Generating and Spreading Fear

6 May 2024 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

Students and professors, carry on! History will only remember you, and it will have no mention at all of your oppressors. Keep up the fight to make the world a better place for us all.

Arab Intellectual

Bouthaina Shaaban

Dear students and professors,

For over 200 days, we here in the Arab World have been wondering how the so-called civilized world, along with its intellectual system and human rights laws, would allow such a genocide to take place against helpless women, children, and innocent civilians in Gaza and Palestine, without trying the impossible to stop this disgraceful insult against every human life everywhere.

Every day, the Zionists would perpetrate dozens of massacres against hundreds of Palestinians and would kill journalists, medical doctors, nurses, and patients, burying them in a mass grave inside the hospital. And yet the US continues to flood the Zionists with armaments, money, and moral support, enabling the worst genocide and ethnic cleansing that has brought dishonor upon our world and us who live in these times. 

All of us here in the Middle East were feeling absolutely helpless, depressed, and utterly betrayed by the Western World, as it not only betrayed us, but also Western values which the West claimed to develop and promote in the interest of humanity. For seven, long, difficult months, we questioned everything the West had said about itself, most notably its propaganda regarding the free press, the rights of women, the rights of children, and human rights in decent and safe lives.

All of this was happening to us as if we lived on an extremely remote island until the students of Columbia University broke this cycle with their brave forthcoming acts to challenge the conspiratory world‘s silence and announce their extremely important call to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, an act that triggered a worldwide movement by university students, professors, and employees in support of life in Gaza, and against the daily and continued massacres there. 

Your movement has restored our faith in human conscience, but your suffering and the way you have been treated proved to us, beyond any doubt, that Western systems leave a lot to be desired. The deep alliance that has surfaced between Zionists everywhere and Western governments has shown the horrifying moral deterioration of Western governments. Just as they spread fear and horror about Covid-19, they also started to fabricate myths about attacks on Jews, although Jewish students and professors were at the forefront of these noble movements, this did not prevent misleading media from accusing the student movement as antisemitic.

Instead of trusting that the movement proved that the issue was not between Muslims and Jews, but one of occupation, racism, and the worst violation of human rights witnessed in modern times, the authorities went on distorting facts and misleading people. 

When Jews were persecuted in Europe, they found their haven among the Arabs, and until the creation of the Zionist entity, Jews were citizens in most Arab countries, living amicably with Muslims and Christians and contributing to the prosperity and welfare of their countries. The Middle East is the cradle of the three monotheistic religions, and that is why its people lived together with the church and the mosque side by side, and with the deep-rooted faith that we all worship the same God but in different ways.

The first time we heard a language that divided the Iraqis into Sunnis and Shias was when American forces occupied Iraq and started talking about the Sunni triangle, Kurdish North, and Shia South. This is an alien language to the region’s indigenous Arabs, and this is the language that terrorists attempted to implant among our people. 

Antisemitism is a label coined and promoted by those who gave themselves the right to uproot indigenous people and to use their land and resources as their own. The Arabs had never been and cannot be antisemitic, as they themselves are Semites. Those who misused movements to incite hatred against Jews have nothing to do with Islam, as the Quran lauded all prophets and mentioned the followers of all prophets with great respect; “Indeed the faithful, the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabaeans —those of them who have faith in Allah and the Last Day and act righteously— they shall have their reward near their Lord, and they will have no fear, nor will they grieve.”

The Quran stresses the importance of faith rather than religion, and any attempt to generate and spread fear among the followers of other religions is only a very suspicious political tool used for dubious purposes. The Western media that was supposed to facilitate communication among different people on different lands had become an impediment in the way of truth reaching audiences everywhere. 

Students and professors paid a heavy price, and some have lost the opportunity to complete their studies, but what you have done is so gracious and so eternal that it restored our confidence in humanity and its ability to strongly object to gross injustice, no matter how powerful and militarized it may seem. In that sense, you restored some of our confidence that the voice of the people will override the voice of governments who cannot get beyond their narrow, material interests, and their deeply rooted and unquestioned prejudices and shallow slogans.

You proved that you do not belong to the hypocrisy of the State, whose current discourse and actions are in total contradiction with its own narrative. Western systems are trying to spread fear: Jews fearing Muslims, Muslims fearing Jews, Christians fearing Muslims, Westerners against Easterners, in order to serve the interests of Zionist dark forces who do not see people with similar hearts and minds, but only see what may divide their ranks and make them weaker: inactive and incapable of undermining the interests of these dark forces.

Our God said in the Quran, “O mankind! Indeed We created you from a male and a female, and made you nations and tribes that you may identify yourselves with one another. Indeed the noblest of you in the sight of Allah is the most Godwary among you. Indeed Allah is all-knowing, all-aware.” Differences in color, origin, religion, or ethnicity, only exist to prove the greatness of the Creator, and not to classify people as superior and inferior. Only the vile racists do that for their own evil purposes, which have nothing to do with the interests of most people on this planet. 

Students and professors, carry on! History will only remember you, and it will have no mention at all of your oppressors. Keep up the fight to make the world a better place for us all.

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

Bouthaina Shaaban Arab Intellectual

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MILITARY AND MORAL FAILURES”: HOW IRAN’S ISRAEL STRIKE RESHAPED THE REGION FOREVER

APRIL 29TH, 2024

Source

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

Kit Klarenburg

On April 13, Iran, alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Ansar Allah, executed Operation True Promise, a vast wave of drone, cruise and ballistic missile strikes on Israel, launched in retaliation to Tel Aviv’s criminal bombing of Tehran’s Damascus embassy less than two weeks earlier, which killed two Iranian generals. As a result, history was made, and the world – particularly West Asia – will never be the same again.

“This action was hugely significant. Now, the Israelis will have to be extremely careful about what they do in Syria against Tehran. The regional balance of power has permanently shifted away from the Zionists. Tel Aviv will never recover at all. It is the end of them. They have destroyed themselves. They are seen as a regime that has no place in the civilized world, a Nazi state, across the entire globe,” geopolitical expert Dr. Mohammad Marandi tells MintPress News.

Iran’s first-ever strike on Israel, following decades of provocations, escalations, assassinations, incendiary threats, and determined lobbying for U.S.-led war against Tehran by Tel Aviv officials, the effort targeted airbases, Israeli Air Force intelligence HQ and a constellation of air defense systems. The U.S., Britain, and France scrambled jets to help shoot the vast payload down – unsuccessfully – while Jordan controversially permitted Western powers to use its airspace for the purpose. Israel claimed a 99% interception rate.

However, extensive photo and video material shows that most missiles hit their targets and wrought much damage. In the process, Iran demonstrated to Tel Aviv and its Western backers a hitherto unknown ability to circumvent layer upon layer of protective measures, including top-tier fighter jets, NATO-supplied air defense systems, and the much-vaunted Iron Dome. One by one, they largely failed in their duty, leading to the astonishing sight of Iranian missiles soaring unmolested over the Knesset.

This righteous scene no doubt sent untold chills through Western and Israeli corridors of power, searching vainly for spines to run up. It also dispatched a palpable message—Tehran could, if it wished, have struck the Zionist legislature but didn’t do so. For the time being, at least. The floor was now Tel Aviv’s to decide whether—and how—to retaliate. A response came on April 19 in the form of pre-dawn drone sorties across Iran.

Initially framed by Western media as hugely impactful, in reality, a small swarm of Israeli quadcopters attempted to breach Tehran’s air defenses but ultimately couldn’t. An Iranian spokesperson referred to the effort as “failed and humiliating.” This characterization surely applies more widely to the pathetic state to which Tel Aviv has been reduced following Operation True Promise’s seismic success. As we shall see, Israel now has little time remaining and no good choices left to make.

Iraqi military personnel inspect Israeli missile fragments found by farmers in Latifiya and Aziziya. Photo | Sabreen

‘NEW EQUATION’

Despite its astonishing optics and unprecedented nature, some West Asian observers were disappointed that the attack on Israel wasn’t a decapitation. Such perspectives overlook Iran’s longstanding commitment to caution. Devastation of Tehran’s Syrian embassy was without historical parallel and concerned with Israel eliciting a major escalation to drag the U.S. into total war. A measured, well-advertised show of strength deterred a broader response while signaling a major shift in Iranian policy towards Israel. IRGC commander Hossein Salami has said:

“We have decided to create a New Equation, and that is if from now on the Zionist regime attacks our interests, assets, personalities, and citizens, at any point, we will attack against them.“

Those are fighting words, and Operation True Promise demonstrated they can be backed with action. Iran has shown it can strike Israel directly from its own soil, its fleets of missiles and drones capable of traveling thousands of kilometers over both friendly and hostile airspace, separate timezones, and multiple countries. Along the way, Tehran will have gleaned an enormous amount of invaluable intelligence on the defensive capabilities and vulnerabilities of Israel and the local Western infrastructure upon which its defenses depend.

Any future Iranian strike would make the most of whatever was learned on April 13, and the data yield was surely enormous. Since Russia’s “Special Military Operation” began in February 2022, defense cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has reached extraordinary levels – and intensive learning and on-the-go refinement of battle strategy is core Russian military doctrine. As a nameless Ukrainian Army officer bitterly told Politico on April 3, Western weapons systems sent to Kiev “become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians”:

“We used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully – but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.“

If there’s a next time, too, Iran’s missile and drone fleet is likely to be considerably more sustained, playing out over several days, weeks, or even months, wave after wave, burst after burst. Estimates suggest around 300 separate projectiles were fired at Israel during Operation True Promise. Largely unsuccessful attempts to repel the blitz by Tel Aviv alone cost $1.08 – 1.35 billion, according to an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) general.

“One Arrow missile used to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile costs $3.5 million, while the cost of one David Sling missile is $1 million, in addition to the sorties of aircraft that participated in intercepting the Iranian drones,” they told local media. Meanwhile, an Israeli think tank researcher calculates the costs “were enormous,” comparable to what Israel burned through during the entire 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which lasted almost three weeks.

IDF personnel remove debris from missile intercepted during the Iranian attack in southern Israel. Photo | IDF

Those sums were spent on missile interceptors, missiles, jet fuel, and other military equipment and infrastructure. It is uncertain how much Iran spent on the Operation, but it is undoubtedly a great many orders of magnitude less. Some sources have suggested $30 million, which could well be accurate. Dr. Marandi tells MintPress News that “most” of the initial “decoy” barrage, including drones, were collecting dust. “Tehran was looking for an excuse to get rid of them,” he says.

“Most of the heavy-duty work attempting to counter Iran’s strike was done by the Americans anyway, not the Israelis. The Iron Dome barely factored in. The two places hit hardest – the southern airbase where F35s are based and Tel Aviv’s Golan Heights intelligence base resulted in significant damage and casualties. Of course, the Zionists don’t admit this,” Dr. Marandi adds.

This massive cost discrepancy is a very, very grave issue for Israel, as the U.S. can attest, given its embarrassing experiences attempting – and completely failing – to end Ansar Allah’s anti-genocide blockade of the Red Sea. Almost immediately, Politico reported that the Pentagon was aghast at squandering missiles costing millions to shoot down $2,000 Ansar Allah drones. A CIA officer lamented:

“That quickly becomes a problem because the most benefit, even if we do shoot down their incoming missiles and drones, is in their favor. We, the U.S., need to start looking at systems that can defeat these that are more in line with the costs they are expending to attack us.“

‘ISRAEL GOES UNDER’

There is no sign yet of Washington having publicly rectified this concern, which may account for why U.S. officials at the start of April offered Ansar Allah a sweeping offer of total surrender in return for ending the Red Sea blockade. This was summarily rejected. No business as usual – no commerce, no trade – on Yemen’s watch while Palestinians are slaughtered. In the event of any subsequent Iranian strike on Tel Aviv, too, Tehran’s drones will not be used to deter shipping either, but tie up, smoke out, and exhaust Israeli air defenses.

This tactic was used to significant effect on April 13, as it has been by Russia since its airstrikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure began in late 2022. Now, Kiev is on the verge of being de-electrified, which will cause battlefield collapse and population displacement, with potentially devastating knock-on effects on neighboring countries and states trying to keep Kiev’s lights on. It seems safe to say neither Israel nor its Western allies could sustain a serious defense to a protracted assault by Tehran, economically or materially.

That conclusion is supported by an April 22 Wall Street Journal report, which revealed the Biden administration was shocked at the scale of Iran’s barrage. It “matched worst-case scenarios” outlined by U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon, an unnamed senior official despairing, “this was on the high end…of what we were anticipating.” White House Situation Room attendees on the day allegedly feared Israel and its allies would not be able to repel the assault. And they couldn’t.

On top of a mass crime against humanity amounting to a 21st-century Holocaust, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been utterly destructive to its own economy. A Financial Times investigation published on November 6 documented how the assault has ravaged personal finances, job markets, businesses, industries, and the Israeli government itself.

“Thousands” of companies were teetering on the brink of collapse, with entire sectors plunged into an unprecedented crisis. One in three businesses had either shuttered or were operating at 20 percent capacity.“

One can imagine how much worse things have gotten in the six months since, and Israel isn’t yet embroiled in an all-out war. An extended period of mass strikes from Iran, Ansar Allah and Hezbollah could completely paralyze the country economically, render entire areas uninhabitable – or, at least, uninhabited – destroy infrastructure, and much more. Among the infrastructure in Tehran’s crosshairs could well be the Dimona nuclear power plant, which would unleash deadly chaos on a terrifying scale.

Resultantly, Israel’s “Samson Option,” under which it is committed to launch a mass nuclear strike if its existence is threatened, should no longer be taken very seriously. Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld once boasted, “We have the capability to take the world down with us, and I can assure you that will happen before Israel goes under.” But Tehran’s hypersonic missile capabilities are in every way an effective counter-deterrent. They could even deliver a nuclear, chemical or biological payload of their own.

‘WHOEVER MOVES’

Israel’s Iranian drubbing is further exacerbated by its attempt to crush Hamas being an absolute disaster in every conceivable way. The fiasco’s consequences are and will remain wide-ranging and grave, to the extent they could be fatal. This may account for Netanyahu’s flailing bid to draw Tehran into all-out war. After all, the scale of the Israeli Defense Forces’ defeat is such that in a scathing op-ed for Haaretz on April 11, Zionist “journalist” Chaim Levinson lamented:

“We’ve lost. Truth must be told… It’s unpleasant to say, but we may not be able to safety [sic] return to Israel’s northern border…No cabinet minister will restore our sense of personal security. Every Iranian threat will make us tremble. Our international standing was dealt a beating. Our leadership’s weakness was revealed to the outside. For years we managed to fool them into thinking we were a strong country, a wise people and a powerful army. In truth, we’re a shtetl with an airforce, and that’s on the condition it’s awakened in time.”

Haaretz | Apr 11, 2024

Even the Western media, which since the genocide began has been at best silent and at worst complicit – and much more active in the latter sphere than the former – has acknowledged Tel Aviv’s battlefield cataclysm. The Economist, a nakedly Zionist publication that has whitewashed, diminished, or outright justified every conceivable crime committed by the IDF, has condemned the Forces’ “military and moral failures” and how “its generals botched the strategy, and discipline among troops has broken down”:

“[Israel is] accused of two catastrophic failures. First, it has not achieved its military objectives in Gaza. Second, it has acted immorally and broken the laws of war. The implications for both the IDF and Israel are profound…Hamas fighters are still ambushing Israeli forces throughout Gaza, and the group is reasserting itself in areas the IDF has left…Accusations that Israel has broken the laws of war are plausible.“

The Economist went on to slam a “lack of enforcement” of already virtually non-existent “rules of engagement” under which the IDF operates. A “veteran reserve officer” was quoted as saying commanders could arbitrarily “decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist or that buildings should be destroyed.” A sapper in another unit admitted, “The only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza”:

“Soldiers have filmed themselves vandalizing Palestinian property and, in some cases, put those videos online. On February 20, the IDF’s chief of staff published a public letter to all soldiers warning them to use force only where necessary, ‘to distinguish between a terrorist and who is not, not to take anything which isn’t ours – a souvenir or weaponry – and not to film vengeance videos.’ Four months into the war, this was too little, too late.”

That The Economist printed such things at all reflects how far Israel has fallen since October 7, 2023. Now, it is a global pariah, viscerally loathed by the overwhelming majority of the world’s citizenry. Adversaries do not fear its once-vaunted military and its ability to unilaterally strike neighboring countries with total impunity, and no comebacks, is over. Tel Aviv’s claim to “defense” and security primacy, upon which much of its exports were successfully marketed for decades, has been amply demonstrated to be bogus.

Meanwhile, Israel has suffered population collapse, with simultaneous mass brain drain and workforce freefall as settlers flee or get conscripted. Demand for mental health services has reached all-time highs. The trauma of perpetrating genocide and living under the daily threat of attack, as Palestinians have since 1948, has ravaged soldiers and civilians alike. But scores of psychiatrists have relocated elsewhere due to stressful workloads and likely won’t return. Such are the foundational flaws of a settler colonial state.

“I don’t think 10 years from now Israel will exist. Zionism will die. The only solution is equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews throughout Palestine. This war will continue, but direct engagement with Iran would be totally destructive, militarily. So the Israelis now target Rafah, but they will be defeated there, and they know that. As long as Netanyahu is leader, we will have a continuation of this tragedy. The only way out is a coup in Tel Aviv,” Dr. Marandi concludes.

For many, these developments may be little consolation, coming as they do off the back of thousands of murdered and mutilated Palestinian children. Yet, Israel as we know it is on the brink of extinction, which wasn’t the case before Hamas breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls. Palestine is now closer to being free than at any point since Israel’s creation. And there is no going back to “normal.”

Time is now and forever on the side of the tenacious, undefeated Resistance – so, too, justice and virtue. We should never forget the immortal, galvanizing words of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, slain in cold blood by a targeted IDF airstrike on December 6, 2023:

“If I must die, let it bring hope‘

Feature photo | A passerby, taking on his cellphone, walks past a banner showing missiles being launched from Iranian map in northern Tehran, Iran, April 19, 2024. Vahid Salemi | AP

Will Zionism Self-Destruct?

 APRIL 22, 2024

ALASTAIR CROOKE

Israel’s strategy from past decades will continue with its hope of achieving some Chimeric transformative “de-radicalisation” of Palestinians that will make ‘Israel safe’.

(This paper is the basis of a talk to be given at the 25th Yasin (April) International Academic Event on Economic and Social Development, HSE University, Moscow, April 2024)

In the summer following Israel’s 2006 (unsuccessful) war on Hizbullah, Dick Cheney sat in his office loudly bemoaning Hizbullah’s continuing strength; and worse still, that it seemed to him that Iran had been the primary beneficiary from the U.S. 2003 Iraq war.

Cheney’s guest – the then Saudi Intelligence Chief, Prince Bandar – vigorously concurred (as chronicled by John Hannah, who participated in the meeting) and, to general surprise, Prince Bandar proclaimed that Iran yet could be cut to size: Syria was the ‘weak’ link between Iran and Hizbullah that could be collapsed via an Islamist insurgency, Bandar proposed. Cheney’s initial scepticism turned to elation as Bandar said that U.S. involvement would be unnecessary: He, Prince Bandar, would orchestrate and manage the project. ‘Leave it to me’, he said.

Bandar separately told John Hannah: “The King knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria”.

Thus began a new phase of attrition on Iran. The regional balance of power was to be decisively shifted towards Sunni Islam – and the region’s monarchies.

That old balance from the Shah’s time in which Persia enjoyed regional primacy was to be ended: conclusively, the U.S., Israel and the Saudi King hoped.

Iran – already badly bruised by the ‘imposed’ Iran-Iraq war – resolved never again to be so vulnerable. Iran aimed to find a path to strategic deterrence in the context of a region dominated by the overwhelming air dominance enjoyed by its adversaries.

What occurred this Saturday 14 April – some 18 years later – therefore was of utmost importance.

Despite the bruhaha and distraction following Iran’s attack, Israel and the U.S. know the truth: Iran’s missiles were able to penetrate directly into Israel’s two most sensitive and highly defended air bases and sites. Behind the whooping western rhetoric lies Israeli shock and fear. Their bases are no longer ‘untouchable’.

Israel also knows – but cannot admit – that the so-called ‘assault’ was no assault but an Iranian message to assert the new strategic equation: That any Israeli attack on Iran or its personnel will result in retribution from Iran into Israel.

This act of setting the new ‘balance of power equation’ unites the diverse Fronts against the U.S.’ “connivance with Israeli actions in the Middle East, that are at the core of Washington’s policy – and in many ways the root-cause of new tragedies” – in the words of Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov.

