Peter Jenkins, a former British ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, expresses concerns about the decisions of France, Germany, and the UK to appease President Trump on fixing “flaws” in the Iranian nuclear agreement. http://lobelog.com/europe-dont-go-all-wobbly-on-the-jcpoa/ It is worth a read to see that the European governments are still Washington’s toadies despite the “hate Trump” attitude that allegedly prevails among Washington’s European vassals.
Readers need to understand that there are no flaws in the agreement. The allegation of “flaws” is an israeli orchestration in order to resurrect the attacks on Iran that the nuclear agreement terminated. What Trump is doing is appeasing Israel. Israel doesn’t want Iran to have long range missiles, non-nuclear ones, that enhance Iran’s defensive posture. More importantly, Israel does not want to lose the nuclear weapons charge that Israel invented and hoped to use to have the US military destabilize Iran a la Iraq and Libya. Israel’s problem with Syria and Iran is that both countries support Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has twice driven the vaunted Israeli army out of southern Lebanon, territory Israel wants to occupy for the water resources. If Israel, armed as it is with the American Zionist Neoconservatives who control US foreign policy, can resurrect the Western attack on Iran, Israel can perhaps pressure Iran to abandon Hezbollah and Lebanon to Israel.
Americans are so totally brainwashed by Israeli propaganda that there is no public restraint on Washington serving Israel’s interest. And that is what Trump is doing. The tough guy is nothing but a panderer for Israel.
What is going on has nothing whatsoever to do with the Iranian nuclear or missile program. It has to do with Israel’s use of US power, including the intimidation power over Europe, to remove Iran as a constraint on Israeli expansion.
Of course, the UK diplomat probably knows this, but he also knows that he cannot say it without being read out of his career as an “anti-semite.”
January 29, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | European Union, Sanctions against Iran, United States, Zionism |
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Frankly, it was hard to believe when some newspapers mentioned a few months ago that PM Modi was planning to travel to Palestine in a near future. No Indian prime minister ever visited Israel or Palestine. A de-hyphenation of India’s Israel relationship and its ties with Palestine has been the stated Indian policy all along, ever since 1991 when India established relations with Israel, hardly three years after recognizing Palestine – one of the first countries to do so – in 1988. But it is mere sophistry.
The fact remains that India carefully calibrated the dynamics of the two tracks. Paradoxically, Modi will be flagging openly for the first time that hyphenation firmly continues to be the Indian policy. Every time Delhi adds a new dimension to relations with Israel, it feels a compulsion to burnish the ties with Palestine. After Modi’s visit to Israel, he is left with no option but to travel to Palestine.
Modi can be very excessive in the diplomatic arena – such as introducing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Gandhi recently in Ahmedabad (“Ghandi”, as Netanyahu spells the famous name.) Perhaps, Modi’s intention was good, because Netanyahu is the very antithesis of Gandhi’s doctrine of non-violence and he hoped that something of the principles of ‘ahimsa’ might rub on the militant Israeli leader. (Gandhi would never have condoned the assassination of foreign adversaries as state policy, no matter the pretext.)
There was no rational explanation to hype up the relationship with Israel, a country with which India has a trade volume of $4 billion (including arms purchases). But Modi went overboard, and a Palestine visit became unavoidable. Would Netanyahu get upset with Modi for visiting Palestine? Why should he? The world leaders routinely visit Palestine – Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Shinzo Abe, Vladimir Putin and so on. Even Donald Trump dropped by Bethlehem while visiting Israel.
But the real significance of Modi’s visit to Palestine on February 9, which was announced by South Block on Saturday, lies elsewhere. The visit is being scheduled within a few weeks of the Trump administration’s announcement to withhold $65 million out of the $125 million in annual support it gives to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and to freeze an additional $45 million it had authorized in December for food relief to refugees in Gaza and the West Bank. The stony heart of Netanyahu applauded Trump’s decision. Netanyahu seeks “a new model” for aid disbursement that would entail greater Israeli control over Palestinian funds as a means to arm-twist the Palestine Authority, and he and Trump would seem to be working in tandem.
To the extent that Modi’s visit is a gesture of solidarity at a juncture when Trump brutally threatens to pass a death sentence on Palestine by cutting all aid, Delhi’s move is invested with a lot of political symbolism. Certainly, it will be interesting to see what Modi says while on Palestinian soil. His joint statement with Netanyahu was almost ditto a narrative of the Israeli position on Palestine. It even omitted any reference to a two-state solution. Will Modi make amends?
