war against Russia.
The same imperialist rogue states are enabling Israeli aggression against Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Israel’s deadly bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus earlier this month was a particularly brazen violation of international law. The barbarity of the Israeli fascist regime is fully enabled and incentivized by its Western patrons. The bitter irony is Washington and Berlin remonstrating with Iran to exercise “maximum restraint” while Israel openly attacks its sovereignty and assassinates its citizens.
Meanwhile, the United States, Australia and Britain are cajoling Japan to join their military alliance to provoke China. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was feted in Washington this week where he signed bellicose new military measures aimed at China and Russia. Kishida linked Ukraine with Asia, claiming that if Russia were to win the war in Ukraine, then China would take over East Asia. The Japanese minion gets its half right. The regions are indeed linked, not by alleged Russian and Chinese misconduct, but by the U.S.-led imperialism that Japan is cravenly serving.
Western imperialism and fascism have come full circle in a staggeringly short span of history. Nearly 80 years after Japan was defeated in the Pacific War in which it was responsible for up to 20 million deaths in China, Tokyo is at the forefront of new plans to wage a potential nuclear war on China. The perversion of Japan joining with the United States in this venture after the latter dropped two atomic bombs on its people in 1945 is yet another sickening twist in history.
The monstrous crimes of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan are today rehabilitated because the same forces serve the imperialist geopolitical interests of today.
The twists and contradictions of history are, however, crystallized in one historical force. All the crimes, barbarity, bloodshed and danger of catastrophic world war are the cause of imperialist powers – chief among them the United States and its insatiable quest for hegemonic domination.
Historic failure and systemic collapse of Western capitalism is the motive engine driving the world to war again, as it was in previous periods of the modern age. Colonialist genocide, World War One, World War Two, and now the abyss of World War Three.
Germany in the dock for genocide with Israel is not as incongruous as it might seem. Because imperialism and fascism are on the rampage again across the world. Both Germany and Israel are gang members in the crime syndicate, each with their specific justifying myths and alibis.
Russia and China are arguably the two nations that suffered the most in history from fascism. It is entirely consistent – if not lamentable – that Russia and China today are once again confronted by the same forces.
Germany is once again on the wrong side of history. And so too are the United States and all its Western vassals. Eternal shame on them.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth.’ Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Ramzy Baroud
The Palestinian city of Rafah is not just older than Israel; it is as old as civilization itself.
It has existed for thousands of years. The Canaanites referred to it as Rafia, and Rafia has been almost always there, guarding the southern frontiers of Palestine, ancient and modern.
As the gateway between two continents and two worlds, Rafah has been at the forefront of many wars and foreign invasions, from ancient Egyptians to the Romans to Napoleon and his eventually vanquished army.
Now, it is Benjamin Netanyahu’s turn. The Israeli Prime Minister has made Rafah the jewel of his crown of shame, the battle that would determine the fate of his genocidal war in Gaza – in fact, the very future of his country. “Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are essentially telling us: ‘Lose the war,’” he said at a press conference on February 17.
There are around 1.3 to 1.5 million people in Rafah, an area that, before the war started, had a population of merely 200 thousand people.
Even before the start of this genocidal war, Rafah was still considered crowded. We can only imagine what the situation is right now, where hundreds of thousands of people are scattered in muddy refugee camps, subsisting in makeshift tents that are unable to withstand the elements of a harsh winter.
The Mayor of Rafah says that only 10 percent of the needed food and water is reaching the population in the camps, where the people are suffering from extreme hunger, if not outright starvation.
These families are beyond traumatized as they have lost loved ones and homes and have no access to any medical care. They are trapped between high walls, the sea and a murderous military.
An Israeli invasion of Rafah will not alter the battlefield in favor of the Israeli army, but it will be horrific for the displaced Palestinians. The slaughter will go beyond everything we have seen so far anywhere in Gaza.
A child wounded in an Israeli bombing is brought to Al Najjar hospital in Rafah, Feb. 24, 2024. Fatima Shbair | AP
Where will up to 1.5 million people go when the Israeli tanks arrive? The closest so-called safe area is al-Mawasi, which is already overcrowded and too small to begin with. The displaced refugees there are also experiencing starvation due to Israel’s prevention of aid and constant bombing of convoys.
Then, there is northern Gaza, which is mostly in ruins; it has no food to the extent that, in some areas, even animal feed, which humans are now consuming, is no longer accessible.
Suppose the international community does not finally develop the will to stop Israel. In that case, this horrific crime will, by far, prove worse than all the crimes that have already been committed, resulting in the death and wounding of over 100,000 people.
Even with the invasion of Rafah, Israel would achieve no military or strategic victory. Netanyahu wants to satisfy the calls for blood emanating from throughout Israel. After all of this, they are still seeking revenge. “I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza,” Israel’s Minister of Social Equality, May Golan, said at a Knesset session on February 21.
But, still, there will be no victory in Rafah, either.
At the start of the war, Israel said Hamas was primarily concentrated in the north. The north was duly destroyed, though the Resistance carried on unabated. Then they claimed that the Resistance headquarters was under Shifa Hospital, which was bombed, raided and destroyed. Then they claimed Bureij, Maghazi and central Gaza were the main prize of the war. Then, Khan Younis was declared the ‘capital of Hamas’. And on and on…
Aside from the mass destruction and the killing of hundreds of civilians daily, Israel has won nothing; the Resistance has not been defeated, and the alleged ‘Hamas capital’ has conveniently shifted from one city to another, even from one neighborhood to another.
Now, the same ridiculous claims and unsubstantiated allegations are being made and leveled against Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population ran to, in total despair, to survive the onslaught.
Children desperately clamor for food in Rafah, Feb. 23, 2024. Fatima Shbair | AP
Israel had initially hoped that Gazans would rush in their hundreds of thousands to the Sinai Desert. They did not. Then Israeli leaders, like far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, began speaking of “voluntary migration” as the “right humanitarian solution.” Still, the Palestinians stayed. Now, they have all agreed on the invasion of Rafah, a last-ditch effort to orchestrate another Palestinian Nakba.
But another Nakba will not happen. Palestinians will not allow it to happen.
Ultimately, Netanyahu’s and Israel’s political madness must come to an end.
The world cannot persist in this cowardly inaction.
The lives of millions of Palestinians are dependent on our collective push to bring this genocide to an immediate end.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Thousands of miles separate Uganda and Congo from the Gaza Strip, but these places are connected to Palestine in ways that traditional geopolitical analyses would fail to explain.
On January 3, it was revealed that the far-right Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is actively discussing proposals to expel millions of Palestinians to African countries in exchange for a fixed price.
The discussion on expelling millions of Gazans has supposedly entered the mainstream thinking in Israel starting on October 7. However, the fact that this discussion remains active over three months since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza indicates that the Israeli proposals are not an outcome of a specific historical moment, for example, the Al-Aqsa Flood operation.
Even a glance at Israeli historical records points to the fact that the mass expulsion of Palestinians – known in Israel as ‘Transfer’ – was, and remains, a primary Israeli strategy that aims at fixing Israel’s so-called ‘demographic problem.’
Long before fighters from the Al-Qassam Brigades and other Palestinian movements stormed the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel on October 7, Israeli politicians discussed, in fact, on many occasions, how to reduce the overall Palestinian population to maintain the demographic Jewish majority in historic Palestine.
The idea was not only confined to Israel’s extremists; it was even discussed by the likes of former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman when he suggested in 2014 a proposal for a ‘population exchange plan.’
Even supposedly liberal intellectuals and historians have supported this idea in principle and practice.
A top Israeli historian, Benny Morris, regretted in an interview with the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz in January 2004 that Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, failed to expel all Palestinians during the Nakba – the catastrophic event of murder and ethnic cleansing that led to the creation of the state of Israel on top of Palestinian towns and villages.
Another proof that the idea of ‘Transfer’ was not concocted on the spur of the moment is that comprehensive plans were immediately produced after October 7. They include a position paper published by the Israeli think tank the ‘Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy’ on October 17 and a report released three days later by the Israeli news outlet Calcalist, which outlined a document proposing the same strategy.
The fact that Egypt, Jordan and other Arab countries openly and immediately declared their total rejection of expelling Palestinians indicates the degree of seriousness of those official Israeli proposals.
“Our problem is (finding) countries that are willing to absorb Gazans, and we are working on it,” Netanyahu said on January 2.
These comments were followed by others, including a statement by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich when he said, “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration.”
It was then that the Israeli official discourse adopted the term ‘voluntary migration.’ But there is nothing voluntary about the starvation of 2.3 million Palestinians, who continue to face an ongoing genocide and are being pushed systematically toward the border region between Gaza and Egypt.
In its legal case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the government of South Africa included the planned ethnic cleansing of Gaza by Tel Aviv as one of the main points listed by Pretoria, accusing Israel of genocide.
Due to the lack of enthusiasm on the part of pro-Israel Western countries, Israeli diplomats are circumnavigating the globe, looking for governments that are willing to accept ethnically cleansed Palestinians.
Imagine if this behavior stemmed from any other country in the world: a country that murders people en masse yet shops around looking for other states to accept the expelled survivors in exchange for cash.
Not only has Israel made a mockery of international law, but they have also set whole new standards of despicable behavior by any state, anywhere in the world, at any time in history, ancient or modern.
And yet, the world continues to watch, support, as in the case of the US, or gently or vehemently protest, but without taking a single meaningful action to stop the bloodbath in Gaza or to block the terrifying scenarios that could indeed follow if the war does not end.
But there is one thing that many people might not know: the Zionist movement, the very ideological institution that established Israel, had attempted to move the world’s Jewry to Africa to select a state before the choice of Palestine as the ‘Jewish homeland.’
This was called the ‘Uganda Scheme’ of 1903. It was raised by Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, at the Sixth Zionist Congress. It was based on a proposal by British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain.
Declaration of the British Government allocating a “Jewish Territory” in East Africa, August 29, 1903
The Uganda Scheme eventually fell through, but the Zionists continued to shop for some other place, finally, to the misfortune of the Palestinians, settling on Palestine.
Suppose one compares the genocidal language of Israeli leaders of today and studies their racist references to Palestinians. They would find a significant overlap between their collective perception and how Europeans perceived Jewish communities for hundreds of years.
The sudden Zionist interest in Congo as a potential ‘homeland’ for Palestinians further illustrates the point that the Zionist movement continues to live in the shadow of its history, projecting the racism practiced against Jews on Israel’s racism against innocent Palestinians.
On January 5, Israel’s Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu proposed that Israelis “must find ways for Gazans that are more painful than death.” One does not need to struggle to find historical references of similar language used by German Nazis in their depiction of Jews in the early half of the 20th century.
If history does repeat itself, it has an odd and unkind way of doing so.
We have been told that the world has learned from the mass killings of previous wars, including the Holocaust and other WWII atrocities. Yet, it seems that the lessons have largely gone unlearned. Not only is Israel now assuming the role of the mass killer, but the rest of the Western world continues to play the role assigned to them in this historical tragedy. They are either cheering, politely protesting, or doing nothing at all.
Feature photo | Theodor Herzl with a Zionist delegation in Alexandria, Egypt in 1898. Photo | Public Domain
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
There is a reason why Palestinians are keen on releasing their prisoners, despite the heavy price they continue to pay for their freedom.
It may seem rational to ask the question: what is the point of releasing a few Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons if the price of doing so is the death of over 15,000 Palestinians in Gaza?
Even if all Palestinian prisoners – numbering about 7,000 – are released, they would not even amount to 30 percent of the total number of Palestinian dead and missing so far in the ongoing Israeli genocide in the Strip.
The logic may sound even more puzzling when we consider that, between October 7 and November 28, Israel detained over 3,290 Palestinians in the West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem.
Namely, the number of Palestinian women and children detainees released – following several prisoner swaps between Palestinian Resistance and the Israeli army in the period between November 24 and November 30 – is insignificant compared to those who were detained during the same period.
But mathematical equations are irrelevant in liberation wars. If we resort to this kind of logic, then perhaps it is more rational for colonized nations and oppressed groups not to resist in the first place because doing so could multiply the harm inflicted upon them by their colonizers and oppressors.
While Israelis see their captives, whether civilians or military, held in Gaza in terms of numbers, Palestinians approach the issue from an entirely different perspective.
All Palestinians are captives, according to the reality on the ground, because all Palestinians are victims of Israeli colonialism, military occupation and apartheid. The difference between being a prisoner in Megiddo, Ofer, or Ramleh prison, for example, and being a prisoner in an isolated, walled-off Palestinian town under Israeli military Occupation in Area C in the West Bank is rather technical.
True, those in Megiddo are subjected to more violence and torture. They are denied proper food, medicine, and the freedom to move about. But how is that fundamentally different from the incarceration of 2.3 million people living in Gaza now?
Some would even argue that living in Gaza during a time of genocide is more confining and far less safe than being a political prisoner in Israel under ‘normal’ circumstances.
So clearly, the issue is not related to numbers but to power relations.
Under international law, Israel is the Occupying Power. This entitles Israel to certain rights per, for example, the Fourth Geneva Convention and numerous responsibilities. For decades, Israel has abused those ‘rights’ and completely ignored all its obligations. Over the same period, Palestinians have appealed to – even implored – the international community to enforce international law on Israel, unsuccessfully.
This was illustrated in the pitiful display by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly on May 15. “Protect us,” he said repeatedly before making an analogy between Palestinians and animals. “Aren’t we human beings? Even animals should be protected. If you have an animal, won’t you protect it? Protect us!”
Most Palestinians know well that the US, West-dominated international institutions will not protect Palestinians based on any moral rationale or even their love for animals.
This realization dawned on Palestinians generations ago when the international community failed to enforce a single UN resolution on Israel. Regarding the ongoing Gaza genocide, it proved particularly irrelevant to the extent that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pronounced it outright when he said on November 8 that the UN has neither “money nor power” to prevent genocide in Gaza.
Guterres and other top UN officials must be aware of the marginal role that the international community can play in the Israeli war on Gaza because of the strong US stance in support of Israel. As long as Washington continues to serve the role of the vanguard of Israeli war crimes in Palestine, Tel Aviv has no reason to stop.
So, Palestinians do what every other occupied, colonized people did in this situation. They resist. Through their resistance, they hope to introduce a new factor to a long-skewed equation primarily controlled by Israel and its Western allies.
By releasing their prisoners as a direct result of their resistance, Palestinians are, therefore, able to influence outcomes. It means that they are political agents, in fact, political actors who can redefine the game’s rules altogether.
Indeed, Palestinians approach the issue of prisoners as part of a more extensive campaign of liberation struggle. Those who can free 100 or 7,000 detainees would, then, set a historical precedent that would, eventually, allow them to release the whole Palestinian people.
Israel is fully aware of the power and representation of the prisoners’ issue because Israel imprisons Palestinians as an expression of power and control over every aspect of Palestinian lives. Though some of the Palestinian detainees are considered, in the eyes of Israel, ‘security prisoners’, many were detained for social media posts, for WhatsApp status, or for no reason at all.
Many Palestinian women were detained for visiting the families of other prisoners or for mourning the deaths of Palestinian youths killed by Israel. Israel detained these women for the same reason that far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had outlawed the rights of Palestinians to celebrate their children’s freedom.
Specifically, Israel wants to control every aspect of Palestinian lives – their actions, real or symbolic, but even their anger, their joy and all other emotions.
When Palestinians are released through prisoner exchanges, they emerge, proudly and with heads held high, from Israeli dungeons despite the numerous obstacles, restrictions, and Israel’s insistence on keeping all Palestinian captives. For Palestinians, this is an unparalleled victory.
So, no, this is not a numbers game. Though every Palestinian individual matters, whether those being killed in Gaza or those held captive in Israeli prisons, for Palestinians, all issues are linked to one single project called liberation.
It is for this coveted collective freedom that Palestinians have fought, generation after generation, despite the high cost of death, imprisonment, and perpetual captivity.
Even Israeli experts call it “a textbook case of genocide.” Those are the exact words of Raz Siegal, an Israeli historian and professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University. On October 16, Siegal told Democracy Now:
We have to understand that the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide from 1948 requires that we see special intent for genocide to happen. And to quote the convention, intent to destroy a group is defined as racial, ethnic, religious or national as such that is collectively, not just individuals. And this intent, as we just heard, is on full display by Israeli politicians and army officers since October 7th. We heard Israel’s president. It’s well-known what Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 9th declaring a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off water, food, fuel, stating that “We’re fighting human animals,” and we will react “accordingly.” He also said that “We will eliminate everything.” We know that Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, for example, acknowledged wanton destruction and said explicitly, “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” So we’re seeing the special intent on full display.
And it isn’t just Israelis who are guilty. Leaders of Western countries have given the Gaza Holocaust their full backing. On Saturday, October 7, even as Israeli tanks, rockets, and helicopter gunships were mass-murdering hundreds of Israeli civilian prisoners alongside dozens of their Hamas captors, US President Joe Biden condemned as “unconscionable” the “appalling terrorist attacks” and encouraged what would become genocidal Israeli “retaliation.”
In reality, the Israelis, not Hamas, were the terrorists of October 7. The only mass slaughters of civilians that day were carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces. Hamas’s brave soldiers were under strict orders to attack Israeli military targets and try to capture military hostages, with the taking of civilian hostages being a secondary option or last resort. There were no Hamas orders to kill unarmed civilians, and surviving Israeli hostages speak of the kindness and generosity of their Hamas captors.
Zionist-owned Western media immediately began broadcasting outrageous lies deliberately designed to incite genocide. (Every media person responsible for those lies must some day be tried, convicted and executed.)
Zionist genocide propagandists raved deliriously about Hamas supposedly beheading 40 babies, baking babies in ovens, gouging eyes, mutilating breasts, cutting open naked women, raping women, mutilating dead bodies, spreading cyanide, and on and on. All lies. When Joe Biden endorsed the beheaded babies canard, claiming that he had seen the bodies, he sealed his fate as a self-incriminated genocide inciter who will be executed in the unlikely event that he lives long enough to face trial.
Hamas effectively neutralized Israel’s vaunted intelligence services, blinding them to the possibility of an attack of this scope and scale…(then) Hamas defeated those Israeli soldiers stationed along the barrier wall in a stand-up fight. Two battalions of the Golani Brigade were routed, as were elements of other vaunted IDF units.
Hamas struck the Headquarters of the Gaza Division, the local intelligence hub, and other major command and control facilities with brutal precision, turning what should have been a five-minute response time into many hours—more than enough time for Hamas to carry out one of its primary objectives—the taking of hostages. This they did with extreme proficiency, returning to Gaza with more than 230 Israeli soldiers and civilians.
Hamas fighters killed about 600 Israeli soldiers during the first 24 hours, a total that “included many of Israel’s most elite officers, including dozens of colonels and majors.” After Hamas repeatedly defeated the Israeli military in stand-up fights, and captured hundreds of Israeli prisoners, the Zionists panicked and invoked the Hannibal Directive, according to which heavy weaponry is used to eliminate both hostage takers and hostages. According to an Israeli Air Force officer who participated in the mass murder of hundreds of Israeli civilians along with their Hamas captors, top-level Zionist commanders ordered “mass Hannibal.” In other words, they deliberately ordered the mass slaughter of their own civilians by the hundreds in order to prevent them from becoming hostages and adding to Israel’s political problems. Had they not done so, Hamas would have returned to Gaza with as many as 700 prisoners, rather than the 250 that they actually got.
Israel then used photos of the carnage that they themselves had inflicted—using helicopter gunships, tanks, and rockets—and blamed it on Hamas. Even a cursory look at the photos of the devastated kibbutz buildings, the blown-up buildings at the music festival, and the vast array of shredded automobiles makes it clear that most of the damage was done not by Hamas’s small arms fire, but by Israel’s heavy weaponry. Yet the shameless Zionists, mass-murderers of their own people, had the chutzpah to blame the courageous and ethical soldiers of Hamas for their own crimes!
The West Sparks the Genocide
By October 8 I could see, as could anyone else with eyes, that the images out of Israel showed that the Israelis, not Hamas, were responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths. The Biden Administration, and its CIA daily briefer, must have known the same thing, with even greater certainty and in greater detail. Yet instead of using its knowledge of the truth to restrain Israel’s murderous impulse towards Biblical-scale vengeance, Joe Biden went on television and bloviated about supposedly seeing 40 Israeli babies beheaded by Hamas.
Everything the almost-entirely-Jewish Biden Administration did was calculated to encourage Israel to launch a genocide. And every other Western leader went along, actively or passively, with the genocide plan.
Once the exterminationist carpet-bombing of Gaza was underway, and thousands of women and children murdered, did those Western leaders reverse course and demand that Israel stop? Of course not.
Anthony Blinken, who flew to Tel Aviv first, in the midst of the carpet-bombing, let slip that his pre-eminent loyalty was to the genocidal entity, announcing that he flew to Tel Aviv “not only as the United States Secretary of State but also as a Jew.” (Remove the words only and also from that sentence to understand its real meaning.)
Joe Biden flew to Tel Aviv to put his stamp of approval on the genocide. So did UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who described Hamas as “the new Nazis” according to Netanyahu. Second-tier Western powers like Austria and Czechoslovakia also sent their leaders to kiss Netanyahu’s reeking rump and endorse the Gaza Holocaust.
Why has the West’s entire leadership class been falling all over itself competing to see who can move to the head of the line of genocidal war criminals? Can’t they see that the global majority is appalled by the wholesale Zionist atrocities and sides with Palestine? Don’t they realize that the West is hastening its own demise, and ensuring the rise of a non-Western-led world order, by undermining its pretense of concern for international law and human rights?
Several possible reasons for the West’s unanimously-pro-genocide position have been proposed. Some say the West is incorrigibly racist and just doesn’t care about the deaths of brown people, especially Muslims. They add that the West’s undisputed hegemon, the USA, was founded on Old Testament style genocide, and that the formerly Protestant and now Jewish Bible-thumpers of Washington DC share Netanyahu’s vengeful lust for Biblical extermination of “Amalek” (meaning the designated racial enemies of the Jews and/or Americans).
Another potential explanation invokes realpolitik. The US imperial center increasingly dominates the West (the Ukraine war destruction of Nordstream emasculated Europe) but is losing ground elsewhere. Hamas’s crushing defeat of Israel on October 7 struck a powerful blow not only against Zionism, but against the whole Anglo-Zionist Empire. The Biden “minyan” (Jewish-Zionist cabinet) panicked and scrambled to endorse Israeli genocide, not out of sober calculation, but for the same reason that a rabid rat, when cornered, mindlessly lashes out. These people know that the days of the US empire, and the Zionist entity, are numbered, and it drives them crazy. They see that every day the rising countries, led by China, Russia, and Iran, become stronger, and the US and its European vassals grow weaker. Terrified, they realize that if war is to come, the sooner the better, because every day the West’s chances of winning recede. And then, even more terrified, they grasp that it is already too late. So they take out their frustration on the women and children of Gaza.