The equation represents a key ‘Front’ – together with Russia’s war against NATO in Ukraine – for persuading the West that its exceptionalist and redemptive myth has proved to be a fatal conceit; that it must be discarded; and that deep cultural change in the West needs to happen.

The roots to this wider cultural conflict are deep – but finally have been made explicit.

Prince Bandar’s post-2006 playing of the Sunni ‘card’ was a flop (in no small part thanks to Russia’s intervention in Syria). And Iran, has come in from the cold and is firmly anchored as a primary regional power. It is the strategic partner to Russia and China. And Gulf States today have switched focus instead to money, ‘business’ and Tech, rather than Salafist jurisprudence.

Syria, then targeted by the West and ostracised, has not only survived all that the West could ‘throw at it’ but has been warmly embraced by the Arab League and rehabilitated. And Syria is now slowly finding its way to being itself again.

Yet even during the Syrian crisis, unforeseen dynamics to Prince Bandar’s playing of Islamist identity versus Arab socialist secular identity were playing out:

I wrote then in 2012:

“Over recent years we have heard the Israelis emphasise their demand for recognition of a specifically Jewish nation-state, rather than for an Israeli State, per se”;

– a state that would enshrine Jewish political, legal, and military exceptional rights.

“[At that time] … Muslim nations [were] seeking the ‘undoing’ of the last remnants of the colonial era. Will we see the struggle increasingly epitomised as a primordial struggle between Jewish and Islamic religious symbols – between al-Aqsa and the Temple Mount?”

To be plain, what was apparent even then – in 2012 – was “that both Israel and its surrounding terrain are marching in step toward language which takes them far away from the underlying, largely secular concepts by which this conflict traditionally has been conceptualised. What [would] be the consequence – as the conflict, by its own logic, becomes a clash of religious poles?”

If, twelve years ago, the protagonists were explicitly moving away from the underlying secular concepts by which the West conceptualised the conflict, we, by contrast, are still trying to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of secular, rationalist concepts – even as Israel quite evidently is seized by an increasingly Apocalyptic frenzy.

And by extension, we are stuck in trying to address the conflict through our habitual utilitarian, rationalist policy tool-set. And we wonder why it is not working. It is not working because all parties have moved beyond mechanical rationalism to a different plane.

The Conflict Becomes Eschatalogical

Last year’s election in Israel saw a revolutionary change: The Mizrahim walked into the Prime Minister’s office. These Jews coming from the Arab and North African sphere – now possibly the majority – and, with their political allies on the right, embraced a radical agenda: To complete the founding of Israel on the Land of Israel (i.e. no Palestinian State); to build the Third Temple (in place of Al-Aqsa); and to institute Halachic Law (in place of secular law).

None of this is what might be termed ‘secular’ or liberal. It was intended as the revolutionary overthrow of the Ashkenazi élite. It was Begin who tied the Mizrahi firstly to the Irgun and then to Likud. The Mizrahim now in power have a vision of themselves as the true representatives of Judaism, with the Old Testament as their blueprint. And condescend to the European Ashkenazi liberals.

If we think we can put Biblical myths and injunctions behind us in our secular age – where much of contemporary western thinking makes a point of ignoring such dimensions, dismissing them as either confused, or irrelevant – we would be mistaken.

As one commentator writes:

“At every turn, political figures in Israel now soak their proclamations in Biblical reference and allegory. The foremost of which [is] Netanyahu … You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible, and we do remember – and we are fighting…“Here [Netanyahu] not only invokes the prophecy of Isaiah, but frames the conflict as that of “light” versus “darkness” and good versus evil, painting the Palestinians as the Children of Darkness to be vanquished by the Chosen Ones: The Lord ordered King Saul to destroy the enemy and all his people: “Now go and defeat Amalek and destroy all that he has; and give him no mercy; but put to death both husband and wife; from youth to infant; from ox to sheep; from camel to donkey” (15:3)”.

We might term this ‘hot eschatology’ – a mode that is running wild amongst the young Israeli military cadres, to the point that the Israeli high command is losing control on the ground (lacking any mid-layer NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) class).

On the other hand –

The uprising launched from Gaza is not called Al-Aqsa Flood for nothing. Al-Aqsa is both a symbol of a storied Islamic civlisation, and it is also the bulwark against the building of the Third Temple, for which preparations are underway. The point here is that Al-Aqsa represents Islam in aggregate — neither Shi’i, nor Sunni, nor ideological Islam.

Then, at another level, we have, as it were, ‘dispassionate eschatology’: When Yahyah Sinwar writes of ‘Victory or Martyrdom’ for his people in Gaza; when Hizbullah speaks of sacrifice; and when the Iranian Supreme Leader speaks of Hussain bin Ali (the grandson of the Prophet) and some 70 companions in 680 CE, standing before inexorable slaughter against an 1,000 strong army, in the name of Justice, these sentiments simply are beyond the reach of western Utilitarian comprehension.

We cannot easily rationalise the latter ‘way of being’ in western modes of thought. However, as Hubert Védrine, France’s former Foreign Minister, observes – though titularly secular – the West nonetheless is “consumed by the spirit of proselytism”. That Saint Paul’s “go and evangelize all nations” has become “go and spread human rights to all the world”… And that this proselytism is extremely deep in [western DNA]: “Even the very least religious, totally atheists, they still have this in mind, [even though] they don’t know where it comes from”.

We might term this secular eschatology, as it were. It is certainly consequential.

A Military Revolution: We’re Ready Now

Iran, through all the West’s attrition, has pursued its astute strategy of ‘strategic patience’ – keeping conflicts away from its borders. A strategy that focused heavily on diplomacy and trade; and soft power to engage positively with near and far neighbors alike.

Behind this quietist front of stage, however, lay the evolution to ‘active deterrence’ which required long military preparation and the nurturing of allies.

Our understanding of the world became antiquated

Just occasionally, very occasionally, a military revolution can upend the prevailing strategic paradigm. This was Qasem Suleimani’s key insight. This is what ‘active deterrence’ implies. The switch to a strategy that could upend prevailing paradigms.

Both Israel and the U.S. have armies that are conventionally far more powerful than their adversaries which are mostly composed of small non-state rebels or revolutionaries. The latter are treated more as mutineers within the traditionalist colonial framing, and for whom a whiff of firepower generally is considered sufficient.

The West, however, has not fully assimilated the military revolutions now underway. There has been a radical shift in the balance of power between low-tech improvisation and expensive complex (and less robust) weapons platforms.

The Additional Ingredients

What makes Iran’s new military approach truly transformative have been two additional factors: One was the appearance of an outstanding military strategist (now assassinated); and secondly, his ability to mix and apply these new tools in a wholly novel matrix. The fusion of these two factors – together with low-tech drones and cruise missiles – completed the revolution.

The philosophy driving this military strategy is clear: the West is over-invested in air dominance and in its carpet fire power. It prioritises ‘shock and awe’ thrusts, but quickly exhausts itself early in the encounter. This rarely can be sustained for long. The Resistance aim is to exhaust the enemy.

The second key principle driving this new military approach concerns the careful calibration of the intensity of conflict, upping and lowering the flames as appropriate; and, at the same time, keeping escalatory dominance within the Resistance’s control.

In Lebanon, in 2006, Hizbullah remained deep underground whilst the Israeli air assault swept across overhead. The physical surface damage was huge, yet their forces were unaffected and emerged from deep tunnels – only afterwards. Then came the 33 days of Hizbullah’s missile barrage – until Israel called it quits.

So, is there any strategic point to an Israeli military response to Iran?

Israelis widely believe that without deterrence – without the world fearing them – they cannot survive. October 7 set this existential fear burning through Israeli society. Hezbollah’s very presence only exacerbates it – and now Iran has rained missiles down into Israel directly.

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The opening of the Iranian front, in a certain way, initially may have benefited Netanyahu: the IDF defeat in the Gaza war; the hostage release impasse; the continuing displacement of Israelis from the north; and even the murder of the World Kitchen aid workers – all are temporarily forgotten. The West has grouped at Israel’s – and Netanyahu’s – side again. Arab states are again co-operating. And attention has moved from Gaza to Iran.

So far, so good (from Netanyahu’s perspective, no doubt). Netanyahu has been angling to draw the U.S. into war with Israel against Iran for two decades (albeit with successive U.S. Presidents declining the dangerous prospect).

But to cut Iran down to size would require U.S. military assistance.

Netanyahu senses Biden’s weakness and has the tools and knowhow by which he can manipulate U.S. politics: Indeed, worked in this way, Netanyahu might force Biden to continue to arm Israel, and even to embrace his widening of the war to Hizbullah in Lebanon.

Conclusion

Israel’s strategy from past decades will continue with its hope of achieving some Chimeric transformative “de-radicalisation” of Palestinians that will make ‘Israel safe’.

A former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. argues that Israel can have no peace without such ‘transformative de-radicalisation’. “If we do it right”, Ron Dermer insists, “it will make Israel stronger – and the U.S. too”. It is in this context that the War Cabinet’s insistence on retaliation against Iran should be understood.

Rational argument advocating moderation is read as inviting defeat.

All of which is to say that Israelis are psychologically very far from being able to reconsider the content to the Zionist project of Jewish special rights. For now, they are on a completely different path, trusting to a Biblical reading that many Israelis have come to view as mandatory injunctions under Halachic Law.

Hubert Védrine asks us the supplementary question: “Can we imagine a West that manages to preserve the societies it has birthed – and yet “is not proselytizing, not-interventionist? In other words, a West that can accept alterity, that can live with others – and accept them for who they are”.

Védrine says this “is not a problem of the diplomatic machines: it’s a question of profound soul-searching, a deep cultural change that needs to happen in western society”.

A ‘trial of strength’ between Israel and the Resistance Fronts ranged against it likely cannot be avoided.

The die has been deliberately cast this way.

Netanyahu is gambling big with Israel’s – and America’s – future. And he may lose.

If there is a regional war, and Israel suffers defeat, then what?

When exhaustion (and defeat) finally settles in, and the parties ‘scrabble in the drawer’ for new solutions to their strategic distress, the truly transformative solution would be for an Israeli leader to think the ‘unthinkable’ – to think of one state between the River and the Sea.

And, for Israel – tasting the bitter herbs of ‘things fallen apart’ – to talk directly with Iran.

(Republished from Strategic Culture Foundation by permission of author or representative)

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From the ‘Battle of Dignity’ to the shield of shame: How Jordan has fallen

APR 16, 2024

Source

Amman’s collaboration with Tel Aviv peaked last Saturday with its shocking defense of Israeli territory from Iranian drones and missiles, a move that may prove fateful for the future of the Hashemite Kingdom.

(Photo Credit: The Cradle)

Khalil Harb

The most dangerous development during Iran’s massive 13 April retaliatory strike against Israel last weekend was the defensive military alliance – comprising the US, Britain, Jordan, and France – that coalesced to defend the occupation state.

Jordan has jumped to Israel’s full defense at a time when Arabs have never been more collectively outraged by its crimes.

Particularly notable was Jordan’s role in thwarting Iran’s incoming drones and missiles. The Hashemite Kingdom was the only Arab or Muslim state to act as Israel’s “firewall,” providing direct military protection for Tel Aviv within a multilateral, regional military framework.

Despite Amman’s long-standing pro-Israel stance, this sudden reassertion of its position is indicative of some broader shifts in military strategies across West Asia. 

Patterns and calculations of confrontations across West Asia will be readjusted to adapt to this new equation and others that have emerged in the region as alliances shift to and away from the west. 

That includes the Axis of Resistance, which will likely reassess the expected range of responses in a future confrontation, given that western anti-missile capabilities are well spread throughout strategic locations – strategic sites from the Ain al-Assad base in Anbar, Iraq, to the Al-Tanf base at the Syrian–Jordanian–Iraqi border and from the Mashabim base in the Negev desert to the King Faisal base in northwestern Jordan.

Strategic shifts

Over the years, the Jordanian government has dramatically shrunk its commitments to the Palestinian cause and “Arabism.” 

This can be traced from its 1968 “Battle of Dignity” against Israel to 5 November, when King Abdullah II boasted of his country’s “success” in airdropping medical aid to the Jordanian field hospital in the Gaza Strip, and now, quite stunningly, employing its air force to protect Israel’s security from retaliatory Iranian strikes. 

This shift is not merely a reactionary measure but the culmination of years of extensive security and military coordination with the occupation state, as highlighted by a Jordanian opposition activist speaking to The Cradle. This deep-seated integration into anti-missile and drone operations reflects a strategic evolution rather than a spontaneous response.

Eyewitness reports from multiple sources to The Cradle describe the audible presence of warplanes over the Amman region, followed by the sound of explosions hours later when overhead projectiles were intercepted and downed. 

One Jordanian witness relays that the suburb of Marj al-Hamam saw the most interceptions against Iranian drones and missiles, with debris reported across the area.

Jordanian writer and journalist Rania Jabari informs The Cradle that “citizens in Jordan have felt jammed on the GPS for about two weeks,” that is, since after the Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus. 

Amid rising concerns about a swift Iranian counterattack through drone incursions, Israel reportedly initiated GPS jamming operations across several regional countries, including Jordan. 

Jabari suggests that this electronic interference might have precipitated the Jordanian Air Force’s readiness to intercept any unauthorized aerial objects in its airspace, given the potential risks to national security from mistakenly guiding Iranian drones into Jordanian territory.

However, the Jordanian opposition activist casts doubt on the capability of Jordan’s Air Force – equipped with only about 60 older F-16 and F-5 aircraft – to single-handedly manage the response against hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles destined for Israel.

Regional repercussions 

Supporting these suspicions, Israeli Channel 12 reported that Israeli fighter jets had intercepted drones launched by Iran in the airspace of Jordan and Syria. 

The day after the Iranian Operation True Promise, the Jordanian government issued a vague statement, only saying that “some unidentified flying objects that entered our airspace last night were dealt with and intercepted to prevent endangering the safety of our citizens and inhabited areas.”

The statement conspicuously omitted any mention of the scale of involvement of the Israeli Air Force or the nature and role of US fighter jets participating in the operation.

Given the limitations of Jordan’s aerial fleet and the extensive geographic area these planes need to cover – a “firewall” stretching approximately 1,500 kilometers from western Iran to the occupied territories of Palestine – the involvement of international forces seems credible. 

Additionally, Iraqi sources inform The Cradle that coalition forces had shot down about 30 drones and missiles over Iraq, with explosions heard in regions like Erbil, Najaf, Wasit, and Anbar. This indicates that a significant number of the drones and missiles traversed Jordanian skies, where they were intercepted before reaching their intended targets in Israel.

The role of the Jordanian Air Force is so significant that the Iranian Mehr news agency quoted an Iranian military source as saying, “Iran will monitor Jordanian movements, and if they cooperate with Israel, Jordan will be our next target.”

The source is said to have “warned Jordan and other countries in the region before the start of the attack against cooperating with the occupying entity.”

This statement seems to have aroused the ire of the Jordanian government. On Sunday, authorities summoned the Iranian ambassador in Amman to warn against Tehran’s “questioning of Jordan’s position.”

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi also issued a statement saying that his government would “intercept any drone or missile that breaches our airspace, whether Iranian or Israeli.” 

However, the Jordanian oppositionist questions the accuracy of Safadi’s statement, especially about his country’s readiness to confront a similar threat coming from Tel Aviv, noting numerous occasions when Israeli fighter jets infiltrated Jordanian airspace to carry out raids on Syria. 

A history of betraying Palestine  

Jordan’s historical antagonism towards Palestinian resistance dates back to the “Black September” massacres of 1970, aimed at expelling the PLO from the country – allegedly with the support of former King Hussein bin Talal, who reportedly received backing from Israel and the US.

During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel’s Air Force shot down and destroyed dozens of Jordanian aircraft. Following the 1994 Amman–Tel Aviv peace agreement, the two states have struck multiple defense deals, including Israel supplying Jordan with F-16 jets and Cobra helicopters.

Since the 1970s, when Israel supported Jordan during the Palestinian revolt against King Hussein, the two air forces have not engaged in combat. Israeli belligerence persists despite this. On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, when asked about potential opposition from the Jordanian Air Force should Israel strike Iraq, then-retired Air Force Commander Avihu Ben-Nun boldly stated, “There would be no more Jordanian Air Force.”

It is very likely, moreover, that the western militaries involved in Israel’s defense last weekend utilized Jordanian bases. For example, US troops are stationed at the Mashabim air base in the Negev desert, supporting operations like the Iron Dome system. 

Similarly, UK and French military forces are present at multiple strategic locations within Jordan, including the King Faisal Air Base in Al-Jafr and the Humaymah base near Aqaba, where they play roles in regional defense and run intelligence operations.

There are also French troops at King Faisal Air Base, known as Al-Ruwaished Base, which is close to Al-Tanf. From this base, activities involving espionage operations in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran are carried out through a state-of-the-art reconnaissance center, and its airport is believed to be used by both Israeli and US drones. 

Sacrificing Jordan’s stability for Israel’s security 

But Jordan’s relations and collaboration with Tel Aviv remain deeply unpopular among the country’s citizenry, with protestors amassing for weeks near the Israeli embassy in Amman – many of them subsequently subjected to repression and tight security restrictions by Jordanian authorities. 

Adding to the pressure on Amman, the Iraqi resistance faction, Kataib Hezbollah, announced earlier this month its readiness to arm “12,000 fighters with light and medium weapons, anti-armor launchers, tactical missiles, millions of bullets and tons of explosives, so that we can be united to defend our Palestinian brothers,” adding that it would seek to “cut off the [Jordan] land route that reaches the Zionist entity.”

By participating in the interception of Iranian drones, Jordan has made a significant contribution to alleviating some pressure off Israel, but one that comes with a much more significant domestic consequence for the stability of the kingdom. 

Will Amman’s blatant alignment with Tel Aviv in this context prove to be politically detrimental for its monarch? In years to come, this decision may be viewed as a strategic error of gargantuan proportions. For now, Jordan’s political future and its position in regional politics remain uncertain – certainly as Tel Aviv and Tehran gear up for further confrontations. 

King Abdallah can jump into the fray as he did last weekend and suffer through further waves of domestic and Arab outrage, or he can resolve to stay neutral and quiet – as many larger, more powerful neighbors chose to do – and let Iranians and Israelis adversaries fight their own battles.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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Genocide as a Strategy for Success

March 27, 2024

Global Research,

By Dr. Paul Larudee

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Global Research Fundraising: Stop the Pentagon’s Ides of March

***

The future always surprises us to some degree. But we make plans, anyway, based on our projections, and we adjust them when our predictions are at least partially wrong, which they always are, because they make assumptions based upon things that we take for granted, such as our health and that meteors and tsunamis will not disrupt those plans. Bearing that in mind, I will make some predictions for the immediate future of Gaza and Israel, and their relationships with the rest of the world. I’m sorry if it is not a happy picture.

First, I predict with sadness and disgust that the remaining Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza will be killed or expelled, mostly the former, despite all our efforts.

The main reason is that, Joe Biden, as recently described by Aaron David Miller, sees no compelling alternative for Israel that doesn’t include doing grievous harm to Palestinian civilians.

Properly translated, this means the greatest genocide since WWII. If this is an accurate picture of the thinking of the Biden administration, there can be little doubt that the US will continue to supply Israel with the means to make the population of Gaza disappear. The option of denying those means to Israel is simply unthinkable to Joe and his government. It might mean giving up their comfortable and prestigious futuresm presidential libraries and all.

Joe Biden is not Dwight D. Eisenhower, nor John Kennedy, nor even Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter.

Most of Gaza Strip Is Now a Wasteland. Children are Being Starved. Military Intervention and Israeli Embargo Are Necessary

We no longer have a president with the guts or the acumen to defy anyone, least of all the Zionist Lobby, and we have no prospect of ever having such a person in the White House in the foreseeable future.

Donald Trump? He needs the Israel Lobby even more than Biden, and if they weren’t comfortable with him, they would have sabotaged his candidacy a long time ago. Both of them have the same morals as Netanyahu. I rest my case.

A ceasefire? I cannot imagine it.

The week-long November pause worked because neither side gave up too much strategically and both benefited politically. There is no similar bargain on the horizon. If Hamas gives up all its captives, it has nothing left to trade. That’s why the Hamas proposal is in three stages, with the final stage being an independent Palestinian state with the right to defend itself, and with multilateral guarantees for its security and independence.