More importantly, it remains to be seen what Modi has to offer to the Palestinian people to alleviate their suffering. When he could offer $1 billion to the beleaguered Mongolians who are sandwiched between Russia and China, a similar gesture to the Palestinian people will be noted regionally and internationally as a noble gesture.
Of course it will be a far more fitting tribute to Gandhi’s legacy on Modi’s part than escorting Netanyahu to Sabarmati Ashram.
Read a dispatch in the weekend Guardian newspaper on what awaits Modi in Palestine.
January 28, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | India, Israel, Palestine |
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Haitham Siyaj
Israeli repression targeting Palestinian youth activists has continued to rise. On Friday, 26 January, occupation forces seize Haitham Siyaj, only a month after he was released from nearly two years’ imprisonment without charge or trial under administrative detention. Siyaj is one of the comrades of Basil al-Araj who was seized by occupation forces shortly after being released from months in Palestinian Authority prison.
There, his administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial – was renewed repeatedly. Siyaj was once again seized at a flying checkpoint erected by occupation forces in the Jaba area.
Tareq Mattar
At the same time, Palestinian youth activist Tareq Mattar’s administrative detention was also extended for another six months. Mattar, 28, is a Palestinian youth leader who is active in a variety of projects, initiatives and forums to organize Palestinian youth and promote study and discussion of the Palestinian cause. He was previously jailed for his Palestinian political activities. He has been jailed without charge or trial since August 2017.
Samer Abu Aisha
Meanwhile, Palestinian journalist Samer Abu Aisha, 30, from Jerusalem, was summoned for interrogation by occupation police on 24 January; he was released from Israeli prison six months ago after 20 months in prison. He was seized by occupation forces in January 2016 after they stormed the headquarters of the ICRC in Sheikh Jarrah where he and a fellow Jerusalemite activist, Hijazi Abu Sbeih, were staying in defiance of an order to expel them from their city for six months. He was jailed for 20 months on charges of illegal protest, incitement and “disturbing public security.”
January 28, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Zionism |
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Israel’s deliberate targeting of Gaza’s health sector and denying those in need of humanitarian care from obtaining it constitute a crime against humanity
Some describe Gaza as either the world’s largest “concentration camp” or “open air prison”, while others liken it to the modern-day equivalent of the Warsaw ghetto.
Whatever appropriate analogy you apply to the enclave, that traps two million Palestinians on a slender piece of coastal land along the Egyptian-Israeli border, it’s impossible to overstate the level of human misery and suffering that is taking place there today.
A catastrophic situation
When I spoke with Dr Basem Naim, the former Palestinian minister for health and resident of Gaza, I referred him to a UN report that forewarned that Israel’s medieval-like blockade promises to make the territory “uninhabitable” by 2020.
“What do they [UN] mean? It’s uninhabitable here now,” Naim told me. “The situation today is catastrophic.”
Dr Naim explained how Israel’s intentional cutting of Gaza’s power supply, meant to exert pressure on Hamas but, instead, punishing ordinary Palestinians, is having dire affects on the health sector in Gaza.
“The typical Palestinian gets only three to five hours of electricity each day,” he said. “You can’t pump water to apartments that are above ground level. You can’t pump sewage, which is why more than 95 percent of Gaza’s drinking water is undrinkable.”
He explained that hospitals, which depend on 24-hour electricity, are unable to perform life-saving surgeries, and that some, including Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, have ceased doing operations altogether.
This is happening while newborn babies and the elderly freeze to death in the winter, and die from heat exhaustion in the summer. This is happening because Israel is allowing only 120 watts of power to be provided to Gaza, knowing that 400 watts are needed to meet the basic minimum survival needs of two million Palestinian people.
“The scarcity of energy and the severe shortage of fuel in Gaza have damaged all aspects of life in the Strip,” said the International Committee of the Red Cross in a statement issued last year.
Closed borders
But the biggest problem facing the imprisoned citizens of Gaza is the “closed borders”, according to Dr Naim. He explained:
“For example, the last time Rafah border crossing was opened, which was one week ago, came after more than 100 days of closure, and out of the 35,000 people waiting to leave Gaza through Rafah, only 2,000 were able to leave, and the others must wait again for another 100 days. When I talk about 35,000 people, I’m talking about urgent humanitarian cases; patients, and people who need to meet their families for urgent situations. It’s nearly impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to get urgent medical care in Israel, Egypt, or Jordan.
“If a Palestinian wants to leave Gaza for urgent medical care or treatment, he or she must wait 70 days to get [an] Israeli reply saying he or she is allowed or not. And after 70 days, and even if the request is approved, he or she must come to Erez crossing for an interrogation, and he or she might be arrested. I know many cases where the families of patients were blackmailed by Israeli security forces, like Shin Bet, under these very circumstances.”