Another realpolitik-based explanation involves the possibility that US leaders, or at least the most extreme neocon faction, would welcome an all-out war with Iran and the Axis of Resistance—a war which every additional day of genocide brings closer. Even though such a war risks a civilization-imploding World War III, and would at minimum result in tens or hundreds of thousands of Israeli and American casualties, it might at least offer a distraction from looming US defeat in Ukraine. Additionally, a massive war in West Asia would reduce the region to chaos and set back China’s Belt-and-Road plan by a decade or two, thereby prolonging the US imperial illusion by maintaining it on life support for another few years. (China builds, the US destroys, so maximizing destruction prolongs the US imperial agony.)
But in the end, the best explanation for Western leaders’ pro-genocide position involves the role of the media. Allan Thompson’s (ed.) The Media and the Rwanda Genocide shows that more than half a million Rwandans were butchered in 1994, most hacked to death with machetes, primarily due to media incitement. By dominating the formation of public opinion, the Rwandan media, especially radio, created a pro-genocide bubble that took on a life of its own. Specifically, by spreading outrageous lies that dehumanized the target group, both broadcast and print media deliberately orchestrated the mass murder of as many as 700,000 people.
This is exactly what mainstream Western media have done in their incitement of the Gaza genocide. The aforementioned lies about beheaded and roasted babies, gouged eyeballs and broken pelvises, and other gory inventions from the fecund sado-masochistic Zionist imagination were deliberately deployed to provoke real mass murders and maimings of Palestinians.
By enthusiastically participating in the Gaza genocide, the West, starting with its media and political elites, has completely discredited itself in the eyes of the world. The era of Western hegemony is coming to an end. The majority of the Earth’s population can now see that anything, absolutely anything, would be better than allowing these genocidal monsters to continue to dominate this planet.
The war criminals have sealed their own so-called civilization’s fate, and condemned their own souls to eternal hellfire. I hope to live long enough, insha’allah, to see them all, every last one of them, dragged to Beijing or Moscow or Tehran and tried for their crimes against humanity and led to the gallows.
Now into its second month, Israel’s war on Gaza has left the strip’s northern section in shambles and killed over 14,000 Palestinians, with the majority being women and children. While Israel is launching the attacks on Gaza, several Western powers are also involved in the assault behind the scenes. MintPress News takes a deep dive into the countries sustaining Israel’s war.
WHO IS SENDING ISRAEL WEAPONS?
Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October, several rights groups have initiated legal proceedings regarding arms exports to Israel.
On Nov. 6, Palestinian human rights organizations, Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights launched legal action in the Federal Court of Australia to access all arms export permits that have been granted to Israel since Oct.7.
“We know that hundreds of permits have been issued in recent years, but the Australian government keeps the basic details secret: what items are being exported, who is making them, what are they used for?,” Rawan Arraf, executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, whose organization is supporting the Palestinian groups’ application, said in a press release.“
Australia’s arms exports are shrouded in secrecy and have come under additional scrutiny after a Senate hearing in October found that 52 defense permits were granted to the Israeli government in 2023, with more than 350 being granted since 2017.
On Nov. 13, Palestinians sued United States President Joe Biden for failing to prevent genocide in Gaza and to stop the administration’s military and diplomatic support. Three days later the plaintiffs filed an urgent motion to immediately halt U.S. support for Israel.
“Palestinian children in Gaza are undoubtedly targets as repeated Israeli military offensives destroy their homes, schools, and neighborhoods, as Israeli forces use U.S.-made and funded weapons to kill them and their families with impunity,” Khaled Quzmar, general director at Defense for Children International – Palestine, and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a press release.
Bloomberg revealed a U.S. Defense Department document entitled “Israel Senior Leader” requests, dating to late October, listing the weapons Israel is seeking for its ongoing war on Gaza. According to Bloomberg, the weapons arsenal is already being shipped. The arms are listed below:
2,000 Hellfire missiles for Apache attack helicopters manufactured by U.S. weapons firm Lockheed Martin
30mm chain gun ammunition for Apache attack helicopters manufactured by U.S. arms corporation General Dynamics
57,000 155mm shells for artillery guns
400 120mm mortars
PVS-14 night vision monoculars from U.S. manufacturer Night Vision Devices
M141 shoulder-fired bunker-busters
75 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, manufactured by U.S. firm Oshkosh Defense
More than 300 Tamir interceptors for Israel’s Iron Dome system, and made by U.S. arms manufacturer Raytheon
As previously reported by MintPress News, photos have shown that U.S.-manufactured weapons containing white phosphorus are being used in Israel’s assault on Gaza. These artillery shells were made by Pine Bluff Arsenal, an army facility based in Arkansas known for supplying white phosphorus ammunition. The U.S. army did not respond to requests verifying if Pine Bluff Arsenal artillery is being used in Gaza.
On Telegram and LinkedIn, the Defense Ministry mentioned how its Mission to the U.S. based in New York City helped procure the arms and equipment.
Open-source data has also indicated Western military aircraft and warships in the Eastern Mediterranean region over the last month.
.@TheCVN69 & the #IKESCSG transited the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea, Oct. 28.
As a part of the @USNavy's 🇺🇸 globally-deployed forces, IKECSG will join the @Warship_78 CSG in support of the defense of Israel and to deter aggression throughout the region. pic.twitter.com/DVAuqhfBu4
— U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet (@USNavyEurope) October 30, 2023
U.S. warships — the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group and the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike groups — sailed to the Mediterranean in October to support Israel’s military. The Eisenhower carrier is last known to be in the Red Sea while the U.K.’s navy’s Argus ship is docked in Cyprus.
At least six German Air Force planes have arrived at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport in the last week along with two planes from the British Air Force and aircraft from the Polish Air Force and U.S. Navy.
In the last month, military aircraft from France and Australia have also all traveled to Tel Aviv. Australia’s Defense Department acknowledged its in deployed aircraft to the region in press releases.
The deployment of Australian aircraft and supporting Defence personnel is a precautionary measure to support whole-of-Australian Government contingency planning and delivery of support to Australian citizens and approved foreign nationals, in the region, if required.
Several British Air Force planes have traveled to Tel Aviv from the U.K.’s Akrotiri military base in Cyprus in the last week. A plane belonging to arms manufacturer BAE Systems also arrived to the airbase recently.
The aforementioned militaries did not respond to MintPress News’ requests for comment on why their aircraft landed in the region and what kind of cargo or personnel it was transporting. Only Australia’s Defense Department responded, referring MintPress News to its previous press releases on the matter.
New from @CAATuk: "Israel is using UK arms exports in a genocide against the Palestinian people. The UK government is complicit in these crimes not just by supplying these weapons for decades, but by repeatedly inciting Israel to commit war crimes against Palestinian civilians". pic.twitter.com/zbO7WE2NVp
While it remains unclear the exact kind and amount of equipment Western governments are sending to Israel during this time, activist groups have deemed these states complicit in Israel’s ongoing war against Gaza.
“Since 2018, Britain has approved arms exports to Israel worth at least £147 million (or roughly $183 million),” the U.K.-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) said in a statement to MintPress News. “Because of the nature of Britain’s arms export licensing, the true value is likely to be substantially higher. This includes exports for military aircrafts, helicopters and drones. It also includes components for armored vehicles and bombs.”
“The British government is therefore providing material support for Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip,” PSC said.
According to U.K.-based Campaign Against Arms Trade, British companies provide 15% of the materials for the F35 stealth combat aircraft, which Israel is currently using to bomb Gaza. Suppliers for the F35 stealth fighter jets also include: U.S., Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Netherlands, and France.
Also sections on Spain, Belgium, and South Africa! Plus a spreadsheet of the international supply chain for the US F-35 stealth fighter, one of the aircraft Israel is using to bomb Gaza. https://t.co/qgPMhSIksT
Lockheed Martin’s MLRS M270 rocket launcher, which was used inside Gaza for the first time since 2006, was built in Europe by an international consortium of companies from France, Germany, Italy, and the U.K.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute provided data on arms sales from Europe to Israel between 2013 to 2022 to EuroNews, showing Italy and Germany had supplied Israel’s military with weapons now being used on the ground in Gaza. It also said Germany had sent more than 1,000 tank engines to Israel. As of Nov. 2, Germany’s government has exported $323 million in arms to Israel — nearly 10 times more than it sent to Israel last year.
During a NATO meeting in Brussels in October, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius confirmed that Israel was also requesting munitions for its navy.
“We will discuss with the Israelis how exactly that will now proceed,” Pistorius said, suggesting the weapons pipeline to Israel may increase.“
WHO IS SENDING TROOPS?
Media reports have suggested that foreign soldiers are assisting in Israel’s current war operations.
Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, revealed that a Spanish mercenary is assisting Israeli forces in Gaza. Pedro Diaz Flores has been pictured there with the Israeli occupation forces. He previously fought in Ukraine, having become involved in the war through the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade.
Through his involvement with the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade, Pedro was absorbed in to the Charlie One Unit of Ukrainian Military Intelligence. pic.twitter.com/Ah9SwghOoT
“So I came for economy, for money. They pay very well, they offer good equipment and the work is calm. It is 3,900 euros [$4,187] per week, complementary missions aside,” Flores told El Mundo.
In October, British newspaper Socialist Worker — along with other publications — received an “advisory notice from the Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee to not publish information related to British special forces operating in the Middle East.
“Reports have started to appear in some publications claiming that UK Special Forces have deployed to sensitive areas of the Middle East and then linking that deployment to hostage rescue/evacuation operations,” the D-notice said.
The Socialist Worker noted how the Daily Mail reported that the U.K.’s Special Air Service is on “standby in Cyprus” to rescue British hostages held captive in Gaza.
Additionally, Palestinians in Gaza have disclosed they’ve encountered soldiers with American flags on their uniforms. In the below video clip from Quds News Network, a Palestinian man tells an Al Jazeera reporter that his brother spoke in English to a male soldier donning an American flag on his uniform while trying to flee the strip. These claims remain unsubstantiated and it’s possible that soldiers with dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship are wearing an American flag patch without the Israeli military’s permission.
This is just one of a growing number of accounts and reports that US troops are directly participating in the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Last week, Bloomberg reported discussions of “a multinational force that may involve American troops." pic.twitter.com/ruAUTYShlY
Forward Observations, a volunteer group founded by former U.S. infantry soldier Derrick Bales, who fought in Afghanistan, has posted footage from Gaza and southern Israel on social media.
In one Instagram post, Forward Observations is seen in Be’eri, a community attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, being guided by members of the Israeli military’s Lotar unit which responded to the violence.
According to Foreign Policy, Forward Observations began as a lifestyle brand selling tactical gear. Then, the group traveled to Ukraine, where it started sourcing medical supplies, gear, and money for Ukrainian soldiers. Bales has been criticized for associating with Vadim Lapaev, a member of the far-right Azov Battalion. He apologized for his connections to Lapaev but said the brigade isn’t as radical as alleged.
Forward Observations did not respond to MintPress News’ inquiries to verify if its personnel are indeed in Israel and what it’s doing there.
U.S. Department of Defense official (DoD), Christopher P. Maier, told The New York Times this month that U.S. special operations forces are stationed in Israel and “actively helping the Israelis” with various efforts including to “identify hostages, including American hostages.”
While Maier declined to tell the Times how many Special Forces are currently in Israel, former Pentagon adviser, Douglas MacGregor, said in a television news interview that 2,000 Marines and 2,000 Special Forces have been deployed to the region. MacGregor also mentioned how U.S. Special Forces embedded with Israeli Special Forces entered the Gaza Strip in October to carry out reconnaissance but were then ambushed and suffered grave casualties.
On the television program Palestine Declassified, British sociologist David Miller told host Chris Williamson, a former U.K. parliament member, that this operation is “an indication that the American soldiers are directly involved in confronting the resistance.”
And a White House photo shared on Instagram and then subsequently deleted shows President Joe Biden meeting with members of the Delta Force during his Oct. 18 visit to Israel. A senior Arab source familiar with the Palestinian groups in Gaza told Middle East Eye — before Israel’s ground invasion — that Palestinians expected Israel to flood Hamas tunnels with a kind of nerve gas or chemical weapon under the supervision of U.S. Delta Force commandos. Israel has begun its ground campaign into Gaza, but there have been no reports of nerve agents being used as of yet.
Despite these reports, the Pentagon told MintPress News “the U.S. has no boots on the ground in Israel.”
So as Western populations continue to flood the streets for Palestine, their governments appear to be supporting the aggressor.
The US-Israeli strategy of attempting to tie the destiny of the Arab world with Tel Aviv and to crush the idea of Palestinian resistance to occupation failed on October 7.
There are some governments that are so cruel and unjust that people have no choice but to resist by force. After 16 years, the steel and concrete wall constructed by Israel to imprison Palestinians in Gaza was breached by Palestinian resistance forces on October 7.
The current challenge is to break through the wall of US-Israeli myths and lies that have been carefully constructed over the decades to maintain Israel’s long history of oppression and injustice against the Palestinians; fabrications that have been used to sustain US-Israeli hegemony in West Asia.
Eleven minutes after Zionist leaders declared, without UN Security Council approval, “independence” on 14 May 1948, President Harry S. Truman became the first world leader to officially recognize the self-proclaimed “Jewish” state. The lies that began on that date have never ceased; nor has Palestinian resistance to the racist, settler-colonial “state” being built on their land.
There has also been no break in America’s complicity in financing, protecting, and sustaining the Zionist colonial project in the heart of the Muslim world – a relationship that has exacted an unimaginable price on the Palestinians and on all the people of the region.
The United States sees itself in Israel. For it too was founded on racism and built on indigenous land. US history is replete with examples of resistance and rebellion that mirror the attack of that fateful day.
The indigenous people have never ceased resisting US policies of expansion, removal, and extermination. And the more than 250 acts of resistance by enslaved blacks have been well documented. The most violent of these slave rebellions took place on 21 August 1831 in Southampton, Virginia. The Nat Turner Revolt and the reaction to it are uncannily similar to October 7 in terms of the causes and reaction.
Today, historians look back on that August day differently. The slaughter of over 55 white enslavers, their wives, and children is called a rebellion, insurrection, or revolt. Although the insurrection gave northerner abolitionists a black hero and a martyr for the movement, most newspapers of that era, especially in the South, denounced Turner’s revolt as a massacre. The event further radicalized American politics and moved the country closer to civil war.
Like the corporate media of today which has accepted Israel’s narrative as fact, editors in 1831 rushed to report news, merely reprinting articles that appeared in Virginia newspapers. And analogous to events unfolding currently, the failure to check facts led to the publication of inaccurate, prejudicial, and harmful misinformation.
Akin to the Israeli regime, which has been conducting genocide in Gaza and the West Bank under the guise of eliminating Hamas, revenge-minded white vigilantes lynched blacks who played no part in the uprising. Southern writers talked of retaliation, calling for ethnic cleansing and pogroms against the enslaved and free blacks of Southampton County, expressing a willingness to conduct a “final solution” for Virginia’s black population.
There were few, especially in the South, willing to accept that slavery was the root cause of Turner’s revolt. Similarly, in 2023 the corporate media has drowned out the voices of those contending that the attack by Hamas was inevitable, that it was an act of resistance to 75 years of settler-colonialist violence and Israel’s never-ending war against Palestinians. The media have instead eschewed context, either ignoring or discounting the severity of the Israeli apartheid regime.
The regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv believe they can crush Palestinian resistance by exterminating the Palestinian political and military organization, Hamas (Harakah al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah), an Arabic phrase meaning Islamic Resistance Movement. It looks as if Israel’s objective is to kill as many Palestinians as they can until the moral conscience of the Western world is stirred.
Israel has never observed international and humanitarian laws demanded of an occupying power. Its occupation of Palestine is illegal. Therefore, all Israelis living on Palestinian land are colonizers, regardless of whether they live in Tel Aviv or in the occupied West Bank. Also, all Israeli citizens over the age of 18 have been soldiers, since national military service is mandatory (Palestinian citizens of Israel are exempt).
Under international law, Palestinian resistance, even armed resistance, to occupation is legitimate. Conversely, Israel’s claim that it has a “right to defend itself” is illegitimate. According to international law, it does not have that right as long as it illegally occupies Palestine.
Not only does Israel not have the right to defend itself, Miko Peled, Israeli-American peace and human rights activist, has made the case that Israel as an apartheid state—which it is—does not have the right to exist. And that dismantling the apartheid state and replacing it with a true democracy, one person-one vote, is the only path to peace and security in the region.
In the midst of the current tragedy, it is important to know that before the introduction of Zionism by the imperial powers following World War I, Palestinian Jews lived peacefully with their Muslims and Christian neighbors; harmony that was shaped by a millennium of openness and coexistence.
Continuing the Muslim tradition of tolerance, Muslims, Christians and Jews lived and thrived together under Ottoman rule (1516-1918). In the 1500s, the gates of Palestine were opened to Jews fleeing persecution in Spain and other parts of Christendom. The inscription on the Jaffa Gate (the main western gate into the Old City) reflects that spirit, reads: “There is no God but God, and Abraham is his friend.”
The forceful importation of European Zionist ideology and settler-colonialism into Palestine destabilized Palestinian life and the region. The current tragedy in Gaza can be traced directly to the arbitrary partition of West Asia and the British mandate of Palestine (and Iraq) at the end of the war. In November 1917, the British government, with no regard for the indigenous population, publicly stated its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” on Palestinian land. The Balfour Declaration, as it came to be known, set in motion Israel’s 75-year genocidal war against the Palestinians. And since 1948, the United States has financed and abetted Israel’s war.
Washington’s hegemonic plans for the region, dependent on its garrison regime in Tel Aviv, have begun to fall apart and pretenses of “honest broker” exposed. From all appearances, the United States has lost control of the Frankenstein monster it helped create.
On October 7, Palestinian freedom fighters did what the United States and Israel thought unimaginable, they dared to leave the “reservation,” to escape their imprisonment. Until that pivotal event, Washington and Tel Aviv believed they were on a clear path to controlling the region and erasing the Palestinian cause by brokering normalization agreements between Israel and authoritarian Arab Gulf regimes.
Resistance movements in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Iran were considered marginalized and contained. The US-Israeli strategy of attempting to tie the destiny of the Arab world with Tel Aviv and to crush the idea of Palestinian resistance to occupation failed on October 7.
At present, the Biden administration has made Israel’s war on Palestinians its war. Without the consent of the Congress, it has given the Netanyahu regime the green light to continue bombing, slaughtering and starving the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and murdering, imprisoning and terrorizing the over 2 million Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank.
The Biden administration has also refused to support life-saving UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. From 1954 to the present, the United States has used its veto power 34 times to block Security Council resolutions critical of Israel and that have attempted to hold it accountable for its violations of international law in Palestine. Israel has consistently ignored all resolutions pertaining to its crimes against Palestinians and keeps bombing UN institutions and personnel in Gaza today.
Additionally, President Biden has submitted a request to Congress for additional military aid for Israel amounting to $14.3 billion to complete its genocide in Gaza (and the West Bank), a request that is in violation of US law. Twenty percent of Israel’s military budget is currently financed by US taxpayers. The Leahy Law, named after its sponsor, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and first enacted in 1997, prohibits the US government from providing military assistance to foreign security forces when there is credible information of human rights violations.
Like Israel, Washington is not playing by the “rules-based order” it demands of others and it is not observing the international laws it helped established. The United States is on the wrong side of history, and its decisions are jeopardizing America’s national security and what is left of its standing worldwide, endangering Muslims and Jews in the United States and in every country, fueling violence at home and in West Asia.
History is replete with acts of violent resistance to oppression. Apartheid is violent, and resistance to it is morally required. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that “To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber.”
– Dr. M. Reza Behnam is a political scientist specializing in the history, politics and governments of the Middle East. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
London — (Craig Murray) — October 23 saw the most violent bombardment of Gaza until that point, notably concentrated on precisely the areas where Israel ordered the population to evacuate. I find it almost impossible to believe that this genocide is underway with the active support of nearly all Western governments.
I want to examine two questions — what will happen internationally, and what is happening in Western societies?
Israel is on the course of further escalation and intends to kill thousands more Palestinians. More than 2,000 Palestinian children alone have now been killed by Israeli aerial attacks in the last fortnight.
Gaza has no defense from bombs and missiles, and there is no military reason why Israel cannot keep this up for months and simply rely upon aerial massacre. We are perhaps within a week of thirst, starvation and disease, killing even more people per day than bombardment.
The population of Gaza is simply defenseless. Only international intervention can stop Israel from doing whatever it wishes, and those countries that have influence with Israel are actively abetting and encouraging the genocide.
The question is, what is Israel’s aim? Do they intend to reduce the Gaza Strip further, annexing half or more of it? Will starvation and horror enable the international community to force Egypt to accept the expulsion of the population of Gaza into the Sinai Desert as a “humanitarian” move?
That appears to be the end game: the expulsion of population and territorial expansion into Gaza.
That would require a ground invasion, but probably not until after even more intense aerial bombardment to eliminate all resistance.
This territorial ambition, of course, accords with the violent expansion of illegal settlement in the West Bank, which is currently underway, with the world paying almost no attention. It is challenging indeed to comprehend the passivity of Fatah and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, at the moment.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political stock within Israel is so low that he can only recover by making a significant step towards the complete genocide of the Palestinian people and the achievement of Greater Israel.
Netanyahu now knows that there is no violence against Palestinians so extreme that the Western political elite will not support it under the mantra of “Israel’s right to self-defense.”
I do not see any salvation for Gaza coming from Hezbollah. If Hezbollah were to employ its vaunted missile strike capabilities, the moment to do it would be now when the Israeli armor is drawn up in massive parks outside Gaza, a perfect target even for longer-range missiles of limited accuracy. Once dispersed into Gaza, the armor would be far more challenging for Hezbollah to hit at range.
Hezbollah is better equipped now to fight a defensive war in Lebanon than when it defeated the Israeli advance in 2006. But it is not configured or equipped to fight an aggressive ground war in Israel, which would be a disaster.
It also has to worry about hostile militias at its rear. If Hezbollah can provoke an Israeli incursion into Southern Lebanon, it could inflict substantial casualties. Still, Israel will not do that in a way that detracts from its capabilities in Gaza.
Iran has dramatically improved its diplomatic position in the last year. The Chinese-brokered lessening of hostility with Saudi Arabia has the potential to revolutionize Middle Eastern politics, and Tehran will not lightly lay aside the benefits of this. Iran had also made real progress with the Biden administration in overcoming the blind hostility of the Trump years.
Iran has no desire to throw away these gains. That is why it seems highly improbable that Iran endorsed the October 7 attacks by Hamas. Iran is now restraining Hezbollah.
But there are limits to the patience of Iran. The extraordinary truth is that Iran is probably the only state under discussion here with a genuine humanitarian concern for the lives of Palestinians. If the genocide unfolds as horribly as I anticipate, Iran can be pushed too far.
That said, I offer just a cautionary footnote that Saudi Arabia is not, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, quite the reliable U.S./Israeli puppet it has historically been. I do not have much time for MBS, as readers know, but his high opinion of the importance of the House of Saud and its leadership role among Arabs makes him a different proposition from his predecessor.
Saudi Arabia has leverage. The Biden administration has gone all in on regional domination, sending two aircraft carrier groups into a situation which, if it escalates, could send oil prices to highest-ever levels, with Russia blocked from the market. U.S. President Joe Biden risks a massive gas price hike in an election year.