That is of course totally unacceptable to Israel, and they said so. For them, the “occupied territories” are more accurately called “greater Israel”, which has not yet been sufficiently settled by Zionist Jews to justify extending the official borders to encompass it. Too many non-Jews. They will address that problem in its turn, but for now the priority is to empty Gaza. So much for the two-state solution, which Israel embraced as long as all they had to do was sit at a negotiations table, keep the deal just out of reach and blame the Palestinians for its failure. Now they’re having none of it.

When will Israel’s genocide end, and what will the result look like? First, the Palestinian population in Gaza will have fallen by at least 2 million, the result of both murder and expulsion, as noted earlier. The orphaned children will be far fewer than the dead ones, but those who survive will be shipped to western countries for adoption, so that they will lose their names and their cultural heritage. But I’m sure they will have loving parents and become well-adjusted western citizens.

As for Israel, its world has been changing since October 7th. First, it is losing – and will continue to lose – its liberal population. It began years ago, but Israel’s population has declined by roughly 10 percent since October 7th, 2023, in parallel with the decline in the population of Gaza, but by choice instead of genocide.

The fanatics with genocidal intentions are not the ones leaving, mostly the ones who are more in keeping with traditional Jewish values of being a light unto the nations – or at least not a source of darkness. The emigrants are mainly those who are giving up on the Zionist project. They are not the only ones. American and other western Jews are losing their appetite for the Zionist menu, which allows us to maintain our respect for integrity.

This of course means that Israel will be far more isolated than previously, both from the Jewish diaspora and from the non-Jewish communities that previously supported Israel. It’s amazing how a little thing like genocide can cause your friends to turn on you. I suspect that Israeli products, institutions, and culture will be shunned by much of the world. No more trips to Israel as prizes on television game shows.

I have no doubt that Gaza will be annexed to Israel, and I imagine that developers will create Zionist dream communities along the coast, on top of the graves and rubble of their victims.

But there might be fewer new immigrants than they might have hoped for. Israel’s future, if it has one, will be as a violent fortress for Zionist exclusivism, supported by a slowly shrinking world Zionist network and their allies using the resources of other countries in much the same way that Israel is using  the United States today, and enriching those individuals and interests that cooperate with them.

I leave it to you to decide if this sounds like a strategy for success.

*

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Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Copyright © Dr. Paul Larudee, Global Research, 2024

Genocide as a Strategy for Success

How Ansar Allah are schooling the West on the battlefield: Bloomberg

11 Mar 2024 

Source: News Websites

Ansar Allah fighters stage a rally against the U.S. government designating Ansar Allah as a terror group and against the U.S.-led sustained airstrikes on Yemen, near Sanaa, Yemen, January 25, 2024. (AP)

By Al Mayadeen English

An opinion piece published in Bloomberg details the significant challenges the Yemenis pose against the Western maritime coalition, giving them the upper hand in battle.

A recent op-ed published by Bloomberg detailed the considerations the West must take into account in its war on Yemen and schooled the West on the challenges it has to face before declaring itself victorious against a movement it cannot catch up to, Yemen’s Ansar Allah.

Throughout the confrontations between Ansar Allah and the foreign infiltrative coalition in the Red Sea, author Marc Champion reflects on the military advancements the Yemenis possess. The Yemenis revolutionized the battlefield by utilizing enhanced weapons such as precision missiles and suicide drones, among others, that had only been available to the richest nations. 

The second challenge encompasses the vulnerability of Western nations that have perpetuated a war without calculating all they would lose. For example, Champion discusses the infrastructure of the United States and its offshore projects that could be shrunk in the face of a powerful foe. He proceeds to speculate how much the US per capita gross domestic product, which stands at over $76,000, could be hit, highlighting its fragility. 

The economic structure of the globe should be considered, according to Champion, who claims the disruptions in the maritime supply chain caused by Yemen’s Ansar Allah, which add up to 12% of the global shipping, essentially do not affect Yemen as much as they affect European importers. 

Moreover, the author depicts the discrepancies between the political ideology of the US and Yemen. If Yemen kills US troops that have been deployed to infiltrate and militarize the Red Sea and protect the interests of “Israel” by bombing the defensive force that is supporting Gaza through a US-funded Israeli genocide, then it would transpire as a political problem that backfires at Biden’s administration. On the other hand, when US troops kill Yemeni civilians in the US’ brutal attacks on residential Yemeni areas, then it only fuels Ansar Allah further, and more so the popular support it garners.

Champion then says the US must not escalate tensions against a clearly overpowered movement that regards it as an absolute evil and continues to recruit freedom fighters in the quest for liberation. 

Read more: Much of Yemeni offensive capability is intact after US-led strike: NYT

Yemen refutes the undersea cables matter once again

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On submarine telecommunication cables, the author classifies them as an extension of Western vulnerabilities in the region, that could be a target for the Yemenis. 

It is important to note that Ansar Allah has repeatedly declared its intention to preserve and protect the cables. Earlier in March, the Ministry of Transport and Maritime Affairs in Yemen reiterated that Sanaa “is keen on the security and safety of undersea cables in Yemeni waters, in accordance with international laws, treaties, and agreements.”

It pointed out that “the Republic of Yemen is also keen on the interests of the countries associated with the cables as obligated by laws, agreements, international treaties, and the common interests between Yemen and other states.”

This comes after Israeli newspaper Globes reported earlier that at least four underwater communication cables were damaged in the sea between Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Djibouti in East Africa, accusing the Yemeni Armed Forces of allegedly being behind the operation.

Sanaa rejected claims made by the United States and Britain regarding the cutting of undersea cables in the Red Sea and condemned the act of sabotage, describing it as “criminal”. The Yemeni government in Sanaa affirmed on Saturday that the US-UK aggressions against the country have disrupted the undersea cables, jeopardizing the security and safety of international communications. 

Read more: Yemen honored to fight for Gaza: Sayyed al-Houthi

The unstoppable Ansar Allah

Previously, a piece published on The Atlantic magazine’s news website suggested that Yemeni Ansar Allah leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi “may now be the most popular public figure in the Middle East.”

The piece pointed out that since the Yemeni Armed Forces began their operations in the Red Sea in November in support of the Palestinian people, Sayyed al-Houthi “has been treated like a latter-day Che Guevara, his portrait and speeches shared on social media across five continents.”

It emphasized that although it remains challenging to assess the consequences of the attacks, the Yemeni operations created a gap in the global economy.

The operations, according to the piece, turned the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement into “heroes for Arab and Muslim youths who embrace the Palestinian cause,” and even influenced Western progressives.

Elsewhere, the piece indicated that the US-British aggression did not deter the Yemeni Armed Forces, adding that “since staking claim to the Palestinian cause,” the Yemeni forces “have come to seem unstoppable.”

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War on Gaza

The counterrevolutionary nature of liberal feminist support for Gaza

 March 10, 2024

Source: Al Mayadeen English

This article is a historical analysis of liberalism, how it is imperial by nature, with a focal lens on the counterrevolutionary nature of feminist movements that do not show support for Gaza.

The struggle of the Palestinian revolutionary versus the Western feminist (Al Mayadeen English/Executed by: A. Makki, Zeinab El-Hajj)

By Tala Alayli

In Malcolm X’s analysis of white liberals, he explained that the liberal can only be distinguished from the conservative by his deceit, veiled as support to the oppressed that would later exploit his vulnerability and suffering in the power play of political gain. The liberal’s solidarity, hence, is but a ploy to gain the favor of the oppressed, exploit his struggle, and then throw him back into the ditch he promised to pull him out of. 

In this case, liberal feminism can also be considered as a branch of what Malcolm X highlighted, specifically in the case of Gaza and the events that unfolded since October 7, 2023. 

Liberal feminism, by definition, focuses on achieving gender equality through political and legal reform within the framework of liberal democracy and is informed by a human rights perspective. 

However, the paradigm encompasses two major gaps: The essence of liberal democracy, and the flawed human rights perspective. As both stem from a capitalist, white supremacist, exploitative foundation, they cannot be considered to build equality. This is also because essentially, when we refer to liberalism, we refer to what Malcolm X laid: The flawed, traitorous nature of liberal solidarity that ultimately always goes back to its oppressive roots.

This is what we see when liberal Westerners use the Palestinian flag to show solidarity with Gaza but demonize its Resistance by accusing them of the recurrently refuted accusation of rape in the demonstration of what they consider to be intersectional feminist defense.

Since the New York Times, a pro-“Israel” news outlet, published the narrative that Hamas fighters sexually assaulted female Israeli captives, “pro-Palestinian” Western protesters decided to showcase their activism and solidarity by condemning the Israeli military offensive in Gaza, but by simultaneously, even more vigorously, condemning what they claim Hamas did.

Before we discuss what their activism entails, two matters must be dissected: Why the NYT’s narrative is false, and why the West cannot seem to let it go.

The NYT: DEBUNKED

The NYT has always been biased toward “Israel”, whether by the diluted language it uses when describing the crimes the occupation has committed in Gaza, or its affiliations with pro-Israeli lobbyists, through its connections to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), and its employment of staffers that have direct connections with IOF soldiers.

To clarify, the NYT’s executive editor, Joe Kahn, happens to be the son of a CAMERA board member, a committee that preserves “Israel’s” image in the media. CAMERA has on several occasions forced the NYT, among other media outlets, to change its wording when it appeared to be neutral at most, to the Palestinian cause. 

But I am willing to give the NYT the benefit of the doubt and consider that its editorial board does not interfere with running stories written by other authors that happen to be less biased toward “Israel”. This leaves two other major conflicts of interest. 

First, a report by the Intercept revealed that a few of the NYT’s editors get their stories from IOF soldiers who had volunteered with the Israeli military. This not only diminishes the integrity of a running story but tells it from an entirely one-sided lens that does not include all the facts, and projects biased Israeli propaganda onto a story that millions could read. 

Second, concerning the NYT’s story of Hamas fighters sexually exploiting Israeli captives, the story was not only withdrawn by the news outlet but refuted by internal staff and the families of the captives who had been a part of the story. 

When editors in the NYT itself express frustration when a misleading story gets published and their workplace gets disparaged, that becomes a clear indication that said news outlet understood the story needed more research but published it regardless. The reason as to why becomes clear: demonize Hamas in any way possible to justify what “Israel” does next. 

Read more: Israeli forces rape women in Gaza, execute others, UN ‘appalled’

Moreover, multiple accounts ascertained that the running story carried several gaps. The Israeli family involved in a key case mentioned in the NYT report has disavowed the published story, asserting that reporters manipulated their statements, Press TV reported, citing Israeli media. 

Adam Sella and Anat Schwartz, who co-authored the false article alongside Jeffrey Gettleman, have been called out for their credibility and their attempt to promote a fabricated narrative that the NYT proudly endorsed. 

Anat herself cannot be considered a reliable source of information, specifically when running a leading story for one of the biggest news media outlets. However, it does not come as a surprise. 

Schwartz formerly served in the Israeli occupation forces and actively worked with Israeli military intelligence. She was also the main focus of several online scandals that exposed her fascist extremism. 

Schwartz explicitly liked a post on X that says Zionists actively and deliberately run the narrative equating Hamas to ISIS. It is not a reality, but a charade that Zionist lobbyists have desperately tried to promote to conceal the Israeli occupation’s crimes in Gaza since October 7. 

In another incident, she publicly expressed how her fabrications “are important for Hasbara” and the promotion of Israeli and anti-Palestinian propaganda, something the Israeli newspaper Ynet urged the NYT to conceal. 

It was also revealed how after the sexual abuse report was vehemently refuted, Adam Sella, who just graduated and garners zero reporting experience, was given another chance to push the narrative, this time using ZAKA. 

ZAKA is an Israeli rescue group that submitted a report to the UN regarding the false rape accusations from October 7. It was then revealed that ZAKA’s founder himself, Meshi-Zahav, was convicted of rape and of exploiting his power to sexually assault young girls. 

Adam Sella cognitively utilized a renowned rape-infested organization to accuse Hamas of raping Israeli female captives, and tried to hide it by using an alias for ZAKA, the “Rape Crisis Group”.

Israeli media also revealed that police could not find any evidence that proved captives were sexually assaulted, leading readers to an endless sea of possibilities as to why the narrative is still being circulated.

But the reason why it gained so much momentum is the trend of championing women in sexual assault cases to an extreme that dismisses all other factors, such as its viability. 

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The West has adopted sexual harassment issues as a personal burden they have suffered from, but also wish to rid women internationally of, whether the case is credible or not. In this case, we see white women calling for the protection of other white women, when Palestinians are being quite literally shredded into clumps. 

But they cannot seem to detach themselves from the fact that Hamas never sexually exploited Israeli captives, and that is because the magnitude of Israeli brutality must be justified by the occupation’s benefactors. So, when all else fails, they go back to the one flawed argument that guarantees mass condemnation of Hamas, and mass support for “Israel’s” warmongering. 

This brings me to my second headline, the examination of the phenomenon of neglecting literary fallacies and facts despite knowledge of them.

Read more: Food blogger, Israeli film director scripted Hamas rape story for NYT

Lessons in Civilization 

The main thing to examine is the racial prejudice the West has against Palestinians and how it affects their understanding of the Resistance’s conduct.

The West is still engulfed in ideological white supremacy, and thereby looks at the third world with an inferior eye and a patronizing attitude, solely because their societies cannot understand the struggle we have seen since the colonial and post-colonial ages. 

Over the past 20 years alone, Gaza has been a victim of war seven times. The West, however, saw zero wars on their lands. So, a discrepancy is born when Western societies fail to understand what drives the Palestinians so passionately into resisting occupation perpetrated by a racial supremacist entity, and its white supremacist benefactors. This is because there is no tangible experience that the West has collectively touched that drives them into taking back what is theirs.

Some argue that the West itself is also built on theft from indigenous communities, so even if the basis of the struggle is a concept it is familiar with, it has been the aggressor for the last two centuries, which is why it sees so much of their reflection in “Israel”.

The extent of fraternization with the Zionist entity is also another facet of Western-Israeli solidarity. When “Israel” was created as a vassal entity, it was made for the West; this includes systems of cooperation between the Israeli settler society and the Western one. 

“Israel” depends on the US and the West for survival, reproduction, and rebranding. Incorporating Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory, they are classified as the core, while “Israel” is a periphery state. This means that a relation of dependency has been birthed. “Israel” provides resources it has usurped to the core, while the core ensures its survival. The development of “Israel” however, very clearly, established it as a settler colonial entity. “Israel” turned into a core in its region and treated its surroundings as its peripheries and semi-peripheries. Its settler colonial influence itself is derived from its relative core, and just as its predecessors’ philosophies and racial classifications transcended into material genocides, it attempts to erase indegenous societies to host settler societies from around the world. This is further proven by Joe Biden’s infamous “If Israel did not exist, we would have to create an Israel”. 

In this sphere, we could also examine Antonio Gramsci’s relation of dependency and the neo-Gramscian concept of hegemony. 

“Israel” has consented to be dependent on the US and American hegemony because this necessitates its survival, which allowed the US to extend its capitalistic notions onto this settler society. And since the US controls and influences all notions that reproduce capitalism, such as international law, “Israel” has been evidently exempt from prosecution. In this case, we regard the dependent relationship between “Israel” and the US as consensual, but the one between them and Palestine as coercive. Military force now transpires to force Palestine into submitting to this hegemony, which in turn creates a stereotypical consensus that Palestinian society, much like other societies that have rejected US hegemony, is painted as violent and terroristic, which reinforces the systematic racism the West builds its ideology on. 

The Western feminist has also ridden the bandwagon and forgone its intersectional component that would regard all societies as equal instead of recognizing violence when it is allegedly committed against the same society that has consented to be dependent on the core. 

When the Resistance defends its lands and people against the West’s colonial baby, it is regarded as violent. When Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, it was regarded as violent because the West saw it as a phenomenon that was born from a vacuum. 

However, today, on the 155th day of the genocide in Gaza, the entire world recognizes “Israel’s” viciousness and disproportionate response to Al-Aqsa Flood. Over 30,000 martyrs later, the West can no longer ignore the mass crimes its closest ally has committed in a small enclave. But they defend these crimes either way. 

The reason, I found to be in Rudyard Kipling’s pro-imperialism poem titled “The White Man’s Burden”. 

Take up the White Man’s Burden

The savage wars of peace

Fill full the mouth of famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought

Watch Sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hopes to nought

Kipling paints a dichotomy in the above stanza, one that shows the paradox of how a destructive, murderous war is meant to bring peace, but ultimately fails because those who are being fought are lazy and foolish, which fails the Empire’s imperial plan. 

This is how the West perceives the Middle East. Since October 7, what the West has said about Arab people and governments is that they are indolent and have let Palestine down. This holds a certain truth, but it also shows how the West thinks it is entitled to step up and “bring peace” to a country it has no ties to but the resources it would later steal. 

So, when we compare this analysis to liberal feminist movements that criminalize Hamas, movements that give the Resistance the green light to resist, but in mechanisms that the West could approve of, we can recognize the entitlement and superiority that these societies think they possess over the brave and highly moral Resistance. We see notions that are so offensively and inherently racist, the notion that says Middle Eastern societies, and the Resistance in this case, need to take lessons in civilization from a highly self-regarded Western ethical institution, that authorizes the ethnic cleansing of people around the world, but draws the line at a fully acknowledged fake story used to further their perspective of third world people. 

In this case [and all cases], liberalism equals imperialism, strongly and transparently, and it uses feminism to achieve its goal: Always regard the liberal West as a high standard of ethics and mold nations, societies, and even Resistance movements, into what it essentially wants: A conditioned force that only acts by the rules of the major aggressor. But it fails every time. 

So, when feminists take to the streets and tell the Resistance it should do its job in a way that is considered acceptable to the West, what it is doing in fact, is neglecting the anti-colonial essence of feminism, embracing imperial liberalism, and imposing it on the same movement that fights it, ideologically and militarily, thereby rendering all their attempts of extending support counterrevolutionary. 

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War on Gaza

Gaza: Genocide by Starving

MARCH 7, 2024JAIME C.

Global Research, March 07, 2024

By Jamal Kanj

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***

Imagine you are at home, with your wife and children. It’s dinner time before you put your three children to sleep. The room is cold, the propane cooking cylinder empty, no food, no electricity, or drinking water.

Your youngest child, Manar, cries, “I’m hungry. We haven’t had food for the last four days.” She rubs her dry bluish hands together, “Uhf-uh-ih-ih-uhhf, … I’m cold.” The words escape her chattering teeth.

You, let’s say your name is Nader, look at Manar’s feeble body, her pale skin has lost color. The once bouncy curly black hair had tangled and knotted like a cluttered eagle nest, unwashed for more than a month.

Ahmad asks his wife, “Noora, did you search the cabinets and closets for the dry food?”

Noora took a deep breath, “More than ten times, our kitchen is as empty as our stomachs.” She looked at the cold floor in despair, her face twisted into a sorrowful mask.

“Press this against Manar’s stomach,” he said in a low voice and handed Noora a bag full of sand. “It’ll help her sleep, again.”

It wasn’t the first night they put their children to sleep with a sack of sand on their stomach. This has become a common method for Gazans to suppress hunger. It was after midnight when Manar stopped crying, only then Nader and Noora had a chance to close their eyes, not knowing how more miserable the next day would be.

Unsure of the time, Nader jumps from the floor mattress to a strong pounding at the door. Loud pandemonium and commotion outside, he looks at his watch, 3:45 am. His first thought, the Israeli military ordering residents to vacate the building before blowing it up, as they had done dynamiting blocks of buildings in his neighborhood a week earlier. Noora and the children awake. Manar crawls to the corner with her siblings, wraps herself around her mother.

Nader leaped to the door to find his neighbor brother, Ali, on the other side panting for air.

“Come Nader … come, let’s go.” He stopped to catch a breath after running up the stairs. “Flour trucks.” His chest ballooned and deflated several times, “trucks arriving at the Nabulsi roundabout.” Ali moved sideways to make way for neighbors clumping down the stairs.

The children’s faces lit up. Their eyes like laser light, at Nader, wide open, waiting for his response.

“There were Israeli tanks at the roundabout. They ordered me home yesterday and didn’t allow me to bring water,” Nader said.

“The UN is distributing the flour. The Israelis allowed the trucks in.” Ali looked down the stairs, “Let’s go before it’s too late.” He urged Nader.

Nader turns his head toward his children, Manar’s laser focused eyes turn into a vacant stare, open mouth. He clenched his teeth, pulled the winter coat from the hook, closed the door behind and followed his older brother Ali, down to the street.

