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US Hybrid War on Iran Stalling?

Empire poised to lose on two fronts at once–but at least we shot down that *&#! Chinese balloon!

By Kevin Barrett | 2-7-23

Tehran – In a lecture and Q&A with foreign journalists last night, strategic analyst Dr. Mostafa Khosh-Cheshm summarized the history and current state of what he described as the US hybrid war on Iran. He asserted that the American campaign has stalled due to Iran’s successful counterattacks and deterrents, but anticipates possible escalation into new battlegrounds despite the American side’s failure to make any progress toward achieving its objectives.

The apparent failure of the Israeli-inspired US hybrid war on Iran comes at the worst possible time for the US empire, which faces impending military catastrophe in Ukraine as even The New York Times has belatedly admitted. Future historians may look back on the neoconservatives’ decision to simultaneously target Russia, China, and Iran as one of the biggest blunders in history, on the scale of those analyzed in Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. Writing of the foolish Goth king Recared, who inadvertently opened Spain to Muslim conquest, Tuchman notes that “for a ruler opposed by two inimical groups, it is folly to continue antagonizing both at once” (p.16). True enough; and how much more foolish to simultaneously antagonize three such groups!

The biggest mistake, from a US geo-strategic perspective, is making an enemy of Iran. China and to a lesser extent Russia are, due to their size and resources, peer competitors whose aspirations the US has reason to wish to contain. Iran, for its part, is a large and important country blessed with significant natural and human resources, but is not a natural peer competitor of the US. But since it occupies a critically-important strategic location at the crossroads of the Eurasia-Africa world island, and has historically suffered from Russia’s southward expansion, Iran and the US have every reason to maintain friendly relations and make win-win deals. The problem, from Iran’s perspective, is that the US seems incapable of making win-win deals (and sticking to them) while respecting the sovereignty of its partners. Instead, it arbitrarily shreds its own solemn agreements and aggressively insists on economically and militarily subjugating other nations, while exporting its own decadence in the form of “woke” obsessions with deviant sexuality, attacks on traditional family structures, nihilistic Soros-funded revolts against all forms of traditional authority, and other bizarre fetishes that the non-Western world wants no part of.

According to Dr. Khosh-Cheshm, the US is attacking Iran with a multi-point hybrid war. He listed the following battlegrounds:

War of perception. The US and its vassals, especially Saudi Arabia, maintain and lavishly fund Farsi-language propaganda media, which work in tandem with Zionist-owned Mockingbird mainstream media to wage psychological war on Iran. Among their mendacious perception-management ops, these weaponized media have created false impressions that “Iranians are rising up against their government,” which leads us to the second category:

Instigating riots/ color revolutions. The CIA and its allies (Soros, etc.) regularly try to overthrow governments they don’t like by fomenting riots and trying to escalate them into bloody civil wars. The trick is to find a way to get a crowd into the street to protest against the targeted government. It’s easy enough to create such a crowd of “protestors” using paid agents (rent-a-mobs) while trolling for dupes on social media. (Note that almost all major social media are controlled by the CIA, as the Twitter Files has revealed.) Once a crowd has taken to the street, paid agents instigate violence by smashing windows, burning shops and cars and police stations, attacking police, and generally inciting mayhem. When the police respond by trying to control the crowd and arresting perpetrators of violence, snipers on rooftops and/or or infiltrators with handguns shoot both police and protestors, with the intention of making each side blame the other. Additionally, knife attacks on police are a new wrinkle the CIA is apparently experimenting with in Iran. 60 police officers were murdered by CIA assets in three months, using the weapons that Mike Pompeo bragged about smuggling to US-supported terrorists in Iran. According to Dr. Khosh Cheshm, protestors facing police were frequently shot from behind with handguns with silencers. Other random people unrelated to the protests, sometimes six blocks or more away, were murdered by the same CIA-trained Operation Gladio professionals. Western media reports falsely blamed these murders on Iranian police. “It’s called ‘taking the toll,’ Dr. Khosh Cheshm explained. Alongside a smaller number of actual victims of the rioters-vs.-police clashes, the Gladio victims inflate the toll and contribute to the impression of outlandish government repression, when in fact it is the government’s restraint, in the face of the murder by CIA terrorists of 60 police in three months, that is outlandish.

The real-life CIA riot campaign in Iran has been spectacularly unsuccessful. The largest crowd of “protestors” anywhere in Iran numbered only around 600, while vastly larger marches have supported the government. (Annual commemoration of the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, including this weekend’s, always draw millions of people.) But CIA-organized protests in dozens of Iranian cities, despite drawing smallish crowds, have provided images, soundbites, and other fodder for the concocted media war.

Iran is vulnerable to these tactics because it bends over backward to protect the right to peacefully protest. Under the CIA-asset Shah’s regime, protests were banned and routinely met with extreme violence by police and soldiers. Protestors were dragged to CIA-built torture chambers and tortured by CIA-trained torturers. The Islamic Republic reacted against this sad history by enshrining the right to protest in the constitution. So protests are constantly happening in Iran, and always have been since 1979. The normalcy of protesting makes it easier for the CIA to get crowds of at least a few hundred people, many of them sincere protestors duped by social media propaganda, into the streets to provide cover for the Operation Gladio operatives’ violence.

Iran’s government has neutralized the CIA color revolution primarily through flexibility and mercy (though the “Iranian war on terror” has unfortunately included a degree of extrajudicial violence as all such efforts do). Several months ago the government ordered police to stop enforcing mandatory hijab, and it is now normal to see a few women in public with fully-uncovered hair. But the vast majority, well over 90%, still cover—showing that there is no mass support for the CIA’s anti-hijab campaign.

The government’s “mercy and flexibility” approach also includes Monday’s announcement by the Supreme Leader pardoning tens of thousands of prisoners, a fraction of whom are protestors. All protestors except paid CIA-Soros agents and terrorists are being pardoned, alongside a much larger number of common criminals. It’s worth noting that Western media reports of protestors being executed are misrepresentations. In reality, the “protestors” who were executed were murderers who stabbed or shot police officers. Their executions came after murder convictions.