Biden’s calculation, or that of his security services, is that nobody can or will intervene to save the Palestinians. They judge the genocide as containable. That is an extraordinary gamble.
There has been an extraordinary amount of vitriol aimed at Qatar by pro-Israel commentators for hosting the Hamas office and leadership. This is extraordinarily ignorant.
QATAR’S DIPLOMATIC VENUE
Qatar hosts Hamas, just as Qatar hosted the Taliban Information Office at the direct request of the United States. It provides a means of dialogue between the United States and Hamas (exactly as it did with the Taliban) both at a deniable level and through third parties, including, of course, the government of Qatar.
Thus, when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Qatar one day and the Iranian foreign minister the next, these were, in fact, “proximity talks” involving Hamas.
How do I know? Well, at Julian Assange’s request, I visited Qatar about five years ago to discuss whether Julian and WikiLeaks might potentially relocate to Qatar, which Julian had described as “the new Switzerland” in terms of being a neutral diplomatic venue.
It was explained to me by the Qataris, at a very senior level, that Qatar hosted the Taliban Information Office and Hamas because the United States government had asked them to do so. Qatar hosted a significant U.S. military base and depended on U.S. support against a Saudi takeover.
I was told that they would do so if I could generate a request from then-U.S. President Donald Trump for Qatar to host WikiLeaks. Otherwise, no.
So, I know what I am talking about.
One tiny but good result of this brokering in Qatar was the release of two American national hostages. British diplomats have told me that discussions in Qatar have held back the Israeli ground offensive, but I am not convinced that Israel wishes to do this yet. They are having sadistic fun shooting children in a barrel.
Qatar has also been the origin of deals allowing a tiny amount of aid into Gaza, but this is so small as to be almost irrelevant. It is performative humanitarianism by the West.
CHINA AND RUSSIA
I have frequently praised China for the fact that its economic dominance has been unaccompanied by any aggressive desire for world hegemony, but this also has its downside. China sees no benefit in assisting the Palestinians in practice.
Hopeful reports of China sending warships refer simply to pre-planned exercises, largely in the Gulf. That China is carrying out such joint exercises with Gulf states is indeed part of a long-term increase of influence but is irrelevant to the immediate reality.
Russia, of course, has its hands full in Ukraine. It is allowing its Syrian bases to be used as a conduit following increased Israeli bombing of Syrian airports, but there is not a great deal more that it can do.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is genuinely furious at what is happening in Gaza but is struggling to find any way to apply pressure, barring linkage to Ukraine shipping issues (which Erdogan is considering).
That is a very rough and ready tour d’horizon, but the net effect is that I see no current hope for averting the atrocity unfolding before our horrified eyes.
Most of our eyes are indeed horrified. The gap between the Western political and media elites and their people on this issue is enormous.
Western leaders have not only failed to restrain Israel; they have almost unanimously egged Netanyahu on, with the continued repetition of the phrase “Israel’s right to self-defense” as justification for the mass bombing, removal and starvation of an entire civilian population.
The Western leadership’s glee in vetoing every attempt at a ceasefire resolution at the U.N. is astonishing.
Massive demonstrations have been taking place across Europe against this unspeakable massacre, and the knee-jerk reaction of politicians at their isolation from public opinion has been to try to make such shows of dissent illegal.
Almost every politician in power in the West is being forced to row back a little from their open pro-genocide position, because public opinion has terrified them. Really fascinating.
In the U.K., people have been arrested for displaying Palestinian flags. In Germany, pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been entirely banned. Something similar has been attempted in France, with predictable failure.
I have attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations in three countries, and the most striking thing on each occasion was the strong support of passers-by and the number of people spontaneously coming out to join the demo as it passed.
A wave of racism has been unleashed in the U.K. and elsewhere. I am astonished by the Islamophobia and racial hatred released online, with no apparent comeback.
U.K. ministers claim to be alarmed at the “terrorist sympathies” of pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Yet, it is perfectly legal to call for Palestinians to be exterminated, to compare them to different types of animals and vermin, and to suggest they should be driven into the sea. That does not horrify ministers at all.
It has also become dangerous to suggest that Palestinians, too, have a right to self-defense and may offer armed resistance to genocide — a right they enjoy beyond doubt in international law.
Remember, Israel has formally declared war. Is it the position in British law that the only belief it is legal to hold and express is that in this war, the Palestinians must simply line up quietly to be killed?
The step change in Western authoritarianism is likely to be met by blowback.
After 20 years, we had finally come through the vicious cycle of the “War on Terror,” where terrorism, repression and institutionalized Islamophobia all boosted each other across the Western world.
Outrage at the appalling genocide in Gaza is likely to result in isolated incidences of, also appalling, Islamist-inspired violence in Western countries, including the U.K., mainly because of the U.K.’s military support of Israel.
The political elite will cite that consequential terrorism in itself as justifying their stance. And so the vicious cycle will restart. This will, of course, be welcome to the agents of the security state, whose power, budgets and prestige will be boosted.
Once again, we must be on the lookout for radicalization and real terrorism, but also for agent-provocateur-led terrorism and false flag terrorism.
If we descend back into that nightmare again, the direct cause will be elite support for the genocide of the Palestinian people and the Islamophobic narrative. The primary cause of terrorism here is Israel, the terrorist apartheid state.
MY OWN ‘TERRORISM’ INVESTIGATION
My phone is not being returned to me by police as I am now formally under investigation for terrorism. Whether this relates to support for Palestine or WikiLeaks was not made clear.
💥INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS
🔴"The treatment of @CraigMurrayOrg – and others – under the TERRORISM ACT concerns us greatly as independent journalists and should concern us all."
What follows is, unspun and unvarnished, my account of my interview under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act as given to my lawyers:
I arrived from Keflavik airport, Iceland, to Glasgow airport at about 10 a.m. on Monday, October 16. After passport control, I was stopped by three police officers, two male and one female, who asked me to accompany them to a detention room.
They seated me in the room and told me:
I was detained under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act”
I was not arrested but detained, and therefore had no right to a lawyer.”
I had no right to remain silent. I had to give full and accurate information in response to questions. It was a criminal offence to withhold any relevant information.”
I had to give up any passwords to my devices. It was a criminal offence not to do this.”
Credit | Craig Murray
They searched my baggage and my coat, going through my documents and taking my phone and laptop. They did not look at one document from Julian Assange’s lawyers that I told them was privileged.
They asked me about boarding cards for Brussels and Dublin they found and what I had been doing there. I replied I was at a debate at Trinity College in Dublin, while in Brussels, I had attended a human rights meeting focused on the case of Julian Assange.
They asked me to identify individuals on visiting cards I had from the Brussels meeting (one was a German member of Parliament).
They asked me the purpose of my visit to Iceland. I told them that I was attending a coordinating meeting of the campaign to free Julian Assange. I said I had also attended a pro-Palestinian rally outside the Icelandic Parliament, but that was not a prior intention.
They asked how I earn my living. I said from two sources: voluntary subscriptions to my blog and my civil-service pension.
They asked what organizations I am a member of. I said the Alba Party. I said I worked with WikiLeaks and the Don’t Extradite Assange campaign but was not formally a “member” of either. I was a life member of the FDA union [for professionals in public service]—no other organizations.
They asked if I received any money from WikiLeaks, Don’t Extradite Assange or the Assange family (separate questions). I replied no, except for occasional Don’t Extradite Assange travel expenses. In December, I had done a tour of Germany and received a fee from the Wau Holland Foundation, a German free speech charity.
They asked what other campaigns I had been involved in. I said many, from the Anti-Nazi League and Anti-Apartheid movement. I had campaigned for Guantanamo inmates alongside Caged Prisoners.
They asked why I had attended the pro-Palestine demo in Iceland. I said one of the speakers had invited me, Ögmundur Jónasson. He was a former Icelandic interior minister. I said I did not know what the speeches said as they were all in Icelandic.
They asked whether I intended to attend any pro-Palestinian rallies in the U.K. I said I had no plans but probably would.
They asked how I judged whether to speak alongside others on the same platform. I replied I depended on organizers I trusted, like the Palestine Solidarity Committee or Stop the War. It was impossible to know who everyone was at a big rally.
They asked if anyone else posted to my Twitter or blog. I replied no, it was all me.
They asked how considered my tweets were. I replied that those that were links to my blog posts were my considered writing. Others were more ephemeral, and like everyone else, I sometimes made mistakes and sometimes apologized. They asked if I deleted tweets, and I said very seldom.
The treatment of @CraigMurrayOrg – and others – under the Terrorism Act concerns us greatly as independent journalists and should concern us all. https://t.co/wgLSpeIaWf
I volunteered that I understood the tweet that worried them and agreed it could have been more nuanced. This was the limitation of Twitter, [now X]. It was intended to refer only to the current situation within Gaza and the Palestinian people’s right of self-defense from genocide.
That was more or less it. The interview was kept to exactly an hour, and at one point, one said to another, “18 minutes left.” They did not tell me why. At one point, they did mention protected journalistic material on my laptop, but I was too dazed to take advantage of this and specify anything.
They took my bank account details and copies of all my bank cards.
This is an enormous abuse of human rights. The abuse of process in refusing both a lawyer and the right to remain silent, the inquiry into perfectly legal campaigning, which is in no way terrorism-associated, the political questioning, the financial snooping and the seizure of material related to my private life, were all based on an utterly fake claim that I am associated with terrorism.
I have, to date, not been arrested and not charged. Contempt of court is therefore not in play, and you are free to comment on the case (although, in the current atmosphere, any kind of free thought is liable to vicious state action). I am safe and currently in Dublin. I intend to travel to Switzerland to discuss this with the United Nations.
My legal team has already submitted against this outrage to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and is looking at the possibility of judicial review in the U.K. We also have to prepare the defense against possible terrorism charges, ludicrous as that sounds.
I am afraid this all costs money. I am grateful for the unfailing generosity of people in what seems like a continual history of persecution.
Some readers were unimpressed when I excitedly shared the news on social media that Indonesia had refused to host the Israeli team as part of the Under-20 World Cup, scheduled from May 20 to June 11 in Indonesian cities.
Though any news related to Palestine and Israel often generates two sharply different kinds of responses, the latest act of Indonesian solidarity with the Palestinian people failed to impress even some pro-Palestine activists in the West. Their rationale had nothing to do with Palestine or Israel but the Indonesian government’s own human rights record.
This supposed dichotomy is as omnipresent as it is problematic. Some of the most genuine acts of solidarity with the Palestinians – or other oppressed nations in the Global South – tend to occur in other Southern nations and governments. But since the latter are frequently accused of poor human rights records by Western governments and West-based rights groups, these gestures of solidarity are often questioned as lacking substance.
Aside from the weaponization of human rights – and democracy – by Western governments, some of the concerns about human rights violations are worth a pause: can those who do not respect the rights of their own people be trusted to champion the rights of others?
THE LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS
Though intellectually intriguing, the argument, and the question, lack self-awareness, reek of entitlement, and reflect a poor understanding of history.
First, the lack of self-awareness. In the West, advocacy for Palestinian rights is predicated on reaching out, educating and lobbying some of the world’s most destructive colonial and neocolonial powers. This advocacy includes civil engagement with countries that have, for example, invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, tormented Africa and continue to subjugate many nations in the Global South.
These Western governments were also the ones who either handed the deed of Palestine – Britain – to the Zionist movement or sustained Israel militarily, financially and politically for generations – the US and others.
Even though little tangible progress has been recorded regarding substantive political shifts away from Israel, we continue to engage with these governments with the hope that a change will come.
Rarely do Western activists make arguments similar to those made against Indonesia – or other Asian, African, Arab or Muslim countries. Personally, never once have I been reminded of the moral conflict of pursuing solidarity from Western governments that have long invested in the oppression of the Palestinian people.
THE ENTITLEMENT
Second, the entitlement. For many years and, particularly since the end of World War II, western governments endeavored to serve the roles of judge, jury and executioner. They drafted international law yet selectively implemented it. They passed the Human Rights Declaration yet selfishly determined who deserves this humanity. They launched wars in the name of defending others, yet left in their wake more death and mayhem than existed prior to these ‘humanitarian interventions.’
Some human rights activists in the West rarely appreciate that their influence is primarily derived from their very geographic position and, more importantly, citizenship. This is why Hannah Arendt rightly argued that individuals could only enjoy human rights once they obtain the right to be citizens of a nation-state. “Human rights lose all their significance as soon as an individual loses her political context,” she wrote in her seminal book, The Right to Have Rights.
Though some activists have paid a heavy price for their genuine solidarity with the Palestinian people, others understand solidarity in purely conceptual terms, without considering the numerous political obstacles and, sometimes, compromises an occupied nation faces.
A protest in Jakarta against Israeli participation in the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in Indonesia, March 20, 2023. Achmad Ibrahim | AP
The fact that Palestinian civil societies launched the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement in 2005, in that particular order, reflects the awareness among Palestinians that it will take more than individual acts of solidarity to end the Israeli occupation and to dismantle Israeli apartheid. Divestment means that companies that benefit from the Israeli occupation must sever their ties with Israel – even if some of these companies may have questionable practices.
The same logic applies to sanctions, which require a strong political will by governments to ostracize Tel Aviv until it ends its occupation, respects international law and treats Palestinians as equal citizens.
If having a perfect human rights record is a prerequisite for government support, not many countries, if any, will qualify. Oppressed people simply cannot be so entitled, as they do not have the privilege or the leverage to shape a perfectly harmonious global solidarity.
A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY
Finally, the need for a better understanding of history. Before the signing of the Oslo Accords between the Palestinian leadership and Israel in 1993, the term ‘human rights’ was an important component of the Palestinian struggle. But it was neither the only nor the main driving force behind the Palestinian quest for freedom. For Palestinians, all aspects of Palestinian resistance, including the pursuit of human rights, were parts of a larger liberation strategy.
Oslo changed all of that. It shunned such terms as resistance and redefined the Palestinian struggle from that of liberation to human rights. As a result, the Palestinian Authority respected its assigned task, and many Palestinians played along simply because they felt they had no other alternative.
Yet, by elevating the human rights discourse, Palestinians were entrapped in entirely Western priorities. Their language, which, in the past, was consistent with revolutionary lessons of anti-colonial movements in the Middle East, Africa and the rest of the Global South, was rejigged to appeal to Western expectations.
This should not suggest that anti-colonial movements did not champion human rights discourses. On the contrary, such lessons were at the core of millions of people’s valiant struggles and sacrifices worldwide. But for them, human rights was not an isolated moral position nor a political stance to be used or manipulated to highlight the moral superiority of the West over the rest or to sanction poor countries, often for the sake of exacting political or economic concessions.
Palestinians care deeply about the human rights of other nations. They ought to because they have experienced firsthand what it means to be stripped of their rights and humanity. But, also, they are in no position, nor should they seek one that would allow them to condition solidarity from others on the West’s politicized human rights agendas.
he Israel lobby is working directly with the Canadian government and with Silicon Valley corporations to quash the voices of those critical of its expansionist policies and systematic oppression of its indigenous population.
One clear example of this came last September when an international parliamentary committee met in Congress in Washington, DC, to demand that Twitter remove the account of Palestinian-Canadian Laith Marouf. Marouf is a multimedia producer who currently serves as a senior consultant at the Community Media Advocacy Centre and the coordinator of ICTV, a project to secure a national multi-ethnic news television station in Canada. He also has a long record of active support for Palestinian rights.
As such, Marouf – whose Community Media Advocacy Centre is funded by the Canadian government – faced official consequences for comments he made critiquing Israel. But the Trudeau administration went further to secure his erasure from social media, which should concern all those who believe in free speech.
Marouf’s case is just one in an endless stream of such acts happening all over social media and beyond. Marouf, in other words, was not the first and certainly will not be the last. Furthermore, his case opens the floodgates for the stream of suspensions to become a torrent.
As a major human rights abuser engaged in apartheid and military occupation of Palestinian land, Israel’s working relationship with big tech and the Canadian government is showcasing how antisemitism is being weaponized to target, flag and now vanish accounts critical of the apartheid state.
Marouf’s case also highlights the existence of a nearly fifty-year alliance between a Canadian national and a former Soviet dissident – a relationship that began as part of an Israeli intelligence operation. This history directly ties what happened to Marouf to Israel’s foreign policy strategies developed between 2000 and 2016.
A BIASED GROUP
The Interparliamentary Task Force To Combat Online Antisemitism is, as the name suggests, an international grouping of parliamentarians. Launched in September 2020, the task force is focused on increasing awareness of and developing responses and solutions to allegedly growing online antisemitism. Its first hearing was held on September 16, and the committee called executives from Twitter, YouTube, Meta, and TikTok to testify and explain how and why accounts like those of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, were still in existence. Khamenei’s English Twitter account has nearly a million followers. At the time of writing, it and its Russian, Spanish, Arabic and Farsi alternative accounts remain live.
Former Canadian member of parliament (MP) Michael Levitt went over his five allotted minutes in his enthusiasm to denounce Marouf’s tweets. Another member of the task force devoted some of her time to arguing that “Zionism as an identity” should be included as a “protected characteristic.” She elaborated, “Zionist is an integral part of the identity of the majority of Jews and many non-Jews who self-define as Zionists.”
But who is on this committee, and why would they make such an argument? Answering this question accurately involves peeling back several layers of the onion and tracing back the origin story of this latest assault on online Palestinian speech.
An exhausted Laith Marouf and his CUTV crew report live from the ground in Montreal, May 20, 2012. Alexis Gravel | Flickr
It is claimed that the committee consists of “bipartisan legislators” and parliamentarians from Israel, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Yet this claim of “bipartisanship” is quickly scotched. The task force’s four South African members identify as Zionists and are part of the controversial Democratic Alliance, the party for whom most White South Africans vote. No African National Congress (ANC) members are involved in the group. At the hearing, one MP denounced the ANC, reportedly claiming, “The greatest proponents of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment comes from our government.”
Members of the Task Force from the US include Democratic Congresspersons Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has visited Israel on an AIPAC-sponsored tour, and Ted Deutch, the newly-appointed CEO of the Zionist lobby group, the American Jewish Committee.
Among the British representatives is Andrew Percy, the Conservative MP who converted to Judaism in 2017 partly because of “a wholehearted commitment to support of Israel.” The other British representative is Alex Sobel, a longtime supporter of the Zionist affiliate of the Labor Party, the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM). The Canadian representatives included the former MP Michael Levitt, who is now President-CEO of the Zionist Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Also from Canada was Anthony Housefather, who in 2019 wrote, “I have always been and will continue to be a huge supporter of Israel.”
Along with two Members of the Israeli Knesset (MK) was the former MK Michal Cotler-Wunsh. Widely respected journalist Gideon Levy has described Cotler-Wunsh as both “an expert on human rights, an enlightened intellectual” and “nationalist, racist, cruel.”
At the hearing itself, three more Zionists were present. The first was the Israeli special representative for antisemitism, Noa Tishby. Recently Tishby denounced Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Bella Hadid – all Muslim women – as anti-Semites for condemning the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli soldiers. Tishby reportedly “singled out only criticism of Israel from Muslim Americans,” showing an apparent “effort to cast their anger as the product of ethnic or religious bigotry.” Another Zionist at the hearing was Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, appointed in March 2022. According to Ismail Allison of CAIR, Lipstadt has a “history of using bigoted rhetoric, including Islamophobic … talking points.”
Well-known Canadian politician and jurist Irwin Cotler was also in attendance. He is Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, a position receiving CA$ 5.6 million over five years beginning in 2022. He is also the stepfather of Michal Cotler-Wunsh MK, mentioned above. As it turns out, Cotler is the most significant actor in this story, being deeply embedded in Zionist lobby networks.
Unsurprisingly, no representative of Arab or Palestinian origin is involved in the task force.
20 YEARS OF CLASHES
Marouf claims that “in 2021, I began to be stalked and harassed online by Zionists in the Broadcasting sector in Canada.” These efforts led to his Twitter account being shut down for “hateful conduct” and promoting “violence against or directly attacking” people with protected characteristics like race, ethnicity or national origin.
In fact, Marouf has spent much of the past two decades years combatting Zionist efforts to censor him. The first such instance happened at Concordia University in 2001 when he was the first Arab candidate to be elected to a student union executive in Canada. Within months of his appointment, he was “expelled summarily … for writing that ‘Zionism is Jewish Supremacy’”. He won an ensuing six-month court battle with the university. After that, however, the attacks continued; the next was from the Chair of the Department of History, who, as Marouf noted, was also the chair of a Zionist lobby group.
Among the interlocutors back in 2002 was then-MP Irwin Cotler. Cotler’s reputation was at that stage not nearly as great as it is now. Perhaps this is why Marouf’s comrades were able to occupy his office, following which the police were called. Marouf has confirmed to Mintpress that he was “part of the organizing of the occupation” but was not present in the office.
At the time of Marouf’s clashes with Cotler, Cotler’s wife, Ariela, was also involved in the events. She was President of the board of Montreal Hillel in 2001 during the most heated period at Concordia. Hillel is the Zionist student organization on campus in Canada and the US. She “played a major role in the pro-Israeli activity” at that time, according to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, an Israeli think tank.
Before that, Ariela had been parliamentary secretary for Menachem Begin. As can be imagined from this, Ariela is a hardline Zionist and claims to have been involved “at the cradle” with the creation of the so-called Birthright program, which takes young Jews to “Israel” despite there being no “birthright” for Jews in Canada or elsewhere to colonize Palestine.
Ariela Cotler has also been involved in a wide range of other Zionist lobby groups, including the Canada Israel Committee and the Federation Combined Jewish Appeal, the largest Zionist fundraiser in Canada. The Federation CJA, as it is known, has promoted Canadians joining the Israeli army.
IRWIN COTLER – ZIONIST REGIME ASSET
Cotler’s public persona is that he has some sympathy for the underdog. At the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, he notes he has been described as “Counsel for the Oppressed” and as “Freedom’s Counsel.” His 600-word profile does not use the words “Israel,” “Zionism,” “Jewish,” or “antisemitism”; his decades-long advocacy for the crimes of the State of Israel are not even hinted at.
Born in 1940, he took degrees at McGill University and then secured a Law postgraduate degree at Yale in 1966. In 1968 he was hired as a speechwriter for the then Justice Minister for four years. In 1970 he was appointed as an associate professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto before being appointed Professor at McGill in 1973. That same year he helped found and became President of the pro-Israel Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East, and he then “spent his summers travelling the Middle East.”
By the late 1970s, he was already heavily involved in Zionist advocacy, being the lawyer for Anatoli Shcharansky. A Ukrainian Zionist activist, Shcharansky was active in agitation as part of an operation run by a secret Israeli intelligence organization, Nativ, to access new settlers from the Soviet Union. Was Cotler aware that he was involved in an intelligence operation?
Cotler is welcomed by Benjamin Netanyahu during a 2014 visit to Israel. Photo | Israeli GPO
In 1978 while working with Shcharansky, he was living in the Jewish quarter of Damascus and, not surprisingly – given his Zionist contacts – drew the attention of Syrian officials. He also spent time in Egypt in 1975, 1976 and 1977, making contact with the political elite, including the foreign minister, and was introduced to President Anwar Sadat. Knowing that Cotler would later visit Israel, Sadat “asked him to deliver a message to … prime minister Menachem Begin.”