The above is not a work of imagination, but a reality of life endured by thousands of individuals in Gaza for more than 150 days. It is exactly what happened in the Flour Massacre on February 29 to thousands of starving fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters in north Gaza. Where Israel used aid trucks to lure, murder and injure almost 900 hungry civilians. The blood of the starving, young and old, man and woman, drenched the flour sacks meant to feed hungry children.

Israel’s Gaza Solution: Let Palestinians Die Before the World. Bombing Hospitals and UN Institutions. Nobody Will Stop Israel

In its efforts to render life in Gaza uninhabitable, Israel has not only targeted essential infrastructures such as hospitals, universities, water treatment plants, and roads but has also directed attacks towards civilian police. This deliberate targeting of police aimed to exacerbate the suffering and provoke a collapse of law and order. Despite warnings from the U.S. against targeting civilian police who maintained public safety and managed the orderly distribution of food, Israel dismissed such concerns, seeking to create lawlessness and chaotic conditions to worsen starvation and justify its actions as in the case of the Flour Massacre.

In covering the story, the Gaza absent Western media became willing outlets to market Israel disinformation cloaked in euphemisms to obscure the grim reality on the ground. Outlets like CNN along with other print media and the BBC for example referred to the death of 112 and the injuring of 760 hungry human beings as “Gaza food aid carnage” or “a chaotic encounter with Israeli troops,” blaming the death on stampedes and truck drivers. They then broadcasted, unquestionably, Israeli-manipulated videos showing the product of the Israeli designed chaos and claiming the hungry crowd posed a threat to its soldiers.

This wasn’t different from an earlier misinformation propagated by CNN Wolf Blitzer, when hosting Mark Regev, the Israeli version of the German Joseph Goebbels, in his show, The Situation Room, on November 15, 2023 where he started the show by saying “Happening now, the Israeli military says it uncovered Hamas weapons and a command center inside Gaza’s largest hospital.” Needless to say, it was all false. In spite of Regev’s abject disregard to basic truth, the Israeli Goebbels was brought again to CNN this week to market the flour truck massacre spinning lies, unchallenged, and claiming no Israeli involvement in the gunfire and blaming the shooting on “Palestinian armed groups.”

Unarguably, CNN, much like most of the American and European news outlets, have become a platform for disinformation with Israeli embedded hosts such as Blitzer who honed his journalistic prowess as a pro-Israel propogandist working for America Israel Public Affairs Committee, serving as an editor for its Near East Report in the mid 1970s.

It wasn’t until Al Jazeera aired a video showing the “chaotic” scene amidst heavy gunfire around the food truck, along with footage revealing bullet injuries in the upper bodies of victims, when some U.S. outlets, such as  the New York Times, who espouses a faux professionalism, couldn’t continue ignoring the flagrant Israeli lies. The paper revisited the Israeli drone video that was made available to the compliant U.S. media outlets. After careful review the newspaper concluded that the footage had been altered with “multiple clips spliced together.” The edits conveniently erased the events just before the crowd dispersed in all directions, evading bullets, scrambling over trucks, seeking cover behind vehicles and structures, and falling to the ground from direct gunshot wounds. 

It is important to point out, the targeting of aid trucks at the Nabulsi roundabout is neither the first nor the last of Israeli attempts to obstruct the delivery of food aid in Gaza. Approximately three weeks prior, on February 6, Israel fired upon a crowd gathering at the Kuwaiti roundabout, while naval gunboats targeted UNRWA humanitarian food trucks. More recently, or three days following the Flour Massacre, on March 3rd, Israel once again opened fire on a hungry crowd awaiting food trucks at the Kuwaiti roundabout, resulting in the deaths and injuries of several civilians.

The submissive prostration of Western media, providing unchallenged platforms to Israeli PR spokespersons, is unprecedented in the so called “free world.” By agreeing to Israeli directives restricting media access into Gaza, Western mainstream media has no presence to report from the theater. Gone AWOL, the media has been transformed into an active participant in whitewashing Israeli genocide where the Gaza coverage has been regulated, directly and indirectly, by an Israeli hasbara manifested by the managed evidence and narrative of the Flour Massacre. Or to paraphrase the original Goebbels, Western mainstream media has become a “keyboard on which Israel plays.”

In fact, Western, and particularly American genuflection to Israel extends beyond the media. Case in point, almost two weeks ago, the White House National Security Communications Advisor, John Kirby, disparaged his own U.S. army, praising the Israeli forces for taking actions to protect civilians, stating that he was “not sure our own (American) military would take” similar actions.

When asked about the murdering of the hungry civilians in Gaza, Kirby’s boss, Joe Biden pled ignorance stating “There’s two competing versions of what happened. I don’t have an answer yet.” 

In avoiding answering the question, the U.S. president accorded equal credence to the Israeli disinformation machine. In keeping up with his standing, Biden is consistent in his anti-Palestinian bias hyperbolizing Israeli victimhood, while downplaying Israeli crimes against Palestinians under the pretext of not having enough information.

This week and after five months of pleading for Israel to allow more aid trucks into Gaza, Biden joined other inept Arab dictators in an inconsequential gesture dropping 38,000 meals to 2,4 million in Gaza. A stunt by the incompetent leaders which is aimed more at mollifying international outrage against Israel than a genuine desire to alleviate the mounting starvation levels in Gaza.

Image: Gaza airdrops (Source)

The made for TV theatrical air drop of mere 38,000 meals was like a grain of sand on the beach of Gaza. The parachuted meals were equivalent to providing a minuscule 0.005 of the daily meal for every Gazans, or the equivalent of offering 5 loaves of bread per 1000 individuals. This is a farce and rings hollow from an Administration that plans to send Israel almost $15 billion, in addition to the weapons and political cover that empower Israel to carry out the very siege the air drops purportedly intend to mitigate. The starvation in Gaza is not due to a drought or a natural disaster, but an Israeli made catastrophe enabled by Biden, Western governments, and blessed by Arab dictators.

As you read this, remember Nader, who joined his brother Ali to feed his hungry child, Manar. He would have been most likely one of those killed or injured in the February 29, Flour Massacre. His children, if alive, are still hungry and cold at home, watching through a broken window (U.S.) aid parcels parachuting from the skies alongside the roar of an American-made jet delivering 2000-pound bombs over their heads. 

Manar, if she wasn’t among the more than 15 children who tragically perished this week from malnutrition and dehydration, will always recall how the Israeli-made starvation drove her father to death.

*

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Jamal Kanj is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries, A version of article is published on Al Mayadeen TV.

Featured image: Palestinian children try to eat from a single bowl inside the tent as Palestinians, trying to live in makeshift tents they set up, are viewed in Rafah, Gaza on February 14, 2024 [Abed Zagout – Anadolu Agency]

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Jamal Kanj, Global Research, 2024

https://www.globalresearch.ca/gaza-genocide-starving/5851485

Published by Jaime C.

Uncovering the mainstream media lies View all posts by Jaime C.

Full spectrum warfare: Israel’s weaponization of words against Palestine

MAR 7, 2024

Source

Photo Credit: The Cradle

Although winning the social media information battle since 7 October, Palestinians and their supporters must work to gut the persistent language parameters that Israel has long cultivated to establish itself as victim, terrorized, and righteous.

Ali Choukeir

He mobilized English language and sent it to the field.

So declared British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax about British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s speech in the House of Commons at the time, after he managed to convince his Conservative Party opposition to enter the war against Hitler.

In a multipolar world where great powers are vying to influence global public opinion, language is paramount. “Words, after all, are the building blocks of our psychology“and shape our perception of good and evil, right and wrong. 

The information warfare at play, for decades dominated by the western axis and its vast, global media reach, seeks to shape our opinions of the geopolitical chess board. It is a fight that became visible to all in the battlefields of Syria, then intensified over Ukraine, and is now collapsing over Israel’s stunningly brutal military assault on Gaza and its 2.4 million civilians.

Israel has the right to defend itself.

This ubiquitous phrase used by Israel during its 75+ years of oppression and occupation of Palestine often serves as a thinly veiled justification for its indefensible actions. This shield against accountability for human rights abuses has not only been wielded by the Israeli government but has also found resonance among western leaders.

This rhetoric gained renewed traction following the Hamas-led resistance operation, Al-Aqsa Flood, on 7 October 2023. In its immediate aftermath, US President Joe Biden promised to ensure that Israel has “what it needs to defend itself,” declaring from his highly visible White House pulpit that he has assured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop.”

Similar sentiments were parroted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after 7 October, who posted on X that Israel has “an absolute right” to defend itself, followed by a spate of EU leaders clambering to assure “their support for Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with humanitarian and international law.”

During his visit to the occupation state in November, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken not only reiterated Washington’s support for “Israel’s right to self-defense” but went as far as to say, “It is obligated to do so.”

The right to commit genocide 

This assertion of the “right to defend itself” serves as a key component of the linguistic and conceptual arsenal employed by the US-backed Israeli government within occupied Palestine and the broader West Asian region.

In a world where narratives vie for dominance in shaping public opinion, the significance of terminology cannot be overstated. Israel has adeptly utilized linguistic nuances and strategic ambiguity to advance its narrative on the Palestinian issue, whether through historical revisionism, past conflicts, or contemporary events like the Al-Aqsa Flood.

The Cradle columnist Sharmine Narwani wrote about this in 2012, emphasizing the significance of “public diplomacy” as a crucial tool in geopolitics. “Anything that invokes the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and the myths about historic Jewish rights to the land bequeathed to them by the Almighty” all serve to preserve Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. 

However, such narratives obscure the reality of the situation: a powerful occupying force supported by a superpower pitted against an indigenous population without a conventional army to defend them. 

A war of words

Gustave Le Bon, the founder of mass psychology, begins in his book The Psychology of the Masses, what he calls “images, words and phrases” as one of the direct factors that contribute to the formation of the opinions of the masses: 

The masses fascinate their imagination and are aroused by the intelligent and correct use of appropriate words and phrases, and if we use them artistically and tactfully, then they can possess secret power. It evokes in the soul of many masses the most powerful hurricane, but it also knows how to calm them. Words whose meanings are difficult to determine precisely are the ones that sometimes have the greatest ability to influence and act.

Following the 2008 Israeli offensive on Gaza, Republican pollster and political strategist Dr Frank Luntz authored a study titled “The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary,” commissioned by a group called The Israel Project for use by those “who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel.”

In the second chapter, titled “Glossary of Words That Work,” Luntz presents “For the first time in our communication effort … an A–Z glossary of specific words, phrases, and concepts that should form the core of any pro-Israeli communication effort.” The following are just a few examples from his glossary of terms:

Humanize Rockets: Paint a vivid picture of what life is like in Israeli communities that are vulnerable to attack. Yes, cite the number of rocket attacks that have occurred. But immediately follow that up with what it is like to make the nightly trek to the bomb shelter.

‘Peace before political boundaries’: This is the best phrase for talking about why a two-state solution isn’t realistic right now. First the rockets and the war need to stop. Then both peoples can talk about political boundaries.

‘The RIGHT to’: This is a stronger phrase than ‘deserves.’ Use the phrase frequently, including: the rights that both Israelis and Arabs enjoy in Israel, the right to peace that Israelis and Palestinians are entitled to, and Israel’s right to defend its civilians against rocket attacks.

Narrative manipulation and linguistic tactics

Understanding the historical efforts to control the narrative surrounding the ‘Arab–Israeli conflict’ begins with the absence of a clear definition or identification of its parties. This ambiguity allows for manipulation and flexibility in defining the issue. Consequently, a selection of vocabulary and terms has been identified that shapes the discourse surrounding the Palestinian cause.

Major international media outlets and political leaders have progressively framed the resistance against the occupation from its historical portrayal as an Arab–Israeli conflict to a Palestinian–Israeli one, then further narrowing it to a confrontation between Hamas/Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Israel. The western press and major media outlets also favor the usage of terms like “clash” rather than “Israeli aggression” and seek to frame the murder of Palestinians as people who “died” rather than “killed” by Israel.

This reductionist approach diminishes the complexity of the conflict and emphasizes Israel’s role while minimizing the opposing side’s agency. Additionally, overused terminology such as “conflict” replaces more nuanced terms, further simplifying the narrative.

In line with Israel’s perpetual portrayal of itself as a victim, it garners sympathy by weaponizing the Holocaust and gains support globally by positioning itself as such and asserting its “legitimate right to self-defense.” 

Israel and the US have also conflated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, equating criticism of its policies with bigotry against Jews. This conflation has led to accusations of anti-Semitism against individuals who critique Israel, such as university presidents, perpetuating a narrative that stifles intellectual dissent.

Israeli media employs “harrowing” terms like “neutralization” to describe the killing of resistance fighters in Gaza and the West Bank, employing language that minimizes the emotional impact on Palestinians and presents a sanitized version of events while also dehumanizing them. 

Writing and fighting back 

It is crucial to recognize that the lexicon surrounding the Palestinian issue and the wider resistance in the West Asian region against Israel plays a significant role in shaping narratives and collective consciousness. This linguistic battleground, often overlooked, is integral to understanding the current war’s dynamics and the framing of events.

For instance, in the aftermath of Al-Aqsa Flood, Israel strategically utilized its Hasbara apparatus to propagate a specific narrative. This narrative included the assertion of Israel’s “right of self-defense,” which framed Israel as a victim justifying its actions. 

Additionally, Israel referred to individuals held by Hamas as “hostages” rather than “detainees” or “prisoners,” implying their potential use as human shields and justifying lethal responses. The forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza was labeled as “repositioning” or “transfer,” a euphemism aimed at downplaying the severity of the situation. 

While Israel initially referred to its military actions as “ground maneuvers” to mitigate media and legal ramifications, it later framed its indiscriminate aggression as a “war on terror” to garner international support. This framing aimed to portray Hamas as a terrorist entity akin to ISIS, appealing to western sentiments and seeking to eliminate the notion that there were innocents in Gaza.

As the Axis of Resistance has often repeated, this war is being fought on multiple fronts – not just in the physical realm but prominently in the online realm of propaganda. Redressing the imbalance of power in the information war, however, is no easy task. The battle of words and ideas is an essential one for Palestinian resistance movements and pro-Palestine voices to fight. The opportunity to completely flip the narrative – now that Israel has revealed Zionism’s ugliest face in Gaza – has fully arrived, and the myth of Israeli victimhood must be put to rest forever.

Full spectrum warfare: Israel’s weaponization of words against Palestine

MAR 7, 2024

Photo Credit: The Cradle

Ali Choukeir

He mobilized the English language and sent it to the field.

In a multipolar world where great powers are vying to influence global public opinion, language is paramount. “Words, after all, are the building blocks of our psychology“and shape our perception of good and evil, right and wrong. 

The information warfare at play, for decades dominated by the western axis and its vast, global media reach, seeks to shape our opinions of the geopolitical chess board. It is a fight that became visible to all in the battlefields of Syria, then intensified over Ukraine, and is now collapsing over Israel’s stunningly brutal military assault on Gaza and its 2.4 million civilians.

So declared British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax about British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s speech in the House of Commons at the time, after he managed to convince his Conservative Party opposition to enter the war against Hitler.

Israel has the right to defend itself.

This ubiquitous phrase used by Israel during its 75+ years of oppression and occupation of Palestine often serves as a thinly veiled justification for its indefensible actions. This shield against accountability for human rights abuses has not only been wielded by the Israeli government but has also found resonance among western leaders.

This rhetoric gained renewed traction following the Hamas-led resistance operation, Al-Aqsa Flood, on 7 October 2023. In its immediate aftermath, US President Joe Biden promised to ensure that Israel has “what it needs to defend itself,” declaring from his highly visible White House pulpit that he has assured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop.”

Similar sentiments were parroted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after 7 October, who posted on X that Israel has “an absolute right” to defend itself, followed by a spate of EU leaders clambering to assure “their support for Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with humanitarian and international law.”

During his visit to the occupation state in November, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken not only reiterated Washington’s support for “Israel’s right to self-defense” but went as far as to say, “It is obligated to do so.”

The right to commit genocide 

This assertion of the “right to defend itself” serves as a key component of the linguistic and conceptual arsenal employed by the US-backed Israeli government within occupied Palestine and the broader West Asian region.

In a world where narratives vie for dominance in shaping public opinion, the significance of terminology cannot be overstated. Israel has adeptly utilized linguistic nuances and strategic ambiguity to advance its narrative on the Palestinian issue, whether through historical revisionism, past conflicts, or contemporary events like the Al-Aqsa Flood.

The Cradle columnist Sharmine Narwani wrote about this in 2012, emphasizing the significance of “public diplomacy” as a crucial tool in geopolitics. “Anything that invokes the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and the myths about historic Jewish rights to the land bequeathed to them by the Almighty” all serve to preserve Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. 

However, such narratives obscure the reality of the situation: a powerful occupying force supported by a superpower pitted against an indigenous population without a conventional army to defend them. 

A war of words

Gustave Le Bon, the founder of mass psychology, begins in his book The Psychology of the Masses, what he calls “images, words and phrases” as one of the direct factors that contribute to the formation of the opinions of the masses: 

The masses fascinate their imagination and are aroused by the intelligent and correct use of appropriate words and phrases, and if we use them artistically and tactfully, then they can possess secret power. It evokes in the soul of many masses the most powerful hurricane, but it also knows how to calm them. Words whose meanings are difficult to determine precisely are the ones that sometimes have the greatest ability to influence and act.

Following the 2008 Israeli offensive on Gaza, Republican pollster and political strategist Dr Frank Luntz authored a study titled “The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary,” commissioned by a group called The Israel Project for use by those “who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel.”

In the second chapter, titled “Glossary of Words That Work,” Luntz presents “For the first time in our communication effort … an A–Z glossary of specific words, phrases, and concepts that should form the core of any pro-Israeli communication effort.” The following are just a few examples from his glossary of terms:

Humanize Rockets: Paint a vivid picture of what life is like in Israeli communities that are vulnerable to attack. Yes, cite the number of rocket attacks that have occurred. But immediately follow that up with what it is like to make the nightly trek to the bomb shelter.

‘Peace before political boundaries’: This is the best phrase for talking about why a two-state solution isn’t realistic right now. First the rockets and the war need to stop. Then both peoples can talk about political boundaries.

‘The RIGHT to’: This is a stronger phrase than ‘deserves.’ Use the phrase frequently, including: the rights that both Israelis and Arabs enjoy in Israel, the right to peace that Israelis and Palestinians are entitled to, and Israel’s right to defend its civilians against rocket attacks.

Narrative manipulation and linguistic tactics

Understanding the historical efforts to control the narrative surrounding the ‘Arab–Israeli conflict’ begins with the absence of a clear definition or identification of its parties. This ambiguity allows for manipulation and flexibility in defining the issue. Consequently, a selection of vocabulary and terms has been identified that shapes the discourse surrounding the Palestinian cause.

Major international media outlets and political leaders have progressively framed the resistance against the occupation from its historical portrayal as an Arab–Israeli conflict to a Palestinian–Israeli one, then further narrowing it to a confrontation between Hamas/Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Israel. The western press and major media outlets also favor the usage of terms like “clash” rather than “Israeli aggression” and seek to frame the murder of Palestinians as people who “died” rather than “killed” by Israel.

This reductionist approach diminishes the complexity of the conflict and emphasizes Israel’s role while minimizing the opposing side’s agency. Additionally, overused terminology such as “conflict” replaces more nuanced terms, further simplifying the narrative.

In line with Israel’s perpetual portrayal of itself as a victim, it garners sympathy by weaponizing the Holocaust and gains support globally by positioning itself as such and asserting its “legitimate right to self-defense.” 

Israel and the US have also conflated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, equating criticism of its policies with bigotry against Jews. This conflation has led to accusations of anti-Semitism against individuals who critique Israel, such as university presidents, perpetuating a narrative that stifles intellectual dissent.

Israeli media employs “harrowing” terms like “neutralization” to describe the killing of resistance fighters in Gaza and the West Bank, employing language that minimizes the emotional impact on Palestinians and presents a sanitized version of events while also dehumanizing them. 

Writing and fighting back 

It is crucial to recognize that the lexicon surrounding the Palestinian issue and the wider resistance in the West Asian region against Israel plays a significant role in shaping narratives and collective consciousness. This linguistic battleground, often overlooked, is integral to understanding the current war’s dynamics and the framing of events.

For instance, in the aftermath of Al-Aqsa Flood, Israel strategically utilized its Hasbara apparatus to propagate a specific narrative. This narrative included the assertion of Israel’s “right of self-defense,” which framed Israel as a victim justifying its actions. 

Additionally, Israel referred to individuals held by Hamas as “hostages” rather than “detainees” or “prisoners,” implying their potential use as human shields and justifying lethal responses. The forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza was labeled as “repositioning” or “transfer,” a euphemism aimed at downplaying the severity of the situation. 