Funding separatist terrorist groups. Alongside astroturf protests focusing on the headscarf and economic issues, the US, Saudis, and Israelis have armed, funded, and incited separatist terrorists in Kurdistan and especially in Arabic-speaking Khuzestan. The latter region harbors ISIS-style groups propagandized, recruited, and paid by the Saudis to commit mayhem. Though a nuisance, and a tragedy for individual victims and their families, these groups are too small, and their appeal is too limited, to make a decisive contribution to the hybrid war.

Cyber wars. The US and Israel, not necessarily in that order, have launched what Dr. Khosh Cheshm calls “vast cyber-attacks” on Iran’s infrastructure. Last spring, dozens of Iranian entities were targeted. Shortly thereafter, the Albanian government’s entire data base “vanished into the cloud.” In its place, a message appeared: “We love the people of Albania, but the MEK (the biggest US-supported anti-Iran terrorist group) is there doing cyber and physical terrorism. We are sorry your data has been removed.” NATO threatened retaliation but did nothing effectual. Meanwhile Israel routinely launches anti-Iran cyber-attacks, but Iran’s ability to retaliate in kind, and its increasing reliance of nearly-unhackable homegrown software, has limited the effectiveness of anti-Iran cyber-warfare.

Foreign currency meddling: The US government and its oligarch owners, notably people like George Soros, are experts at attacking the value of targeted nations’ currencies. They have had only modest success at sending the message that Iran’s refusal to surrender in negotiations with the US will be punished with such attacks, which inflict economic pain on ordinary Iranians.

Assassinations: A significant number of Iranian scientists and government officials have been assassinated, chiefly by Israel’s Mossad, but also by the US, as in the case of General Soleimani. Iran’s policy is normally tit-for-tat payback. For example, in response to the murder of Iran’s top physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Israeli rocket scientist Aby Har-Even, the founder and head of Israel’s rocketry and space programs, “succumbed to wounds sustained when rioters torched Efendi Hotel (owned by Israel’s aerospace agency) at the peak of Arab-Jewish violence” according to the Times of Israel. The precisely one hundred stab wounds that ended the life of Har-Even sent a message about the excessiveness of Israel’s murder of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and Netanyahu’s threat against Iran of “death by a thousand cuts.” Note that such presumed Iranian tit-for-tat assassinations are deniable and have not been publicized by either side.

In the case of General Soleimani, Iran is exacting multipronged revenge, consisting of the well-known rocket attack on the US base at Ain al-Assad, Iraq; threatened assassinations of every major US official involved in the murder, with bounties on all their heads (including a one million dollar bounty on Trump); and the eventual termination of the Zionist entity occupying Palestine, and expulsion of the US from the region.

Sabotage. After Israel’s second attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, the center of Israel’s ballistic missile program mysteriously blew up. The mushroom cloud was visible for miles around. An Israeli leader of the program was cited in the media begging “please stop, we’re losing more than the Iranians.” That media story was in fact a covert message asking Iran for a truce.

Shipping war. The US and especially Israel are bent on disrupting Iran’s oil exports and have attacked and seized various Iranian ships, and even non-Iranian ships allegedly containing oil sourced to Iran. Iran has responded, as usual, tit-for-tat retaliation. For instance, after one such ship was seized off the coast of Greece last spring, Iran seized two Greek ships, which were held until the Iranian ship was released. Iran’s ability to retaliate has led to a change in tactics: Now captains are being offered bribes to renege on their delivery agreements. But few if any are doing so, perhaps because making Iran a lifelong enemy is just not worth it.

Sanctions/Economic pressure. Iran is buried beneath layers upon layers of sanctions and has responded by learning how to evade them. During the past year, virtually the whole world, with the exception of a handful of ultra-compliant US vassals, is joining the sanctions-evading game, thanks to the counterproductive sanctions on Russia. Many are asking Iran for advice. Though sanctions have negatively affected the Iranian economy, they have not even come close to damaging it badly enough to make a difference.

Pressuring the IAEA UN, and other international bodies. The US is pushing the IAEA to charge Iran with noncompliance and take it to the UN. But that is a two year process. It would only take two months to achieve similar objectives by invoking the trigger process in the JCPOA nuclear deal. So once again, the US is trying to increase psychological pressure on Iran, but lacks the means to enforce its wishes

Abraham accords. The US has attempted to ramp up pressure on Iran by weaponizing the Arab signatories of the so-called Abraham Accords, a phony Palestine-Israel peace plan that is despised by virtually the entire population of the region. Not only is the Arab public strongly pro-Palestine, as this year’s World Cup in Doha showed, but even the supposedly pro-Zionist Arab leadership is giving the Americans the cold shoulder. Saudi leader Bin Salman, for example, has refused to take Biden’s and Blinken’s phone calls, humiliated Biden with “second-rate guest” treatment, and generally made it clear that Saudi Arabia is no longer taking American orders.

Failure of the Hybrid War

The Israeli-American hybrid war on Iran has stalled, as Iran fights the aggressors to a stalemate on each battleground. Iran has successfully sent the message: “For each wound you inflict, we will retaliate with an equivalent or worse.” As a result, the US is in no position to force Iran into the kind of agreement the Americans want: A renewed “JCPOA” that would not provide Iran with any significant sanctions relief. The Americans want the promised “relief” to only last for three years, after which it would be canceled if Iran doesn’t succumb to American demands unrelated to the nuclear remit. Since no US or European companies will invest in Iran unless they are guaranteed a two or three decade time frame in which they won’t be sanctioned and forced to pull out at a loss, the US proposal as it stands won’t help Iran’s economy and thus offers Iran no incentive to join.

So the hybrid war’s purpose is to bring Iran to its knees and ultimately force it to dismantle its (non-nuclear) rocket program, abandon its ties to Axis of Resistance allies, and thereby deeply compromise its national security and its sovereignty. For Iran, of course, that’s a non-starter. Iran would be happy to comply with the original JCPOA, severely limit its 100% civilian nuclear program, and enjoy genuine sanctions relief. But that’s not enough for the Zionist-run US. Why not? The real underlying issue is Iran’s commitment to the liberation of Palestine. As long as Iran stands by the Palestinians, the US, dominated by Zionist oligarchs, will do everything it can to hobble Iran and ultimately subjugate and enslave it.