Cotler claims he said “he didn’t know” Begin “particularly well.” But when he arrived in Israel, he was “invited to lunch with members of the Knesset.” There he met a Begin staffer named Ariela Zeevi, who took him to meet her boss. The message was, “Egypt was prepared to enter into peace negotiations with Israel.” Cotler later married the staffer in 1979 and became a “close personal friend” of Begin.
ZIONIST LOBBY STALWART
In 1980, Irwin Cotler was appointed President of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Four years later, he participated in a Jerusalem conference entitled “Hasbara: Israel’s Public Image.” (Hasbara is a Hebrew word meaning “explanation,” which is used as a synonym for “propaganda” in English). The American Jewish Congress ran the event, a group with a history of working directly with the Israeli intelligence agency Nativ, a campaign to recruit new settlers from the Soviet Union. Though referred to only as a professor of law at McGill, Cotler made it clear that he was a committed partisan of Israeli hasbara, complaining that “hasbara efforts are discriminated against” and that “Israel itself has become some kind of illegitimate entity.”
Since this public declaration of commitment to the cause of Zionism, he has taken up a dizzying number of appointments in Zionist organizations. He is or has been affiliated with a wide range of Zionist groups on three continents, including,
All of these groups are closely related to the State of Israel, some with intelligence connections, some in receipt of funds, or created by Tel Aviv. None of these roles are listed in his biography at the Wallenberg Center, to which he is currently attached. Nor are Cotler’s interesting links with the far right in Ukraine; he is reportedly on the advisory board of “Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter,” which honored Ukrainian Nazis who collaborated with Nazi Germany and massacred Jews in the 1940s.
ENTER THE MOSSAD
But it is in the policy planning process of the state of Israel that Cotler seems to have made the most significant impact. Cotler has been, as British writer Antony Lerman puts it, “probably the most significant and influential international figure in the propagation of the concept of the ‘new antisemitism.’” As codified and finally published in its current form in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association, the “working definition” of antisemitism is the weapon of choice of the Zionist movement to intimidate and bully supporters of the Palestinians.
While the idea of the new antisemitism has roots back to the 1940s and was a subject of renewed interest from the early 1970s, the administrative infrastructure to redefine antisemitism flourished from the late 1980s when Mossad was given the lead in the coordination of the strategy. As Lerman has noted, the Monitoring Forum on Antisemitism, established in 1988, “aimed at establishing Israeli hegemony over the monitoring and combating of antisemitism by Jewish groups worldwide.” It “was coordinated and mostly implemented by Mossad representatives” working in Israeli embassies.
A key step in the process was the first Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust in January 2000. The resulting Stockholm Declaration “became the founding document” of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association. Cotler headed the Canadian delegation to that event. He was also a key figure in responding to the 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism, which concluded that Zionism is racism. In a hyperbolic reply for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, he denounced “what was supposed to be a conference against racism” [emphasis in original], saying it “turned into a conference of racism against Israel and the Jewish people.” He also decried what he called a new “genocidal antisemitism – the public call for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.
Cotler was engaged directly with the state of Israel’s response to Durban in co-founding the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism (ICCA) in 2002 “in collaboration with Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior.” This venture, however, collapsed, its main problem being that it was obviously an instrument of Israeli foreign policy. Even an arch-Zionist like Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League observed: “If a lot of its strategy and implementation is coming from Israel, I won’t be supportive of it.”
In 2003 a new body, the Global Forum for Combatting Antisemitism, was created by Melchior and Cotler’s friend and former “client” Natan Sharansky (formerly known as Anatoli Shcharansky, he changed his name to Zionise it, as do many incoming settlers). Sharansky was also – as an Israeli government minister in charge of antisemitism —chair of the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism, which had been set up in the 1990s. “The State of Israel has decided to take the gloves off and implement a coordinated counteroffensive against antisemitism,” Sharansky said.
Sharansky right, holds the Congressional Gold Medal presented to him by President Reagan, center, as President-elect Bush looks on, Jan. 11, 1989. Barry Thumma | AP
In his “3D test of antisemitism,” Sharansky took up the idea of discrimination against a nation-state, trialed by Cotler. It focused only on the occasions where it was claimed that criticism of Israel became antisemitism:
“demonization” is “when Israel’s actions are blown out of all sensible proportion”;
“double standards,” when criticism of Israel is “applied selectively”;
“delegitimization” when Israel’s “fundamental right to exist” is denied.
These are tendentious arguments. Who is to judge what is “sensible” or “selective”? No regime or even state has a “fundamental” right to exist.
Cotler and Sharansky would frequently connect again over the course of the ensuing decade. For example, they both attended the February 2008 Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism. It was here that the plan to extend the event around the globe was announced. Though it has been claimed that the subsequent London event was independent, the 2008 event it was seen as simply another GFCA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) event. Minister Tzipi Livni personally thanked British MOP John Mann for ‘volunteering to host the Global Forum next year.’
Tellingly, the new body used the identical name to the previous 2002 effort: the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism (ICCA). Sharansky was an advisor.
In 2009, Cotler was on the steering committee of the ICCA. Also, there was Fiamma Nirenstein, an Italian writer and politician who has lived in an illegal settlement in East Jerusalem since 1998. Cotler led a delegation of 11 Canadian MPs to the event. Together, they decided to form a Canadian coalition. Thus was the Israeli network extended to Canada: the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism. It met in November 2010 and produced a final report the following year. Canadian groups which were critical of the redefinition of antisemitism to equate it with anti-Zionism responded to the consultation, but their submissions were “excluded from the hearings.”
The ICCA would host conferences in London in February 2009, Ottawa in November 2010, Brussels in June 2012 and Berlin in March 2016. A “task force” report on “internet hate” was published in 2013. In addition, an Italian parliamentary report was published in 2011, having reportedly taken “inspiration” from the ICCA. Similar German parliamentary reports came out in 2011 and 2017. These reports, commissions and groupings laid the groundwork for the American hearing late last year that removed Marouf from social media.
ZIONIST INFLUENCES EMBEDDED IN TWITTER
As the State of Israel developed its strategy to redefine antisemitism as opposition to Israeli government policy, it embedded a number of Zionist lobby groups in the process. For example, advisors on the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism included the following: The U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL), B’nai B’rith International (BBI), the World Jewish Congress (WJC), and the U.K.-based Community Security Trust (CST). Some of these advisors to the state of Israel were carried over as advisors to the European Union Monitoring Center, which first introduced the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2005. Both the ADL and BBI were there, as was the EU branch of the WJC, the European Jewish Congress and the UK-based CST.
When Twitter started to appoint advisors on content, these same groups were again in the frame, with no indication that they were essentially assets of the Israeli government. In 2015, Twitter launched a safety center and listed a number of ‘trusted partners’ in the US, Australia, and Europe.
In the area of offensive speech, it listed both the ADL and CST as concerned with antisemitism. Twitter executives have referred to the CST as “empowering” Twitter to “take action.” The big tech platform takes advice from precisely zero Palestinian organizations or grassroots Muslim groups on how to regulate its content.
From 2018, the list of groups working with Twitter evolved. In addition to the ADL, two new European groups were added: the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the UK and the Centre Européen Juif d’Information [European Jewish Information Center] (CEJI) in Brussels. Both these groups are strongly pro-Israel. The Board of Deputies unblushingly admits in its 2020 Trustees report that it enjoys a “[C]lose working relationship with the Embassy of Israel in the UK, including with the Ambassador, diplomats, and professional staff, and strengthened links to the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the IDF Spokesperson Department.”
The CEJI is a Zionist organization that advertises working closely with a range of other Zionist groups as “partners,” including B’nai B’rith Europe and the CST. Scandalously, amongst its funders are a host of social media firms, including Twitter itself. So Twitter funds a Zionist lobby group to lobby Twitter on issues relating to the question of Palestine. It is not surprising, therefore, that when pressure is brought to bear from apparently bipartisan lawmakers, and Twitter turns to its trusted advisors, pro-Israel decisions are routinely made. The whole process of both pressure and response is entirely corrupted by Zionist influence.
Israel’s government is also heavily involved in censoring pro-Palestinian content online. According to 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, the Israeli Ministry of Justice Cyber Unit sends requests to remove Palestinian content to tech giants. Through Israel’s access to information law, the government said requests to social media companies led to the deletion of 27,000 posts from Facebook, Twitter, and Google from 2017-2018.
CONCLUSIONS
After all these years, Cotler continues to spearhead illegitimate attempts to subvert solidarity with Palestine under the guise of fighting antisemitism. Shored up by a constantly evolving Zionist movement with its front groups, lobby initiatives and covert operatives (many of whom are embedded in Twitter’s own editorial structures), it is not a surprise that Twitter censored Laith Marouf’s account.
The Israel lobby’s cancel culture depends on the decades of work done by Cotler as an Israeli asset and by his close co-conspirator, the former Soviet prisoner and Israeli government minister Sharansky. Both have been central to forging the “criticism of Israel is antisemitism” weapon which is put to daily use by the lobby through their operatives on the ground, via inter-parliamentary front groups or via the editorial structures of Twitter itself, to do the bidding of a foreign state.
– Paul Salvatori is a Toronto-based journalist, community worker and artist. Much of his work on Palestine involves public education, such as through his recently created interview series, “Palestine in Perspective” (The Dark Room Podcast), where he speaks with writers, scholars and activists. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
Recently I organized a demonstration outside a Toronto theatre. It was to protest the screening of a dishonest documentary—First to Stand: The Cases and Causes of Irwin Cotler—taking place inside.
The documentary is on former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, professor and lawyer Irwin Cotler. He also denies the Nakba—the catastrophe of 1948 when at least 800,000 and 15,000 Palestinians were, respectively, displaced and killed by Israeli forces to make way for the state of Israel. The film however presents Cotler as a human rights “hero”, which no Nakba denier can be.
Admittedly all documentaries have a degree of bias in them in that they portray individuals, states of affairs, etc. from a particular point of view, often the filmmaker who, say, wants to convey a certain social or political message. However, First to Standdoes more than this. It misleads the public by keeping outside the frame any substantive discussion or critique about Cotler’s denialism.
That’s a major part of who Colter is. For years he’s been promoting the view that the Nakba, as understood by historians the world over and formally acknowledged by a United Nations resolution last year, is effectively a fiction.
In doing so, he Is part of a larger global subculture, if you will, of racists, that either seek to downplay the severity of the Nakba or, like Cotler, erase it as a historical fact. In turn, they, deplorably, trivialize the legacy of Palestinian suffering and trauma caused by the Nakba itself, which—as we see on social media daily—is ongoing through Israel’s violent ethnic cleansing against Palestine, carried out with impunity (e.g. Israel not being sanctioned by Western powers).
Whether it manifests itself in the bombing of Gaza, random killings of unarmed Palestinian civilians, illegal evictions of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank (to build more Israeli settlements that contravene international law), such cleansing is inextricably connected to the Nakba. For the Nakba is coextensive with the founding of Israel which, ever since, has been a state that was founded on and continues to expand by destroying Palestinian life. Israel would simply not be where it is today without that destruction.
At recent Toronto launch of film about @IrwinCotler attendees deny existence of Palestinians & react angrily to protesters calling him a human rights “fraud” pic.twitter.com/jBArAYDvQ7
This all went into my thinking as I independently organized the demonstration. The event was not sponsored or part of any formal organization. I mostly did the organizing online and when it was thought, at first, that Cotler would be in attendance there seemed to be quite a bit of enthusiasm among possible demonstration attendees. Many of us, at the time, were moved by the idea of contesting Colter, non-violently and face-to-face in the theatre. But as it turned out (and was advertised) he would only be at the screening virtually.
When this came to light the enthusiasm dropped. This was admittedly discouraging; I wasn’t sure if it was worth organizing any demonstration at all. I felt I might be the only one to show at it—a lone person standing outside the theatre with a sign protesting Cotler.
The thought of that changed everything. I asked myself why not do that. Why does a demonstration have to be big? Loud? A crowd? Why can’t a demonstration, however great the injustice it opposes, not be comprised of one individual? What ultimately matters, it seemed to me, is that a demonstration conveys a clear message, such as that First to Stand is a dishonest film. I also thought that I had a duty to protest the documentary, as an ally to the Palestinian people who could not be outside the theatre (living in another continent and, in the case of Gaza more specifically, under illegal blockade) at the time of the demonstration. Accordingly, the duty, as I conceived of it, would consist of me being a voice in solidarity with the Palestinian people, not for them, where they were physically absent. Whether I’d get much of a rise from any single passerby (and there turned out to be many) was irrelevant. Central to my thinking was that the documentary, whatever merit it had, is whitewashing the anti-Palestinianism of Cotler and by extension the current Canadian government where he enjoys the prestigious post of Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism.
Moreover, I didn’t want the documentary to be screened and people—entering the theatre, passing by it, etc.—not know this was happening. If I could get them to think about that or, better, engage in conversation with them so that eventually they might join the larger struggle for Palestinian justice, I believed that would be a tiny but meaningful victory. And so in a similar spirit to what St. Therese of Lisieux and later Dorothy Day referred to as the “little way”, while strengthened by love for the Palestinian people, I resolved to do so while holding up a simple sign. Made with only a black marker it read: “IRWIN COTLER IS A NAKBA DENIER.”
I announced my plan to others in the WhatsApp group where I was doing part of the organizing. I also invited any who wanted to join me to do so. My tone was cordial. I did not want anyone to feel they had to or feel bad if they couldn’t. Additionally, I wanted to clarify for any who anticipated something bigger that the demonstration might very well just be me. I didn’t want people to attend it thinking they had in any way been misled to believe they would be part of a sizeable, animated crowd—though any non-violent action for Palestine, whatever the scale, is in my view both necessary and worthwhile.
As the video of this article shows and to my pleasant surprise about 10 fellow Palestinian allies showed also protest the dishonesty of the film. They were of different faiths, ethnicities, etc. with one thing in common—their love for the Palestinian people and unwavering commitment to justice for Palestine itself.
Some I knew already, others the honor of meeting the first time. It was an emotional experience for me. It confirmed there were others who believed enough in my small act of standing alone, in solidarity with Palestine, to join me and ultimately turn the act into a group event.
We held signs, distributed a flyer about Cotler’s anti-Palestinianism, chanted loudly pro-Palestinian messages and others that challenged the legitimacy of Cotler—in contrast to the documentary—as a beacon for human rights. As we did so people, many of whom were entering the theatre, passed by us. Some were curious to know more about our message. We engaged them in constructive dialogue, as I had hoped.
Others mocked and yelled at us, not unlike at the pro-Palestinian demonstration I attended in Toronto last December and wrote about. Like at that demonstration, we were at times met with anti-Palestinian animus. At least two people told us that there was no Palestine, echoing the false and racist position of Toronto groups such as the Canadian Education Antisemitism Foundation (CAEF) thatdoes the same and held an event last November where Cotler was a featured guest.
Not only did the demonstration allow us to contest the documentary it also brought out the anti-Palestinianism that still exists in Toronto. I’ve brought this to the attention of several local and federal elected officials, including recently resigned Mayor John Tory, inviting them to work with those concerned about both the safety of Palestinians in Toronto and justice for Palestine more broadly. None have replied.
On a positive note, the demonstration was a success. It challenged people to think about who Cotler really is and, in turn, how anti-Palestinianism in Canada and elsewhere is not being taken seriously. I’m also encouraged by, looking back, how it doesn’t take much to hold a demonstration as we did. It can begin with one person saying I’ll be at a certain place and time to protest an injustice, be it against Palestine or otherwise. If others see your sincerity, that you’re not doing it to be “cool” or get likes on social media, they will join you. Even if they don’t you can still demonstrate alone.
That requires the mustering of at least some courage, the inspiration for which can be drawn from the Palestinian people themselves. Risking their lives they fight daily against Israeli military might, far exceeding their defense resources and capacity. If they can do that surely we, in safer and more privileged parts of the world, can demonstrate against anti-Palestinianism—however large or small we are in number—in public.
That has more impact than posting about Palestine online. It tells people you are serious about Palestine and you are not afraid to fight for it in the proximity of random strangers, who you can’t just scroll over like on a computer screen. This will surely upset some but, more importantly, mobilize others.
Among those strangers are those who want justice for Palestine too. If it means holding a sign in front of a theatre, let them know they can join that struggle with you.
There’s no reason to hide from that struggle if it’s in your heart to partake in it. There’s an international family of pro-Palestinian brothers and sisters waiting for you. And unlike First to Stand we do not hide the truth. We are not afraid to say that the Nakba is ongoing and it’s high time it ends.
Potential new US legislation aimed at curbing Syria’s illicit drug trade is being weaponized to strike at the state and starve its people.
On 15 December, a bill introduced by US lawmakers into the 2023 Department of Defense budget to “Combat the Syrian Regime’s Drug Trade,” passed the Senate, with the support of 83 senators and the opposition of 11.
The Countering Assad’s Proliferation Trafficking And Garnering Of Narcotics Act or the CAPTAGON Act, which passed in the joint congressional committees between the House of Representatives and the Senate, is supposed to become law after US President Joe Biden soon signs the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023.
The bipartisan bill inaugurates a new phase of US pressure on Syria, and is another pretext to increase the siege on the Syrian people, who suffer from extremely difficult economic conditions similar to those they suffered during the famine that the region witnessed during the First World War.
Severe US-imposed sanctions under the “Caesar Act” have contributed to the tragedy of the Syrians, at a time when the country is in the midst of an economic crisis, with the US occupation and the Kurdish Autonomous Administration controlling vast areas of lands rich in oil, gas, and agricultural crops in the east of the country, in addition to the Turkish occupation of other regions.
Further sanctions
Nevertheless, Washington is preparing to impose more sanctions, this time under the pretext of combating narcotics networks manufacturing and smuggling Captagon from Syria across West Asia and perhaps to the US.
Republican Representative French Hill, who first introduced the bill last year, considers the matter a threat to international security and has branded Syria as a “narco-state.” However an anonymous Syrian government source, who spoke to The Cradle believes otherwise:
“The CAPTAGON Act is an American way to impose additional sanctions on the Syrian government and to penetrate more into neighboring countries. The Americans make up many excuses, but the goal is one: to starve Syrian people and bring down the state. This looks like a revenge operation and a way to dominate Syria.”
“They know that when the state weakens, terrorist and criminal groups advance, but instead of helping the Syrian state, they increase its siege,” he added.
The CAPTAGON Act considers “the Captagon trade linked to the (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad regime a transnational security threat, requiring a strategy by the United States Government to disrupt and dismantle the Captagon trade and narcotics networks of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.”
Disrupting the drugs trade network
The bill demands presenting the required strategy to Congress for review within a period not exceeding 180 days of its approval, provided that the method includes providing support to partner countries of the region that receive large quantities of smuggled Captagon, such as Saudi Arabia.
The lawmakers urge the Biden administration to employ the sanctions effectively, including the Caesar Act, to target drug networks said to be affiliated with the state.
The strategy includes a public communication campaign to increase awareness of the extent of the connection of Damascus to the illicit narcotics trade, a description of the countries receiving or transiting large shipments of Captagon, and an assessment of the counter-narcotics capacity of such countries to interdict or disrupt the smuggling of the highly-addictive amphetamine.
Lawmakers have also called for the strategy to include a plan for leveraging multilateral institutions and cooperation with international partners to disrupt the narcotics infrastructure in the country.
War by other means
Practically, “this strategy constitutes an integrated plan, security, political and economic, to penetrate more into the vicinity of Syria and encircle it and prevent access to raw materials,” according to Syrian researcher Bassam Abdullah:
“The terminologies contained in the law are broad, and lead to American-style solutions: providing security and diplomatic support and cooperation to countries to spy on Syria, targeting individuals and entities with sanctions, exerting economic pressure on Damascus in cooperation with international partners, and launching media campaigns against the Syrian government.”
Abdullah believes that “the aim of this law is to demonize Syria, not to solve the Captagon crisis in which the Americans claim Syria’s involvement, and it is a continuation of the war in other forms.”
The aforementioned Syrian government source pointed out that Washington, “Under the pretext of suspected drug transportation, may use such a strategy to stop shipments of food, oil and raw materials, and to cause more damage to the import and export chains, which are suffering from a significant decline.”
Indeed, other Arab security sources, who have asked to remain anonymous, have revealed to The Cradle that the information circulating between agencies cooperating with the US Drug Enforcement Administration indicates that “the raw materials used in the Captagon industry come from China and India, and it is involved in many other industries.”
The issue isn’t Syria’s alone
One Syrian security source informed The Cradle that: “Syria has historically been a transit country. But terrorist and criminal gangs took advantage of the conditions of war for industrialization, promotion, and smuggling. Some of these gangs receive western support and are active in areas under American control.”
He confirms that the government, which is regaining its strength, “is working to strike these gangs, and the Syrian apparatus is making every effort to combat drugs. What we need is help, not more blockades.”
For Abdullah, “Damascus has reactivated its membership in Interpol. If the Americans or others have information, Syria is ready to cooperate. Americans always want to play the role of the world’s policeman who decides and punishes. This is how the unilateral mind thinks.”
He asks: “Does anyone really believe that America wants to combat drugs and not tighten the blockade?”
“Afghanistan is the best model. During the twenty years of the American occupation, what witnessed an increase: wheat cultivation or the cultivation and manufacture of narcotic plants?”
Cooperation, not conflict with Damascus
In March 2021, the Syrian delegate to the UN and other international organizations in Vienna, Hassan Khaddour, declared before the UN Drugs Committee that the illicit narcotics problem in Syria had worsened due to the control of terrorist organizations supported by several countries over some border areas.
He pointed out that this created a suitable environment for the smuggling and trade of drugs, and provided huge financial revenues for financing terrorist groups. The Syrian ambassador asked for international cooperation with Syria, a permanent exchange of information, and providing the Syrian government with technical capabilities, laboratory equipment, and detection devices at the border crossings.
Although the implementation strategy of the latest hostile US legislation against Syria is not yet clear – and whether they include military strikes or security sabotage under the pretext of combating drugs – sources close to the Americans in Beirut say that there are intentions to launch unidentified attacks against drug production sites in Syria.
However, the Syrian security source comments by saying, “This is pure fabrication, because the hostile strikes target the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its sites. The Americans always fabricate lies to justify their aggression, as the Israelis do.”
In war, as in life more generally, the concept of tempo is essential.
In his masterpiece Philosophy and Real Politics, British “Leninist” philosopher Raymond Geuss emphasizes “priorities, preferences, timing” (p. 30) as defining differences between “real politics” and the abstract, universalistic philosophy that flattens everything in the unfathomable ignorance of timeless present and depthless surface.
Be reminded of that while you celebrate Putin’s birthday by cheering at the destruction of the Crimean bridge – and the loss of 3 innocent lives. Please be reminded of that. Either one or the other must hold: you plan and execute war – just like anything else – with a view to its intrinsic logic – dictating its own and specific tempo – or else, you go on the offensive and strike with an ear for audience and a view for choreographic photo ops. No, world history and Putin’s, or any other individual’s, private life events being synchronized is not a possibility. That’s called “delusion of reference” and might be a sign of serious mental illness.