It’s worth noting that it’s not only from Gaza that Palestinians are denied freedom of movement. Earlier this month, Omar Barghouti, who lives in Israel and is one of the founders of the boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli occupation, was denied the right to visit his cancer-stricken mother in Jordan.
Israel’s refusal to allow a prominent Palestinian figure, who has a demonstrable lifetime track record of non-violent activism, undercuts Israeli claims that travel bans have little to do with security and everything to do with meting out collective and inhumane punishment to the Palestinian people, writ large.
A new report published by the human rights group Gisha – Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement shows that 2017 was the worst year for the movement of Palestinians in and out of Gaza since Israel’s attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014, reducing the number of exit permits by 51 percent from 2016 to 2017.
The report shows that Israel allowed fewer than 6,000 monthly exits in 2017 compared with the more than 14,000 allowed the previous year.
The authors of the report also identified a list of policies that were carried out by Israeli authorities to prevent or restrict freedom of Palestinian movement through the Erez crossing.
These new restrictive measures were “introduced with little or no justification provided as to their purpose and, it appears, no consideration of the impact they would have on the lives of Gaza’s residents”.
Targeting the health sector
These measures include “significant extension of the processing times of permit applications, leaving thousands of permit applications pending with no response; a new directive prohibiting Palestinians from exiting Gaza with electronic devices, toiletries and food; freezing travel to the American Consulate; mandatory shuttle services to Allenby Bridge Crossing; “security blocks” blocking travel for medical patients, traders, and humanitarian workers; increase in the frequency and severity of “security interviews” at Erez; trader permits cancelled as new approvals declined; travel for Friday prayers in Jerusalem remaining blocked, and; recipients of permits for travel abroad increasingly made to sign a commitment not to return for a year.”
It’s not only inexcusable for Israel to impose any kind of restriction of movement, but to deliberately target Gaza’s health sector by cutting power to the Strip, and then to deny those in need of humanitarian care from obtaining it – constitutes a crime against humanity by any definition.
“The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives, and survival, and the overall conditions warrant the characterisation of a crime against humanity,” says Richard Falk, a former UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Palestinian children in Gaza suffer from acute anaemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Children need thousands of hearing aids.
“Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Palestinians in Gaza. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people … Over 50 percent of Palestinian children in Gaza under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live,” wrote Falk in 2008.
When I referred to Falk’s findings from a decade ago, Dr Naim said things have become “much worse”, pointing to the fact that much of Gaza’s critical infrastructure was destroyed during Israel’s 2014 assault, noting that 20,000 tons of explosive ordinance was dropped on the Strip by Israeli jets and artillery, and that unemployment and poverty have skyrocketed since.
Breaking the Palestinians’ will
Israel’s restriction on Palestinian movement is also preventing Gaza from building a functioning civil society as human rights workers, social workers, health workers, educators, engineers, etc are denied opportunities to expand their knowledge and skills in other countries.
It also runs afoul of Israel’s “obligations to respect the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, including their right to freedom of movement, which includes, with some limitations, a right to enter and leave one’s country and to choose one’s place of residence within it,” according to Human Rights Watch.
In fact, Palestinians in Gaza may visit their families in the occupied West Bank only if he or she can prove their relative is “dead, dying, or getting married“, which constitutes another violation of not only international law but also the Oslo Accords that stipulate the Palestinian territories – East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank – constitute one unified territorial entity. Israel has made movement between the territories all but impossible for Palestinians.
Given that nearly a third of Palestinians in Gaza have relatives in either the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Israel, one can see how needlessly cruel Israel’s brutal policies of occupation truly are.
Of course, Israel tries to justify its near total freeze of Palestinian movement in and out of Gaza with concerns for its security, but this has always been a rhetorical fig leaf for Israel’s sustained effort to break the will of the Palestinian people.
Israel’s intent has always been to strangle Palestinian political, social, and civil life in the hope that those it occupies will come to the realisation that resistance is futile.