Now that the hybrid war on Iran has stalled, just as the war on Russia through Ukraine is poised to collapse, the Empire may be tempted to escalate. No wonder United Nations chief António Guterres just warned that World War 3 may be starting.

The problem is that Iran, like Russia, can match any feasible escalation. Just as the Russians have rough nuclear parity with the Americans, Iran has a formidable non-nuclear “nuclear option”: shutting down oil traffic from the Persian Gulf. With its highly maneuverable navy, a mountainous shoreline bristling with formidable anti-ship missiles, and the ability to easily (and deniably or non-deniably) take out the docks at Ras Tanoura, Saudi Arabia’s only deepwater port, Iran can blow up the world economy any time it wants to. Short of that non-nuclear nuclear option, Iran has every US military installation in the region in its crosshairs, and can lay waste to Israel with its rockets, in response to enemy escalations. The upshot is that Atlantic Magazine’s expert simulation of a US-Iran war showing that Iran would win is even more relevant today than it was in 2004.

The smart move would be for the US to call off its hybrid war. To do that, though, it will have to remove the neocons from power and radically reformulate its policies. That may be easier said than done. But the only alternative is writing a new chapter for the next edition of The March of Folly.

February 7, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Washington’s Hypocrisy on its “Rules Based International Order”

A Tale of Three Cities

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 7, 2023

One might actually be willing to consider that there might be some value in the “rules based international order” being promoted by the Joe Biden Administration if such a thing actually existed and was applied equally to all transgressors. Of course, in reality, the “rules” being referred to are neither agreed upon nor driven by any broad international consensus and are merely a trick that is exploited to further the interests of the United States and its closest allies. In fact, the “rules”, such as they are, are most frequently ignored to give a pass to the bad behavior being exhibited by the US and its friends.

If the “rules” were actually intended to place limits on violent interactions among nations, consider for a moment the actual record of the United States in that regard. Recent opinion polls demonstrate that the US by a large margin is considered by other nations to be the most dangerous country in the world. That judgement is based not only on historic memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also the Vietnam War and the overthrowing of alleged “leftist” regimes in places like Iran, Chile and Guatemala. Armed interventions on a greater or lesser scale have been a regular feature of US initiatives throughout the Caribbean and Latin America ever since the Spanish-American War.

More recently there has been the global war on terror, unleashed on the entire world based on US condemnation of countries that were not perceived to be toeing Washington’s red line on what constitutes terrorism. This has led to pointless and ultimately failed interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Somalia in which, by some estimates millions of civilians have died directly or indirectly, and the US itself has sustained the war-making through the printing of trillions of dollars in essentially fiat currency and running up enormous debts, a chicken that will come home to roost before too long. In Afghanistan, and also in Yemen and Iraq, the US has engaged in targeted assassinations as well as profile killings of civilians using drones.

The most troublesome aspect of all the violence that the US has initiated is that there are no actual rules in sight, apart from the Blinken-Biden-Austin clowns in Washington citing unsubstantiated threats coming from countries incapable of actually doing any harm like Iran or countries like Russia and China that had previously no intention of confronting the American military colossus.

So Washington is the beating heart of policies that have created turmoil worldwide while also moving the Doomsday clock closer to the finality that might well come with a nuclear war. And all the posturing is literally for nothing, for a bad cause supporting a corrupt, autocratic regime in a country that is no democracy with no visible off ramp. The hypocrisy of those in the White House and in Congress, as well as in the media, who are so reckless with the lives and fortunes of their fellow citizens literally defies belief.

If Washington is the first of the three cities that I am considering, Moscow must certainly be number two as it is on the receiving end of the US hypocrisy, being accused of having deviated from the “rules based” international order by invading Ukraine one year ago. Russia, however, sees things differently. The Kremlin has argued that it has repeatedly sought to negotiate a settlement with Ukraine based on two fundamental issues that it plausibly claims threaten its own national security and identity. First is the failure of Ukraine to comply with the Minsk Accords of 2014-5 which conceded a large measure of autonomy to the Donbas region, an area indisputably inhabited by ethnic Russians, as is Crimea.

Recently former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has let slip that there was never any intention to comply with the Minsk Agreement, implying that it was all a charade to enable strengthening Ukraine to join NATO and, if necessary, fight Russia. In fact, the Accords were ignored right from the beginning, with Ukrainian militias and other armed elements using artillery to shell the Donbas, killing an estimated 15,000 mostly ethnic Russian residents, a number which appears to be confirmed by independent sources.

The second vital national security issue for Moscow was over plans to offer NATO membership to Ukraine, which would place a possibly superior hostile military alliance at its doorstep. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly observed that the issues were both negotiable and that Zelensky only had to agree to maintain his country as “neutral,” i.e. not linked to any military alliance, and to honor some reasonable autonomy for Donbas. Reportedly it was the United States and Britain that pushed Ukraine into rejecting any and all of the Russian demands in a bid to initiate a war of attrition using Ukrainian lives to destabilize Putin’s government and reduce its ability to oppose US and Western dominance.

And there is of course the back story, that the United States had long been meddling in Eastern Europe in spite of a pledge not to take advantage of the break-up of the Soviet Union to expand NATO eastwards. The US had brought about “regime change” in Ukraine in 2014 to remove a government friendly to Moscow. But in this case, the increasing involvement of the US and NATO in the fighting has been an extremely dangerous development because it has escalated the conflict and turned it into what might become a devastating nuclear exchange. One would like to see an immediate truce initiated to stop the fighting followed by serious negotiations to come to a settlement of the territorial dispute. But, of course, the United States, which has provided Zelensky with more than $100 billion in aid, has made it clear that it is not interested in a negotiated settlement unless Putin is willing as a confidence building first step to withdraw from all occupied Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. In other words, he must surrender.