While Israel initially referred to its military actions as “ground maneuvers” to mitigate media and legal ramifications, it later framed its indiscriminate aggression as a “war on terror” to garner international support. This framing aimed to portray Hamas as a terrorist entity akin to ISIS, appealing to western sentiments and seeking to eliminate the notion that there were innocents in Gaza.

As the Axis of Resistance has often repeated, this war is being fought on multiple fronts – not just in the physical realm but prominently in the online realm of propaganda. Redressing the imbalance of power in the information war, however, is no easy task. The battle of words and ideas is an essential one for Palestinian resistance movements and pro-Palestine voices to fight. The opportunity to completely flip the narrative – now that Israel has revealed Zionism’s ugliest face in Gaza – has fully arrived, and the myth of Israeli victimhood must be put to rest forever.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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Israeli-Saudi normalization in Checkmate, a realist analysis

23 Feb 2024

Source: Al Mayadeen English

There is a fundamental contradiction between the goals of KSA and “Israel” and the end that each of them seeks for this genocide despite their opposition to the aspirations of the Palestinian people (Illustrated by Mahdi Rteil to Al Mayadeen English)

By Ali Jezzini

A realist analysis attempting to shed light on the complications of Israeli-Saudi normalization in light of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and the discrepancies in the aims of each party.

The Israeli war on Gaza has entered its fourth month. The occupation regime faces an open case in the International Court of Justice for carrying out genocide on the one hand and is exposed to activism against the crimes it is committing by all humanitarian organizations around the world, as well as many countries. Despite all of this, and in contradiction to all logic, there is still strong talk about normalizing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the Israeli regime.

This may seem utterly illogical at first glance, given that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia markets itself as one of the most important Arab and Islamic powers, and thus positions itself as a defender of the interests of this group. How, then, does it extend its hand to those who not only commit these crimes against humanity but also those whose leaders make genocidal statements? This in addition to a clear and unequivocal rejection of the two-state solution that Saudi Arabia has set as a condition for normalizing relations makes the situation more bizarre.

Answering these questions requires an analysis of the geopolitical reality in the region, alongside a short historical overview, and a presentation of the interests and concerns of each party, as well as their political and security goals.

US hegemony and its goals in the war in Gaza

Despite the sharp transformations that have affected the international system in the recent period, which mainly affected the unilateral dominance of the United States after the Cold War, Washington still maintains the role of the primary hegemon who is trying to prevent the system from turning into fully multipolar.

US hegemony depends on a military power represented by the world’s first military budget, which is equivalent to about 40% of all global military spending, as well as a large number of military bases around the planet. In addition to military power, the United States has an unparalleled ability to influence the global economy due to countries using the US dollar as a trusted currency for exchange. US military power punishes countries that do not respect its hegemony, or in most cases use sanctions linked to its banking and monetary system.

As a hegemon, the United States works to prevent the formation of regional powers that oppose it, whether alliances or sovereign states. Here we turn to the series of alliances undertaken by the United States, which rely mainly on focal points around the planet to prevent powerful countries from challenging its hegemony. Former US State Secretary Mike Pompeo defines these entities or states as “beacons of democracy,” although they are more akin to land-based aircraft carriers. These entities are Taiwan, “Israel” and Ukraine.

The United States is using Taiwan, in addition to Japan and South Korea, mainly to prevent China from becoming an absolute regional hegemon in East Asia or as a method to contain its power projection. It is using Ukraine in Europe to prevent Russia from becoming a hegemon in Eastern Europe and to also prevent Germany from becoming a hegemon in Western Europe. On the other hand, “Israel” represents an exception to American policy. Aside from the ideological aspect, “Israel” plays the role of the region’s policeman par excellence for the United States either by destroying or deterring all countries with sovereign national projects. “Israel” here is the focus of the fight against the axis of resistance in West Asia, led by Iran, to prevent this axis from turning into a regional hegemon and anti-American force.

In light of this, any weakening of the Israelis, or threat to them, from a geopolitical standpoint poses a risk to the hegemony of the United States in one of the most important spots in the world from a geographical standpoint, as well as the one richest in fossil energy resources. In this context, the United States is more concerned about “Israel’s” security than “Israel” itself. But, as an absolute hegemon, it faces dilemmas that are radically different from those faced by “Israel”. Such discrepancy is what is putting the two parties on opposite sides with time, and this is what we will discuss in more detail in the section related to the Israelis of the article.

Balance of power in the Middle East

“Israel”, Saudi Arabia, and most of the Gulf states belong to the American axis in the West Asia region, and despite the Chinese breakthrough in economic investment, US-Western hegemony over these countries is still at its height. Because of Saudi Arabia’s self-proclaimed Islamic authority, it faces difficulty in normalizing its relations with the Israeli entity due to the so-called “Arab street’s” continued opposition to such a step, and the genocide in Gaza has contributed to reviving the Palestinian cause in an important part of this street.

From its inception, Saudi Arabia has primarily benefited from or fought national states in traditional centers of power, such as Nasser’s Egypt, or initially cooperated with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq before sacrificing him in the US-led coalition invasion in 1991. Finally, it financed the destruction of Syria and added fuel to the fire of the war that has been raging since 2011. As a non-traditional power with fewer population that only owns holy places and oil wealth, it benefits mainly from neutralizing the positions of traditional powers in the region, which has a larger population. Without absolute American protection for the Gulf states, and an Israeli military role in the subjugation process, Saudi Arabia’s role will be incomplete or unachievable.

Since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, Saudi Arabia has been hostile to it, not only because it was presenting an Islamic sovereign counterweight that was exclusive to Saudi Arabia in the previous stage, but because it threatens the existing dependency structure in the region as it is the main element in the axis of resistance.

Following Yemen entering the Resistance Axis, the war on Syria’s failure to change the regime, and the loss of Israeli deterrence on October 7, normalization and direct military cooperation became more necessary for the American Axis members to confront the dangers of the liberation process led by the Resistance Axis. “Israel”, which was supposed to be the leader of this axis militarily, technologically, and financially, is still reeling from the wounds of October 7. What makes matters worse nowadays is that the United States is facing a crisis in Ukraine, and it needs to move to confront China in East Asia as quickly as possible.

Why does Saudi Arabia act the way it does?

At a point before October 7, and according to press leaks, one of Saudi Arabia’s conditions for normalizing relations with “Israel” was its direct association with the United States through a defense treaty similar to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. This condition indicates the primacy of security for Saudi Arabia. The primacy of security has been greatly enhanced after the failure of the Saudi coalition to impose its will on Yemen, and Yemen has turned into an essential and effective pillar in the current war in support of Gaza.

Normalization in this context was a necessity for Gulf security, which since 1991 has been closely linked to the Western security concept through the stationing of more than 40,000 American soldiers in the region. Normalization, then, was not a transitional and pivotal point as former US President Trump tried to market, but merely a shift in the level of security and military relations that already existed, even if no direct diplomatic and trade relations existed.

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Both Saudi Arabia and the United States here are accelerating toward normalization  while the blood has not yet dried in Gaza, as each of them is aware of the problem that may be imposed by the shift of hegemonic focus from West Asia to East Asia. Normalization between Saudi Arabia and “Israel” here aims primarily to bridge any potential gap in military power to confront the axis of resistance in the future.

The problem here is that Saudi Arabia stipulated a two-state solution as the condition for the peace and normalization process. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken exposed the Saudis when he announced that a mere commitment to this solution by the Israelis is sufficient and not its immediate implementation. The Saudis certainly objected and denied the announcement, but based on the course of events, it would not be unlikely that they made such a pledge.

The two-state solution here is not presented by Saudi Arabia because it embraces the Palestinian issue nor that it is particularly fond of the Palestinian people and its ambitions, but in an attempt to bury the main point of conflict between the Arabs and the Zionists, in preparation for its leadership of this future Arab-Israeli alliance.

The two-state solution proposed by Saudi Arabia, despite its meager demands, and even though it is giving up most of historical Palestine, is rejected by the Israeli entity in all its sects, right, and left, above and below.

Saudi Arabia, then, faces a major dilemma. On the one hand, it sees normalization as a future security necessity, since there are no guarantees about the future of the region after the Arab uprisings in 2011 if they are to occur again in the context of the massacre taking place in Gaza. In other words, no one can guarantee that the normalization will not be rejected by the Arab street and lead to the situation exploding in the region if the Saudis are unable to obtain something that they can market as a solution to the Palestinian issue.

In conclusion, normalizing relations with the Zionists who insist on ethnic cleansing and the policy of apartheid and treating the Palestinians as if they were sub-humans may be a step that carries dangers to Saudi Arabia and its Axis that are greater than the danger of the Axis of resistance. Here, Saudi Arabia, led by Mohammed bin Salman, sees itself as being forced to bet on one of two losing horses.

An Israeli checkmate

The Zionist project, as the last settler colonial project, depends on many ideological foundations supported by material strength for survival. The Al-Aqsa flood operation on October 7 demonstrated the extent of the Israelis’ fateful dependence on American support, not only in terms of weapons, technology, and international diplomatic backing in the UNSC, but also through the presence of Direct military action for the first time, represented by sending two aircraft carriers and a nuclear submarine.

“Israel” in this context is a land-based aircraft carrier for the US hegemon in the region. On another note, “Israel” must show the Arabs surrounding it that it is omnipotent. Most of these Arabs have come under states ruled by elites who marketed their legitimacy through some sort of a liberal dream and the absurdity of resistance to the US. Therefore, these elites also derive their legitimacy from “Israel” itself, in one way or another, and from its chieftain, the United States. “Israel” must also convince the settlers to reside by planting the idea of its invincibility and its capability to deter everyone at the same time at all spectrums through disproportionate punishment.

Any shaking of these concepts exposes this Western fortress in West Asia to the dangers of collapse, disintegration, or rolling a downhill path. Internally, the combination of the extremism and racism of the Zionist doctrine and the settlers’ belief in “Israel’s” invincibility succeeded in greatly complicating the scene. Due to the continuous pivoting of Israeli politics towards the extreme right, it is natural that exaggeration in setting and inflating war goals is the daily bread of politicians. This means that achieving a total and comprehensive victory becomes not an option, but rather a necessity to preserve this mythical self-image that Israeli society has, or it will simply disintegrate and enter into an internal conflict that unleashes reverse migration.

As a result, most Israelis believe, according to opinion polls, that some sort of complete victory over the resistance in Palestine should be the goal, as crazy and unachievable as this goal is. Most Israelis believe that “voluntary migration” a.k.a ethnic cleansing is something that should be encouraged and carried out in Gaza, not to mention the genocidal statements made by Israeli officials, which alerted them to one of the most clear genocides in history, not only in action but in intent. Which is unambiguous.

In light of the above, the goals of Israeli politics and society here contradict those of Saudi Arabia. Here Israeli exceptionalism appears. There is no one like “Israel”. Normal countries win without having absurd conditions of their victory being the genocide of the other party. Racist colonial entities on the other hand need that.

Because of the high and unachievable conditions for victory, “Israel” has placed itself in a checkmate, either an internal conflict, or destruction that will have a disastrous impact not only on its international reputation and relations, but at the expense of sabotaging the path of normalization and its law, and even the risk of revolutions erupting in the Arab world, endangering the pro-US Saudi leadership. 

US-sponsored Israeli-KSA ties between a rock and a hard place 

Although Saudi Arabia and “Israel” largely agree on the goal of eliminating resistance in Gaza, they differ sharply in the way and outcome each side prefers for the war to lead to.

Given the primacy of the Chinese challenge to American hegemony, the United States wants, in any way, to freeze the current situation in West Asia and maintain its policeman there, i.e. Israel, as it pivots east. The failure to weaken Russia and push its political system to collapse has strengthened the United States’ desire to avoid a war that it sees as secondary in West Asia while China grows stronger.

There is no doubt that America wants to eliminate the resistance movements, thus a victory of the Israelis in Gaza is essential to the US more than “Israel” itself, but it fears that the genocide in Gaza will lead to the eruption of a war in the region led by the resistance axis on the one hand, and on the other hand, it fears a political collapse and revolutions in the fabric of its allied countries. Its allies in the region are mainly Jordan, Egypt, and then Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Therefore, the ideal outcome is a two-state solution, and an alliance of Arab-Israeli regimes to confront the axis of resistance while reducing the cost of US presence in the region.

The Saudi view here is very close to the American one, as it wants to end the resistance movements in the Arab world as a continuation of its victory over the national projects of the last century, but it fears that the shedding of Palestinian blood might push its current leadership of the Arab world, ensured by subjugating Egypt and destroying Iraq and Syria, to the abyss. Therefore, it prefers to end the Palestinian cause through a two-state solution, establish a Saudi-Israeli alliance with US support, and deter the Axis of resistance.

The Israelis, based on the above, are in a completely different place. They want to ethnically cleanse Gaza and eliminate the resistance, no matter how much it costs in human losses, and they do not intend to back down, even if it means dragging the United States into a regional war that is not one of its current priorities.

Indeed, the dog is following here and not the opposite. It is not that the Israelis are craving for a regional war for their own sake, but rather because they, as the last settler colonial entity and the last of the “exceptional peoples” in the international system, believe that they are entitled to what no one else is entitled to, to ensure the survival of their racist regime.

In light of the racist and superior nature of their regime, they are forced to show those whom they see and treat as sub-human who are the bosses here, otherwise, the social and political cohesion of the Israeli colonial entity will be in danger.

Conclusion

There is a fundamental contradiction between the goals of each party and the end that each of them seeks for this genocide despite their opposition to the aspirations of the Palestinian people. These differences appear incompatible, even if the interest is common, as any concession from any party here means that it exposes its other future ally to a future existential threat.

It is unlikely that the United States will be able to reconcile the two parties without one of them giving up what it declares to be its core interests and putting its fate in jeopardy. Another option would be that the already existing war expands and blows the chessboard and all the pieces away. What is certain is that the coming days will bring radical and pivotal changes to the nature of international and regional relations in West Asia, if they do not lead to the collapse of some states and regimes.

As Vladimir Lenin said: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen,” and it appears we are living such an era.

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The Resistance Has a Plan for Israel. But on the Other Side, Fantastical U.S. Stratagems Ensure a Cascading Failure

FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Source

Alastair CROOKE
Former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.

ALASTAIR CROOKE 

We have entered a period of breakdown and violence, as the forces pulling apart the old status quo cascade and mutually reinforce one another.

In a speech on Tuesday, Hizbullah leader Seyed Nasrallah said that the Party will continue the border offensive until at least the Gaza massacre stops. The war in Gaza however, is far from over. And Nasrallah warned that even were a ceasefire to be reached in Gaza, “should the enemy perform any action, we will return to operating according to the rules and formulas that existed before. The purpose of the resistance is to deter the enemy, and we will react accordingly”.

Israel’s Defence Secretary Gallant has underlined that contrary to international consensus expectations, he too expects the war in Lebanon to continue. Gallant said the military has stepped up its attacks against Hizbullah by one level out of ten:

“The Air Force planes flying currently in the skies of Lebanon have heavier bombs for more distant targets. Hizbullah went up half a step, whilst we, a full one … We can attack not only at 20 kilometres [from the border], but also at 50 kilometres, and in Beirut and anywhere else”.

It is not clear what ‘red line’ Hizbullah would have to cross for Israel to significantly escalate its response to much higher levels; Israeli leaders have suggested that an attack on a strategic site; or an attack leading to major civilian casualties; or a substantive barrage on Haifa might constitute the breaking point.

Nonetheless, with three military divisions rather than the usual one now deployed in the north of Israel, the IDF has more forces poised for action on the northern border than it has preparing for an incursion into Rafah – at this point. It is clear, as Chief of Staff Halevy has specified, that Israel is “preparing for war” against Hizbullah (more than preparing for Rafah).

Is the threat to Rafah a bluff to put pressure on Hamas to concede on the deal and hostages? One way or another, both Israel’s political and military chiefs are adamant: The IDF will incurse into Rafah – ‘at some point’.

The qualitatively different Hizbullah’s strike on Safed on Israel’s northern regional command HQ on Wednesday – which that resulted in 2 dead and 7 further casualties – is being treating in Israel as the gravest attack since the start of the war, with Ben Gvir calling it a “declaration of war”. Subsequent Israeli attacks killed 11 people, including six children, in a barrage of strikes on villages across southern Lebanon, in retribution for the Safed blitz – with the fierce exchange of fire still continuing.

The ‘Safed Strike’ deep into the Galilee very likely was intended to signal that Hizbullah is not about to capitulate to western demands that it provide Israel with a ceasefire that is intended to facilitate evacuated Israelis to return to their homes in the north. As Nasrallah confirmed in a scathing attack on those external (Western) mediators who serve only as Israel’s lawyers, and neglect to address the massacres in Gaza:

“It is easier to move the Litani River forward to the borders, than to push back Hezbollah fighters from the borders, to behind the Litani River … They want us to pay a price without Israel committing to a thing”.

In these circumstances, Nasrallah clarified that residents of northern Israel will not return to their homes – warning that even more Israelis risk being displaced:

“‘Israel’ must prepare shelters, basements, hotels and schools to house two million settlers who will be evacuated from northern Palestine, [were Israel to expand the war zone].”

Nasrallah outlined what is clearly the agreed Axis of resistance’s overarching strategic plan. (There has been a flurry of meetings between senior Axis principals over the last week, across the region, for which Nasrallah is speaking):

“We are committed to fighting Israel until it is off the map. A strong Israel is dangerous to Lebanon; but a deterred Israel, defeated and exhausted, is less of a danger to Lebanon”.

“The national interest of Lebanon, the Palestinians, and the Arab world is that Israel leaves this battle defeated: Therefore, we are committed to Israel’s defeat”.

Put bluntly, the Axis has its vision of the conflict’s outcome. And it is a “deterred, defeated and exhausted” Israeli State. By implication, it is an Israel that has relinquished the Zionist project – one that is reconciled to the notion of living as Jews between the River and the Sea – albeit with rights no different to others living there (i.e. Palestinians).

On the other side, the western strategic plan, as the Washington Post reports – which the U.S. and several Arab countries hope to present within a few weeks – is a long-term plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, including a “time frame” for the establishment of a provisional de-militarized Palestinian “state”:

“Imperatively, it begins with a hostage deal accompanied by a six-week cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. While it may be termed “cessation of hostilities” or an “extended humanitarian pause,” such a cease-fire will signal the de facto end of the war along the lines and scale that it has been fought since 7 Oct.”

The plan addresses “Post-war Gaza”, in terms already well-known. As senior Israeli commentator, Alon Pinkas, affirms:

“Parallel to the announcement U.S., Britain and possibly other countries will consider and eventually make a joint statement of intent by recognizing a provisional, demilitarized and future Palestinian state – without delineating or specifying its borders”.

“Such a recognition does not necessarily contradict Israel’s legitimate and reasonable demand to have overriding security control over the area west of the Jordan River in the foreseeable future … [it constitutes] a practical, timebound, irreversible path to a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace with Israel … whose recognition could also be submitted to the UN Security Council – as a binding resolution. Once the Arab countries sign off on such a framework, the U.S. believes that neither Russia nor China would veto it …

“Within the “regionalization” phase however, the Americans will craft a regional security cooperation mechanism. Some in Washington imagine a reconfigured region with a new “security architecture” as a harbinger to a gradual Mideast version of the European Union, with greater economic and infrastructure integration”.

Ah – the New Middle East again!!!

Even Alon Pinkas, an experienced former Israeli diplomat, concedes: “If the plan seems too fantastical to you: You’re not alone”.

The basic improbabilities to this plan simply are disregarded. Firstly, Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich responded to the reported American-Arab plan, saying: “there’s a joint American, British and Arab effort to establish a terrorist state” next to Israel. Second, (as Smotrich further notes): “They see the polls. They see how the absolute majority of Israelis oppose this idea [of a Palestinian State]”; and thirdly, some 700,000 settlers were installed in the West Bank – precisely to block any Palestinian State.

Is the U.S. really going to impose this onto a hostile Israel? How?

And, from the Resistance perspective, ‘a provisional, demilitarized and future Palestinian ‘state’, without delineated or specified borders, is not a state. It is truly a Bantustan.

The reality is that when a Palestinian State might have been a real prospect (two decades ago), the international community turned a willing ‘blind eye’ – for decades – to Israel’s successful and complete sabotage of the project. Today, circumstances are much changed: Israel has moved far to the Right and is in the grip of an eschatological passion to establish Israel on the entire “Land of Israel”.