The point I’m trying to get across is that, contrary to Ukraine, Russia will not rush to respond to Ukraine’s symbolic provocations in the timing of any mediatic agenda. Big Serge has explained very convincingly that they are probably following the schedule dictated by military and political necessity, rather than the “events” that attract the attention of Western so-called “politicians”. By the way, has Zelensky been reminded of Putin’s b-day by Facebook?
Be it as it may, it would be a mistake to think that, because of the advances of the Ukrainians on the ground, Russia’s offensive is not “proceeding”. While the UA’s junta continues to push Ukraine’s youth forward to be uselessly massacred in occupying some almost empty 2000 sq km under Russian target shooting, global developments unfold in the embarrassed “distraction” of Western media.
Putin in his recent speech, Pope Francis since years ago, and well, just anybody else at this point has been able to tell you that this is a global war. The Nord Stream sabotage at the hands of the Anglo-Americans is only additional, unnecessary evidence that the confrontation with Russia reaches from Caucasus to the Danish Sea and beyond.
Only a few days ago, an anti-French and pro-Russian uprising expelled the latest iteration of Parish’s endeared viceroys in the country. I won’t deny that seeing so many, newly liberated Africans waving the Russian flag moved me. It is just another step in the global anti-colonial, liberation struggle outlined by Putin in his programmatic speech.
If you like counting square km, well Burkina Faso stretches over 274 200. The 74th country in the world by surface, with a population of 20 million: we could say, average size. I know, I know, anything happening South to the Mediterranean and involving Black people is irrelevant until they are slave-traded and “integrated” into the Metropolis: only then, and only if they vote right (i.e. left) Black Lives Matter. But whatever the Western empire’s propaganda is saying – or conceiling – the truth is that the colonies are absolutely vital for its hegemony. Africa is the youngest continent, and possibly the richest in resources: it is no coincidence if the French, British, and nowadays the American continue to feast on it. France will simply be unable to retain its standard of living without its neo-colonies. And that moment is coming. The Central African Republic, Mali, and now Burkina, have recently broken free. And it is everything but unlikely that other states in the area will follow. Nearby, Niger and Chad still suffer under the French yoke, but not passively. The Chadian dictator Idriss Déby died at the hands of the rebel in 2021, and his young son is now leading the country. The local junta has just postponed free elections by another two years, yet obviously, as these are NATO’s friends, you won’t read or hear about violations of democracy.
On to another plexus in world power, the Middle East is undergoing a seismic-range transformation as the divides that defined the region cannot be taken for granted anymore. It is already some time since Turkey has timidly restarted some dialogue with Syria. Iran only drew nearer to Russia and China by entering the SCO. Besides being key in assembling a union of Caspian states, ripe with strategic and economic relevance, including tourism, Teheran is pushed in the arms of the continental powers by the suicidal policies of the West. Divide et impera, divide and rule, has been the leitmotiv of any empire since at least the times of the Romans. The US followed it rather carefully, for instance when they divided Russia from China under Nixon’s administration. Now they’re provoking China in Taiwan at the same time as they’re fighting a hybrid war with Russia in Ukraine, and with their imaginary third arm they believe to be able to overturn the Ayatollahs. Evidently, this hubris has since long divorced reason. The US could not deal the coup the grace in the ‘90s and early 2000s, when Russia and China were busy with their own problems if not actively helping the West. Imagining that it could succeed in after decades of internal decline, while fighting an emboldened decolonizing coalition, and at the same time pursuing contradictory attempts at détente to signal discontinuity with Trump is worse than preposterous. The SCO should reward #Iranianlivesmatter, #Iranrevolution, women cutting hairlocks worldwide and such as its most effective PR campaign.
However relevant, this is not even the most significant and impressive turn that has been taken in recent days. Even Western press could not ignore the “detail” that OPEC+, at its summit in Vienna, has brutally smashed US hopes to avoid a reduction in oil outputs in order to keep the prices low. After having played with his declarations, journalists challenged the Saudi representative, who ended up refusing to answer questions from Reuters. They probably did not get the memo that the imperial arrogance of the US is not swallowed with the same servility all the world over anymore. But most interestingly, the Saudis have also explained that they have not been convinced by Russia about the oil prices but are simply protecting their country’s economic interests. Even more outrageous to American ears! They speak of interests that are not our own! How dare they!
At this point, even Biden must be realizing that there were deeper reasons behind the Saudi prince’s decline of his phone call already in March, besides inflicting him and the American government the umpteenth humiliation on the world stage. Not only the US are finally given the brush-off in one of the most important regions of the world: the latter is actively being reshaped by the hatred of them. The Middle East connects three continents, including the two largest, not to mention oceans and seas, and by controlling its straits the Anglo-American have been able to choke the world economy for well over a century. Add the infamously rich resources of the region. It is no coincidence that the same Raymond Geuss considers the British loss of control of the Suez strait in 1956 as the end of their empire, more than the independence of India. Let’s not forget this was “facilitated” by Khrushchev’s threat at the UN to resort to missiles in case the colonial powers did not withdraw from Egypt.
The region continued to be torn apart by the West’s skillful exploitation of its ideological, social, national, and especially religious diversity: first of all, the conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims. These are behind the most dramatic – and almost completely ignored – humanitarian crisis of our time: the devastation of Yemen.
It won’t be easy, but if the interests of such opposite countries as Saudi Arabia and Iran were to align, with a little help by American hostile resentment against the independence of both, and perhaps a friendly nudge by Russia (and China), this would be a massive blow to Western hegemony. Much more than the temporary occupation of I don’t know how many soccer fields in rural Ukraine.
Last but not least, let’s not forget the Americas. One of the most outspoken admirers of Russia, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is currently not represented at the Organization of the American States. Still, when the OAS voted on a resolution to condemn Russia’s referendums on October 7th, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico voted against.
Of course, in the perspective of the West’s rigged “democracy” the 24 states that voted in favor count more. But excepting the US and Canada for obvious reasons, the like of St. Kitts and Nevis are no match to the largest nations and economies of the continent. It’s the same logic why Biden’s bragging about a majority of states condemning Russia at the UN General Assembly is delusional: if three fourth of the countries actually voted in favor, among those abstaining there were India, China, Pakistan, Vietnam and other immense world players. Even more evident is the diplomatic defeat over the resolution to remove representatives of the Venezuelan opposition from the OAS: only the US, Canada, Guatemala and Paraguay voted against. The resolution didn’t pass, due to a significant number of abstainers and the requirement of a 2/3 majority, but is still a resounding slap in the US face in its very backyard.
So, while the heralds of the Empire are cheerfully selling us memes and Tik-Tok videos about the terrorist bonfire on the Crimea bridge, we still retain many and big reasons to nod in re-reading Putin’s diagnosis about the emergence of a free, sovereign, multipolar world and the end of Western hegemony being inevitable.
Jo Red is “lucky enough to be born in Italy: studied a lot, knows nothing”
لم تُقدّم الكلمة التي ألقاها مفتي الجمهورية الشيخ عبد اللطيف دريان في اللقاء الموسع للنواب السنة الـ24 في دار الفتوى، أي جديد. والأمر نفسه ينطبق على لقاء النواب في دارة السفير السعودي. في عائشة بكار تماماً كما في اليرزة لم يتطرق المجتمعون إلى مسألة محددة، لتكون صور اللقاءين هي الأهم. خلاصة الاجتماعين تقديم النواب السنة كورقة ضغط سعودية إلى الغرب وإنهاء الحريرية السياسية بتعيين دريان وريثاً شرعياً
لو كان الرئيس سعد الحريري على «قيد الحياة» السياسية، لما احتاج مفتي الجمهورية الشيخ عبد اللطيف دريان أن «يعلّي باب داره» لاستقبال أكبر عدد ممكن من النواب السنّة في اجتماعٍ واحد، ولما كان «استعطى» حضور جهاد الصمد أو قاسم هاشم وآخرين إلى «عائشة بكّار»، وما كان أيضاً ليُلقي بعباءة مرجعيته الدينيّة على من صنّفهم إبّان الانتخابات النيابيّة أشبه بـ«الخوارج» عن الدين، أو ليُقدّم «شرعيّة» الدار على طبقٍ من ذهب إلى «متمردي الطائفة» الذين ترشّحوا باسم حزب الله وفازوا بمعيّته. لو لم ينكفئ الحريري منذ أشهر، لم تكن الصورة قد ظُهّرت بهذه الطريقة: أشرف ريفي على يمين المفتي وفؤاد مخزومي على يساره، ولكان سيجري البحث عنهما «بالسراج والفتيلة» في الصفوف الخلفيّة.
بكل بساطة، لو لم يكن الحريري منكفئاً، ما كان اجتماع دار الفتوى الذي ضم 24 من أصل 27 نائباً سنياً (تغيّب النواب أسامة سعد، حليمة القعقور وإبراهيم منيمنة) لينعقد. يُدرك العارفون هذا الأمر جيّداً، باعتبار أنّ عمر فكرة اللقاء 15 سنة منذ 7 أيّار واتفاق الدوحة. وفي كل مرة، كان رئيس تيّار المستقبل يُجهض الفكرة قبل تنفيذها متذرعاً بأكثر من سبب، إلى أن لم يجد ذرائع كافية لرد الطلب السعودي عام 2016. حينها، وافق على مضض مشترطاً أن يحصل الاجتماع في بيت الوسط. أيامٌ قليلة قبل أن يبدأ بوضع لائحة المدعوين التي استثنيت منها معظم الشخصيات التي لا تدور في فلك 14 آذار، بحجّة أنه لن يدعو إلا الفاعليات السنيّة الرسمية، مسقطاً منها رؤساء الأحزاب والشخصيات التي تمتلك حيثيّة سنيّة مناطقية (كالوزير السابق عبد الرحيم مراد وجهاد الصمد وفيصل كرامي…)، ما دفع المملكة العربيّة السعوديّة إلى تلبية رغبة الحريري بغض النظر عن اللقاء.
هكذا بقيت المملكة تمنّي نفسها بلقاءٍ من دون أن تحصل عليه. هي التي لم تكن تفتح الأبواب اللبنانيّة إلا باستخدام مفتاح الحريري الأب والابن. ومن أجلهما، هندست كل ما يُسهّل «الأحادية السنيّة». حينما كان رفيق الحريري يقفل البيوتات السياسيّة السنيّة كانت السعوديّة تقف خلف السّتار. وحينما كان «أبو بهاء» يُحاول تقويض شعبيّة بعض الشخصيّات كانت الرياض تُقدّم الغالي والنفيس لهذه الغاية، ممتنعة عن استقبال هؤلاء إلا لأداء الحج والعمرة. ولذلك، كان لزاماً على الرئيس نجيب ميقاتي مثلاً أنّ يحج ويستعمر على مدار السنة التي كان فيها رئيساً للحكومة في العام 2011 من دون أن يستقبله ولو حاجب في مؤسسة رسمية سعودية! في الجهة المقابلة، كانت دار الفتوى تلتزم بـ«الفتاوى السياسية» للحريريّة. لم تجتهد يوماً بعد استشهاد المفتي الشيخ حسن خالد. وحينما قرّر المفتي الشيخ محمّد رشيد قباني التغريد خارج سرب بيت الوسط «أكل نصيبه». اليوم، المشهد تغيّر. من وقف في «عائشة بكار»، قائلاً للحريري: «لا تقلق أنا معك وعلماء لبنان معك» انقلب عليه، وثبّت «سماحته» قولاً وفعلاً أنّ الحديث صحيح ولكنّه صار موجّهاً اليوم إلى السعوديّة بما لا يشبه تاريخيّة العلاقة بين الدار ورؤساء الحكومات وتحديداً الحريري. اليوم، صار «طويل العمر» يوغل بالداخل اللبناني من دون استخدام «قفازاته الحريرية»؛ فهو في الأصل يقتص من الحريري الابن. وما الاجتماع الموسّع الذي عُقد في عائشة بكار إلا مأتم رسمي لإعلان وفاة الحريرية السياسيّة التي عاشت 40 عاماً في كنف المملكة ومكارمها.
في حين لا يعتبر تيار المستقبل أنّ هذا الاجتماع كان رسالةً موجهة لرئيسه. بالنسبة له، الحريري علّق نشاطه السياسي وبالتالي لا يملك بريداً كي تصل الرسائل عبره. وتشدّد مصادره على أنّ «اجتماع الدار ومضمون البيان الصادر عنه ليسا موضع نقاش، خصوصاً أن علاقتنا مع الدار ممتازة والمفتي هو مرجعيّة روحيّة وسياسيّة».
دريان البديل؟ ومهما يكن من أمر، فإن السعوديّة التي دفنت الحريرية السياسيّة تبحث عن بديل عنها. هي لم «تعتنق» التعددية السنيّة بل تبحث عن بديلٍ واحد يحل مكان الحريري ويقوم بدوره؛ لم ترتوِ من حرق فؤاد السنيورة في الانتخابات النيابيّة حينما أثبت أنه لا يصبو إلى رتبة قائد، ولا اقتنعت بأن تسليم الساحة السنيّة إلى قائد مسيحي يعني أنّها لم تفهم بعد تركيبة الشارع السني. فيما يعتقد البعض أنّ سيناريو لقاء الدار هو بعض من أفكار جعجع، وتشير لغة البيان الذي صدر واستخدمه دريان في كلمته إلى أن أصابع السنيورة موجودة خلف الفواصل والنقاط، وإن كان البيان لم يقدم جديداً وكان أشبه بـ«لزوم ما لا يلزم»، إذ اكتفى بالعموميّات وبضرورة انتخاب رئيس للجمهوريّة، وكانت الإشارة الأهم رسالة التطمين إلى الشارع المسيحي بأن«رئيس الجمهورية هو الرئيس المسيحي الأوحد في المنطقة العربية». فيما لم يتطرّق البيان إلى «لب الموضوع» أي التشتت داخل الشارع السني وغياب المرجعيّة بعد انسحاب الحريري من المشهد.
إذاً، تُحاول المملكة تثبيت قدمي دريان كمرجعيّة سياسيّة. والدليل على ذلك هو مسودّة البيان الذي كان من المفترض أن يوزّع على الإعلام: «عقد اللقاء برئاسة مفتي الجمهورية»، مما استدعى رداً من بعض النواب الموجودين ولا سيّما النائب جهاد الصمد الذي أكد أنه لا يقبل بهذه الصيغة فتم تغييرها. هذه المرجعيّة تريدها السعوديّة طيّعة بين يديها، خصوصاً أن المتابعين يؤكّدون أن شخصيّة دريان ليست مؤهلة للقيام بهذا الدور، بالإضافة إلى أنّ البطريركية المارونية تختلف كلياً عن دار الإفتاء التي لا تمتلك فعلياً مؤسسات سياسية ولم تلعب يوماً دوراً وطنياً ضخماً مثلما فعل البطاركة الموارنة على مر التاريخ السياسي. من الممكن أن المملكة تُحاول أن تلعب «صولد» لأنّها ترى في دريان شخصيّة طيّعة؛ ارتضت أن تغيّر بطلبٍ واحد موعد انعقاد الاجتماع حتى يتسنى «للنواب المصطفين» ومعهم دريان تناول العشاء على مأدبة السفير السعودي وليد البخاري في مقر إقامته، ليظهر بما لا يقبل الشك أن لقاء دار الفتوى حصل بإيعازٍ سعودي. كما طلبت منها إنتاج لقاء معلّب يوحي بأن النواب الذين اجتمعوا أمس سيكونون في الخندق نفسه في كل الاستحقاقات، وسيكتبون على الورقة البيضاء الاسم الذي تريده المملكة كرئيس للجمهوريّة، من دون الأخذ في الاعتبار أنّ من بين الـ24 نائباً الذين حضروا السبت نواباً محسوبين على حزب الله أو مقربين منه أو لا يقبلون حتى بأن يعيشوا حياتهم السياسية بإمرة «طويل العمر».
الدخول إلى اللعبة فعلياً، لا تريد المملكة قيادة سياسية حقيقيّة، بل «تقريش» اللقاء خارجياً ومحاولة وضعه في سياق اللقاءات السعودية مع الأميركيين والفرنسيين والتي كان آخرها اللقاء الثلاثي في نيويورك. تعتقد المملكة أن اجتماع النواب السنّة وعلاقتها مع سمير جعجع يجعلان منها على الأرض شريكاً للأميركيين والفرنسيين في إنتاج التسويات وحتى اختيار الرئيس الجديد، أو أقلّه أنها تملك «عدّة الشغل» لإمكانيّة تعطيل أي تسوية. ولذلك، أهمية لقاء دار الفتوى أو اجتماع النواب العشرين في دارة السفير السعودي كانت في الصورة وليس بأي شيء آخر، بدليل أن الحاضرين لم يبحثوا بأي أمر هام. وكان لافتاً غياب النائب عماد الحوت وتردّد أن الأمر مرتبط برفضٍ من القيادة الجديدة للجماعة الإسلاميّة، مقابل حضور النائب عدنان طرابلسي تأكيداً على التموضع الجديد لـ «جمعية المشاريع الخيريّة».
لا تريد المملكة قيادة سياسية سنية حقيقية بل «تقريش» اللقاء خارجياً
وتشير مصادر المجتمعين إلى أنّ اللقاء لدى البخاري تركّز على كلامٍ للأخير عن رؤية المملكة 2030 ورؤية ولي العهد الداخلية، مؤكداً أنّ «السعودية على مسافة واحدة من الجميع». وبحسب معلومات «الأخبار» فإن البخاري اكتفى بالعموميات ولم يأتِ على ذكر حزب الله، وحتى أنّه في معرض حديثه عن مواصفات رئيس الجمهورية اكتفى بأن بلاده تتمنّى بأن يكون الرئيس غير فاسد، واعداً بأن بلاده ستُقدّم مساعدات إلى لبنان وأن هناك اتفاقيّات موجودة في هذا الإطار وعلى الدولة الالتزام بها. أما في دار الفتوى، فقد تناوب النواب الـ24 على الكلام، واعترض بعض الحاضرين على عدم مناقشة البيان معهم علماً أنه سيصدر عنهم. وكان الصمد أبرز الرافضين، إذ قال: «إننا لسنا طلاباً، بل عليكم الاستماع إلى رأيي وأنا أرفض ما جاء في البيان بالنسبة لمواصفات رئيس الجمهورية»، وهذا أيضاً ما قاله بعض النواب كقاسم هاشم وملحم الحجيري وعبد الرحمن البزري. ولذلك، قدّم الصمد مذكّرة قبل انعقاد اللقاء تتضمن ثوابت الطائفة السنية من دون أن يتم الأخذ بها. الصمد أكد لـ«الأخبار» أنه لن يُشارك في اجتماعٍ آخر «في حال أرادوا مني فقط أن أبصم من دون الاستماع إلى رأيي أو المشاركة في مسودة البيان أو بأن يركّز البيان على محور مقابل محور»، مضيفاً: «لستُ ضد الاجتماع في المبدأ ولكن كان المضمون سيئاً والإخراج كذلك».
Establishment version: modern free market freedom, practised by freedom loving people, to freely create freedomaceous wealth everywhere! Woohoo!
Real World Translation: rigged system to funnel wealth from the poor to the rich by imposition of slave wages and debt servitude = economic enslavement of the 99%
Disinformation:
Establishment version: anything contrary to the “truthiness” narrative espoused by Western Mainstream Media Patriots. Is Israel an apartheid state? That’s disinformation!
Real World Translation: anything which portrays the AngoEuroZionist Empire in a bad light and their enemies du jour (Russia, China, Iran etc) in a neutral or favourable light. Absolutely nothing to do with truth or facts.
National Endowment for Democracy:
Establishment version: benevolent fund by the USA to promote rule by, for and of the ordinary people in foreign countries. Yay!
Real World Translation: CIA cutout to finance astroturf campaigns to destabilise foreign governments that do not bend to the US will, in order to install US puppet regimes that will funnel wealth to the USA.
US invasion of Iraq in 2003:
Establishment version: act of “liberation” to save the world from Saddam’s WMDs and bring democracy to the Iraqi people.
Real World Translation: WMD story was a fucking LIE, invasion was done to preserve the US petrodollar and control Iraqi oil assets and give massive contracts to US corporations. Killed more than a million Iraqis by 2010, so I guess you could say those Iraqis were “liberated” (from life).
Russian invasion of Ukraine:
Establishment version: unprovoked aggression by Russian dictator Vlad-the-Impaler Putin on 24 Feb 2022 because he is just plain crazy (also a vampire). So naturally the West needed to ban Russian cats and Tchaikovsky in response.
Real World Translation: belated response by Russian Duma (democratic parliament) to relentless aggression by the US/NATO since 2014 – including the murder of 14,000 civilians in Donbass, ie Russia was forced to intervene to protect Russian speaking Ukrainians from genocide by the US proxies. Also more than 30 bio-pathogen labs funded by the USA (by Victoria Nuland’s own admission) were discovered in Ukraine, so there WERE WMDs in-the-making in Ukraine.
International “Rules based order”:
Establishment version: even the USA cannot properly define WTF this crapulent term means.
Real World Translation: USA makes up their one-sided rules (to always benefit itself) and orders everybody else about, otherwise foreigners face sanctions or coups or assassination of their leaders or invasion. Nothing to do with United Nations International Law.
Far too many Newspeak and Doublethink terms to itemise here!!
Commenters can think of many more!!
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Speaking Truth is an act of Treason in an Empire of Lies.
Putin called the USA an Empire of Lies.
Who is the most prominent Truth speaker in the Empire?
Julian Assange – who is now being suitably punished for such Treason.
Nothing should better qualify me to write about world affairs at the moment – and Western meddling in Ukraine – than the fact that I have intimately followed the twists and turns of Israeli politics for two decades.
We will turn to the wider picture in a moment. But before that, let us consider developments in Israel, as its “historic,” year-old government – which included for the very first time a party representing a section of Israel’s minority of Palestinian citizens – teeters on the brink of collapse.
Crisis struck, as everyone knew it would sooner or later, because the Israeli parliament had to vote on a major issue relating to the occupation: renewing a temporary law that for decades has regularly extended Israel’s legal system outside its territory, applying it to Jewish settlers living on stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank.
That law lies at the heart of an Israeli political system that the world’s leading human rights groups, both in Israel and abroad, now belatedly admit has always constituted apartheid. The law ensures that Jewish settlers living in the West Bank in violation of international law receive rights different from, and far superior to, those of the Palestinians that are ruled over by Israel’s occupying military authorities.
My latest: A new report by human rights group B'Tselem calling Israel an apartheid state will make it harder to smear Israel's critics as antisemites for arguing that the Jewish state is a racist endeavour https://t.co/ubVRYd3nhj
The law enshrines the principle of Jim Crow-style inequality, creating two different systems of law in the West Bank: one for Jewish settlers and another for Palestinians. But it does more. Those superior rights, and their enforcement by Israel’s army, have for decades allowed Jewish settlers to rampage against Palestinian rural communities with absolute impunity and steal their land – to the point that Palestinians are now confined to tiny, choked slivers of their own homeland.