So whether Moscow has broken with the “rules based international order” depends very much on how one defines threats. Certainly, at a minimum, Washington has behaved far worse than Russia over the past twenty years, which rather confirms that the “rules” are essentially a convenient fiction. And finally, my third city to consider is Jerusalem, the claimed capital of the state of Israel. As the Jewish state is arguably either Washington’s closest ally or, as many believe, the tail that actually wags the White House dog, it is instructive to look at its behavior to examine whether the US applies a uniform standard to friend and foe alike when it doles out punishment to accused rule breakers.

If the United States is considered by the world community to be the most dangerous “superpower” country, Israel has to be considered the leading pariah among smaller, more regionally focused nations. And its control over the White House, the Congress and the national media in the US is such that it is never held to account for anything. Most recently, there was an attack by Israeli soldiers on a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin on the West Bank in which ten Arabs were killed. In retaliation, a Palestinian gunman subsequently shot dead seven Israelis in Jerusalem before being killed himself. Speaking from the Oval Office, President Biden only saw fit to mention the Palestinian counter-attack, saying merely that “This was an attack against the civilized world.” The initial Israeli attack which killed ten was not even cited, suggesting that Israeli atrocities killing Palestinians do not bother the civilized world that the Bidens live in.

In another White House demonstration of where its priorities lie, last year’s shooting dead by an Israeli soldier of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh led eventually to a milk-toast call for an inquiry by the White House, even though Biden and company openly bought into the Israeli government lie that it was an accident, likely triggered by a lot of Palestinian terrorist shooting in the area, which was not true. And don’t expect any real pushback against Israel’s policy of shoot-first from Congress, which only last week removed Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee because she was “antisemitic” due to her criticism of Israel’s behavior.

The Israeli Defense ministry indicated that it would not cooperate with any inquiry into its behavior and the Abu Akleh story has since disappeared. Israel has also killed other American citizens without any consequences, including Rachel Corrie and 34 sailors on board the USS Liberty naval vessel in 1967. Never before has a government killed Americans only to be rewarded with a $3.8 billion gift from the US taxpayers every year. The Jewish state’s government has also recently indicated that its free-fire policy against Palestinian civilians and their foreign supporters will not be modified. Israeli soldiers and policemen who kill Palestinians, who are routinely described as “terrorists,” are almost never investigated or prosecuted and have been, in some cases, praised in the media and promoted.

And Israeli control over major parts of the US federal government appears to be tightening. In a press conference last week, the United States State Department refused to confirm that Israel is in illegal occupation of large parts of Palestine, nor will it acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear arsenal.

Israel’s track record vis-à-vis its neighbors is somewhat similar to the American pattern of rules enforcement, though it rarely even bothers to excuse its behavior. It even started a major war, having attacked all its neighbors, after complaining falsely that they were “threatening,” in 1967, after which it illegally seized and occupied their territory. It is currently bombing Syria on a regular basis and has also attacked Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinians in Gaza. It has assassinated Iranian scientists and technicians.

Israel has invaded and occupied southern Lebanon and facilitated a massacre of Palestinians settled in camps there. Neither Syria nor Iran has ever attacked Israel or even threatened to do so, but Israel persists in claiming that it is threatened and is trying to convince Biden to join it in attacking the Iranians. The new, extreme racist right-wing government of Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu is in particular stepping up the pressure on Palestinians through actions that are illegal under international law without a squeak coming out of the White House. Home demolitions, property seizures, checkpoints and other round the clock harassment of Palestinians also are increasing in frequency as the Israelis expand their occupation of the West Bank. And Israel even sponsors actual terrorists in the form of the weaponized settlers who beat and destroy Palestinians at will with no consequences even when they kill an unarmed Arab or a child.

And some Israelis are also thinking of something grander, in the form of genocide, when it comes to their Palestinian neighbors. A prominent right wing Israeli member of parliament has perhaps suggested what he and many of his colleagues would like to see done to the remaining Palestinians. Zvika Fogel, a member of the governing coalition has called for a “final war” against the Palestinians to “subdue them once and for all”, following international condemnation of security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s incursion into Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, an additional illegal move intended to assert total control over access to Muslim holy sites. Fogel responded to the criticism, saying in an interview that Israel’s policy of going to war with Palestinians “every two or three years” was no longer good enough and that there should be one last war to “subdue them once and for all. It would be worth it because this will be the final war…”

So, it is a tale of three cities. Moscow is engaged in a war that at least has a rationale, even as one should and must oppose armed interventions between two neighboring countries. The Russian operation has been opposed by the United States, which has heedlessly escalated the war and produced a situation that can be devastating for all life on the planet. Washington is also the grand hypocrite in the game in that it has behaved far worse than Moscow over the past twenty years. And then there is Jerusalem, or if one prefers, Tel Aviv. A monstrous Israel is preeminent in how it wins the prize for being the absolute worst in its inhumanity and war crimes, without a rebuke from Washington or Joe Biden ever about “rules based international order” violations.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

February 7, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Report: Israel commits 3,532 violations in West Bank, Jerusalem in January

MEMO | February 4, 2023

Israeli occupation settlers and forces have committed 3,532 violations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in January, the Palestine National Information Centre revealed.

The Information Centre disclosed in a report that January was the bloodiest month in the occupied West Bank since 2015, citing the Israeli killings of 35 Palestinians, including eight children and a 61-year-old woman – with 20 killed in Jenin alone.

In addition, the report also pointed out that the Israeli occupation settlers and forces wounded 342 Palestinians.

According to the Information Centre, the occupation settlers committed 17 settlement activities, including stealing land, razing farms, paving new settlement roads and approving new settlement units, in addition to 319 aggressions.

Meanwhile, the occupation forces and settlers demolished 290 commercial and agricultural facilities and confiscated 40 others.

The Information Centre also documented the Israeli demolition of 40 Palestinian homes and issued 154 demolition notices.