The U.S. and Europe have only themselves to blame for the dilemma in which they now find themselves. And a policy stance – such as outlined by Biden – plainly said is doing untold strategic damage to the U.S. and its compliant European allies.

Even on the Lebanon track, let us be plain too, Israel’s demands from Lebanon go far beyond a mutual ceasefire. There is no guarantee, even should a ceasefire be reached in Gaza as part of a comprehensive hostage/end-of-war deal, that Nasrallah will agree to withdraw all his forces from the border with Israel, or conversely, that Israel will comply with its commitments.

And with the U.S. defining its Palestinian ‘solution’ as an improbable, provisional, disarmed and wholly impotent Palestinian entity, nestled within a fully militarised Israel, exercising ‘full security overlordship from the River to the Sea’, it would not be surprising were Hizbullah rather, to opt to pursue the Axis’ plan of a defeated, exhausted post-Zionism.

Israeli commentator, Zvi Bar’el, writes:

“Even were the American assumptions to become a working plan, it is still unclear what policy Israel will adopt on Lebanon. Even pushing Hezbollah back so that Israeli communities are no longer within the range of its anti-tank missiles does not remove the threat of tens of thousands of medium and long-range missiles. The deterrence equation between Israel and Hezbollah will continue to determine [the true] reality along the border”.

[The current U.S. working assumption, as presented by the Administration’s special envoy Amos Hochstein in his previous visits to Lebanon], “is that a border demarcation agreement between Israel and Lebanon will result in final and full recognition of the international border and thus deny Hezbollah the formal basis for justifying its continued fight against Israel to liberate occupied Lebanese territories. At the same time, it allows the Lebanese government to order its army to deploy its forces along the border in order to assert its sovereignty over its entire territory and demand that Hezbollah forces pull back from the border”.

This is just more wishful, ‘fantastical’ thinking. And it contains a flaw: Hochstein’s work plan does not include an agreement on the Sheba’a Farms, but only on the ‘Blue Line’ – the border agreed in 2000, but which is not recognized by Lebanon as an international border. If the issue of the Sheba’a Farms is not settled, Hezbollah will not be bound by a limited demarcation accord that omits the Sheba’a area.

Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October, every stratagem and protocol, dug from some musty West Wing cupboard, and upon which the U.S. leant, has failed. What was supposed to be a limited and compartmentalized military operation in Gaza by the IDF has turned into a regional firestorm. Aircraft carriers sent to deter other actors from getting involved failed with the Houthis; U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria became targets, with attacks on U.S. bases continuing, despite U.S. attempts at delivering deterrent ‘punches’.

Quite clearly, Netanyahu is ignoring Biden, and ‘defying the world’ – as this week’s headlines attest:

“Defying Biden, Netanyahu Doubles Down on Plans to Fight in Rafah” (Wall Street Journal)

“As Israel corners Rafah, Netanyahu defies the world” (Washington Post)

“U.S. won’t punish Israel for Rafah op that doesn’t protect civilians” (Politico)

“Egypt Builds Walled Enclosure on Border as Israeli Offensive Looms: Authorities are surrounding an area in the desert with concrete walls as a contingency for possible influx of Palestinian refugees” (Wall Street Journal).

Netanyahu has vowed to forge ahead, saying on Wednesday that Israel would mount a “powerful” operation in the city of Rafah, once residents have been “evacuated”. Israelis explicitly say the White House is not opposed to the Rafah blitz, provided Palestinians are given the opportunity to “evacuate” (to where, is left unsaid). (Meanwhile, Egypt is building a refugee camp inside its border, surrounded by concrete walls …).

At this point, all of the U.S.’ various problems – the political polarization, widening war, funding for wars, the alienation amongst the swing-state Arab constituencies and Biden’s sinking ratings – are beginning to feed into, and reinforce, each other. What began as a foreign-policy issue – Israel defeating Hamas – has become a significant domestic crisis. Dissatisfaction within the U.S. at Israel’s conduct of the war is fuelling the growth of significant protest movements. Who can truly believe that yet another trip by Blinken to the region will solve anything at this point, asks Malcom Kyeyune?

It is hard to say where things in the region will stand, a couple of months from now. We have entered a period of breakdown and violence, as the forces pulling apart the old status quo cascade and mutually reinforce one another.

Axis of Resistance: from Donbass to Gaza

FEB 16, 2024

Pepe Escobar

The resistance in Donbas and Gaza share an essential common vision: overthrowing the unipolar hegemon that has quashed their national aspirations.

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The resistance in Donbas and Gaza share an essential common vision: overthrowing the unipolar hegemon that has quashed their national aspirations.

During my recent vertiginous journey in Donbass tracking Orthodox Christian battalions defending their land, Novorossiya, it became starkly evident that the resistance in these newly liberated Russian republics is fighting much the same battle as their counterparts in West Asia.

Nearly 10 years after Maidan in Kiev, and two years after the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the resolve of the resistance has only deepened.

It’s impossible to do full justice to the strength, resilience, and faith of the people of Donbass, who stand on the front line of a US proxy war against Russia. The battle they have been fighting since 2014 has now visibly shed its cover and revealed itself to be, at its core, a cosmic war of the collective West against Russian civilization.  

As Russian President Vladimir Putin made very clear during his Tucker Carlson interview seen by one billion people worldwide, Ukraine is part of Russian civilization – even if it is not part of the Russian Federation. So shelling ethnic Russian civilians in Donbass – still ongoing – translates as attacks on Russia. 

He shares the same reasoning as Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, which describes the Israeli genocide in Gaza as one launched against “our people”: people of the lands of Islam.

Just as the rich black soil of Novorossiya is where the “rules-based international order” came to die; the Gaza Strip in West Asia – an ancestral land, Palestine – may ultimately be the site where Zionism will perish. Both the rules-based order and Zionism, after all, are essential constructs of the western unipolar world and key to advancing its global economic and military interests.

Today’s incandescent geopolitical fault lines are already configured: the collective west versus Islam, the collective west versus Russia, and soon a substantial part of the west, even reluctantly, versus China. 

Yet a serious counterpunch is at play. 

As much as the Axis of Resistance in West Asia will keep boosting their “swarm” strategy, those Orthodox Christian battalions in Donbass cannot but be regarded as the vanguard of the Slavic Axis of Resistance.

When mentioning this Shia–Orthodox Christianity connection to two top commanders in Donetsk, only 2 kilometers away from the front line, they smiled, bemused, but definitely got the message.

After all, more than anyone else in Europe, these soldiers are able to grasp this unifying theme: on the two top imperial fronts – Donbass and West Asia – the crisis of the western hegemon is deepening and fast accelerating collapse. 

NATO’s cosmic humiliation-in-progress in the steppes of Novorossiya is mirrored by the Anglo–American–Zionist combo sleepwalking into a larger conflagration throughout West Asia – frantically insisting they don’t want war while bombing every Axis of Resistance vector except Iran (they can’t, because the Pentagon gamed all scenarios, and they all spell out doom).

Scratch the veneer of who’s in power in Kiev and Tel Aviv, and who pulls their strings, and you will find the same puppet masters controlling Ukraine, Israel, the US, the UK, and nearly all NATO members.        

Lavrov: ‘No perspectives’ on Israel–Palestine

Russia’s role in West Asia is quite complex – and nuanced. On the surface, Moscow’s corridors of power make it very clear that Israel–Palestine “is not our war: Our war is in Ukraine.”

At the same time, the Kremlin continues to advance itself as a mediator and trusted peacemaker in West Asia. Russia is perhaps uniquely situated for that role – it is a major global power, highly vested in the region’s energy politics, a leader of the world’s emerging economic and security institutions, and enjoys robust relations with all key regional states. 

A multipolar Russia – with its large population of moderate Muslims – instinctively connects with the plight of the Palestinians. Then there’s the BRICS+ factor, where the current Russian presidency can draw full attention from new members Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt to advance fresh solutions to the Palestine conundrum. 

This week in Moscow, at the 13th Middle East Conference of the Valdai Club, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov went straight to the point, stressing cause, the Hegemon’s policies; and effect, pushing Israel–Palestine toward catastrophe.

He played the role of Peacemaker Russia: we are proposing “holding an inter-Palestinian meeting to overcome internal divisions.” And he also delivered the face of Realpolitik Russia: There are “no perspectives for an Israel–Palestine settlement at the moment.”

A detailed Valdai report opened a crucial window for understanding the Russian position, which links Gaza and Yemen as “epicenters of pain.”

For context, it is important to remember that late last month, Putin’s special representative for West Asian affairs, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs ML Bogdanov, received an Ansarallah delegation in Moscow led by Mohammed Abdelsalam. 

Diplomatic sources confirm they talked in-depth about everything: the fate of a comprehensive settlement for the military-political crisis in Yemen, Gaza, and the Red Sea. No wonder Washington and London lost their marbles.

‘Disappearing the Palestine question’

Arguably, the most critical round table at Valdai was on Palestine – and how to unify the Palestinians. 

Nasser al-Kidwa, a member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) and former minister of foreign affairs of the Palestinian Authority (PA) (2005–2006), stressed Israel’s three strategic positions, all of which are aimed at maintaining a dangerous status quo: 

First, Tel Aviv seeks to maintain the split between Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Second, per Kidwa, is to “weaken and strengthen one or the other, preventing national leadership, using force and only force to suppress Palestinian national rights and prevent a political solution.”

Third on Israel’s agenda is to actively pursue normalization with a number of Arab countries without dealing with the Palestinian issue, that is, “disappearing the Palestinian question.”

Kidwa then stressed the “demise” of these three strategic positions – essentially because Netanyahu is trying to prolong the war “to save himself” – which leads to other likely outcomes: a new Israeli government; a new Palestinian leadership, “whether we like it or not”; and a new Hamas. 

Implied then are four vast fields of discussion, according to Kidwa: the state of Palestine; Gaza and the Israeli withdrawal; changing the Palestinian situation, a process that should be domestic-based, “peaceful,” and harboring “no revenge”; and the overall mechanism ahead. 

What is clear, says Kidwa, is that there will be no “two-state solution” in the offing. It will be back to the very basics, which is affirming “the right of national independence for Palestine” – an issue already ostensibly agreed on three decades ago in Oslo.

On the mechanism ahead, Kidwa makes no bones about the fact that “the Quartet is dysfunctional.” He pins his hopes on the Spanish idea, endorsed by the EU, “that we modified.” It is, broadly, an international peace conference in several rounds based on the situation on the ground in Gaza.

That will imply several rounds, “with a new Israeli government,” forced to develop a “peace framework.” The end result must be the minimum acceptable to the international community, based on UNSC resolutions galore: 1967 borders, mutual recognition, and a specific timeline, which could be 2027. And crucially, it must establish “commitments respected from the beginning,” something the Oslo crowd couldn’t possibly fathom.

It is fairly obvious that none of the above will be possible under Netanyahu and the current dysfunctional White House.

But Kidwa also admits that on the Palestinian side, “we don’t have a maestro that puts these elements together, Gaza and West Bank together.” This, of course, is a strategic policy success of the Israelis, who have long toiled to keep the two Palestinian territories at odds and have assassinated any Palestinian leader able to surmount the divide.

At Valdai, Amal Abou Zeid, an advisor to the former Lebanese president General Michel Aoun (2016–2022), noted that “as much as the war in Ukraine, the Gaza war disrupted the foundations of the regional order.”  

The previous order was “economic-centric, as the pathway to stability.” Then came Hamas’ 7 October operation against Israel, which triggered a radical transformation. It “suspended the normalization between Israel and the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia,” and revived the political resolution of the Palestine crisis. “Without such a resolution,” Zeid stressed, the threat to stability is “regional and global.” 

So we’re back to the coexistence of two states along the 1967 borders – the impossible dream. Zeid, though, is correct that without closing the Palestinian chapter, it’s “unattainable for the Europeans to have normal relations with Mediterranean nations. The EU must advance the peace process.” 

No one, from West Asia to Russia, is holding their breath, especially as “Israel extremism prevails,” the PA has a “leadership vacuum,” and there’s an “absence of American mediation.” 

Old ideas vs new players

Zaid Eyadat, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The University of Jordan, tried to adopt a contrarian “rationalist perspective.” There are “new dynamics” at play, he argued, saying “the war is much bigger than Hamas and beyond Gaza.”

But Eyadat’s outlook is bleak. “Israel is winning,” he insists, contradicting the region’s entire Axis of Resistance and even the Arab street.

Eyadat makes the point that “the Palestinian question is back on the stage – but without the desire for a comprehensive solution. So Palestinians will lose.” 

Why? Because of a “bankruptcy of ideas.” As in “how to transform something from untenable to more reasonable.” And it is the “rules-based order” which is at the heart of this “moral deficit.”

These are the kinds of yesteryear statements that are at odds with today’s resistance-minded, mutlipolar visionaries. While Eyadat frets about Israel and Iran competition, an extremist and uncontrolled Tel Aviv, splits between Hamas and the PA, and the US pursuing its own interests, what’s missing in this analysis is the ground arena and the surge in multipolarism globally.

The Axis of Resistance “swarm” in West Asia has barely started and still carries a slew of military and economic cards yet to come into play. The Slavic Axis of Resistance has been fighting nonstop for two years – and only now are they starting to glimpse a possible light, linked to the fall of Adveevka, at the end of the (muddy) tunnel. 

The resistance war is a global one, played out – so far – in only two battlefields. But their state supporters are formidable players on today’s global chessboard and are slowly racking up victories in their respective domains. All while the enemy, the Hegemon, is in economic free-fall, lacks domestic mandates for its wars, and offers zero solutions.

Whether in the muddy black soil of Donbass, the Mediterranean shores of Gaza, or the world’s essential shipping waterways, Hamas, Hezbollah, Hashd al-Shaabi, and Ansarallah will take all the time they need to turn “epicenters of pain” into “epicenters of hope.”

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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THE IDF’S FAILING GAZA WAR, WITH EX-U.S. SPECIAL FORCES’ GREG STOKER

FEBRUARY 2ND, 2024

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Mnar Adley & Alan Macleod

ALAN MACLEOD

MNAR ADLEY

The death and destruction caused in Gaza is almost beyond comprehension. Over 25,000 people have died at the hands of the Israeli air and ground assault, and virtually the entire population of the densely populated strip has been forced to flee their homes.

Few governments have been willing to put up meaningful resistance to Israeli aggression. One exception is Yemen, whose de-facto government Ansar Allah (often referred to as the Houthis) has engaged in a blockade of the Red Sea in an attempt to halt the onslaught.

In response, the U.S. is leading a Western alliance of nations to break the blockade and support the genocide. Yet joining the “MintCast” today is a guest who claims that, for all the destruction, Israel’s war in Gaza is failing. Greg Stoker is a former U.S. Army Special Operations member who left the military and became a committed anti-imperialist. Greg produces content analyzing Western imperialism and the current wars in the Middle East, and his videos explaining the situation regularly go viral, attracting an audience of millions of people.

Today, he sat down with “MintCast” host Mnar Adley to discuss Israel, Yemen and the U.S. role in the chaos. He explained how the IDF is losing the ground war based upon a number of factors, errors and assumptions it made, including an overreliance on air superiority and bombing, the assumption that collective punishment would be an effective deterrent, a shocking lack of training for Israeli ground forces, perilously little infantry cover for Israeli armor making their tanks sitting ducks, and an inability to set realistic goals and targets in the war.

While the Israelis might have all the technology, money and Western backing, they are fighting a close-quarters ground war with a guerilla foe – a sort of war they are woefully unsuited for. With no aircraft or even vehicles of any note, Hamas’ focus is hand-to-hand fighting and hit-and-run skirmishes. Once they hit the Israelis, they can immediately disappear into a myriad of tunnels or bombed-out ruins, making them extremely difficult to pin down. The IDF has been unable to deal Hamas a serious blow despite confidently predicting that it would destroy the group altogether by the end of the fighting.

Meanwhile, the United States continues to escalate its attacks against Yemen. President Biden is the fourth consecutive president to bomb the country. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. will make the same mistakes the IDF has been making, but the threat of a new global conflict is on the horizon, even though the White House refuses to describe what it is currently doing as a “war.”

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Gaza destroys western divide-and-rule narratives

JAN 4, 2024

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Photo Credit: The Cradle

Since Israel’s assault on Gaza began, three separate polls show that Arab and Muslim populations are shifting their support away from Washington’s regional allies toward West Asia’s Axis of Resistance.

Sharmine Narwani

It could be a clean sweep. Decades of western-led narratives crafted to exploit differences throughout West Asia, create strife amid the region’s myriad communities, and advance western foreign policy objectives over the heads of bickering natives are now in ruins. 

The war in Gaza, it transpires, has blown a mile-wide hole in the falsehoods and fairytales that have kept West Asia distracted with internecine conflicts since at least the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Shia versus Sunni, Iran versus Arabs, secular versus Islamist: these are three of the west’s most nefarious narrative ploys that sought to control and redirect the region and its populations, and have even drawn Arab rulers into an ungodly alliance with Israel.

Facts are destroying the fiction

It took a rare conflict – uncooked and uncontrolled by Washington – to liberate West Asian masses from their narrative trance. Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza also brought instant clarity to the question of which Arabs and Muslims actually support Palestinian liberation – and which do not. 

Iran, Hezbollah, Iraqi resistance factions, and Yemen’s Ansarallah – maligned by these western narratives – are now visibly the only regional players prepared to buttress the Gaza frontline, whether through funds, weapons, or armed clashes that aim to dilute and disperse Israeli military resources.

The so-called ‘moderate Arabs,’ a misnomer for the western-centric, authoritarian Arab dictatorships subservient to Washington’s interests, have offered little more than lip service to the carnage in Gaza. 

The Saudis called for support by hosting Arab and Islamic summits that were allowed to do and say nothing. The Emiratis and Jordanians trucked supplies to Israel that Ansarallah blockaded by sea. The mighty Egypt hosted delegations when all it needed to have done was to open the Rafah Crossing so Palestinians can eat. Qatar – once a major Hamas donor – now negotiates for the freedom of Israeli captives, while hosting Hamas ‘moderates,’ who are at odds with Gaza’s freedom fighters. And Turkiye’s trade with the Israeli occupation state continues to skyrocket (exports increased 35 percent from November to December 2023). 

Palestine, for the pro-west ‘moderate Arabs,’ is a carefully handled flag they occasionally wave publicly, but sabotage privately. So, they watch, transfixed and horrified today, at what social media and tens of millions of protesters have made crystal clear: Palestine remains the essential Arab and Muslim cause; it may ebb and flow, but nothing has the power to inflame the region’s masses like this particular fight between right and wrong. 

The shift toward resistance

It is early days yet in the battle unfolding between the region’s Axis of Resistance and Israel’s alliances, but the polls already show a notable shift in public sentiment toward the former.

An Arab barometer poll taken over a six-week period – three weeks before and three weeks after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation – provides the first indication of shifting Arab perceptions. Although the survey was restricted to Tunisia, the pollsters argue that the country is “as close to a bellwether as one could imagine” and that it represents views similar to other Arab countries:

“Analysts and officials can safely assume that people’s views elsewhere in the region have shifted in ways similar to the recent changes that have taken place in Tunisia.”

The survey results should be of paramount concern to meddling western policymakers: “Since October 7, every country in the survey with positive or warming relations with Israel saw its favorability ratings decline among Tunisians.” 

The US saw its favorability numbers plummet the most, followed by West Asian allies that have normalized relations with Israel. Russia and China, both neutral states, experienced little change, but Iran’s leadership saw its favorability figures rise. According to the Arab barometer:

“Three weeks after the attacks, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has approval ratings that matched or even exceeded those of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed.”

Before 7 October, just 29 percent of Tunisians held a favorable view of Khamenei’s foreign policies. This figure rose to 41 percent according to the conclusion of the survey, with Tunisian support most notable in the days following the Iranian leader’s 17 October reference to Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide.” 

The Saudi shift

Prior to the 7 October operation by the Palestinian resistance to destroy the Israeli army’s Gaza Division and take captives as leverage for a mass prisoner swap, the region’s main geopolitical focus was on the prospects of a groundbreaking Saudi normalization deal with Tel Aviv. The administration of US President Joe Biden flogged this horse at every opportunity; it was seen as a golden ticket for his upcoming presidential election.

But Operation Al-Aqsa Flood ruined any chance for Saudi Arabia – home to Islam’s holiest sites – to seal that political deal. And with Israeli airstrikes raining down daily on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Riyadh’s options continue to shrink.