– CJ Werleman is the author of Crucifying America (2013), Koran Curious (2011), and he is the host of Foreign Object. Follow him on twitter: @cjwerleman
READ MORE:
Yes, Palestinians under siege are ‘dehumanised’ – by Israel
Remembering Cast Lead: How corporate media continue to justify Israel’s criminal excesses
January 27, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Cowardice in the face of Zionist/corporate coercion is not confined to individual state actors; it is also found among groups of states. The crippling power of groupthink and the fear of reprisal for defying the hegemonic power can inhibit states from behaving ethically. To stand against tyranny is admittedly dangerous and difficult, so perhaps cowardice is too strong a term for those that don’t, but tyrants have only as much power as their victims are willing to give them; at some point they have to stop giving: There is no cowardice as strong as a shared cowardice, or as Edmund Burke so aptly said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” For an assemblage of do-nothing good men, I give you the United Nations.
The UN’s role in creating our neo-fascist world order goes virtually unremarked as the world’s propaganda organs and gossip networks fixate on the U.S.’s warmongering bombast. To condemn the UN in this manner likely seems absurd to anti-war activists and those indoctrinated with the dogma of liberal internationalism, but it is no coincidence that the 20th century, the most violent in human history, is also the first century when the world succumbed to the conceit that war could be rationalized out of existence.
The UN did not prevent wars; it centralized and depoliticized their execution. Before the UN, states had to make the conscious decision to declare war before engaging in hostilities. War was an instrument of politics. After the UN, war was divorced war from rational politics. It became an aggression sanctioned by the Security Council, like the no-fly zones over Iraq, or a self-proclaimed right to attack based on contrivances like “responsibility to protect” and “violations” of Security Council resolutions. These are the excuses invoked to lay waste whole countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Victims of great power aggression, like Palestine, on the other hand, have no hope of redress.
Like the League of Nations, the UN is founded on high moral principles but has neither the military strength nor the political will to enforce them. It could hardly be otherwise. The U.S. emerged from WWII as the world’s pre-eminent economic, military and political hegemon, so to think that it would willingly subordinate itself to an objective moral code or an international body was preposterous. In fact, the UN exposed its hypocrisy within a mere 25 months of its founding. I discussed the matter in a July 22, 2011, column concerning the possible UN membership of Palestine, which of course never happened.
The essay’s most remarkable aspect is not its scintillating prose but the fact that it could be reprinted today with no loss of relevance, especially concerning the Arab League’s announcement that it would lobby the UN to recognize the state of Palestine because of Donald Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient Canaanite city of Jerusalem. In theory, the league’s idea is perfectly sound. According to Article 4 of the United Nations Charter:
Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
In practice, the announcement is farcical. The league does not seem to have learned anything from the UN’s failure to do so 2011. Why should it expect the UN to behave any differently now? If the league wants the UN to recognize the state of Palestine, it must go about it a different way. It has to make Israel, not Palestine, the issue. The following excerpt from my article shows UN cowardice in the face of U.S. terrorism.
Original Cowardice
By late November 1947, the issue of a Jewish national home had yet to be settled. On one side were those who sympathized with partition of Palestine because of the persecution the Jews suffered under Hitler’s Reich. On the other were those who recognized that such a plan was grossly illegal and a violation of fundamental UN principles of justice. By the 25th, the Zionist lobby realized that it did not have the requisite two-thirds majority in the General Assembly to support partition. Extraordinary measures had to be taken.
Vijayalakshmi Pandit, head of India’s UN delegation and sister of India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, received daily death threats warning her to change her vote. Nehru, though, refused to buckle in the face of threats or lucrative bribes. (Najma Heptulla, Indo-West Asian relations: the Nehru era (Allied Publishers, 1991, p. 158.)
Other, smaller, countries could not afford to stand on principle. In Palestine and Israel—A Challenge to Justice, Professor John Quigley recounts how Liberia, the Philippines, and Haiti—all financially dependent on the U.S.—were coerced into switching their votes:
“Liberia’s ambassador to the United Nations complained that the U.S. delegation threatened aid cuts to several countries. Some delegates charged U.S. officials with ‘diplomatic intimidation.’ Without terrific pressure from the United States on governments which cannot afford to risk American reprisals, said an anonymous editorial writer, the resolution would never have passed. The fact such pressure had been exerted became public knowledge, to the extent a State Department policy group was concerned that ‘the prestige of the UN’ would suffer because of ‘the notoriety and resentment attendant upon the activities of U.S. pressure groups, including members of Congress, who sought to impose U.S. views as to partition on foreign delegations.’” (p. 37)
On Nov. 29, the Partition Plan, known as UNGA Resolution 181 narrowly gained the required two thirds—33 in favor, 13 opposed, 10 abstaining and 1 absent—yet the resolution was a violation of the UN Charter since the UN has no authority to take land from one people and give it to another….