In international law, that process is called “forcible transfer,” or what we would think of as ethnic cleansing. It’s a major reason that the settlements are a war crime – a fact that the International Criminal Court in the Hague is finding it very hard to ignore. Israel’s leading politicians and generals would all be tried for war crimes if we lived in a fair, and sane, world.
So what happened when this law came before the parliament for a vote on its renewal? The “historic” government, supposedly a rainbow coalition of leftwing and rightwing Jewish parties joined by a religiously conservative Palestinian party, split on entirely predictable ethnic lines.
Members of the Palestinian party either voted against the law or absented themselves from the vote. All the Jewish parties in the government voted for it. The law failed – and the government is now in trouble – because the rightwing Likud Party of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined the Palestinian parties in voting against the law, in the hope of bringing the government down, even though his legislators are completely committed to the apartheid system it upholds.
UPHOLDING APARTHEID
What is most significant about the vote is that it has revealed something far uglier about Israel’s Jewish tribalism than most Westerners appreciate. It shows that all of Israel’s Jewish parties – even the “nice ones” that are termed leftwing or liberal – are in essence racist.
Most Westerners understand Zionism to be split into two broad camps: the right, including the far-right, and the liberal-left camp.
Today this so-called liberal-left camp is tiny and represented by the Israeli Labour and Meretz parties. Israel’s Labour Party is considered so respectable that Britain’s Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, publicly celebrated the recent restoration of ties after the Israeli party severed connections during the term of Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
But note this. Not only have the Labour and Meretz parties been sitting for a year in a government led by Naftali Bennett, whose party represents the illegal settlements, they have just voted for the very apartheid law that ensures the settlers get superior rights over Palestinians, including the right to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land.
In the case of the Israeli Labour Party, that is hardly surprising. Labour founded the first settlements and, apart from a brief period in the late 1990s when it paid lip service to a peace process, always backed to the hilt the apartheid system that enabled the settlements to expand. None of that ever troubled Britain’s Labour Party, apart from when it was led by Corbyn, a genuinely dedicated anti-racist.
But by contrast to Labour, Meretz is an avowedly anti-occupation party. That was the very reason it was founded in the early 1990s. Opposition to the occupation and the settlements is supposedly hardwired into its DNA. So how did it vote for the very apartheid law underpinning the settlements?
UTTER HYPOCRISY
The naïve, or mischievous, will tell you Meretz had no choice because the alternative was Bennett’s government losing the vote – which in fact happened anyway – and reviving the chances of Netanyahu returning to power. Meretz’s hands were supposedly tied.
This argument – of pragmatic necessity – is one we often hear when groups professing to believe one thing act in ways that damage the very thing they say they hold dear.
But Israeli commentator Gideon Levy makes a very telling point that applies far beyond this particular Israeli case.
He notes that Meretz would never have been seen to vote for the apartheid law – whatever the consequences – if the issue had been about transgressing the rights of Israel’s LGBTQ community rather than transgressing Palestinian rights. Meretz, whose leader is gay, has LGBTQ rights at the top of its agenda.
Levy writes: “Two justice systems in the same territory, one for straight people and another for gay people? Is there any circumstance in which this would happen? A single political constellation that could bring it about?”
The same could be said of Labour, even if we believe, as Starmer apparently does, that it is a leftwing party. Its leader, Merav Michaeli, is an ardent feminist.
Would Labour, Levy writes, “ever raise its hand for apartheid laws against [Israeli] women in the West Bank? Two separate legal systems, one for men and another for women? Never. Absolutely not.”
Levy’s point is that even for the so-called Zionist left, Palestinians are inherently inferior by virtue of the fact that they are Palestinian. The Palestinian gay community and Palestinian women are just as affected by the Israel’s apartheid law favoring Jewish settlers as Palestinian men are. So in voting for it, Meretz and Labour showed that they do not care about the rights of Palestinian women or members of the Palestinian LGBTQ community. Their support for women and the gay community is dependent on the ethnicity of those belonging to these groups.
It should not need highlighting how close such a distinction on racial grounds is to the views espoused by the traditional supporters of Jim Crow in the U.S. or apartheid’s supporters in South Africa.
So what makes Meretz and Labour legislators capable of not just utter hypocrisy but such flagrant racism? The answer is Zionism.
Zionism is a form of ideological tribalism that prioritizes Jewish privilege in the legal, military and political realms. However leftwing you consider yourself, if you subscribe to Zionism you regard your ethnic tribalism as supremely important – and for that reason alone, you are racist.
You may not be conscious of your racism, you may not wish to be racist, but by default you are. Ultimately, when push comes to shove, when you perceive your own Jewish tribalism to be under threat from another tribalism, you will revert to type. Your racism will come to fore, just as surely as Meretz’s just did.
DECEPTIVE SOLIDARITY
But of course, there is nothing exceptional about most Israeli Jews or Israel’s Zionist supporters abroad, whether Jewish or not. Tribalism is endemic to the way most of us view the world, and rapidly comes to the surface whenever we perceive our tribe to be in danger.
Most of us can quickly become extreme tribalists. When tribalism relates to more trivial matters, such as supporting a sports team, it mostly manifests in less dangerous forms, such as boorish or aggressive behavior. But if it relates to an ethnic or national group, it encourages a host of more dangerous behaviors: jingoism, racism, discrimination, segregation and warmongering.
As sensitive as Meretz is to its own tribal identities, whether the Jewish one or a solidarity with the LGBTQ community, its sensitivity to the tribal concerns of others can quickly dissolve when that other identity is presented as threatening. Which is why Meretz, in prioritizing its Jewish identity, lacks any meaningful solidarity with Palestinians or even the Palestinian LGBTQ community.
Instead, Meretz’s opposition to the occupation and the settlements often appears more rooted in the sentiment that they are bad for Israel and its relations with the West than that they are a crime against Palestinians.
This inconsistency means we can easily be fooled about who our real allies are. Just because we share a commitment to one thing, such as ending the occupation, it doesn’t necessarily mean we do so for the same reasons – or we attach the same importance to our commitment.
It is easy, for example, for less experienced Palestinian solidarity activists to assume when they hear Meretz politicians that the party will help advance the Palestinian cause. But failing to understand Meretz’s tribal priorities is a recipe for constant disappointment – and futile activism on behalf of Palestinians.
The Oslo “peace” process remained credible in the West for so long only because Westerners misunderstood how it fitted with the tribal priorities of Israelis. Most were ready to back peace in the abstract so long as it did not entail any practical loss of their tribal privileges.
Yitzhak Rabin, the West’s Israeli partner in the Oslo process, showed what such tribalism entailed in the wake of a gun rampage by a settler, Baruch Goldstein, in 1994 that killed and wounded more than 100 Palestinians at worship in the Palestinian city of Hebron.
Rather than using the murder spree as the justification to implement his commitment to remove the small colonies of extreme settlers from Hebron, Rabin put Hebron’s Palestinians under curfew for many months. Those restrictions have never been fully lifted for many of Hebron’s Palestinians and have allowed Jewish settlers to expand their colonies ever since.
My latest: Israel's expulsion of international observers from the city of Hebron removes the last restraint on Jewish settlers who are already subjecting Palestinians there to a reign of terror https://t.co/L0khRKHU56
There is a further point that needs underscoring, and that the Israel-Palestine case illustrates well. Not all tribalisms are equal, or equally dangerous. Palestinians are quite capable of being tribal too. Just look at the self-righteous posturing of some Hamas leaders, for example.
But whatever delusions Zionists subscribe to, Palestinian tribalism is clearly far less dangerous to Israel than Jewish tribalism is to Palestinians.
Israel, the state representing Jewish tribalists, has the support of all Western governments and major media outlets, as well as most Arab governments, and at the very least the complicity of global institutions. Israel has an army, navy and air force, all of which can rely on the latest, most powerful weaponry, itself heavily subsidized by the U.S. Israel also enjoys special trading status with the West, which has made its economy one of the strongest on the planet.
The idea that Israeli Jews have a greater reason to fear the Palestinians (or in a further delusion, the Arab world) than Palestinians have to fear Israel is easily refuted. Simply consider how many Israeli Jews would wish to exchange places with a Palestinian – whether in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem or from the minority living inside Israel.
The lesson is that there is a hierarchy of tribalisms, and that a tribalism is more dangerous if it enjoys more power. Empowered tribalisms have the ability to cause much greater harm than disempowered tribalisms. Not all tribalisms are equally destructive.
But there is a more significant point. An empowered tribalism necessarily provokes, accentuates and deepens a disempowered tribalism. Zionists often claim that Palestinians are a made-up or imaginary people because they did not identify as Palestinians until after the state of Israel was created. Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir famously suggested the Palestinians were an invented people.
This was, of course, self-serving nonsense. But it has a kernel of truth that makes it sound plausible. Palestinian identity clarified and intensified as a result of the threat posed by Jewish immigrants arriving from Europe, claiming the Palestinian homeland as their own.
As the saying goes, you don’t always fully appreciate what you have until you face losing it. Palestinians had to sharpen their national identity, and their national ambitions, faced with the threat that someone else was claiming what they had always assumed belonged to them.
SUPERIOR VALUES
So how does all this help us understand our own tribalism in the West?
Not least, whatever the anxieties being encouraged in the West over the supposed threat posed by Russia and China, the reality is that the West’s tribalism – sometimes termed “Western civilization,” or “the rules-based order,” or “the democratic world,” or, even more ludicrously, “the international community” – is by far the most powerful of all tribalisms on the planet. And so also the most dangerous.
Israel’s tribal power, for example, derives almost exclusively from the West’s tribal power. It is an adjunct, an extension, of Western tribal power.
But we need to be a little more specific in our thinking. You and I subscribe to Western tribalism – either consciously or less so, depending on whether we see ourselves as on the right or the left of the political spectrum – because it has been cultivated in us over a lifetime through parenting, schools and the corporate media.
We think West is best. None of us would want to be Russian or Chinese, any more than Israeli Jews would choose to be Palestinian. We implicitly understand that we have privileges over other tribes. And because we are tribal, we assume those privileges are justified in some way. They either derive from our own inherent superiority (a view often associated with the far right) or from a superior culture or traditions (a view usually embracing the moderate right, liberals and parts of the left).
Again, this echoes Zionist views. Israeli Jews on the right tend to believe that they have inherently superior qualities to Palestinians and Arabs, who are seen as primitive, backward or barbarian-terrorists. Overlapping with these assumptions, religious-Zionist Jews tend to imagine that they are superior because they have the one true God on their side.
By contrast, most secular Jews on the left, like the liberals of Meretz, believe that their superiority derives from some vague conception of Western “culture” or civilization that has fostered in them a greater ability to show tolerance and compassion, and act rationally, than do most Palestinians.
Meretz would like to extend that culture to Palestinians to help them benefit from the same civilizing influences. But until that can happen, they, like the Zionist right, view Palestinians primarily as a threat.
Seen in simple terms, Meretz believes they cannot easily empower the Palestinian LGBTQ community, much as they would like to, without also empowering Hamas. And they do not wish to do that because an empowered Hamas, they fear, would not only threaten the Palestinian LGBTQ community but the Israeli one too.
So liberating Palestinians from decades of Israeli military occupation and ethnic cleansing will just have to wait for a more opportune moment – however long that may take, and however many Palestinians must suffer in the meantime.
NEW HITLERS
The parallels with our own, Western worldview should not be hard to perceive.
We understand that our tribalism, our prioritizing of our own privileges in the West, entails suffering for others. But either we assume we are more deserving than other tribes, or we assume others – to become deserving – must first be brought up to our level through education and other civilizing influences. They will just have to suffer in the meantime.
When we read about the “white man’s burden” worldview in history books, we understand – with the benefit of distance from those times – how ugly Western colonialism was. When it is suggested that we might still harbor this kind of tribalism, we get irritated or, more likely, indignant. “Racist – me? Ridiculous!”
Further, our blindness to our own super-empowered Western tribalism makes us oblivious too to the effect our tribalism has on less empowered tribalisms. We imagine ourselves under constant threat from any other tribal group that asserts its own tribalism in the face of our more empowered tribalism.
Some of those threats can be more ideological and amorphous, particularly in recent years: like the supposed “clash of civilisations” against the Islamist extremism of al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
But our preferred enemies have a face, and all too readily can be presented as an improbable stand-in for our template of the bogeyman: Adolf Hitler.
Those new Hitlers pop up one after another, like a whack-a-mole game we can never quite win.
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein – supposedly ready to fire the WMD he didn’t actually have in our direction in less than 45 minutes.
The mad ayatollahs of Iran and their politician-puppets – seeking to build a nuclear bomb to destroy our forward outpost of Israel before presumably turning their warheads on Europe and the U.S.
And then there is the biggest, baddest monster of them all: Vladimir Putin. The mastermind threatening our way of life, our values, or civilization with his mind games, disinformation and control of social media through an army of bots.
My latest: Simple-minded media propaganda – like the claim that Russia’s Putin is deranged – is precisely what brought us to the current crisis over Ukraine https://t.co/QW0pbEq44G
Because we are as blind to our own tribalism as Meretz is to its racism towards Palestinians, we cannot understand why anyone else might fear us more than we fear them. Our “superior” civilization has cultivated in us a solipsism, a narcissism, that refuses to acknowledge our threatening presence in the world.
The Russians could never be responding to a threat – real or imagined – that we might pose by expanding our military presence right up to Russia’s borders.
The Russians could never see our NATO military alliance as primarily aggressive rather than defensive, as we claim, even though somewhere in a small, dark mental recess where things that make us uncomfortable are shoved we know that Western armies have launched a series of direct wars of aggression against countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and via proxies in Syria, Yemen, Iran and Venezuela.
It's disturbing how many people are peddling the idea that Nato is a 'defensive alliance'. It *claims* to be defensive. Actually, Nato is a central pillar of the highly lucrative war industries. This may help clarify: https://t.co/SL2MA1ASMh
The Russians could never genuinely fear neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine – groups that until recently Western media worried were growing in power – even after those neo-Nazis were integrated into the Ukrainian military and led what amounts to a civil war against ethnic Russian communities in the country’s east.
In our view, when Putin spoke of the need to de-Nazify Ukraine, he was not amplifying Russians’ justifiable fears of Nazism on their doorstep, given their history, or the threat those groups genuinely pose to ethnic Russian communities nearby. No, he was simply proving that he and the likely majority of Russians who think like he does are insane.
More than that, his hyperbole gave us permission to bring our covert arming of these neo-Nazis groups out into the light. Now we embrace these neo-Nazis, as we do the rest of Ukraine, and send them advanced weaponry – many billions of dollars worth of advanced weaponry.
US intelligence chiefs: Putin is a madman bent on world domination. If he scents defeat, he'll blow us all up with his nukes.
US Congress: Let's send Ukraine $40bn in weapons to defeat Russia over there rather than here.
And while we do this, we self-righteously berate Putin for being a madman and for his disinformation. He is demented or a liar for viewing us as a existential threat to Russia, while we are entirely justified in viewing him as an existential threat to Western civilization.
And so we keep feeding the chimerical devil we fear. And however often our fears are exposed as self-rationalizing, we never learn.
Saddam Hussein posed an earlier existential threat. His non-existent WMDs were going to be placed in his non-existent long-range missiles to destroy us. So we had every right to destroy Iraq first, preemptively. But when those WMDs turned out not to exist, whose fault was it? Not ours, of course. It was Saddam Hussein’s. He didn’t tell us he did not have WMDs. How could we have known? In our view, Iraq ended up being destroyed because Saddam was a strongman who believed his own propaganda, a primitive Arab hoisted by his own petard.
If we paused for a moment and stood outside our own tribalism, we might realize how dangerously narcissistic – quite how mad – we sound. Saddam Hussein did not tell us he had no WMDs, that he had secretly destroyed them many years earlier, because he feared us and our uncontrollable urge to dominate the globe. He feared that, if we knew he lacked those weapons, we might have more of an incentive to attack him and Iraq, either directly or through proxies. It was we who trapped him in his own lie.
Hypocrisy piled on hypocrisy. The UK is working hand in glove with the ICC to help it prosecute Russian forces for war crimes.
And then there is Iran. Our endless fury with the mad ayatollahs – our economic sanctions, our and Israel’s executions of Iran’s scientists, our constant chatter of invasion – are intended to stop Tehran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon that might finally level the Middle East’s playing field with Israel, whom we helped to develop a large nuclear arsenal decades ago.
Iran must be stopped so it cannot destroy Israel and then us. Our fears of the Iranian nuclear threat are paramount. We must strike, directly or through proxies, against its allies in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Gaza. Our entire Middle East policy must be fashioned around the effort to prevent Iran from ever gaining the bomb.
In our madness, we cannot imagine the fears of Iranians, their realistic sense that we pose a much graver threat to them than they could ever pose to us. In the circumstances, to Iranians, a nuclear weapon might surely look like a very wise insurance policy – a deterrence – against our boundless self-righteousness.
VICIOUS CYCLE
Because we are the strongest tribe on the planet, we are also the most deluded, the most propagandized, as well as the most dangerous. We create the reality we think we oppose. We spawn the devils we fear. We force our rivals into the role of bogeyman that makes us feel good about ourselves.
In Israel, Meretz imagines it opposes the occupation. And yet it keeps conspiring in actions – supposedly to aid Israel’s security, like the apartheid law – that justifiably make Palestinians fear for their existence and believe they have no Jewish allies in Israel. Backed into a corner, Palestinians resist, either in an organized fashion, as during their intifada uprisings, or through ineffectual “lone-wolf” attacks by individuals.
But the Zionist tribalism of Meretz – as liberal, humane and caring as they are – means they can perceive only their own existential anxieties; they cannot see themselves as a threat to others or grasp the fears that they and other Zionists provoke in Palestinians. So the Palestinians must be dismissed as religious maniacs, or primitive, or barbarian-terrorists.
This kind of tribalism produces a vicious cycle – for us, as for Israel. Our behaviors based on the assumption of superiority – our greed and aggression – mean we inevitably deepen the tribalisms of others and provoke their resistance. Which in turn rationalizes our assumption that we must act even more tribally, even more greedily, even more aggressively.
The US war lobby is so massively bloated that it would be simply astonishing if it didn't have a (usually covert) finger prised into every major conflict zone on the planet – and a strong vested interest in perpetuating those conflicts too pic.twitter.com/XOVCkqx78x
We each have more than one tribal identity, of course. We are not only British, French, American, Brazilian. We are Black, Asian, Hispanic, white. We are straight, gay, trans, or something even more complex. We are conservative, liberal, left. We may support a team, or have a faith.
These tribal identities can conflict and interact in complex ways. As Meretz shows, one identity may come to the fore, and recede into the background, depending on circumstances and the perception of threat.
But perhaps most important of all, some tribalisms can be harnessed and manipulated by other, narrower, more covert tribal identities. Remember, not all tribalisms are equal.
Western elites – our politicians, corporate leaders, billionaires – have their own narrow tribalism. They prioritize their own tribe and its interests: making money and retaining power on the world stage. But given how ugly, selfish and destructive this tribe would look were it to stand before us nakedly pursuing power for its own benefit, it promotes its tribal interests in the name of the wider tribe and its “cultural” values.
EU to exempt private and corporate jets from green aviation fuel tax.
This elite tribe wages its endless wars for resource control, it oppresses others, it imposes austerity, it wrecks the planet, all in the name of Western civilization.
When we cheerlead the West’s wars; when we reluctantly concede that other societies must be smashed; when we accept that poverty and food banks are an unfortunate byproduct of supposed economic realities, as is the toxifying of the planet, we conspire in advancing not our own tribal interests but someone else’s.
When we send tens of billions of dollars of weapons to Ukraine, we imagine we are being selfless, helping those in trouble, stopping an evil madman, upholding international law, listening to Ukrainians. But our understanding of why events are unfolding as they are in Ukraine, more so than how they are unfolding, has been imposed on us, just as it has on ordinary Ukrainians and ordinary Russians.
Another carefully calibrated step in Nato's intensifying proxy war against Russia. The US and UK prepare to send offensive rocket artillery to Ukraine with a long enough range to hit Russia.
At what point does Nato drop the pretence and own this war – and its consequences? pic.twitter.com/KtF8GMMyrl
We believe we can end the war through more muscle. We assume we can terrorize Russia into withdrawal. Or even more dangerously, we fantasize that we can defeat a nuclear-armed Russia and remove its “madman” president. We cannot imagine that we are only stoking the very fears that drove Russia to invade Ukraine in the first place, the very fears that brought a strongman like Putin to power and sustain him there. We make the situation worse in assuming we are making it better.
So why do we do it?
Because our thoughts are not our own. We are dancing to a tune composed by others whose motives and interests we barely comprehend.
An endless war is not in our interests, nor in those of Ukrainians or Russians. But it might just be in the interests of Western elites that need to “weaken the enemy” to expand their dominance; that need pretexts to hoover up our money for wars that profit them alone; that need to create enemies to shore up the tribalism of Western publics so that we do not start to see things from the point of view of others or wonder whether our own tribalism really serves our interests or those of an elite.
Greenwald on the interests of the west's military-industrial complex: 'Right at the moment when the market for these weapons disappeared, when the US finally got out of Iraq and Afghanistan, lo and behold there's this new market in Ukraine' https://t.co/s3wVNbkOJN
The truth is we are being constantly manipulated, duped, propagandized to advance “values” that are not inherent in our “superior” culture but manufactured for us by the elites’ public-relations arm, the corporate media. We are made into willing co-conspirators in behavior that actually harms us, others, and the planet.
In Ukraine, our very compassion to help is being weaponized in ways that will kill Ukrainians and destroy their communities, just as Meretz’s caring liberalism has spent decades rationalizing the oppression of Palestinians in the name of ending it.
We cannot liberate Ukraine or Russia. But what we can do may, in the long term, prove far more significant: We can start liberating our minds.
A Great Reset will happen, just not the one intended by the Globalists. They may have to settle for the Great Decoupling instead.
The green economy, de-industrialisation, digital health passports, Central Bank digital currencies, these are all core components of the Globalists’ plan for the Great reset. The WEF has painted a picture of their proposed future via Klaus Schwab and his acolytes. “We will have nothing, own nothing and be happy”. The main obstacle to this grand vision is that not surprisingly very few countries wish to go along with it. The Globalists know their game is coming to an end and the Great Reset is their way of ensuring that the same financial cabal that has brought the world to its current lamentable state will continue to rule over all in the next world order. The most prominent objectors to this insidious plan are of course Russia and China. Unlike their western counterparts both have strong leaders who enjoy popular support, have strong economies and are optimistic about future prospects for growth. Neither intends to sacrifice their countries so that Western elites can maintain their control over the Global economic system and impose their self-serving will on weaker nations. Which in its simplest terms is why both countries need to be destroyed, at least economically before the Great Reset can be imposed on the world. Time, however, is not on the Globalists’ side, recent events have demonstrated that they are aware of this and are accelerating their timelines.