A Washington Institute poll conducted between 14 November and 6 December measures the seismic shift in Saudi public sentiment:

A whopping 96 percent agree with the statement that “Arab countries should immediately break all diplomatic, political, economic, and any other contacts with Israel, in protest against its military action in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, 91 percent believe that “despite the destruction and loss of life, this war in Gaza is a win for Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.” This is a shockingly unifying statement for a country that has adhered closely to western narratives that seek to divide Palestinians from Arabs, Arabs among themselves, and Muslims along sectarian lines – geographically, culturally, and politically.

Although Saudi Arabia constitutes one of the few Arab states to have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, favorable views of Hamas have increased by 30 percent, from 10 percent in August to 40 percent in November, while most – 95 percent – do not believe the Palestinian resistance group killed civilians on 7 October.

Meanwhile, 87 percent of Saudis agree with the idea that “recent events show that Israel is so weak and internally divided that it can be defeated some day.” Ironically, this is a long-stated Resistance Axis refrain. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah was famously quoted as saying “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web,” upon its defeat by the Lebanese resistance on 25 May, 2000. 

Prior to 7 October, Saudis had strongly favored economic ties with Israel, but even that number dropped dramatically from 47 percent last year to 17 percent today. And while Saudi attitudes toward the Resistance Axis remain negative – Saudi Arabia, after all, has been the regional epicenter for anti-Iran and anti-Shia propaganda since the 1979 revolution – that may be largely because their media is heavily controlled. Contrary to the observations of the Arab masses, 81 percent of Saudis still believe that the Axis is “reluctant to help Palestinians.”

The Palestinian shift

Equally important to the discussion of Arab perceptions is the shift seen among Palestinians themselves since 7 October. A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip between 22 November and 2 December mirrors Arab views, but with some nuances.

Gazan respondents, understandably, displayed more skepticism for the ‘correctness’ of Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which triggered Israel’s genocidal assault on the Strip in which over 22,000 civilians – mostly women and children – have so far been brutally killed. While support for Hamas increased only slightly in the Gaza Strip, it tripled in the West Bank, with both Palestinian territories expressing near equal disdain for the western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs from Ramallah.

Support for acting PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party was hit hard. Demands for his resignation are at nearly 90 percent, while almost 60 percent (the highest number recorded in a PSR poll to date in relation to this matter) of those surveyed want a dissolution of the PA.

Over 60 percent of Palestinians polled (closer to 70 percent in the West Bank) believe armed struggle is the best means to end the occupation, with 72 percent agreeing with the statement that Hamas made a correct decision to launch its 7 October operation, and 70 percent agreeing that Israel will fail to eradicate the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.

Palestinians have strong views about regional and international players, who they largely feel have left Gaza unprotected from Israel’s unprecedented violations of international law.

By far the country most supported by respondents is Yemen, with approval ratings of 80 percent, followed by Qatar (56 percent), Hezbollah (49 percent), Iran (35 percent), Turkiye (34 percent), Jordan (24 percent), Egypt (23 percent), the UAE (8 percent), and Saudi Arabia (5 percent). 

In this poll, the region’s Axis of Resistance dominates the favorability ratings, while pro-US Arab and Muslim nations with some degree of relations with Israel, fare poorly. It is notable that of the four most favorable countries and groups for mostly-Sunni Palestinians, three are core members of the “Shia” Axis, while five Sunni-led states rank lowest.

This Palestinian view extends to non-regional international states, with respondents most satisfied with Resistance Axis allies Russia (22 percent) and China (20 percent), while Israeli allies Germany (7 percent), France (5 percent), the UK (4 percent), and the US (1 percent) struggle to maintain traction among Palestinians.

The numbers depend on the war ahead

Three separate polls show that Arab perceptions have shifted dramatically over Israel’s war on Gaza, with popular sentiment gravitating to those states and actors perceived to be actively supporting Palestinian goals, and away from those who are perceived to support Israel.

The new year starts with two major events. The first is the drawdown of Israeli reservists from Gaza, whether because Washington demands it, or due to unsustainable loss of life and injury to occupation troops. The second is the shocking assassination of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri and six others in Beirut, Lebanon, on 2 January.

All indications are that Israel’s war will not only continue, but will expand regionally. The new US maritime construct in the Red Sea has drawn other international actors into the mix, and Tel Aviv has provoked Lebanon’s Hezbollah in a major way.

But if the confrontation between the two axes escalates, Arab perceptions will almost certainly continue to tilt away from the old hegemons toward those who are willing to resist this US-Israeli assault on the region.

There will be no relief for Washington and its allies as the war expands. The more they work to defeat Hamas and destroy Gaza, and the more they lob missiles at Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, and besiege the Resistance Axis, the more likely Arab populations are to shrug off the Sunni-versus-Shia, Iran-versus-Arab, and secular-versus-Islamist narratives that have kept the region divided and at odds for decades.

The swell of support that is mobilizing due to a righteous confrontation against the region’s biggest oppressors is unstoppable. Western decline is now a given in the region, but western discourse has been the first casualty of this war.

How Yemen is blocking US hegemony in West Asia

DEC 29, 2023

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The new US-led coalition in the Red Sea will struggle to overcome Yemen’s naval blockade on Israel, as Ansarallah’s domestically-produced and inexpensive drones and missiles have leveled the technological playing field.

William Van Wagenen

Given the renewed focus on Yemen’s de facto government led by Ansarallah and its armed forces, it is time to move beyond the simplistic and dismissive characterization of the Houthis as merely a ‘rebel’ group or a non-state actor.

Since the start of the war by the Saudi-led coalition against Ansarallah in 2015, the Yemeni resistance movement has transformed into a formidable military force that has not only humbled Saudi Arabia but is also now challenging Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza as well as the superior firepower and resources of the US Navy in the world’s most important waterway.

Economic fallout of Yemen’s naval operations

In response to Israel unleashing unprecedented violence on Gaza, killing over 20,000 people, predominantly women and children, Yemen’s Ansarallah-led armed forces announced on 14 November their intent to target any Israeli-linked ship passing through the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. This crucial waterway serves as the gateway to the Suez Canal, through which approximately 10 percent of global trade and 8.8 million barrels of oil travel each day.

On 9 December, Ansarallah announced it would expand its operations further to target any ship in the Red Sea on its way to Israel, regardless of its nationality. “If Gaza does not receive the food and medicine it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” an Ansarallah Armed Forces spokesperson said in a statement.

To date, Ansarallah has successfully targeted nine ships using drones and missiles, and managed to seize one Israeli-affiliated ship in the Red Sea, according to their official statements. These operations have prompted the largest international shipping companies, including CMA CGM and MSC, and oil giants BP and Evergreen, to re-route their Europe bound ships around the horn of Africa, adding 13,000km and significant fuel costs to the journey.

Delays, transit times, and insurance fees for commercial shipping have skyrocketed, threatening to spark inflation worldwide. This is especially worrisome for Israel, which is already contending with the economic repercussions of its longest and deadliest conflict with the Palestinian resistance in history. 

Additionally, Ansarallah has launched multiple missile and drone attacks on Israel’s southern port city of Eilat, decreasing its commercial shipping traffic by 85 percent.

The disruption in the Red Sea directly undermines a key element of the White House’s 2022 National Security Strategy, which unequivocally states that the US will not permit any nation “to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East’s waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab.”

Coalition of the unwilling

On 18 December, in response to Sanaa’s operations, Secretary of State Lloyd Austin declared the establishment of a naval coalition named Operation Prosperity Guardian, with some 20 countries called to counter Yemeni attacks and ensure safe passage of ships through the Red Sea.

Austin announced the new maritime coalition would include, among others, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, the Seychelles, and Bahrain.

Map of the US-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) in West Asia and North Africa. 

In response to the announcement, Ansarallah politburo Mohammed al-Bukhaiti vowed that Yemen’s armed forces would not back down:

“Yemen awaits the creation of the filthiest coalition in history to engage in the holiest battle in history. How will the countries that rushed to form an international coalition against Yemen to protect the perpetrators of Israeli genocide be perceived?“

The embarrassment for Secretary Austin and White House advisor Jake Sullivan was swift. Shortly after the coalition’s announcement, key US allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt declined participation. European allies Denmark, Holland, and Norway provided minimal support, sending only a handful of naval officers.

France agreed to participate but refused to deploy additional ships to the region or place its existing vessel there under US command. Italy and Spain refuted claims of their participation, and eight countries remained anonymous, casting doubt on their existence.

Ansarallah has therefore destroyed another pillar of the White House National Security Strategy, which seeks “to promote regional integration by building political, economic, and security connections between and among US partners, including through integrated air and maritime defense structures.”

Revolutions in naval warfare

The Pentagon plans to defend commercial ships using missile defense systems on US and allied naval carriers deployed to the region.

But the world’s superpower, now largely on its own, does not have the military capacity to counter attacks from war-torn Yemen, the poorest country in West Asia.

This is because the US relies on expensive and difficult to manufacture interceptor missiles to counter the inexpensive and mass-produced drones and missiles that Ansarallah possesses.

Austin made his announcement shortly after the USS Carney destroyer intercepted 14 one-way attack drones on just one day, the 16th of December.

The operation appeared to be a success, but Politico swiftly reported that according to three US Defense Department officials, the cost of countering such attacks “is a growing concern.”

The SM-2 missiles used by the USS Carney cost roughly $2.1 million each, while Ansarallah’s one-way attack drones cost a mere $2,000 each.

This means that to shoot down the $28,000 worth of drones on 16 December, the US spent at least $28 million in just one day.

Ansarallah has now launched more than 100 drone and missile attacks, targeting ten commercial ships from 35 countries, meaning the cost of US interceptor missiles alone has exceeded $200 million.

But cost is not the only limitation. If Ansarallah persists with this strategy, US forces will quickly deplete their interceptor missile stocks, which are needed not only in West Asia but in East Asia as well.

As Fortis Analysis observed, the US has eight guided missile cruisers and destroyers operating in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, with a total of 800 SM-2 and SM-6 interceptor missiles for ship defense between them. Fortis Analysis further notes that production of these missiles is slow, meaning any ongoing campaign to counter Ansarallah will quickly deplete US interceptor missile stocks to dangerously low levels. Meanwhile, the US weapons manufacturer Raytheon can produce less than 50 SM-2 and fewer than 200 SM-6 missiles annually. 

If these stocks are diminished, this leaves the US Navy vulnerable not only in the Red Sea and Mediterranean, where Russia is also active, but also in the Pacific Ocean, where China poses a significant threat with its hypersonic and ballistic missiles.

Fortis Analysis concludes by observing that the longer Ansarallah continues “throwing potshots” at commercial, US Navy, and allied maritime assets, “the worse the calculus gets. Supply chains win wars – and we are losing this critical domain.”

And Ansarallah has not yet tried a drone swarm attack, which would force US ships to counter dozens of incoming threats at one time.

“A swarm could tax the capabilities of a single warship but more importantly, it could mean weapons get past them to hit commercial ships,” Salvatore Mercogliano, a naval expert and professor at Campbell University in North Carolina observed.

Moreover, US warships would also face the question of how to replenish their missile inventory.

USS John Finn and USS Porter missiles capacity

“The only site to reload weapons is at Djibouti (a US base on the Horn of Africa) and that is close to the action,” he said.

Other experts suggest that the ships would either sail to the Mediterranean Sea to reload from US bases in Italy and Greece, or to the Gulf island of Bahrain which holds the Naval Support Activity and is home to US Naval Forces Central Command and United States Fifth Fleet.

The ‘great equalizer’

As a result, Abdulghani al-Iryani, a senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, described the situation in Yemen as a case where technology acts as a “great equalizer.”

“Your F-15 that costs millions of dollars means nothing because I have my drone that cost a few thousand dollars that will do just as much damage,” he told the New York Times.

While the US military is successful at producing expensive, technologically complex weapons systems that provide excellent profits for the arms industry, such as the F-15 warplanes, it is not capable of producing enough of the weapons needed to actually fight and win real wars on the other side of the world, where supply chains become even more critical.

In Yemen, the US is heavily challenged by the same problem it faced while fighting a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, which after almost two years, US officials acknowledge is all but lost.

Moscow has the industrial base and the supply chains in place to produce hundreds of thousands of the low-cost, rudimentary 152mm artillery shells – two million annually – needed for success in a multi-year war of attrition fought largely in trenches. The US, quite simply, does not. Washington’s war industrial complex is currently, at best, manufacturing 288,000 shells annually and seeks to manufacture one million shells by the year 2028, still only half of the Russian manufacturing ability.

Additionally, one Russian 152mm artillery round costs $600 dollars according to western experts, whereas it costs a western country $5,000 to $6,000 to produce a comparable 155mm artillery shell.

Enter Iran

The security situation will only get worse for the US should Iran enter the conflict in support of Ansarallah, the signs of which are emerging already.

On 23 December, the US openly accused Iran of targeting commercial vessels for the first time since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, claiming a Japanese-owned chemical tanker off the coast of India was targeted by a drone “fired from Iran.”

The same day, Tehran denied the allegations but threatened the forced closure of other crucial maritime shipping lanes unless Israel halts its war crimes in Gaza.

“With the continuation of these crimes, America and its allies should expect the emergence of new resistance forces and the closure of other waterways,” Mohammad Reza Naqdi, an official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), warned.

As a reminder, Iran possesses the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in West Asia, with thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, some capable of striking Israel.

On 24 December, Iran announced its navy had added “fully smart” cruise missiles, including one with a 1,000km range that can change targets during travel, and another with a range of 100km which can be installed on warships.

With US and Israeli forces already under pressure from the Axis of Resistance forces in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and now Yemen, the possible entry of Iran in the conflict is even more ominous for Washington, especially in an election year.

Genocide as a foreign policy

So, how far are President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan willing to go to facilitate Israel’s ongoing carnage in the Gaza Strip?

The trio’s commitment to military aid packages for Israel and Ukraine, despite looming debt concerns, raises questions about their priorities.

The potential risk to the security of the US Navy in the Pacific Ocean may force a re-evaluation of the situation soon. This leaves the US with the option of direct military intervention in Yemen, a course of action with its own ethical and geopolitical consequences.

Recognizing the difficulty of countering Ansarallah from a defensive posture, at least some in the US national security establishment are demanding US forces go on the offensive and strike Yemen directly.

On 28 December, former vice admirals Mark I. Fox and John W. Miller argued that “deterring and degrading” Iran and Ansarallah’s ability to launch these attacks requires striking the forces in Yemen responsible for conducting them, “something no one has yet been willing to do.”

Yemen itself has just emerged from an eight-year, US-backed Saudi and UAE war that led to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Both Persian Gulf nations used US bombs to kill tens of thousands of Yemenis, while imposing a blockade and siege that led to hundreds of thousands of additional deaths from hunger and disease.

According to Jeffrey Bachman of the American University, Saudi Arabia and the UAE carried out a “campaign of genocide by a synchronized attack on all aspects of life in Yemen,” which was “only possible with the complicity of the United States and United Kingdom.” And yet Ansarallah emerged stronger militarily from that conflict.

If US support for two genocides in the Arab world are not enough, maybe the third will be the charm.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

How Yemen changed everything

DEC 28, 2023

In a single move, Yemen’s Ansarallah has checkmated the west and its rules-based order.

Photo Credit: The Cradle

Pepe Escobar

Whether invented in northern India, eastern China or Central Asia – from Persia to Turkestan – chess is an Asian game. In chess, there always comes a time when a simple pawn is able to upset the whole chessboard, usually via a move in the back rank whose effect simply cannot be calculated. 

Yes, a pawn can impose a seismic checkmate. That’s where we are, geopolitically, right now. 

The cascading effects of a single move on the chessboard – Yemen’s Ansarallah stunning and carefully targeted blockade of the Red Sea – reach way beyond global shipping, supply chains, and The War of Economic Corridors. Not to mention the reduction of the much lauded US Navy force projection to irrelevancy.

Yemen’s resistance movement, Ansarallah, has made it very clear that any Israel-affiliated or Israel-destined vessel will be intercepted. While the west bristles at this, and imagines itself a target, the rest of the world fully understands that all other shipping is free to pass. Russian tankers – as well as Chinese, Iranian, and Global South ships – continue to move undisturbed across the Bab al-Mandeb (narrowest point: 33 km) and the Red Sea. 

Only the Hegemon is disturbed by this challenge to its ‘rules-based order.’ It is outraged that western vessels delivering energy or goods to law-breaking Israel can be impeded, and that the supply chain has been severed and plunged into deep crisis. The pinpointed target is the Israeli economy, which is already bleeding heavily. A single Yemeni move proves to be more efficient than a torrent of imperial sanctions. 

It is the tantalizing possibility of this single move turning into a paradigm shift – with no return – that is adding to the Hegemon’s apoplexy. Especially because imperial humiliation is deeply embedded in the paradigm shift. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the record, is now sending an unmistakeable message: Forget the Suez Canal. The way to go is the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese, in the framework of the Russia-China strategic partnership, call the Arctic Silk Road.
 

Map of North-East and North-West Passage shipping routes

For the dumbfounded Europeans, the Russians have detailed three options: First, sail 15,000 miles around the Cap of Good Hope. Second, use Russia’s cheaper and faster Northern Sea Route. Third, send the cargo via Russian Railways. 

Rosatom, which oversees the Northern Sea Route, has emphasized that non-ice-class ships are now able to sail throughout summer and autumn, and year-round navigation will soon be possible with the help of a fleet of nuclear icebreakers. 

All that as direct consequences of the single Yemeni move. What next? Yemen entering BRICS+ at the summit in Kazan in late 2024, under the Russian presidency?

The new architecture will be framed in West Asia 

The US-led Armada put together for Operation Genocide Protection, which collapsed even before birth, may have been set up to “warn Iran,” apart from giving Ansarallah a scare. Just as the Houthis, Tehran is hardly intimidated because, as West Asia analyst ace Alastair Crooke succinctly put it: “Sykes-Picot is dead.” 

This is a quantum shift on the chessboard. It means West Asian powers will frame the new regional architecture from now on, not US Navy “projection.” 

That carries an ineffable corollary: those eleven US aircraft carrier task forces, for all practical purposes, are essentially worthless.   

Everyone across West Asia is well aware that Ansarallah’s missiles are capable of hitting Saudi and Emirati oil fields, and knocking them out of commission. So it is little wonder that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would never accept becoming part of a US-led maritime force to challenge the Yemeni resistance.   

Add to it the role of underwater drones now in the possession of Russia and Iran. Think of fifty of these aimed at a US aircraft carrier: it has no defense. While the Americans still have very advanced submarines, they cannot keep the Bab al-Mandeb and Red Sea open to western operators. 

On the energy front, Moscow and Tehran don’t even need to think – at least not yet – about using the “nuclear” option or cutting off potentially at least 25 percent, and up, of the world oil supply. As one Persian Gulf analyst succinctly describes it, “that would irretrievably implode the international financial system.”

For those still determined to support the genocide in Gaza there have been warnings. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has mentioned it explicitly. Tehran has already called for a total oil and gas embargo against nations that support Israel. 

A total naval blockade of Israel, meticulously engineered, remains a distinct possibility. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami said Israel may “soon face the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, and other waterways.”

Keep in mind we’re not yet even talking about a possible blockade of the Strait of Hormuz; we’re still on Red Sea/Bab al-Mandeb. 

Because if the Straussian neo-cons in the Beltway get really unhinged by the paradigm shift and act in desperation to “teach a lesson” to Iran, a chokepoint Hormuz-Bab al-Mandeb combo blockade might skyrocket the price of oil to at least $500 a barrel, triggering the implosion of the $618 trillion derivatives market and crashing the entire international banking system. 

The paper tiger is in a jam 

Mao Zedong was right after all: the US may be in fact a paper tiger. Putin, though, is way more careful, cold, and calculating. With this Russian president, it’s all about an asymmetric response, exactly when no one is expecting it.

That brings us to the prime working hypothesis perhaps capable of explaining the shadow play masking the single Ansarallah move on the chessboard.       

When Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Sy (Seymour) Hersh proved how Team Biden blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, there was no Russian response to what was, in effect, an act of terrorism against Gazprom, against Germany, against the EU, and against a bunch of European companies. Yet Yemen, now, with a simple blockade, turns global shipping upside down. 

So what is more vulnerable? The physical networks of global energy supply (Pipelineistan) or the Thalassocracy, states that derive their power from naval supremacy? 

Russia privileges Pipelineistan: see, for instance, the Nord Streams and Power of Siberia 1 and 2. But the US, the Hegemon, always relied on its thalassocratic power, heir to “Britannia rules the waves.” 

Well, not anymore. And, surprisingly, getting there did not even entail the “nuclear” option, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which Washington games and scaremongers like crazy.