As a result, 726,000 Arabs were made refugees in their own land from November 29, 1947, until the end of 1948, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. Walter Eytan, Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, referred to the UNRWA’s figure as “meticulous” and believed that the real number was closer to 800,000. Moshe Dayan would later admit: “There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” (Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969).”
One can have sympathy for Liberia, the Philippines and Haiti—without economic freedom, political freedom is an illusion––but the issue never should have been brought to the General Assembly, especially since the voting was known to be coerced. As the last line said: “The UN has no authority to take land from one people and give it to another.”
The crowning cruelty is that Resolution 181 had nothing to do with Israel’s “creation.” President Harry Truman admitted that he refused to let it be ratified in the Security Council precisely because of Jewish savagery against Arabs. In a March 25, 1948, statement he wrote:
“It has become clear that the partition plan cannot be carried out at this time by peaceful means. We could not undertake to impose this solution on the people of Palestine by the use of American troops, both on Charter grounds and as a matter of national policy.”
Without ratification, Resolution 181 was merely a General Assembly recommendation, not a decision, so the partition never officially took place; however, because Zionists were in control of Congress on the matter, and the media and U.S. public were thoroughly indoctrinated with Holocaust™ propaganda, Truman did nothing to stop the Jewish atrocity because he needed Jewish votes in the 1948 election. Truman’s moral cowardice and the UN’s refusal to defend its Charter against obvious violation have given us the illegitimate state of Israel, from which emanates our terroristic, neo-fascist world.
At no time since 1947 has the UN done anything to atone for its cowardice or stop Israel from committing its slow genocide of Palestine. From this perspective, the Arab League’s asking the UN to grant statehood to Palestine is an exercise in futility. Instead it must demand that the UN acknowledge the non-existence of Resolution 181, and thereby the non-existence of Israel.
Cowardice Compounded
The second thing the Arab League has to do is have Israel expelled from the UN. On May 11, 1949, Israel was admitted as a member, but that decision cannot be justified since “Israel” failed the peace-loving criterion mentioned in Article 4 of the Charter. To get around this inconvenient fact, the UN cheated. As I had Ban Ki-Moon say on May 11, 2009:
Few people know that Israel is the only state to be given a conditional admission. Under General Assembly Resolution 273, Israel was admitted on the condition that it grant all Palestinians the right to return to their homes and receive compensation for lost or damaged property, according to General Assembly Resolution 181, paragraph 11. Suffice to say, Israel has never lived up to these terms, and never intended to. For 60 years Israel has violated its terms of admission, and for 60 years the UN has done nothing about it. It has watched as Israel heaped misery upon misery on Palestine, and violated international law with impunity.
It is not necessary for the Arab League to lobby the UN for Palestinian statehood. All it has to do is show that Israel violated its terms of admission to have it expelled. Since the General Assembly, not the Security Council, controls membership issues, vetoes would not come into play.
The league would also do well to consider the example of Taiwan’s UN membership. On Oct. 25, 1971, it was expelled because the UN chose not to recognize Taiwan as a country any longer. The UN decided that the People’s Republic of China was the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations, not the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek. Although Taiwan considers itself an independent state, China considers it to be a province of China. The UN adopted a “One China” policy, just like the U.S. did, and did so asserting that Taiwan had unlawfully occupied China’s UN seat. Let’s let that sink in for a moment: unlawfully occupied.” Is there any more unlawful occupier than Israel?
The UN cannot accept two governments in Palestine any more than it could accept two Chinese governments. Because its “creation” and its membership in the UN are both unlawful, Israel must be expelled and its seat given to Palestine.
The Arab League, and all civilized nations, must demand that the UN adopt a “One Palestine” policy.
January 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Israel, Palestine, United Nations, Zionism |
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The drama which is unfolding in northern Syria is truly an almost ideal case to fully assess how weak and totally dysfunctional the AngloZionist Empire has really become. Let’s begin with a quick reminder.
The US-Israeli goals in Syria were really very simple. As I have already mentioned in a past article, the initial AngloZionist plan was to overthrow Assad and replace him with the Takfiri crazies (Daesh, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, ISIS – call them whatever you want). Doing this would achieve the following goals:
- Bring down a strong secular Arab state along with its political structure, armed forces and security services.
- Create total chaos and horror in Syria justifying the creation of a “security zone” by Israel not only in the Golan, but further north.
- Trigger a civil war in Lebanon by unleashing the Takfiri crazies against Hezbollah.
- Let the Takfiris and Hezbollah bleed each other to death, then create a “security zone”, but this time in Lebanon.
- Prevent the creation of a Shia axis Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon.
- Breakup Syria along ethnic and religious lines.