It documented 29 aggressions on holy sites, road closures in 38 areas and 511 temporary and permanent Israeli military checkpoints across the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

February 4, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Irish MEP: US yielding to Israeli pressures over 2015 Iran nuclear deal

Press TV – February 1, 2023

A member of the European Parliament says the United States has bowed to Israeli pressures over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as negotiations for reviving the agreement have been stalled due to Washington’s excessive demands.

In a post on his Twitter account on Wednesday, MEP Mick Wallace criticized the US and some “hawks” in the European Parliament over the stalled talks on reviving the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“Biden promised to get #JCPOA with #Iran back on track but negotiations have stalled,” he wrote, adding, “[it] seems #US have caved to pressure from #Israel.”

The “hawks in EU Parliament want to abandon” the JCPOA, however, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell “is right to keep dialogue open with Iran,” Wallace added.

The remarks come as negotiations, which started in April last year in Vienna, remain stalled since August as Washington refuses to remove the sanctions that were slapped on the Islamic Republic by the previous US administration of Donald Trump.

This is while after taking office, the Biden administration had criticized his predecessor’s decision to scrap the deal and vowed to reverse the measure.

On the contrary, the Biden administration officials have upped the so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran and on several occasions announced that the talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal are no longer their main focus.

The White House, meanwhile, is leveling accusations against Iran over human rights issues during recent foreign-backed riots and drone delivery to Russia to be used in the Ukraine war. Tehran has strongly rejected the allegations in both cases.

Observers believe Washington is trying to use these baseless accusations against Iran to gain leverage in talks and negotiate from a position of strength.

Meanwhile, the Israeli regime has openly expressed opposition to the deal since it was signed back in 2015. The regime, which is the only possessor of nuclear warheads in the region without being a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has made various efforts in the past years to hamper Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, from assassinating Iranian scientists to carrying out acts of sabotage in Iranian facilities and trying to push others away from the deal.

February 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Author Martin Sandler: Mossad may have assassinated JFK

By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | January 31, 2023

Martin Sandler, editor of “The Letters of John F. Kennedy,” discussed the possibility that Israel’s Mossad was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy during a book talk at the John F. Kennedy Museum in Hyannis, Massachusetts on November 6, 2013.

Sandler is an award-winning author of numerous popular books and textbooks on American history. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts and Smith College.

Sandler’s full Hyannis talk was broadcast on C-SPAN’s Book TV; the segment on the JFK assassination is on C-SPAN here.

Author Michael Collins Piper discusses this subject in his book “Final judgment : The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy,” available on Archive.org, Amazon, and in some libraries.

Piper discusses his book here.

Although Israel has possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960’s, it maintains a policy of nuclear opacity, never officially confirming the existence of its nuclear program. Accordingly, Israel has never signed the NPT.

For information on Israel’s nuclear weapons see this and this and this and this and this.

The video is also on YouTube. For related videos go here.

For more information on Israel see https://ifamericansknew.org/

February 1, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Rights group submits objection to US plans to build new embassy in Jerusalem

MEMO | January 31, 2023

Adalah yesterday filed an objection against the Jerusalem District Planning Committee over the US’ plan to build a new embassy on illegally confiscated Palestinian land in Jerusalem.

Action was taken on behalf of 12 of the descendants of the original Palestinian owners of the land, with the rights group calling on Washington to “immediately cancel” its plans to build the embassy.

“If the US proceeds with this plan, it will be a full-throated endorsement of Israel’s illegal confiscation of private Palestinian property in violation of international law,” a letter to the US Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

“Additionally, the State Department will be actively participating in violating the private property rights of its own citizens.”

These descendants include four US citizens, three Jordanian residents and five East Jerusalem residents.

According to Wafa news agency, the land was confiscated by the Israeli government under the Absentees’ Property Law of 1950, which Adalah says is one of the most arbitrary, discriminatory and draconian laws enacted in the state of Israel.

The Absentees’ Property Law was the main legal instrument used by Israel to take possession of the land belonging to the internal and external Palestinian refugees and Muslim Waqf properties across the newly formed state.

Adalah also highlighted that the confiscation of the land on which the US Diplomatic Compound is to be built violates international law, in particular, Article 46 of The Hague Regulations.

January 31, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

US refuses to call West Bank Israeli occupied territory

MEMO | January 30, 2023

The US State Department refused to describe Palestinians in the West Bank as living under a military occupation during a heated exchange between journalists last week. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel brushed aside questions about Washington’s view on the status of the occupied West Bank in the wake of an Israeli military raid that killed ten Palestinians in Jenin.

“What is the status of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, including Jenin… and everywhere else in the West Bank?” Said Arikat of Al-Quds newspaper asked Vedant. “It’s a simple question. Are they under occupation?”

Patel refused to answer the question despite being asked repeatedly to clarify the position of the US regarding the status of the West Bank. At one point Patel shockingly said that the status of the Palestinians is that “they reside on those territories.”

Frustrated at not getting an answer, Arikat asked if the West Bank is considered a “different planet” and if the US “subscribes to the fact that they are under military occupation?” Patel refused to answer the question.

“Vedant, are they occupied or are they not occupied? What is the status that you give the Palestinians right at this moment? What kind of status do they have?” Arikat insisted.

Patel again refused to answer, deflecting the question by focusing on the escalation of violence and calling for peace and calm in the region. “I’m not talking about a recent period. I am saying about legally, how do you designate the Palestinians in the West Bank? What is their status?” Arikat asked to know for a fourth time.

“I understand the question you’re asking, and I – as we’ve said previously, it is vital for both sides to take action to prevent even greater loss, and we condemn any violence, escalation, or provocation,” said Patel.

Under International law the West Bank and Gaza is Israeli occupied territory. Experts in international law say that given the length of the occupation and given that Israel has no intention to ever withdraw, the correct designation is that it is an illegal occupation. The International Court of Justice has been asked to issue an opinion on that very matter.