Of course we won’t have a smoking gun. But it’s a fascinating proposition that the single Yemeni move may have been coordinated at the highest level between three BRICS members – Russia, China, and Iran, the neocon new “axis of evil” – plus other two BRICS+, energy powerhouses Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As in, “if you do it, we’ve got your back”. 

None of that, of course, detracts from Yemeni purity: their defense of Palestine is a sacred duty. 

Western imperialism and then turbo-capitalism have always been obsessed with gobbling up Yemen, a process that Isa Blumi, in his splendid book Destroying Yemen, described as “necessarily stripping Yemenis of their historic role as the economic, cultural, spiritual, and political engine for much of the Indian Ocean world.” 

Yemen, though, is unconquerable and, true to a local proverb, “deadly” (Yemen Fataakah). As part of the Axis of Resistance, Yemen’s Ansarallah is now a key actor in a complex Eurasia-wide drama that redefines Heartland connectivity; and alongside China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the India-Iran-Russia-led International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), and Russia’s new Northern Sea Route, also includes control over strategic chokepoints around the Mediterranean Seas and the Arabian peninsula. 

This is another trade connectivity paradigm entirely, smashing to bits western colonial and neocolonial control of Afro-Eurasia. So yes, BRICS+ supports Yemen, who with a single move has presented Pax Americana with The Mother of All Geopolitical Jams.         

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Germany’s blind support for Israel in Gaza

DEC 12, 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

Mohamed Sweidan is a strategic studies researcher, a writer for different media platforms, and the author of several studies in the field of international relations. Mohamed’s main focus is on Russian affairs, Turkish politics, and the relationship between energy security and geopolitics.

Mohamad Hasan Sweidan

Germany ostensibly supports Israel to pay for the sins of its Nazi past, yet Berlin’s support of ethnocentric, exclusivist Zionism is the very essence of Nazism.

Since the 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood operation tore to shreds Israel’s security delusion, the west has rallied staunchly behind Tel Aviv, offering unwavering support across political, military, media, intelligence, and other domains. 

Amid this display of western unity, Germany has distinguished itself, standing prominently at the forefront of the EU as a fervent advocate for Israel and a solid opponent of any form of assistance to Palestinians, even the children among them. This, despite that the Israeli army has killed over 10,000 infants and children in Gaza since the start of its air and ground assault two months ago. 

Less than a week after Al-Aqsa Flood, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz offered up military aid toward Israel’s Gaza campaign, saying:

“At this moment, there is only one place for Germany — the place at Israel’s side … Our own history, our responsibility arising from the Holocaust, makes it a perpetual task for us to stand up for the security of the State of Israel.”

According to Scholz and his ilk, Germany must constantly redeem itself by shielding the Jewish generations that followed World War II. But then why does Berlin not feel a similar obligation to protect the non-Jewish Slavic civilians, whose numbers killed by Nazi Germany equal those of the Jewish victims?

Germany’s ‘guilt complex’

The German “guilt complex” has manifested itself through annual payments exceeding $1 billion since the end of WWII in 1945. These reparations, totaling approximately $86.8 billion to Israel between 1945 and 2018, were recently extended until 2027. 

While these funds are ostensibly meant to compensate Jews for the horrors inflicted by Nazi Germany, a closer examination of the historical figures raises doubts about the coherence of the German narrative.

The enormous death toll of 17 million people at the hands of Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945 includes 6 million Jews and 5.7 million Soviet civilians. Yet other sources claim that the number of ethnic Slavic deaths far surpasses that of Jews. Shockingly, Nazi Germany, driven by radical ideological policies, is documented to have killed 10,547,000 ethnic Slavics compared to 5,291,000 Jews.

If we look closer, we find that the majority of the Slav civilians killed were from Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, predominantly from Orthodox Christian backgrounds. Why, then, are they not receiving reparation payments out of a similar sense of German guilt, which weighs on the conscience of Germany’s leaders? 

This, in turn, raises questions about the true motivations behind supporting and financially aiding Israel – whether it is a principled stance as Berlin outwardly promotes, or merely a political maneuver.

Hitler’s hostility to non-Jews 

Historical records reveal a lesser-explored dimension of Adolf Hitler’s hostility, namely that his animosity toward Eastern Christians was not markedly different from his hostility toward Jews. 

This aspect of his reign of terror is often overlooked for political expediency. The Nazis propagated a warped vision where the “superior” German race was destined to rule over the supposedly “inferior” Slavic peoples, framing it as a crusade to rescue western civilization from these so-called eastern barbarians.

Numerous historical references attest to the atrocities inflicted upon Orthodox Christians by the Nazis, yet this suffering is often overshadowed by more widely acknowledged war crimes.

In the aftermath of WWII, the US extended crucial material support to European allied forces through the Marshall Plan, a comprehensive initiative designed to facilitate the reconstruction and resurgence of war-torn Europe. Notably, former West Germany emerged as the third-largest beneficiary of this aid package.

However, this assistance came with a tacit expectation from Washington for Berlin to align itself closely with US interests, a path Germany has adhered to ever since. Crucially, this created a trajectory that transformed Germany into an ardent supporter of Zionism, ironically, an ethnocentric political ideology that idealizes both supremacy and exclusivity. 

The ongoing Ukraine war reveals the extent to which Germany has slavishly prioritized US interests over its own. Although German and Russian interests have converged often in recent times, this rapprochement did not cross US red lines until their joint NordStream2 pipeline project came online in early 2022. When German allegiances were tested, as during the US-fueled Ukraine war, Berlin proved to be utterly loyal to Washington – despite the accute blowback to its own economy.

Germany’s alignment with Zionism 

Germany – like much of the west – treats the global community with a perceptible air of superiority, framed as the “democratic” preeminence of the west over the rest.

When the Global South masses, who form most of the “international community,” voiced their opposition to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, Chancellor Scholz nonchalantly insisted that “Israel is a democracy – this has to be said very clearly.”

In fact, in Berlin’s view, the battle today is between the “western democracies” represented by Israel and others who “do not deserve to live.” This is the essence of Nazism, which has clearly never left Germany.

Modern echoes of Nazi thought are still present in Germany’s exceptional positions, exemplified by a notable surge in weapon exports to the occupation state. According to the German Economy Ministry, from the beginning of the current year until 2 November, Berlin approved exports totaling about 303 million euros ($323 million) to Israel, a staggering tenfold increase from 2022 trade data.

According to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), between 2018 and 2022, the vast majority – 99 percent – of Israel’s arms imports came from the US (79 percent) and Germany (20 percent). 

Moreover, the German state of Saxony-Anhalt recently announced that recognition of Israel’s existence through a written letter has become a prerequisite for obtaining German citizenship.

Berlin’s faith in western supremacy

In blind support of its pro-Israel stance, Germany takes a hardline approach against any form of solidarity with Palestinian civilians. Pro-Palestine demonstrations have been banned, and individuals advocating for the rights of Palestinian children have faced arrest.

This posture is not just in response to the current Gaza war but instead aligns with the enduring principles of German foreign policy, as outlined in its national security strategy, which emphasizes in its opening paragraphs a permanent commitment to Israel’s right to exist.

Chancellor Scholz, in the wake of the Ukrainian conflict, characterized the global situation as a “turning point,” while stressing Germany’s obligation to stand on the right side of history. His statements reveal that Berlin sees itself as a vanguard defender of western hegemony at a time of transformative shifts in the global order.

The German authorities’ approach to the Gaza conflict should be viewed through their increasingly bipolar worldview. Like all Atlanticists, Berlin sees Gaza as a battlefield between advocates for western hegemony in West Asia – necessitating a robust, empowered Israel – and those actively challenging the western role in the emerging multipolar order. 

Berlin’s stance becomes a manifestation of faith in the supremacy of the western axis and a perceived necessity to eliminate those who pose a challenge to this “prestige,” which is the essence of Nazism.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Moscow and Gaza: Is Russia Ready for a Major Shift in its Middle East Policy?

DECEMBER 12, 2023

Image by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is “These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Clarity Press, Atlanta). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Istanbul Zaim University (IZU). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

BY RAMZY BAROUD

Gaza was among the main topics on the agenda of Russian President Vladimir Putin as he arrived in the Middle East region on Wednesday, December 6.

Some news reports referred to the trip as ‘rare’, especially since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022.

We know that the situation in Gaza, namely the Israeli war and the subsequent genocide, is a major objective in Putin’s visit, based on press statements from Russia’s official media.

But we do not know, yet, exactly how Gaza factored in, in Putin’s one-day visit.

Putin’s visit included the UAE and Saudi Arabia, two of the richest and most economically influential Arab countries, which are, like Russia, members of OPEC+ – the larger and most influential group of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Oil prices, energy supplies and the fractious security of the Red Sea waterways are reportedly also part of Putin’s agenda. However, it is unlikely that the Russian president has initiated such an important visit to discuss any of these issues.

Indeed, fluctuating oil prices and achieving OPEC+ consensus regarding production levels have been ongoing issues linking Russia to the Middle East for years, especially since the start of the Ukraine war, which invited unprecedented US-Western sanctions.

But what does Putin have to say about Gaza, in particular?

In the early phase of the Israeli war with the Palestinian Resistance in the besieged Gaza Strip, Russia had taken a guarded position, condemning the targeting of civilians, while calling for a comprehensive political solution.

But, days later, Moscow’s position began evolving into a stronger stance, namely condemning the Israeli war on Gaza, Washington’s blind support for Tel Aviv and the US’ intransigence during UN Security Council meetings.

President Putin, on October 13, compared Israel’s besiegement of the Gaza Strip to the Nazi siege of Leningrad in 1941. “In my view it is unacceptable, more than two million people live there. Far from all of them support Hamas, by the way, far from all. But all of them have to suffer, including women and children,” he said.

Moscow’s UN ambassador, Vasily Nebenzia, has repeatedly attempted, to no avail, to pass a UNSC resolution demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. His efforts culminated to nil due to US refusal, backed by equally strong rejection of other Western allies of Israel.

Despite his unsuccessful efforts, Nebenzia has used the UNSC as a platform to declare Russia’s progressively strong stances against the Israeli war, going as far as questioning Israel’s long-touted ‘right to defend itself’.

“All they (the West) can do is to keep (talking) about Israel’s alleged right for self-defense, which, as an occupying state, it does not have, as was confirmed by the (UN) International Court consultative ruling in 2004,” Nebenzia said on November 2.

Following the US shameful use of the veto power to block the passing of a UNSC resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the Russian representative Dmitry Polyanskiy stated: “Our American colleagues have condemned thousands – if not tens of thousands – more civilians (..) including women and children, to death, along with the UN workers who are trying to help them.”

But for various reasons, the Russian position did not evolve beyond political rhetoric, however strong, into any tangible strategies.

The typical explanation for Russia’s inability to formulate a practical strategy regarding Gaza is its lack of any serious diplomatic or political capital beyond the current war on Ukraine; and that Moscow was fully aware of the Middle East’s delicate geopolitical balances.

But things began to change – not in Moscow, but in Gaza itself.

Over two months into a war that has resulted in the killing of more than 17,000 civilians, so far, Tel Aviv is finally discovering the limits of its military power.

Moreover, the war gradually began to destabilize the Middle East, involving state and powerful non-state actors, many of whom are close allies to Moscow and protectors of Russian interests in the region.

They include Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansarallah in Yemen, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and, of course, Hamas itself.

As a sign of closer relationship between Hamas and Russia, the Palestinian movement has released all Israeli captives with dual Israeli-Russian citizenship.

It has done so without a formal prisoner swap agreement, like the ones that have been mediated through Qatar and Egypt, resulting in the release of scores of Israelis and hundreds of Palestinians, starting on November 24.

Surely, Putin’s visit to the Middle East carries greater meaning than the mere ‘emphasis on the strong relationships’ between Russia and a few Arab countries. This meaning is compounded by the immediate visit to Moscow by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on December 7, also with the sole purpose of discussing the situation in Gaza.

Is it possible that Russia has finally found a geostrategic opportunity in the Middle East that would allow it to expand, in terms of its strategic alliances and political role, beyond Syria?

This expansion must appear as an attractive opportunity for Moscow, especially as early signs of Israeli military failure and, by extent, American failure, in Gaza are becoming unmistakably clear.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected to deliver an important speech at the 21st Doha Forum in Qatar on December 10.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, was quoted by the TASS news agency on December 6 as confirming that Lavrov will be discussing the war in Gaza and the overall situation in Palestine and in the Middle East.

“The minister will pay special attention to the problem of Palestinian-Israeli settlement, of course, and security issues in the Middle East,” she said.

None of this, including the potential new Russian ‘vision’ in the Middle East, would have been possible if it were not for the Israeli-US inability to defeat small Resistance groups in a tiny, besieged region like Gaza.

Aside from the setback of the Israeli military machine, which has been financed and sustained by Washington, the genocide in Gaza has cost the US whatever little political credibility it still enjoyed in the Middle East.

Time will tell whether Russia will be able to stake a claim and help define a new Middle East in the post-Gaza war.

However, one of the most important factors that Russia will consider before making any major moves is the tangible outcome of the Israeli war on Gaza.

And, unlike most Israeli wars against Palestinians and Arabs in the past, this time around it seems that Palestinian Resistance – despite its very limited capabilities in the face of a powerful Israel-US military machine – is the one most likely to control the outcomes.

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Gaza: a pause before the storm

NOV 23, 2023

Source

The US and its allies will continue backing Israel’s war on Gaza after a brief truce. But as the case for ‘genocide’ grows stronger, the new multipolar powers will have to confront the old hegemons and their Rules-Based Chaos.

Pepe Escobar

While the world cries “Israeli genocide,” the Biden White House is gushing over the upcoming Gaza truce it helped broker, as though it’s actually “on the verge” of its “biggest diplomatic victory.” 

Behind the self-congratulatory narratives, the US administration is not remotely “wary about Netanyahu’s endgame,” it fully endorses it – genocide included – as agreed at the White House less than three weeks before Al-Aqsa Flood, in a 20 September meeting between Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe “The Mummy” Biden’s handlers.

The US/Qatar-brokered “truce,” which is supposed to go into effect this week, is not a ceasefire. It is a PR move to soften Israel’s genocide and boost its morale by securing the release of a few dozen captives. Moreover, the record shows that Israel never respects ceasefires.

Predictably, what really worries the US administration is the “unintended consequence” of the truce, which will “allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.”

Real journalists have been working in Gaza 24/7 since October 7 – dozens of whom have been killed by the Israeli military machine in what Reporters Sans Frontieres calls “one of the deadliest tolls in a century.” 

These journalists have spared no effort to go all the way to “illuminate the devastation,” a euphemism for the ongoing genocide, shown in all its gruesome detail for the entire world to see.

Even the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), itself relentlessly attacked by Israel, revealed – somewhat meekly – that this has been “the largest displacement since 1948,” an “exodus” of the Palestinian population, with the younger generation “forced to live through traumas of ancestors or parents.” 

As for public opinion all across the Global South/Global Majority, it “turned” long ago on Zionist extremism. But now the Global Minority – populations of the collective west – are watching raptly, horrified, and bitter that in just six weeks, social media has exposed them to what mainstream media hid for decades. There will be no turning back now that this penny has dropped.

A former Apartheid state leads the way

The South African government has paved the path, globally, for the proper reaction to an unfolding genocide: parliament voted to shutter the Israeli embassy, expel the Israeli ambassador, and cut diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv. South Africans do know a thing or two about apartheid. 

They, like other critics of Israel, better be extra wary moving forward. Anything can be expected: an outbreak of foreign intel-conducted “terra terra terra” false flags, artificially induced weather calamities, fake “human rights abuse” charges, the collapse of the national currency, the rand, instances of lawfare, assorted Atlanticist apoplexy, sabotage of energy infrastructure. And more.  

Several nations should have by now invoked the Genocide Convention – given that Israeli politicians and officials have been bragging, on the record, about razing Gaza and besieging, starving, killing, and mass-transferring its Palestinian population. No geopolitical actor has dared thus far. 

South Africa, for its part, had the courage to go where few Muslim and Arab states have ventured. As matters stand, when it comes to much of the Arab world – particularly the US client states – they are still in Rhetorical Swamp territory. 

The Qatar-brokered “truce” came at precisely the right time for Washington. It stole the spotlight from the delegation of  Islamic/Arab foreign ministers touring selected capitals to promote their plan for a complete Gaza ceasefire in Gaza – plus negotiations for an independent Palestinian state. 

This Gaza Contact Group, uniting Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Palestine, made their first stop in Beijing, meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and then on to Moscow, meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. That was definitely an instance of BRICS 11 already in action – even before they started business on January 1st, 2024, under the Russian presidency.  

The meeting with Lavrov in Moscow was held simultaneously with an extraordinary online BRICS session on Palestine, called by the current South African presidency. Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, whose country leads the region’s Axis of Resistance and refuses any relations with Israel, supported the South African initiatives and called for BRICS member states to use every political and economic tool available to pressure Tel Aviv. 

It was also important to hear from Chinese President Xi Jinping himself that “there can be no security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine.” 

Xi stressed once again the need for “a two-state solution,” the “restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine,” and “the establishment of an independent state of Palestine.” This should all start via an international conference.

None of this is enough at this stage – not this temporary truce, not the promise of a future negotiation. The US administration, itself struggling with an unexpected global backlash, at best, arm-wrestled Tel Aviv to enact a short “pause” in the genocide. This means the carnage continues after a few days. 

Had this truce been an actual “ceasefire,” in which all hostilities came to a halt and Israel’s war machine disengaged from the Gaza Strip entirely, the next-day options would still be pretty dismal. Realpolitik practitioner John Mearsheimer already cut to the chase: a negotiated solution for Israel-Palestine is impossible. 

It takes a cursory glance at the current map to graphically demonstrate how the two-state solution – advocated by everyone from China-Russia to much of the Arab world – is dead. A collection of isolated Bantustans can never coalesce as a state.  

Let’s grab all their gas

There has been thundering noise all across the spectrum that with the advent of the petroyuan getting closer and closer, the Americans badly need Eastern Mediterranean energy bought and sold in US dollars – including the vast gas reserves off the Gaza coastline. 

Enter the US administration’s energy security advisor, deployed to Israel to “discuss potential economic revitalization plans for Gaza centered around undeveloped offshore natural gas fields:” what a lovely euphemism. 

But while Gaza’s gas is indeed a crucial vector, Gaza, the territory, is a nuisance. What really matters for Tel Aviv is to confiscate all Palestinian gas reserves and allot them to future preferential clients: the EU. 

Enter the India-Middle East Corridor(IMEC) – actually the EU-Israel-Saudi Arabia-Emirates-India Corridor – conceived by Washington as the perfect vehicle for Israel to become an energy crossroads power. It fancifully imagines a US-Israel energy partnership trading in US dollars – simultaneously replacing Russian energy to the EU and halting a possible export increase of Iran’s energy to Europe.  

We return to the 21st century’s main chessboard here: the Hegemon vs. BRICS.

Beijing has had steady relations with Tel Aviv so far, with lavish investment in Israeli high-tech industries and infrastructure. But Israel’s pounding of Gaza may change that picture: no real Sovereign can hedge when it comes to real genocide.  

In parallel, whatever the Hegemon may come up with in its various hybrid and hot war scenarios against the BRICS, China, and its multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), that will not alter Beijing’s rational and strategically formulated trajectory.   

This analysis by Eric Li is all one needs to know about what lies ahead. Beijing has mapped out all relevant tech roads to follow in successive five-year plans, all the way to 2035. Under this framework, BRI should be considered a sort of geoeconomics UN without the G7. If you’re outside of BRI – and that concerns, to a large extent, old comprador systems and elites – you’re self-isolating from the Global South/Global Majority. 

So what remains of this “pause” in Gaza? By next week, the western-backed cowards will restart their genocide against women and children, and they will not stop for a good long while. The Palestinian resistance and the 800,000 Palestinian civilians still living in northern Gaza – now surrounded on all sides by Israeli troops and armored vehicles – are proving that they are willing and able to bear the burden of fighting the Israeli oppressor, not only for Palestine but for everyone, everywhere, with a conscience. 

Despite such a terrible price to be paid in blood, there will eventually be a reward: the slow but sure evisceration of the imperial construct in West Asia. 

No mainstream media narrative, no PR move to soften the genocide, no containment of “public opinion turning on Israel” can ever cover the serial war crimes perpetrated by Israel and its allies in Gaza. Perhaps this is just what the Doctor – metaphysical and otherwise – ordered for mankind: an imperative global tragedy, to be witnessed by all, that will also transform us all. 

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.