- Create a Kurdistan which could then be used against Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
- Make it possible for Israel to become the uncontested power broker in the Middle-East and forces the KSA, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and all others to have to go to Israel for any gas or oil pipeline project.
- Gradually isolate, threaten, subvert and eventually attack Iran with a wide regional coalition of forces.
- Eliminate all center of Shia power in the Middle-East.
With the joint Russian-Iranian military intervention, this plan completely collapsed. For a while, the USA tried to break up Syria under various scenarios, but the way the Russian Aerospace forces hammered all the “good terrorists” eventually convinced the AngloZionists that this would not work.
The single biggest problem for the Empire is that while it has plenty of firepower in the region (and worldwide), it cannot deploy any “boots on the ground”. Being the Empire’s boots on the ground was, in fact, the role the AngloZionists had assigned to the Takfiri crazies (aka Daesh/IS/ISIS/al-Qaeda/al-Nusra/etc/), but that plan failed. The only US allies left in the region are Israel and Saudi Arabia. The problem with them is that, just like the USA themselves, these countries do not have ground forces capable of actually deploying inside Syria and taking on not only the Syrian military, but the much more capable Iranian and Hezbollah forces. Murdering civilians is really the only thing the Israelis and Saudis are expert in, at least on the ground (in the skies the Israeli Air Force is a very good one). Enter the Kurds.
The AngloZionist wanted to use the Kurds just like NATO had used the KLA in Kosovo: as a ground force which could be supported by US/NATO and maybe even Israeli airpower. Unlike the Israelis and Saudis, the Kurds are a relatively competent ground force (albeit not one able to take on, say, Turkey or Iran).
The folks at the Pentagon had already tried something similar last year when they attempted to create a sovereign Kurdistan in Iraq by means of a referendum. The Iraqis, with some likely help from Iran, immediately put an end to this nonsense and the entire exercise was a pathetic “flop”.
Which immediately begs the obvious question: are the Americans even capable of learning from their mistakes? What in the world were they thinking when they announced the creation of 30,000 strong Syrian Border Security Force (BSF) (so called to give the illusion that protecting Syria’s border was the plan, not the partition Syria)? The real goal was, as always, to put pressure on Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia while grabbing a lot of oil. As always with Uncle Shmuel, the entire plan had no UNSC authorization was thus totally illegal under international law (as is the presence of the USA in the Syria’s airspace and territory, but nobody cares any more) .
Did Trump and his generals really think that Turkey, Iran, Syria and Russia would accept a US protectorate in Syria masquerading as an “independent Kurdistan” and do nothing about it? Yet again, and I know this sounds hard to believe, but I think that this is yet another strong indication that the Empire is run by stupid and ignorant people whose brain and education simply do not allow them to grasp even the basic dynamics in the region of our planet they are interfering with.
Whatever may be the case the Turks reacted exactly as everybody thought: the Turkish Chief of Staff jumped into an airplane, flew to Moscow, met with top Russian generals (including Minister of Defense Shoigu) and clearly got a “go ahead” from Moscow: not only were the Turkish airplanes flying over Syria’s Afrin province not challenged by Russian air defense systems (which have ample coverage in this region), but the Russians also helpfully withdrew their military personnel from the region lest any Russian get hurt. Sergei Lavrov deplored it all, as he had to, but it was clear to all that Turkey had the Russian backing for this operation. I would add that I am pretty sure that the Iranians were also consulted (maybe at the same meeting in Moscow?) to avoid any misunderstandings as there is little love lost between Ankara and Tehran.
What about the Kurds? Well, how do I say that nicely? Let’s just say that what they did was not very smart. That’s putting it very, very mildly. The Russians gave them a golden deal: accept large autonomy in Syria, come to the National Dialog Congress to take place in Sochi, we will make your case before the (always reluctant) Syrians, Iranians and Turks and we will even give you money to help you develop your oil production. But no, the Kurds chose to believe in the hot air coming from Washington and when the Turks attacked that is all the Kurds got from Washington: hot air.
In fact, it is pretty clear that the US Americans have, yet again, betrayed an ally: Tillerson has now “greenlighted” a 30km safe zone in Syria (as if anybody was asking for his opinion, nevermind permission!). Take a look any map of the Afrin region and look what 50 miles (about 80km) look like. You can immediately see that this 30km “safe zone” means: the end of any Kurdish aspirations to create a little independent Kurdistan in northern Syria.
To say that all these developments make the Russians really happy is not an exaggeration. It is especially sweet for the Russians to see that they did not even have to do much, that this ugly mess of a disaster for the USA was entirely self-inflicted. What can be sweeter than that?