January 30, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Kiev would be planning ethnic cleansing against Hungarians in Transcarpathia

By Lucas Leiroz | January 30, 2023

Ethnic persecutions have been commonplace in Ukraine since 2014, when the Maidan coup d’état established a neo-Nazi dictatorship that began an ethnic cleansing campaign in the Donbass region, exterminating the Russian population. Now, however, the Kiev regime’s blacklist of ethnicities appears to be expanding. Several sources report that Ukrainian citizens of Hungarian ethnicity are being systematically sent to the front lines of the current conflict. The objective would supposedly be to exterminate the Hungarian population inhabiting Transcarpathia, which raises concerns in the Hungarian government and increases the possibility of internationalization of the conflict.

A forced mobilization of ethnic Hungarians from Transcarpathia is currently taking place in Ukraine. According to several sources, Kiev’s officials are transferring hundreds of ethnic Hungarians to the contact zones in the conflict with Russia, where they are dying in large quantities. On January 25, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto confirmed the report and expressed concern about the case.

Previously, Ukrainian forces had already created the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade in the Transcarpathian region. This brigade has suffered heavy losses in Soledar and is now suffering casualties at the battle for Bakhmut. However, instead of putting soldiers from different regions on the front, Kiev is apparently planning to send all ethnic Hungarians to fight in the war zone at the same time, privileging the safety of ethnic Ukrainian soldiers.

There are many reasons why Kiev is planning ethnic cleansing against Hungarians. Tensions between Hungarians and Ukrainians have grown since the start of the Russian special military operation, as Hungary has been the country with the most sovereign stance within NATO and EU, avoiding direct involvement in the conflict, maintaining diplomatic ties with Russia, and severely criticizing western sanctions. Obviously, this deeply worries the Ukrainian regime, even more so considering the possibility of secessionist tendencies in the Transcarpathian region.

The situation in Transcarpathia is for Hungarians similar to the situation for Russians in Donbass. Despite being within the Ukrainian territory, the region is marked by very different characteristics from the rest of the country, with a Hungarian ethnic and cultural predominance. For Kiev, this apparently sounds like a threat, as Hungary refuses to support the neo-Nazi regime against Russia and could encourage Transcarpathia’s residents to do the same. Therefore, the Zelensky government is planning a “final solution” for Transcarpathia, in order to avoid Hungarian separatism or annexation. By systematically sending recently mobilized and militarily untrained ethnic Hungarians to the front, Kiev is provoking a true genocide, as virtually only Transcarpathians are dying during the combats.

However, it is important to note that there seems to be a collaboration on the part of the Transcarpathian authorities themselves with this Ukrainian policy. One of the most important local leaders, the oligarch and Rada deputy Viktor Baloga, has been cooperating for years with the racist policy of repressing the ethnic identity of Hungarians. In 2018, Baloga started a campaign for the departure of all citizens with dual Hungarian-Ukrainian citizenship from Ukraine, stating that they should move to Hungary. At the time, the deputy also defended the extinction of the Berehove city, which is an important cultural center for the ethnic Hungarians of Transcarpathia, alleging risks to national security with Budapest’s influence in the region.

The Baloga family maintains an important local commercial oligarchy, having business in the arms trade sector, and has economically benefited from an alliance with the Maidan regime. After the start of the Russian operation, with the Ukrainian dictatorship becoming more explicit due to the martial law, the persecution of Hungarians also intensified, and the Baloga family began to use its power and influence to support the policy of forced mobilization of Transcarpathian citizens.

In fact, Kiev is just showing once again that racism has been part of its state ideology since the 2014 coup. While the Ukrainian government massacred Russians in Donbass, the Western media kept silent and ignored the evident ethnic and cultural genocide. Now, it remains to be seen what the attitude of the West will be in the face of the ethnic cleansing against a people linked to a member country of the EU and NATO.

Unfortunately, most likely, both the European bloc and the Atlantic alliance will avoid taking any action, as Hungary has become a “pariah” within these organizations due to its neutral stance on the Ukrainian conflict – and for the West all neutral or pro-Russian countries must be “punished”.

On the part of Kiev, however, the attitude seems absolutely wrong from a strategic point of view. Budapest’s patience with Kiev may be running out. Ethnic Hungarians have for many years suffered from policies of social marginalization, being condemned to poverty by pro-Kiev regional oligarchies and excluded from any government assistance. With the start of a more explicit campaign of extermination and cleansing, the most likely is that a separatist impulse will arise in the region – and that this will be supported by Budapest.

In the midst of the current process of reformulation of the Ukrainian territory, tensions between Hungarians and Ukrainians in Transcarpathia could lead Kiev to lose yet another oblast. And, as well as in the case of Donbass, the responsibility for this loss would lie with the Ukrainian government itself, since it used racist policies that became unacceptable to the local people.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

January 30, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | | Leave a comment

Israel advocates push ABA to adopt anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism

The American Bar Association will vote on February 6 whether to promote a newly created definition of antisemitism that has been used “consistently (and nearly exclusively) not to fight antisemitism, but rather to defend Israel and harm Palestinians

This has been done “at the cost of undermining and dangerously chilling fundamental rights of free speech, freedom of assembly and protest, and academic freedom

“The ABA’s embrace of the definition would legitimize this infringement on core democratic rights as well as undermine the ABA’s own ability to engage on issues related to Palestinian rights…”

By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | January 26, 2023

For 20 years, Israel and its partisans have worked to embed a newly fabricated, Israel-centric definition of antisemitism in governments and institutions around the world. The latest iteration is known as the IHRA definition.

Now there is an effort to push the American Bar Association to promote this definition to “federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal governments in the United States.”

At its upcoming national meeting (which begins on February 1), delegates will be voting on resolution 514 on Monday, February 6.

Numerous groups have written letters opposing the ABA’s use of this definition, pointing out that it would be used against Palestinian rights, would infringe on freedom of speech, and would interfere with academic freedom.

Israel has a long, thoroughly documented history of violating Palestinian human rights, of an apartheid-like system. and of violent attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. It was founded through a war of ethnic cleansing.