The Great Reset and its stated objectives have been in the planning for several years, those plans however are now seriously behind schedule. The election of Trump in 2016 wasn’t supposed to happen. He was to Washington the ultimate “Black Swan” event. An outsider without the backing of a political party and with seemingly the entire mainstream media against him, his victory was considered all but impossible. Yet win he did, and it seemed he spent the entire four years of his presidency battling against the Globalist faction, both internationally and within America. Washington felt cheated, not only was Trump an “outsider” he was also a disrupter. Opinions on the divisive Trump aside, he was indisputably an “America First Nationalist”, he was anti-NATO. and a vocal anti-Globalist. There would be no Great Reset under Trump, he was an obstacle to the agenda and had to be removed. Which in 2020 in a blatantly fraudulent election he was. Should Trump run again in 2024 and all indications are that he will, he would likely win an honest election in a landslide. The return of Trump would provide another major obstacle to the Globalist agenda. Expect that all efforts will be expended to prevent another Trump presidency. With an angry populace and increased electoral scrutiny next time around, they may have to turn to other measures to foil a Trump return. Should Trump re-enter the White House in 2024, the notoriously vindictive Trump is expected to seek accountability against those who he believes robbed him of his rightful election. Nerves are frayed in Washington and they know the clock is ticking.
Trump set the agenda back four years and they are now playing against the clock to make up for lost time, all evidence suggests that they are getting increasingly desperate. The recent invitations issued to Sweden and Finland to “fast track” NATO membership is yet another provocation to Russia. Putin wants to end the Ukraine conflict on his own terms and withdraw, he doesn’t not get bogged down in a quagmire that would drag on for years. NATO wants exactly that. Wooing Sweden and Finland is their attempt to ensure years of conflict and tension. Putin understands this all too well. As they lurch from one bad idea to another, attention should be paid to the indecent haste in which they are moving. It appears they are making things up as they go along, all without any obvious sense of consequence.
The prospect of Trump 2.0 is not the only time sensitive issue facing the Globalists. The global economy is on the brink of implosion. Sri Lanka has recently defaulted on its international debts. This will immediately create at least a $500 billion hole in the global economy. Alarmingly, according to the World Bank more than 70 other countries are in a similarly perilous economic condition. For most their debts are un-payable, and the IMF solution of structural adjustment (austerity) privatisations, and cuts to government services, would consign these countries to generations of deprivation and social unrest. Or, they could repudiate the debt completely and abandon the Western banking model. Both China and Russia have alternatives to SWIFT and welcome countries who want to escape the neo-liberal financial plantation. Both offer investment for development, non-interference and respect for countries’ sovereignty. All things valued by every country, but unachievable under Western domination. Decisions will very soon be made by countries throughout the Global south about who they want to align their futures with.
A new proposal being put before the UN on May 22nd essentially requires all nations to surrender their sovereignty to the WHO in the event of another pandemic. That they would even think that post-Covid the WHO enjoys that level of confidence, is delusional. This transparent power grab is easily recognised for what it is, in the unlikely event that it gains enough traction, expect another pandemic to follow shortly after. The cabal still has the tools to cajole, bribe and threaten countries to submit, and doubtless it will try, but outside of the captured western countries, such a desperate move will garner scant support. Covid failed to usher in the Great Reset but it unleashed a wave of destruction on the global economy that may take generations to repair. Many questions on the criminal mismanagement of Covid remain unanswered. There are few nations that don’t harbour deep resentment towards the notoriously corrupt and inept WHO and its genocidal Sugar Daddy Bill Gates. The sheer audacity of the proposal stinks of desperation. The upcoming vote is likely to give the Globalists another stark reminder of its waning power and influence.
A Great Reset will happen, just not the one intended by the Globalists. They may have to settle for the Great Decoupling instead. As Western influence continues to diminish at a rapid pace the trend of countries flocking to the China/Russia orbit is bound to increase. The NWO that they have been lusting after for generations is likely to be restricted to Western Europe and North America, or about 15% of the World’s population. The effects of the disastrous Ukraine provocation and the failed sanctions will soon become undeniable. Food and energy shortages together with uncontrollable inflation, will make even this smaller NWO harder to control. The Emperor has no clothes, as all can now see, their game is old, tired and predictable, and they have no new ideas. The Globalists may not have to worry about a Trump return in 2024. It is highly likely that the clock will have run out on them by then. It could happen any day.
A.B. Abrams has just released a new book entitled World War in Syria – Global Conflict on the Middle Eastern Battlefields. Here are two locations were you can order this most interesting volume:
The book got A LOT of praise already, so I posted a few endorsements at the end of this interview (see at the bottom)
Rather than offer my own endorsement or write a full review, I decided to interview Abrams about both his book and his views on the international aggression against Syria. I hope you enjoy it and, yes, get the book!
Andrei
1)–Please introduce us to your new book! Tell us what was your main purpose in writing it and whom, what audience, did you want to reach?
I wrote this book to provide one of the first comprehensive histories of the Syrian War published to mark ten years after it began in 2011. The book places the war in the context of both the history of Syria’s decades long conflict with Western interests which began in the late 1940s, as well as broader Western geopolitical goals in the region and beyond. The title ‘World War in Syria’ reflects an assessment of the conflict primarily not through the paradigm of a civil war, as is more common in the West, but rather as a global conflict which has pitted the Western Bloc and its regional partners against Damascus and its allies – namely Russia, Iran, North Korea and Hezbollah. The war has seen special forces and other assets from all these parties deployed to Syrian soil, with the West, Turkey, the Gulf States and Israel undertaking considerable military, economic and information warfare efforts to bring about the Syrian government’s overthrow.
The book shows the Syrian War as part of a broader trend towards countries outside the Western sphere of influence, namely the minority of countries without Western military presences on their soil, being targeted for destabilisation and overthrow. For targeting countries with significant Muslim populations, Western cooperation with radical Islamist elements to support such objectives has been common, as seen in Indonesia (1950s and early 60s), Chechnya, Afghanistan (1979-92), and Yugoslavia among others. These precedents are explored at the beginning of the book to provide context to Western efforts to employ similar means against Syria.
The book is not aimed at any specific audience, but at anyone with a general interest in the Syrian War, Western, Russian, Iranian or Turkish foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics, contemporary military affairs, insurgency or terrorism. It follows a previous book published in 2020 on the history of North Korea’s 70 year war with the United States, which similarly sought to provide a comprehensive analysis of a major conflict between the U.S.-led Western Bloc and a targeted country including the Western way of war and the use of both economic and information warfare.
2)–Do you believe that Putin is “allowing” (or even helping!) Israel to bomb Syria? Or maybe the Russian and Syrian air defenses are totally ineffective? How do you explain all the Israeli strikes?
Russia’s position on Israeli strikes has been interesting and caused a great deal of debate and in some cases controversy. I assess that Russian military intervention in Syria in 2015 had the limited goals of supporting counterinsurgency efforts and limiting Western and Turkish efforts to illegally occupy Syrian territory through the imposition of safe zones and no fly. The Russian presence has also served to deter Western and Turkish attacks, as evidenced by the vast discrepancy between the massive strikes planned under Obama to topple the government in 2013, and the very limited attacks carried out under Trump in 2017 and 2018. A longer term goal has more recently materialised with the entrenching of the Russian military presence in Latakia on Syria’s western coast, with Russia’s sole airbase in the region expanded and increasingly oriented away from counterinsurgency operations and towards providing a strategically located asset against NATO.
The expectation among many that Russia ought to prevent Israeli strikes on Syria may well be a result of the Soviet position in the 1980s, when the USSR threatened to intervene if Israel attacked Syria. This resulted in the confinement of Israeli-Syrian clashes that decade to within neighbouring Lebanon’s borders. A number of factors, however, mean that this is no longer feasible. Unlike in the 1980s, Israel is today far from the most pressing threat to Syrian security, while the discrepancy in military capabilities favours Israel much more strongly. Under the Netanyahu government, Russia also cultivated close ties with Israel as a valuable partner with a degree of policy independence from the Western world which could, for example, sell on sensitive Western technologies as it did with the Forpost drone to Russia or with American air defence technologies to China. Israel’s ability to act independently of Western hegemonic interests to some degree has been an asset to Moscow as well as Beijing to strengthen themselves against the West through cooperation. Thus the relationship between Moscow and Tel Aviv is very different from what it was in the 1980s, as is Moscow’s relationship with Damascus, meaning that Russia will be less inclined to take a hard line against Israeli strikes.
Perhaps most importantly, the fact that Russia has not taken a harder line in protecting Syria from Israeli attacks reflects Russia’s much diminished power to influence events beyond its borders compared to the Soviet era. The Russian military intervention in Syria was its first major military action outside the former USSR since the 1980s, and was a major feat considering the poor state of the military just seven years prior in its war with Georgia. The Russian military is nevertheless already stretched protecting its own forces in Syria and deterring Western or Turkish escalation, which is far from easy considering how far these operations are from Russian soil. Unlike in the late Soviet era, Russia no longer has the world’s second largest economy, a large sphere of influence of developed allied economies for support, a blue water navy, 55,000 tanks or 7000 fighters/interceptors. Its military is capable, but if it took on Israel directly as well as Turkey, the West, and the jihadist insurgency at the same time for all attacking Syria, the risk of escalation would be significant and would force it to divert considerable resources away from its own defence – resources which are far more scarce than those the USSR had 40 years ago.
Russia has nevertheless deployed its top fighters the Su-35s, and on at least one occasion Su-34s, to intercept Israeli F-16s before they could attack Syria, which alongside the strengthening of Syrian air defences has made it more difficult for Israel to strike. Russia does not condone Israeli strikes, but they have not been an immediate priority. Although they are damaging particularly to Iranian interests, such strikes do not seriously threaten Syria’s stability and have generally pursued limited goals. While Israel has called for greater Western intervention against Syria in the past, Tel Aviv’s own limitations mean it is not looking to overthrow the Syrian government singlehandedly. This contrasts to Turkey, whose president has stated multiple times and recently in 2020 that the intention is to maintain an occupation and hostile relations until the Damascus government is overthrown. This also remains a long term objective for the West currently through economic warfare, theft of Syrian oil and targeting of crops.
Israeli aircraft have since February 2018 relied in the large majority of attacks on launching standoff weapons from a safe distance outside Syrian airspace, meaning for Syrian ground based air defences to engage them and they must instead intercept the missiles as they approach and cannot target the aircraft themselves. Syria is itself aware of its limitations, and against both Israeli and Turkish strikes it has refrained from escalating by deploying its own fighters/interceptors to attack the enemy aircraft. Syrian aircraft optimised for air to air combat have instead been held in reserve to respond to more serious full scale attacks like the kind the U.S. and is allies were planning in September 2013. As Syrian defences improve with the delivery of the first new fighters as aid from Russia in 2020, the refocusing of resources away from counterinsurgency, and the possible placing of new S-300 systems under Syrian control, the country’s airspace may again begin to be respected as it largely was before the war began. If Syria does begin to deploy fighter units for air defence duties it will reflect a renewed sense of faith in the country’s security, although Turkey rather than Israel is likely to be the first target due to the heated nature of conflict over the Turkish occupation of Idlib and the much weaker state of Turkey’s air force.
3)–I have always suspected that the former Syrian regime (of Assad Sr.) was full of Israeli agents. My evidence? The impossible to organize without top complicity murder of Imad Mughniyeh (his widows also believes that, by the way, she is in Iran now) or the huge list of defectors/traitors and other officials/officers who quickly took their money and joined the international war in Syria. Has that now changed, do you feel that the government is stable and in control?
Based on my knowledge of Syria and Arab nationalist republics more generally, while strong fifth columns have almost certainly been prevalent they are unlikely to be predominantly pro-Israeli and much more likely pro-Western. Although Syria’s Ba’athist government aligned itself very closely with the USSR particularly from 1982, much of the elite and the population maintained strongly pro-Western sentiments. This included the current president in his initial years who, according to Western sources cited in the book, was looking to pivot the country towards closer alignment with the West while sidelining Russia, Iran and the Ba’ath Party. Many in the Arab world even in states which are formally aligned against Western interests aspire to integration and a degree of Westernisation, which has long been a leading weakness in Arab nationalist states’ efforts to establish themselves as independent powers.
The West’s colonial legacy provided a strong basis since the middle of the last century to cultivate considerable soft power in the Arab World. This was perhaps most clearly alluded to by Mohamed Heikal, a leading intellectual of the non-aligned movement and Minister of Information for the United Arab Republic, who noted regarding the political and military elites of Arab republics in the 1950s, 60s and 70s: “All the formative influences in the new leaders’ lives- the books they had read, the history they had learned, the films they had seen- had come from the West. The languages they knew in addition to their own were English or French – Russian was, and remained, a mystery to them. It was impossible for them to remain unaffected by all that they had heard about the communist world- the closed society, the suppression of thought, the ‘Stalinist terror’… they wanted to keep their distance.” Heikal stressed that many of these leaders would turn to the West for assistance “almost automatically,” as the psychology of colonialism persisted. Many of those who turned to a partnership with the Soviets did so only because they were given no other choice, having been refused by the West.
This remains largely true until today at many levels of Syrian society. Perhaps one of the most striking examples was documented by a journalist accompanying the Syrian Arab Army to the frontlines engaging Western-backed insurgents. While the West made war on Syria, it was clear that strongly Western supremacist sentiments persisted throughout the population as a result of Western soft power, with Syrian soldiers on the frontlines reported to exclaim regarding their country: “Look how beautiful this land is! It is almost as beautiful as Europe!” Such sentiments were common even in wartime. The idea of Western primacy and supremacy, long engrained across much of the world through colonial rule, remained a key weakness which made it far from difficult for the Western world to cultivate westphilian fifth columns. According to multiple sources, including British journalist Patrick Seale, this included the President Hafez Al Assad’s brother who had a love for all things American and for parties with Western belly dancers. In this way Syria and Arab nationalist states bear a strong contrast to Western adversaries such as North Korea, which placed a strong emphasis on political education and on ensuring new generations did not grow up seeing the world through paradigms that promote Western supremacy (see Chapters 18 and 19 of my prior book that cover that topic.)
Regarding Israel, while there are strongly pro-Western sentiments within Syria and the Arab world, there are also strong anti-Israeli sentiments which, combined with Israel’s lack of any comparable soft power, makes pro-Israeli fifth columns much more difficult to cultivate. It is highly possible, however, that pro-Western elements in Syria could be led to pursue actions which, while furthering Western interests, also benefit Israel as you mentioned.
4)— How did the war in Syria really start? Can you give us a summary of the true story (the full story is in your book) of how what began with some local protests (almost) ended with the Takfiris in control of Damascus?
It is difficult to do this question justice with a summary answer as there are so many factors at play. One could trace the origin back to 2007, when following Hezbollah’s unexpected military successes against Israel the previous year the Bush administration began to perceive Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, rather than Al Qaeda, as its primary adversaries. This also led to the first mentions of the possibility of manipulating Al Qaeda-type jihadist groups with the help of regional allies (Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia in particular) to focus on attacking Syria and other Iranian partners. By 2009 militants were receiving Western training for operations in Syria. Pro-Western activists in Syria and other Arab countries were also receiving training in the U.S. supported by the State Department, Google, Facebook and others on how to stir unrest using tools such as social media. Media networks and most notably Al Jazeera, which had a long history of being heavily influenced by Western intelligence, began in 2011 to be put to use to vilify the Syrian government, and the Qatari monarchy soon after would lead calls for a Libya-style Western assault.
On the ground in the war’s initial weeks the Syrian government faced large scale incursions by well armed and trained militants from across the Turkish and Jordanian borders, and simultaneously a number of largely peaceful protests against living conditions in some cities. Confusion was sown and the situation quickly escalated out of control. Mass privatisation of public property, years of crop failures, and disparity between the conservative Muslim rural population and the much more liberal lifestyle in major cities, were among a multitude of factors detailed which fuelled unrest and provided foreign powers with an opening to destabilise the country. These details are all fully referenced in the book itself as well as a much more elaborate explanation of the multitude of preparations and incidents which paved the way to war.
5)–Could you please compare and contrast, HOW the Russian and Iranian interventions happened, WHAT these forces did to turn the tide and then tell us WHAT the Russian and Iranian PLANS were and are for Syria – do these two actors more or less agree, or do they have different visions for the future of Syria?
The Russian and Iranian stances towards Syria have contrasted from the war’s outset, with Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev administration in particular being openly resigned to seeing the Syrian state toppled and offering Damascus little in the way of support in the conflict’s critical early stages. Although Russian support increased from 2012 almost as soon as a new administration came to power, namely with arms sales and a blocking of Western efforts to target Syria through the United Nations, it would be three more years before Russia felt the need to deploy its forces. Iranian efforts to make a case for Russian intervention to Moscow, namely through Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani who met with President Putin in 2015, was an important factor.
Iran by contrast, alongside Hezbollah and North Korea, had boots on the ground from 2012-13 and were all committed to supporting counterinsurgency efforts and preserving the Syrian state. For Iran the fall of Syria to Western-backed jihadists as Afghanistan had fallen in 1992 was seen as unacceptable. As senior Iranian cleric Mehdi Taeb famously said: “If the enemy attacks us and wants to take either Syria or [the outlying Iranian province of] Khuzestan, the priority is to keep Syria… If we keep Syria, we can get Khuzestan back too, but if we lose Syria, we cannot keep Tehran.” Iran has thus been much more heavily invested in supporting Damascus throughout the war than Russia has.
There have been similarities between Russian and Iranian support for Syria. Both have sought to support the Syrian economy with Iran emerging as the country’s largest trading partner shortly after the war began, although it has since been displaced by China, while Russia has shown a strong interest in post war investment. Both sought to avoid relying too heavily on deployment of their own manpower on the frontlines as the Soviets had in Afghanistan, and instead focused on arming and training auxiliary forces. Russia, for example, oversaw the creation and arming of the Syrian 5th Corps and provided T-62M and T-72B3 tanks from its own reserves, while Iran facilitated the deployment of allied paramilitaries such as the Afghan Hazara Fatemiyoun. Russia’s military intervention was aimed largely at demonstrating new capabilities to NATO, with many of its strikes meant more than anything as shows of force. An example was in November 2015 when its air force flew Tu-160 supersonic bombers from the Arctic around Ireland and through the Straits of Gibraltar to fire cruise missiles over the Mediterranean at insurgents in Syria before returning to Russia – which was initially widely dismissed by Western officials as phantastic before being confirmed several hours later. Iran’s intervention was significantly quieter and received less fanfare in local media, but was more persistent and tenacious due to the much higher stakes the conflict represented for Tehran. The Iranian and Hezbollah campaigns have also involved much more significant clashes with Israel, as well as with Turkey in Hezbollah’s case, while Russian units have seldom fired on or been fired on by forces from state actors. A significant number of other major contrasts between Iranian and Russian interventions exist, but for the sake of brevity I will restrict the examples to those above.
Although both share the goal of restoring Syrian territorial integrity and bolstering Damascus, Russia and Iran certainly have different visions in accordance with their very different ideological positions, which themselves contrast with Syria’s Ba’athist socialist party-state that is much closer to the USSR, China or North Korea than to either of them. Iran’s influence has led to the growth of Shiite paramilitary groups in Syria which have been major supporters of the Syrian Arab Army on the ground, but their presence contrasts with Syria’s long history of secularism and separation of religion from the state and the security apparatus. This influence may well have an impact on Syrian political culture and policies as it did in neighbouring Iraq. Russia under the current liberal democratic capitalist system, or ‘Western liberalism with Russian characteristics’ as some have referred to it, also has a much greater ideological gap with Damascus than it did in the Soviet era. Russia has been known to try to influence states to move in this direction with reform, most notably Belarus, and could well seek to have a similar influence in Syria. Syria’s ruling party, for its part, is likely to resist both influences but accommodate Russian and Iranian interests on its soil in exchange for their continued economic and military support.
6)–How do you see the future of Syria, Israel and the future of the Middle East? What has that war changed?
The Syrian War, and the NATO assault on Libya which began almost simultaneously in March 2011, have reshaped the Arab world and Middle East profoundly by in one case removing, and in the other seriously weakening the two Arab states which had longest and most persistently opposed Western hegemony. From the late 1970s and early 1980s, as Iraq and Egypt pivoted to align themselves with the West, Syria and Libya alongside South Yemen and Algeria remained the only countries which had not been absorbed into the Western sphere of influence.
The Syrian conflict marked a turning point in several trends in regional affairs. The U.S.’ refusal to invest heavily in the conflict, particularly in 2013 when a full scale assault had been expected, marked an important step in the Obama administration’s Pivot to Asia initiative. This has since been carried forward by Trump and Biden to focus resources on countering China and North Korea specifically and reduce commitments in the Middle East. The Syrian War set an important precedent for how the Western Bloc could seriously erode an adversary at a very low cost. The campaign avoided the need for tens of thousands of Western boots on the ground as in Iraq and instead relied on jihadist militant groups, with much of the funding to support them coming from the Gulf States and Turkey. While the CIA was responsible for organisation and logistics and for coordinating between the insurgency’s Western-aligned sponsors, the Pentagon budget was not seriously affected by the war. A similar mode of attack was seen in Libya, although jihadists there were less effective and had a much smaller support base and Western air power was applied much more to compensate. Attempts to replicate this low cost means of neutralising Western adversaries are likely.
Other major turning points were seen in Turkey, where its attempt to play a leading role in forcing the overthrow of the Syrian government marked the beginning of a more assertive and interventionist foreign policy stance which recently materialised in its intervention against Armenia in 2020. In Egypt Western support for jihadists in Libya and Syria, and ties between these jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood domestically, contributed to alienating the Egyptian Military from the West after it took power in 2013. The region also saw Russia remerge as a major player with its first significant combat operations since the early 1970s. Moscow sought to use the strong impression its intervention had made to capitalise on discontent among traditional Western clients such as the Gulf States and Egypt and form new partnerships of its own.
For Syria itself, as the war largely comes to an end, the world in the 2020s is one very different from when the war begun with China having since emerged as the world’s leading economy and Russia having seemingly abandoned its hopes for integration into the West to pursue a more independent foreign policy. This shift has seriously dampened the impacts of Western sanctions on Damascus, with Huawei rebuilding its telecoms networks and China providing everything from busses to power generators as aid which make it far easier Syria and other Western targets in similar positions to survive. Nevertheless, the continued occupation in the north by Western powers led by the U.S., and in Idlib by Turkey, will continue to pose a serious threat until restored to Syrian government control. Occupied areas reportedly hold 90% of Syria’s oil output, which will continue to be illegally expropriated to undermine Damascus’ reconstruction efforts. Idlib meanwhile, as the largest Al Qaeda safe haven the world has seen since September 2001, continues to be a launching pad for jihadist attacks into Syria. Both Idlib and the northern regions could form the bases for Kosovo-style partitioning of Syria enforced by NATO, and for Damascus it will thus be a leading priority to prevent this and impose continued costs on Western and Turkish forces. An example of how this could be done was the Syrian government ballistic missile strike on an oil facility run by militants under Turkish protection in March 2021.
7)– Last, but not least, what is, in your opinion, the US end goal for Syria (and Lebanon)?
The primary goal is the removal of the Ba’ath Party and Syrian military establishment as organisations which can arrange their domestic and foreign policies and their security with a great deal of independence from the West, and are thus able to oppose Western hegemony in the region. Their continued existence has for decades been a thorn in the side of Western efforts to shape the Middle East in line with its interests. In Lebanon the same applies for Hezbollah. This is hardly a U.S. goal exclusively, but is shared by the major NATO members such as Britain, Germany, France and Turkey and is in the common interests of furthering Western global hegemony.