Let’ look at it all from the Russian point of view:
First, this situation further puts Turkey (a US ally and NATO member) on a collision course with the US/NATO/EU. And Turkey is not ‘just’ a NATO ally, like Denmark or Italy. Turkey is the key to the eastern Mediterranean and the entire Middle-East (well, one of them at least). Also, Turkey has a huge potential to be a painful thorn in the southern ‘belly’ of Russia so it is really crucial for Russia to keep Uncle Sam and the Israelis as far away from Turkey as possible. Having said that, nobody in Russia harbors *any* illusions about Turkey and/or Erdogan. Turkey will always be a problematic neighbor for Russia (the two countries already fought 12 wars!!!). But there is a big difference between “bad” and “worse”. Considering that in a not too distant past Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft over Syria, financed, trained and supported “good terrorists” in Syria, was deeply involved in the Tatar separatist movement in Crimea, and was the main rear base for the Wahabi terrorists in Chechnia for well over a decade, “worse” in the case of Turkey can be much, much worse than “bad” is today.
Second, these developments have clearly brought Turkey into an even closer cooperative dynamic with Russia and Iran, something which Russia very much desires. Turkey by itself is much more of a potential problem than a Turkey which partners up with Russia and Iran (ideally with Syria too, but considering the animosity between the two countries and their leaders that is something for the distant future, at least for the time being). What is shaping up is an informal (but very real) Russian-Turkish-Iranian regional alliance against the Axis of Kindness: USA-Israel-KSA. If that is what happens then the latter does not stand a chance to prevail.
Third, even though the Kurds are outraged and are now whining about the Russian “betrayal” – they will come to realize that they did it to themselves and that their best chance for freedom and prosperity is to work with the Russians. That means that the Russians will be able to achieve with, and for, the Kurds what the USA could not. Yet another very nice side-benefit for Russia.
Fourth, Syria, Iran and Turkey now realize a simple thing: only Russia stands between the crazy US-Israeli plans for the region and them. Absent Russia, there is nothing stopping the AngloZionists from re-igniting the “good terrorists” and the Kurds and use them against every one of them.
Be it as it may, having the USA and Israel shoot themselves in the leg and watch them bleed is not enough. To really capitalize on this situation the Russians need to also achieve a number of goals:
First, they need to stop the Turks before this all turns into a major and protracted conflict. Since Tillerson “greenlighted” a 30km “safe zone”, this is probably what Erdogan told Trump over the phone and that, in turn, is probably what the Russians and the Turks agreed upon. So, hopefully, this should not be too hard to achieve.
Second, the Russians need to talk to the Kurds and offer them the same deal again: large autonomy inside Syria in exchange for peace and prosperity. The Kurds are not exactly the easiest people to talk to, but since there is really no other option, my guess is that as soon as they stop hallucinating about the US going to war with Turkey on their behalf they will have to sit down and negotiate the deal. Likewise, the Russians will have to sell the very same deal to Damascus which, frankly, is in no position to reject it.
Third, Russia has neither the desire nor the means to constantly deal with violent flare-ups in the Middle-East. If the Empire desperately needs wars to survive, Russia desperately needs peace. In practical terms this means that the Russians must work with the Iranians, the Turks, the Syrians to secure a regional security framework which would be guaranteed and, if needed, enforced by all parties. And yes, the next logical step will be to approach Israel and the KSA and give them security guarantees in exchange for their assurances to stop creating chaos and wars on behalf of the USA. I know, I will get a lot of flak for saying this, but there *are* people in Israel and, possibly, Saudi Arabia who also understand the difference between “bad” and “worse”. Heed my words: as soon as the Israelis and the Saudis realize that Uncle Sam can’t do much for them either, they will suddenly become much more open to meaningful negotiations. Still, whether these rational minds will be sufficient to deal with the rabid ideologues I frankly don’t know. But it is worth trying for sure.
Conclusion
The Trump Administration’s “strategy” (I am being very kind here) is to stir up as many conflicts in as many places of our planet as possible. The Empire thrives only on chaos and violence. The Russian response is the exact opposite: to try as best to stop wars, defuse conflicts and create, if not peace, at least a situation of non-violence. Simply put: peace anywhere is the biggest danger to the AngloZionist Empire whose entire structure is predicated on eternal wars. The total and abject failure of all US plans for Syria (depending on how you count we are at “plan C” or even “plan D”) is a strong indicator of how weak and totally dysfunctional the AngloZionist Empire has become. But ‘weak’ is a relative term while ‘dysfunctional’ does not imply ‘harmless’. The current lack of brains at the top, while very good in some ways, is also potentially very dangerous. I am in particular worried about what appears to be a total absence of real military men (officers in touch with reality) around the President. Remember how Admiral Fallon once referred to General Petraeus as “an ass-kissing little chickenshit“? This also fully applies to the entire gang of generals around Trump – all of them are the kind of men real officers like Fallon would, in this words, “hate”. As for State, I will just say this: I don’t expect much from a man who could not even handle Nikki Haley, never mind Erdogan.