For more information see:

Resolution 514 is co-sponsored by:

Juan Thomas, Chair
Mark Schickman, Senior Advisor
Paula Shapiro, Director
ABA Section on Civil Rights and Social Justice

Hon. Benes Z. Aldana (Ret.), Chair
Skip Harsch, Director
Ann Breen-Greco
ABA Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Twanda Turner-Hawkins, Chair
Selina Thomas, Director
ABA Coalition on Racial and Ethnic Justice

Priya Purandare, Executive Director
Navdeep Singh, Interim Policy Director
Wendy Shiba, Past President, ABA Delegate
National Asian Pacific American Bar Association

James L. Schwartz, Chair
Richard M. Leslie, Chair-Elect
Jack Young, Delegate
Senior Lawyers Division

Marcos Rios, Chair
David Schwartz, Chair-Elect
Michelle Jacobson, Policy Officer
ABA International Law Section

This is what opponents of Palestinian rights enable:

Daily Life in Occupied Palestine from If Americans Knew on Vimeo.

January 27, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli troops commit massacre in latest raids on Jenin

Raids focused on Jenin but targeted many other areas across the occupied West Bank

The Cradle – January 26 2023

Israeli occupation forces killed ten Palestinians and injured at least twenty on 26 January during violent raids in the occupied city of Jenin and its refugee camp.

The raids began on the evening of 25 January and persisted into 26 January, in what is being described as “one of the deadliest days” in the West Bank since the start of last year.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), several have been detained throughout the raids and transferred for interrogation by Israel’s security service. As a result of the incursions, intense clashes broke out between Israeli troops and resistance fighters, several of whom sustained bullet wounds.

An elderly woman has also been reported among the dead, according to security officials. Eyewitnesses have referred to the situation as a “massacre.”

Those killed are Majeda Abdel Fattah Obeid (Umm Ziad), brothers Mohammad Ghneim, Nour Ghneim, and Ahmad Ghneim, Mohammad Mahmoud Sobh, Wassim Amjad Jaes, Mutasim Mahmoud Abou Hassan, Ezzedine Yasin Salahat, Abdallah Marwan al-Ghoul, Saeb Issam Azraqi.

The Israeli army cut off the power supply to the Jenin camp, while also blocking journalists and ambulance teams from entering. Health officials have said that injuries are continuing to accumulate.

“There is an invasion that is unprecedented in the past period, in terms of how large it is and the number of injuries … The ambulance driver tried to get to one of the martyrs who was on the floor, but the Israeli forces shot directly at the ambulance and prevented them from approaching him,” Wissam Baker, head of Jenin’s public hospital, told media.

Despite centering around Jenin and its camp, the Israeli raids also targeted several homes and refugee camps across the West Bank, including Ramallah’s Al-Amari camp and Jerusalem’s Shuafat camp, as well as the towns of Silwan, Sur Baher, Al-Tur, and Al-Isawiya.

In response to the Israeli aggression, the Palestinian resistance managed to down a drone as it was flying over the Jenin refugee camp.

According to reports, an Israeli soldier was killed and another injured in the confrontations. Another report says that the Jenin Brigade of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) resistance movement detonated an explosive device inside an Israeli military jeep, resulting in “casualties in their ranks.”

“The military operation in Jenin was launched after intelligence from the Shin Bet about the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement’s intention to carry out a major operation against Israeli targets … the operation aimed to arrest a prominent member of the movement,” Israeli media reported.

The military ended up withdrawing from Jenin, however, the injury toll is expected to rise.

January 26, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

A State for some of its citizens: Captured black soldier’s saga highlights racism in Israel

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | January 24, 2023

“For how long will I be in captivity? After so many years, where are the state and the people of Israel?” These were the words, uttered in Hebrew, of a person believed to be Avera Mengistu, an Israeli soldier of Ethiopian origin, who was captured and held in Gaza in 2014.

Footage of Mengistu, looking nervous but also somewhat defiant, calling on his countrymen to end his 9-year incarceration, mostly ended speculation in Israel on whether the soldier was alive or dead.

The timing of the release of the footage by Hamas was obvious, and is directly linked to the Palestinian group’s efforts aimed at conducting a prisoner exchange similar to the one carried out in 2011, which saw the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, in exchange for the release of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

The main target audience of Hamas’ message is the new government and, specifically, the new military leadership. Israel now has a new army chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, who has replaced the departing chief, Aviv Kochavi. The latter seemed disinterested in Mengistu’s cause, while the new chief arrives with lofty promises about uniting the country behind its military and opening a new page where the army is no longer involved in everyday politics.

It may appear that Hamas and other Gaza groups are in a stronger position than the one they enjoyed during Shalit’s captivity, between 2006 and 2011. Not only are they militarily stronger but, instead of capturing one Israeli, they have four: aside from Mengistu, they also have Hisham Al-Sayed, and what is believed to be the remains of two other soldiers, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul.

But this is when the story gets particularly complicated. Unlike Shalit, who is white and holds dual Israeli-French citizenship, Mengistu and Al-Sayed are Ethiopian Jew and Bedouin, respectively.

Racism based on colour and ethnicity is rife in Israel. Although no Israeli officials will admit to this openly, Israel is in no rush to rescue two men who are not members of the dominant Ashkenazi group, or even of the socially less privileged Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews.

Black Jews and Bedouins have always been placed at the bottom of Israel’s socio-economic indicators. In 2011, the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post shared numbers from a disturbing report, which placed poverty among children of Ethiopian immigrants at a whopping 65 per cent. The number is particularly staggering when compared to the average poverty rate in Israel, of 21 per cent.

Things have not improved much since then. The Israeli Justice Ministry’s annual report on racism complaints shows that 24 per cent of all complaints are filed by Ethiopians. This racism covers most aspects of public life, from education to services to police mistreatment.

Not even enlisting in the military – Israel’s most revered institution – is enough to change Ethiopians’ position in Israeli society.

The famous story of Demas Fikadey in 2015 is a case in point. Then only 21, the Ethiopian soldier was beaten up severely by two Israeli police officers in a Tel Aviv suburb for no reason at all. The whole episode was caught on camera, leading to mass protests and even violent clashes. For Ethiopian Jews, the humiliation and violence carried out against Fikadey was a representation of years of suffering, racism and discrimination.