Should the West achieve its objective, what follows could be a civil war as seen in Libya after Gaddafi’s death, in which NATO powers support both sides to ensure any outcome is favourable to Western interests, or the establishment of a client government as the West recently achieved in Sudan with a coup April 2019. While five major motivations for making war on Syria are explored in detail in the book, at the heart of all of them is that the Syrian government was not part of the Western-led order, did not align itself with Western policy objectives against Iran, China and others, and did not house Western soldiers on its soil. This made the state’s existence unacceptable to the West, as did its close security cooperation with Iran, North Korea and Hezbollah. Whether the outcome of Western intervention is a partitioning, a unified Syria remade as a client state, or an indefinite civil war, the primary goal of neutralising Syria as an independent actor would be achieved. Once the goal of destroying the party, state and military was thwarted, and it became clear from 2016 that the Syrian government would retain power, the Western and Turkish goal changed to prolonging the conflict, creating Kosovo-type enclaves under NATO control, and placing downward pressure on Syrian living standards and the economy. They could thereby impede post-war recovery and a return to normality and ensure that Syria would remain weakened and a burden to its allies.
–Thank you!!
PRAISE FOR WORLD WAR IN SYRIA
“Impressive in its scholarship, pondered in its judgements, above all searing in its dissection of Western powers’ war on Syria waged over
many decades, the book is a must-have on the bookshelves of any seri- ous fair-minded student of Syria.”
– Peter Ford, British Ambassador to Syria from 2003–2006. “The most detailed history of the war in Syria so far, providing a richness
of highly interesting details, as well as a critical analysis of its com- plex international and domestic dimensions, rarely encountered in other
Western publications.” – Nikolaos van Dam, former Special Envoy for Syria, 2015–16. Ambassador of the Netherlands to Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Germany and Indonesia, 1988–2010. Author of Destroying a Nation: The Civil War in Syria. “A. B. Abrams explores the widening scope of the Syrian conflict in his important book. Solving Syria’s civil war will require a regional approach engaging stakeholders whose interests are fundamentally opposed.” – David L. Phillips, Senior Adviser in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama State Departments. Former Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. Director of the Program on Peace-Building and Human Rights, Columbia University ISHR.
“Abrams is a meticulous guide to the labyrinth of Syria’s modern polit- ical history.”
– Richard W. Murphy. U.S. Ambassador to Syria, 1974 to 1978. Consul in Aleppo, Syria, 1960–63. “A. B. Abrams has written an extremely informative and illuminating
account on the international dimension of the origins, outbreak and evo- lution of the Syrian conflict. His empirically rich analysis in this nuanced
and comprehensive study make it one of the best books, if not the best book, written about the Syrian crisis. This book is a MUST read for anyone who wants to understand the Syrian conflict, the Middle East, and the role of the great powers in the region.” – Jubin Goodarzi, Professor and Deputy Head of International Relations, Webster University, Geneva. Former consultant and political adviser on Middle Eastern affairs for the UNHCR. He formerly held posts at Chatham House, CSIS and the Ford Foundation. PRAISE FOR WORLD WAR IN SYRIA
“An insightful and dispassionate record of the Syrian Maelstrom and the West’s role as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” – John Holmes, Major General and Director Special Forces (ret.), British Army. “This is a sad tale of betrayal and conspiracy. Not just theory but facts meticulously uncovered by Abrams. The conspiracy was part of broader trends in the United States and Europe towards the non-Western World.
Since its fight for independence from French rule in 1946, Syria’s strug- gles to remain free of Western hegemonic ambitions have continued to
play out for decades culminating in the crisis which emerged in 2011 and became a proxy war of international proportions.” – Dawn Chatty, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford. Fellow at the British Academy. Author of Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State. “Abrams’ book provides essential historical and geopolitical context to Syria’s ten-year war, reflecting a particularly deep and comprehensive understanding of the conflict and of the country’s strategic importance.” – Military Watch Magazine. “Supported by a weight of evidence, this book sets out the context and details of the Syrian conflict and effectively helps the reader to chart a course between the overwhelming complexity of the crisis and Western efforts to tell a simplified story of events on the ground. It will be of interest to researchers, students and those interested in the messy reality of one of the past decade’s foremost crises.” – Jack Holland, Associate Professor in International Security at the University of Leeds. Author of Selling War and Peace: Syria and the Anglosphere.
“A well-researched and well-written book. Abrams provides the his- torical context of post-independence Syria within which one can find
the reasons why the war became such a nodal point for regional and international intrigue. While doing so, he also hones in as no one else previously has – on some critical turning points during the civil war that determined the direction of the conflict.” – David Lesch, Leader of the Harvard-NUPI-Trinity Syria Research Project. Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professor of Middle East History at Trinity University. Author of Syria: A Modern History and Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad.
“The countries intervening in Syria without approval of the Security Council under Chapter VII were consciously violating international law. Abrams’ intensive, highly-documented work provides an excellent resource for understanding the historical and present dimensions of the conflict.” – Alfred De Zayas, Professor, Geneva School of Diplomacy. Former UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order. “A. B. Abrams has written a timely, balanced and insightful account of the Syrian war. The book is well-researched and provides both the
necessary historic context but reveals also present-day drivers that re- sulted in Syria becoming a theater for regional and global competition
for influence.” – Alex Vatanka, senior fellow in Middle East Studies at the U.S. Air Force
Special Operations School. Senior fellow and director of the Iran pro- gram at the Middle East Institute, Washington D.C. Adjunct professor at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. “An impressive and comprehensive feat of in-depth research, most notably concerning developments in political and military strategy of international actors in the Syrian war. The author provides a unique and sophisticated chronological overview of pre-war socio-political and economic realities in Syria, a detailed description of the conflict over its
entire duration, and an outline of possible post-war scenarios. An excep- tional feature of the book lies in the author’s profound understanding of
how supplies of specific armaments on both sides influenced the course of the war. World War in Syria is an excellent work, highly beneficial for
war and security studies professionals and students, as well as for histo- rians, international relations scholars and the general public wishing to
better understand the effects of external involvement on the development and outcome of the Syrian conflict.” – Daria Vorobyeva, Centre for Syrian Studies, University of St. Andrews. Co-Author of The War for Syria: Regional and International Dimensions of the Syrian Uprising.
“A superb narrative dealing with tactical, operational and strategic mat- ters of that war, in as fine military history writing as any by the first rate
military historian, and also shows a horrendous toll this war exerted on the people of Syria. It is a superb book which makes a great contribution to the field of study of the Middle East and of global politics and balance of forces.” – Andrei Martyanov, former naval officer. Frequent contributor to the U.S. Naval Institute Blog. Author of The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs.
Twitter supports the rights of Zionists to harass Palestinians on its platform and threaten their livelihood and their income.
My 11-year-old Twitter account has been permanently banned by the USA-based social media platform. In its email to me announcing the decision, Twitter quotes 4 of my tweets as evidence of the accusations that I am in violation of their rules against “hateful conduct”, and that I “promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.” Twitter further states: “Additionally, if we determine that the primary purpose of an account is to incite harm towards others on the basis of these categories, that account may be suspended without prior warning.”
There are many things that could be said about the legality of Twitter granting itself the power to judge speech or to levy accusations of crimes actionable under the Criminal Code of Canada and Title 18 of the US Code of Laws. By appointing itself judge, jury and executioner, and claiming the power to permanently sully the reputation of individuals, it usurps their rights under the basics of Natural Justice and Common Law, denying their right to the presumption of innocence, to knowing their accuser and the accusations against them, to cross-examine their accusers and present a defense, and finally to be judged by their peers.
But in my opinion, the most flagrant violation of rights in the decision to ban me lies in equating the political ideology of Zionism with a race, ethnicity, or a national origin; and, more importantly, to imply that opposing the Settler Colonial ideology of Zionism, and the violence, genocide, and infanticide that are results of its quest to create an exclusively “Jewish” State; is in itself an act that “promotes violence against” or “directly attack or threaten” other people.
Zionism: a political ideology, not a race, ethnicity, national origin or religion
Let us unpack this for a minute. Zionism is a political ideology, like Capitalism or Communism, etc. Those who adhere to Zionism come from all walks of life. Therefore, criticizing Zionism is not targeting anyone based on their “Race”, as there is no such thing as a Zionist race; all kinds of abhorrable people pronounce that they are Zionist, from Irish-American President Biden to Brazilian President Bolsanario. Criticizing Zionism is not targeting anyone based on their “ethnicity”; there are Zionist Germans, Zionist Anglos, Zionist French, etc. Criticizing Zionism is not a hateful conduct based on someone’s national origin, as there are many “Israeli” Palestinian citizens and a plurality of other Israelis who are not Zionist. And finally, criticizing Zionism is not targeting anyone based on its religious affiliation, for the largest numbers of those who call themselves Zionists are Christian North Americans and Europeans, and there are many followers of the Jewish faith that reject Zionism.
So, if there is no “other” as defined by Twitter, how can its accusations of “hateful conduct” that “promote[s] violence” or “direct attacks” or “threaten” be accepted? Although there are no valid “victims” in the accusations by Twitter, let us nevertheless take a look at the language it finds threatening and hateful.
Twitter objects to my use of the following terms:
– Zionism is Jewish White Supremacy, Genocide and Infanticide.
– Apartheid Canada and Apartheid “Israel”.
Zionism is a Settler project to Colonize Palestine with European citizens some of which professed Judaism and to create an Imperialist beachhead colony that perpetually causes war in Western Asia and North Africa, and physically fractures the geographic continuity of the Arab world. To create and maintain the Colony, Zionism and its followers committed and continue to perpetrate Genocide against the Indigenous population of Palestine and Infanticide against the Palestinian children. Zionism works to maintain the White Supremacist Imperialist structures that oppress the Arabic-speaking people; i.e. Zionism is Jewish White Supremacy. Since the Balfour Declaration by the British Empire, and the official launching of the Zionist Colony, more than a million Palestinians were murdered, and since only the beginning of 2021, Apartheid Israel killed at least 200 Palestinian children.
As for Apartheid “Israel” and Apartheid Canada, not much needs to be said when every major human rights organization on the planet – and in historic Palestine – have labeled the Colony as Apartheid, and when thousands of Indigenous children are being excavated from mass graves in Apartheid Canada, and the whole world knows about the Infanticide Camps nefariously named Residential Schools.
In any case, whether you agree with my opinion or not, they all fall under fair and free speech and do not target, harass or advocate violence against a group of people based on their religion, ethnicity or national origin. Looking at the tweets in question, it is clear the complaint against me came from a man named Mark Goldberg. I’ll explain a few things below.
Media Law and Policy, from CRTC to Twitter
I work as a Consultant for Broadcasting Law and Policy, specifically the rights of Indigenous Nations, Racialized communities and/or those who are living with disabilities; communities granted Protections with laws and policies, i.e. Protected Groups. My work can be viewed here.
Part of my work is testifying at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in Canada on files like the license renewal of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC, and its compliance with its license conditions and Broadcasting Act provisions, in regards to the rights of Protected Groups to Access, Reflection and Employment at the network.
My work naturally attracts the attention of individuals who support the Zionist ideology. To them, it is very angering to see a Palestinian citizen of Apartheid Canada appearing at the Commission speaking about these important issues.
In that light, Mr. @Marc_Goldberg, who himself is very involved in the Broadcasting sector and hosts an annual conference for the industry, began harassing me online; first in a general manner, and then specifically in regards to my comments at the CRTC during the CBC hearing.
On the 22nd of January, 2021, Goldberg tweeted attacking CMAC’s presentation at the hearing, targeting our suggestion that CBC reporters have a duty to point out when the Canadian state violates its treaty obligations with Indigenous Nations.
Later in the day, Goldberg tweeted a second attack on CMAC, in regards to the CBC administration banning the use of the word ‘Palestine’ on its platforms, and attached a link stating “Palestine doesn’t exist”.
Because we are both involved in Journalism and Media Production and Policy, and are Public persons and have no private life as such, I did not make a Twitter complaint against him.
Unfortunately, my policy of respecting his right to free speech led Goldberg to increase his harassment. As the most recent war in Palestine raged two months ago, Goldberg posted a link to a funding grant I received from the CRTC. The file was related to a CRTC call for comments on how the Commission can deliver on its duties as laid out in the Accessible Canada Act (ACA). CMAC, where I work as a Senior Policy Consultant, helped Indigenous and Racialized Communities living with disabilities to participate and produce interventions on the record that would address their rights as prescribed by the ACA.
Mr. Goldberg was asking how someone like me (a Palestinian) would get funding for this work at the CRTC. He was putting my livelihood and income at risk, and, therefore, bullying me in my workspace that he is also present in. Hence, he was crossing the threshold between Verbal Harassment to Physical Harassment that causes financial harm. Even then, I believed that I could just respond through the exercise of free speech, pointing out how his opinions, which I disagree with and find racist, don’t seem to be stopping the CRTC from participating in his annual industry conference.
Mr. Goldberg harassed me for months publicly on Twitter, on Hearings I participated in at the CRTC, all relating to the rights of Indigenous and Racialized peoples and/or living with disabilities. Mr. Goldberg attempted to harm my livelihood because he disagreed with my opinions that are protected under the law at the Commission; a Tribunal with powers superseding a Federal Superior Court, where I am held legally responsible under the law for what I say. Because Mr. Goldberg knew he could not challenge my work at the CRTC because it was legally sound, he chose to harass me on Twitter. And when he lost the public debate online after I engaged him, he had the audacity to complain to Twitter about my replies to his harassing posts regarding my work and income.
I hope this lays out the Legal Obligations of Twitter in regards to these specific tweets. The posts Mr. Goldberg complained about, are related to work and speech I presented at a Tribunal of the Canadian Government, where I was/am legally liable for my work. My interventions were accepted on the record of the CRTC. Therefore, in deeming my tweets violent and discriminatory, Twitter is assuming powers by superseding those of the CRTC and usurping the legitimate appeal process that requires complaints to be presented to a Federal Court of Appeal in Canada or to the Governor in Council (the Cabinet of Ministers). (You can watch/listen to CMAC’s oral presentation at the hearing, where we open with “Apartheid Canada” and speak of Palestine, at this link.
My assessment of why Mr. Goldberg targeted my account is confirmed by his latest tweet on the subject, where he gloats about having my account suspended and seems to suggest he is also targeting Carleton University professor, Dwayne Winseck.
Finally, Twitter quotes a fourth tweet I made in its email, outlining its decision to suspend my account. In that tweet, I stated: “if you come to my home and try to steal it or harm my children, it will lead to a bullet in your head.”
Obviously, there is no promotion of violence against any “Protected Groups” in this statement, except if you consider House Thieves or Children Killers are protected groups. What is ironic about this tweet is the fact that I wrote it, while visiting my wife’s family in Louisiana, a “Stand your grounds” state, where by law a person has the right to shoot and kill anyone who invades their home and harms their children. Of course, we know that “Stand your grounds” doesn’t apply to Black/Brown/Arab peoples, and is a privilege reserved for White Colonists in the USA or Apartheid “Israel”. By dictating that my post was promoting violence, Twitter is asserting that Colonists have the full right of looting, pillaging and murdering children; considering that the settler’s behavior supersedes the rights of the Colonized populations to defend themselves.
Twitter usurped the powers of Courts and accused innocents of legally actionable crimes under the criminal laws of Canada and the USA. It denies the basic rights guaranteed under Natural and Common Law, including the presumption of innocence, the right to cross-examines the accuser, and the right to be judged by equal peers. It appoints itself as judge, jury and executioner; and shields Supremacy, Genocide, Infanticide and Apartheid from criticism. It supports the rights of Zionists to harass Palestinians on its platform and threaten their livelihood and their income. Furthermore, it asserts that any fight back against this behavior is threatening, violent and itself a form of harassment.
Private Corporations and the rights to free speech
In my 20 years of activism for the liberation of Palestine, I have faced many injustices similar to this Twitter Ban, and almost all stem from the same speech. In 2001, I was the first Arab candidate to be elected to a student union executive in Canada; at Concordia University in Montreal. Within months I was expelled summarily through a Dictate from the President of the University for writing that “Zionism is Jewish Supremacy”. During our 6-month court battle, Concordia argued that it is not a public institution but, rather, a private corporation that can refuse service to any “customer” (not student?!?). This is the same argument that Twitter makes. Although the judge erroneously agreed that Concordia is a private corporation, he nevertheless ruled that it cannot expel a customer without affording them the basics of Natural Justice and Common Law when it accuses them of crimes prescribed in the Criminal Code and that if it did not do so, it then would be violating the Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms (Constitution). Concordia had no choice but to reinstate me as a student and then afford me an internal hearing that abides by the minimums of Common Law. Naturally, I won in the tribunal under these conditions.
A year later, the Chair of the Department of History at Concordia, who was also the Chair of the Zionist lobby group, the Human Rights League of B’nai B’rith, decided to accuse me of promoting hate because I said Zionism is Jewish Supremacy and that “Israel” is an Apartheid state. The internal Concordia tribunal that was convened to rule over these accusations, after months of deliberations, also found that my statements are covered under fair speech and cannot be considered hate speech no matter how appalled and angered my critics were.
Given that none of the Tweets quoted in the decision to suspend my account can be construed as promoting hate or violence against a Protected Group; given that it is clear my accuser is actually harassing me online; given that the grave accusations leveled against me are actual crimes in the Criminal Code of Canada; given that my basic rights under Natural Justice and Common Law dictate that I must have a fair trial before being found guilty of such crimes; the only legal and ethical thing Twitter can do is to remove the suspension on my account and restore my tweets.
I urge all readers to tweet this article at @Twitter @TwitterSuppport and @Jack and ask for my account to be reinstated.
As part of a concerted effort to pressurize Iran ahead of the expected resumption of nuclear talks in Vienna, Washington and its European allies appear to be using a mysterious and not entirely understandable attack on an oil tanker operated by Israel to extract additional concessions from Tehran. In doing so, says the well-informed Iranian newspaper Ettelaat, they are unwittingly playing into the hands of an Israeli scheme aimed at railroading the very nuclear deal that Washington and the Europeans are supposedly trying to revive. The controversy over the recent attack on the Israeli Mercer Street continues unabated, and the US and Britain rushed to bring the issue even to the UN Security Council. However, they failed to reach a consensus on Iran there.
In this connection, it may be recalled that an Israeli ship was attacked off the coast of Oman on July 29 while it was sailing from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to the Port of Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. An oil tanker operated by Zodiac Maritime, owned by Israeli shipping magnate Eyal Ofer, was reportedly attacked by suicide drones. A Zodiac Maritime spokesman said two crew members, British and Romanian nationals, died in the attack. The attack, for which Tel Aviv, London, and Washington instantly and unsubstantiated accused Iran, marked the beginning of a coordinated diplomatic campaign against Tehran at a time when nuclear talks on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal had stalled after six rounds of painstaking negotiations in Vienna. The last round of talks in Vienna was completed more than a month ago, and differences over how to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) are still unresolved. The US has steadfastly refused to lift all sanctions imposed by the Donald Trump administration and to give assurances that it will not withdraw from the JCPOA again, as it did in the past. The sixth round was also held when a transfer of power in Iran connected with the June 18 presidential elections, in which Ebrahim Raisi won a confident and predictable victory.
In a separate statement, US CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Bill Urban said that based on the fact that “the vertical stabilizer is identical to those identified on one of the Iranian UAVs designed and manufactured for the one-sided kamikaze attack, we could assume that Iran was actively involved in the attack.” In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of the G7 countries (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States) condemned Iran for the attack. “This was a deliberate and targeted attack and a clear violation of international law,” the statement said. “All available evidence points to Iran.” There is no excuse for this attack. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh instantly responded that the G7 condemnation consisted of unfounded accusations. “Israel is likely to be the real culprit behind the attack,” the spokesman added. “For experts and those who know the history of our region, it is nothing new that the Zionist regime is scheming such plots,” Said Khatibzadeh emphasized.
Sensing a change of plans in Tehran, the US and its European allies launched a diplomatic campaign to intimidate Iran into returning to the talks in Vienna without any new demands. Washington’s main concern was that the negotiating team of new President Ebrahim Raisi would return to Vienna with new spirit and demands, amounting to a reversal of the American progress made in the last six rounds. This concern is not groundless: the Tehran Times, which presents the official point of view, reported that the Iranians were even considering, among other options, abandoning the results of the Vienna talks under Hassan Rouhani. The same newspaper, citing official sources, concludes that Tehran may reject the results and set a new agenda for negotiations with the West to resolve the remaining issues in a new format and spirit. This is why the US, in an apparent attempt to influence the plans of the Iranian ayatollahs, has sought to increase diplomatic pressure on Iran since the end of the sixth round. They have threatened and are threatening to withdraw from negotiations, openly opposed to lifting all sanctions, and have even prepared new oil sanctions against Iran.
Then there was the incomprehensible attack on Mercer Street, which the US and its allies saw as a gift to exert further pressure on Iran. While the hype surrounding this attack is still going on, the known provocateur, Britain and its allies, in a spirit of high probability, have concocted several stories about the hijacking of commercial ships off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf of Oman. Once again, they have accused Iran, without evidence and with impudence, of playing a role in these events. How can we not recall the dirty work of London and its notorious international organization Médecins Sans Frontières in accusing Damascus of the use of poisonous substances?
Iran fully understands the ulterior motives behind this drama, which the West has habitually turned into a farce. Iranian officials warned the West not to engage in dirty propaganda games to gain concessions. Commenting on the alleged attempted seizure of a ship in the Gulf of Oman, the Iranian Embassy in Britain stated on Twitter: “To mislead the public around the world for diplomatic gain in New York is not fair game.” But this unfair game can lead to the opposite result. The US and Britain have enlisted Israel’s help in their campaign of putting pressure on Iran, which is likely to have unintended consequences for them.
“We have just heard a distorted statement about the Mercer Street incident. Immediately after the event, Israeli officials blamed Iran for the incident. That’s what they usually do. This is a standard practice of the Israeli regime. Its purpose is to divert world attention from the regime’s crimes and inhumane practices in the region,” said Zahra Ershadi, the charge d’affaires ad interim of Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations. She made the remarks after a closed-door UN Security Council meeting on the recent oil tanker incident in the Gulf of Oman.
Israel’s ambassador to the US and the UN, Gilad Erdan, threw aside his restraint and revealed some of these targets. He said that Israel would ultimately like to see the current regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran overthrown. “In the end, we would like [the government] to be overthrown and [for] regime change to take place in Iran,” Gilad Erdan said when asked about Israel’s strategy toward the Islamic Republic, according to the Times of Israel. The statement was made after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s blunt remarks that Tel Aviv allegedly knows for a fact that it was Iran that attacked Mercer Street.
Regardless of Israel’s goals for Iran, the current approach of London and Washington is unlikely to produce results, as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has unequivocally and firmly made it clear that the West is unlikely to succeed in intimidating the Iranians and the country’s leadership. Moreover, no one will force the Iranians to give up their legal rights and freedoms.
Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” .
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 