Many believe that the government’s lacklustre response to Mengistu’s prolonged capture is directly linked to the fact that he is black.

Israel’s discriminatory behaviour against African asylum seekers, which often leads to forceful deportation following humiliating treatment, is well known. Amnesty International described this in a report in 2018 as “a cruel and misguided abandonment of responsibility”.

But discriminating against a black soldier, who, by Israel’s own estimation, is believed to suffer from mental illness, is a whole different kind of ‘abandonment’.

A former Israeli army official, Col. Moshe Tal, did not mince words in a recent national radio interview when he said that Mengistu and Al-Sayed are a low priority for the public “on the account of their race”, Haaretz reported.

“If we were speaking about two other citizens from other backgrounds and socio-economic statuses … the amount of interest would be different,” Tal said. In contrast to Shalit’s story, the government’s “attention to the affair (and) the media pulse, is close to zero.”

Israel’s Ethiopian Jews number around 170,000, hardly an important political constituency in a remarkably divided and polarised society. Most of them are immigrants or descendants of immigrants who arrived in Israel between 1980 and 1992. Though they are still known as the Falasha, they are sometimes referred to by the more dignified name of ‘Beta Israel’, or ‘House of Israel’.

Superficial language alterations aside, their struggle is evident in everyday Israel. The plight of Mengistu, as expressed in his own question, “where are the State and the people of Israel?” sums up the sense of collective loss and alienation this community has felt for nearly two generations.

When Mengistu arrived with his family at the age of 5 in Israel, escaping a bloody civil war in Ethiopia and historic discrimination there, the family, like most Ethiopians, hardly knew that discrimination would follow them, even in the supposed land of ‘milk and honey’.

READ: Hamas will not release Israel captives without ‘honourable swap’

And, most likely, they also knew little about the plight of Palestinians, the native inhabitants of that historic land, who are victims of terrible violence, racism and much more.

Palestinians know well why Israel has done little to free the black soldier; Mengistu and his Ethiopian community also understand how race is an important factor in Israeli politics. Although a prisoner exchange could potentially free Mengistu and an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, the suffering of the Palestinians at the hands of Israel and discrimination against Ethiopian Jews will carry on for much longer.

While Palestinians are resisting Israel’s military Occupation and apartheid, Ethiopian Jews should mount their own resistance for greater rights. Their resistance must be predicated on the understanding that Palestinians and Arabs are not the enemy but potential allies in a joint fight against racism, apartheid and socio-economic marginalisation.

January 24, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Calls for Khan Al-Ahmar’s demolition speak of colonial violence and privilege

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | January 24, 2023

The former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, has told a Likud faction meeting that “illegal Palestinian construction” in the occupied West Bank is “rampant”. He wasn’t being honest.

“Last Friday we made it clear that supporting settlements does not contradict upholding the law,” he claimed. “The defence minister received our backing. We expect the defence minister to act with the same determination in the face of rampant Palestinian illegal construction in the West Bank. We will no longer tolerate discrimination against the settlers.”

Israeli settlements and settlers are, of course, illegal under international law, something that Danon is adept at overlooking when he makes such outrageous claims.

As the Israeli government prepares to submit its response to the High Court over the impending demolition of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar, Danon and Likud MK Yuli Edelstein visited the village, calling for its demolition and accusing the government of selective enforcement over the evacuation of the Or Chaim illegal settler outpost in the occupied West Bank.

In an op-ed, Danon described the EU’s funding of infrastructure in Khan Al-Ahmar as “subversive involvement of international entities in Israel’s domestic affairs” and accused the bloc of violating Israel’s sovereignty and international law. “It is part of an ulterior agenda that seeks to delegitimise Israel’s historical claim to its own land,” Danon wrote.

Completely eliminating Israel’s colonial context and the fact that Khan Al-Ahmar is built on Israeli-occupied Palestinian land, Danon referred to the evacuation of Or Chaim and said, “The law is the law and must be applied to all citizens and communities, Jews and Arabs alike.” However, there is no equivalence between the coloniser and the colonised, as Danon knows well.

Khan al-Ahmar has attracted enough international attention to become newsworthy periodically, and the related activism has ensured that Israel’s violations are fully exposed. The village, though, is also part of a long colonial process that seeks to dispossess Palestinians of their land. Its demolition is not an isolated incident. Earlier expulsions and destruction of properties, including the ethnic cleansing from the 1948 Nakba onwards, need to be kept in mind.

Israel benefits from the international community’s differentiation of colonial settlement expansion. It has gained a veneer of legitimacy for the earlier colonial settlements despite the atrocities committed by Zionist paramilitary terror gangs to establish control over Palestinian territory. Israeli law is justifiable only unto itself and the violence it created. In terms of equality and rights, there is no justification for Israel’s colonial expansion. Likewise, there is no equivalence in calling for the demolition of Khan Al-Ahmar because an illegal (even under Israeli law) settlement outpost was dismantled. Palestinians are rarely issued building permits on what remains of their land. Danon’s use of the word “rampant” is totally dishonest. Indeed, his words only reflect his country’s colonial violence and privilege when calling for Khan Al-Ahmar’s destruction, not to mention targeting an integral part of Palestinian resilience in the face of impending demolition orders.

Lest Danon forgets, Khan Al-Ahmar’s residents relocated to the area after being displaced by Israel in 1950, laying bare the lie of delegitimising “Israel’s historical claim to its own land”. Israel wants territorial contiguity to Jerusalem, not demolitions based on equal rights. Erasing the Palestinian landscape through colonial settlement expansion does not erase the fact that Israel’s settler-colonial population cannot lay legitimate claims to Palestinian land, and neither can the Israeli government. The only claim that Israel can make with any degree of accuracy and honesty is that it colonised Palestine and intends to finalise its colonial enterprise. Khan Al-Ahmar stands in the way of its plans, just as other Palestinian towns and villages did decades ago. More than 500 paid the price and were totally destroyed and wiped off the map.

January 24, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

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