Remember how the USA ignited the Ukraine to punish the Russians for their thwarting of the planned US attack on Syria? Well, the very same Ukraine has recently passed a law abolishing the “anti-terrorist operation” in the Donbass and declaring the Donbass “occupied territory”. Under Ukie law, Russia is now officially an “aggressor state”. This means that the Ukronazis have now basically rejected the Minsk Agreements and are in a quasi-open state of war with Russia. The chances of a full-scale Ukronazi attack on the Donbass are now even higher than before, especially before or during the soccer World Cup in Moscow this summer (remember Saakashvili?). Having been ridiculed (again) with their Border Security Force in Syria, the US Americans will now seek a place to take revenge on the evil Russkies and this place will most likely be the Ukraine. And we can always count on the Israelis to find a pretext to continue to murder Palestinians and bomb Syria. As for the Saudis, they appear to be temporarily busy fighting each other. So unless the Empire does something really crazy, the only place it can lash out with little to lose (for itself) is the eastern Ukraine. The Novorussians understand that. May God help them.
January 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Israel, Middle East, NATO, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, United States, Zionism |
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The story in the New York Times (which is part of a book which is coming out) is a typical Mossad planted story in US media. Notice that there is an attempt to show that humanitarian consideration went into planning to kill Arafat. The most fervent effort by Israel to kill Arafat was in the summer of 1982 during the savage siege of Beirut.
As I lived those times, I remember how whole apartment buildings would be bombed by concussion bombs from the air ON THE SUSPICION that Arafat was in the building. I remember that there were hundreds of people who were incinerated by Israeli fighter jets merely because they lived in apartments where Arafat was suspected by dumb Mossad agents of being there. There are massive sites of bombing that people visited and knew that this was due to wrong Israeli intelligence. But in the article somewhere toward the end they mention this group: “With Eitan’s blessing, Ben-Gal appointed the man he considered the I.D.F.’s top expert in special ops, Meir Dagan, to lead the efforts in south Lebanon. The three of them set up the Front for the Liberation of Lebanon From Foreigners.” The story says in passing that “hundred of people were killed” by them. But this is what they don’t tell you: this front specialized in car bombs in crowded neighborhoods. They would plant car bombs in West Beirut for purposes of sheer terror. I would estimate that the number of innocent victims killed by this group was in the thousands and not the hundreds. This is the record of Israel which many Lebanese and non-Lebanese Arabs won’t forget. These are part of the war crimes for which Arabs hold Israel responsible, in addition to the illegal occupation of Palestine–all of Palestine.
PS The title of the book from which this was excerpted is “The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations.” Targeted assassinations when most of those “operations” were actually car bombs and bombing by fighter jets? It should be titled: Israel secret history of murdering and incinerating civilians in the hope that Arafat was among them.
January 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes |
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Israel has thwarted Palestinian Authority efforts to obtain observer status at the UN Conference on Disarmament (UNOG), Israel Radio reported on Thursday. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has apparently been working behind the scenes with member states, including the United States, to prevent the PA’s accession to the international body this year.
The Palestinian Authority submitted an application to obtain observer status at UNOG, which has 65 member states. As a result of Israel’s lobbying, the PA withdrew its request only one day before the latest conference session in Geneva.
Israel Radio quoted a diplomatic source as saying that Israel, “Did not want to set a precedent in which the Palestinians had observer status in an organisation [that addresses sensitive intelligence issues] like this.”
January 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Israel, Palestine, United Nations, Zionism |
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The Council of Europe has called upon the Palestinian Authority to halt the payments it distributes to the families of Palestinian prisoners and those who have been killed by Israeli forces, the Jerusalem Post has reported. The Israeli narrative swayed the council during its parliamentary session, prompting it to make the demand for the first time as part of a broader call for a resolution on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“After a persistent effort we succeeded for the first time to include in the final report [resolution] a clear call to stop support for terrorists [sic] and their families,” said Yesh Atid MK Aliza Lavie, who addressed the council in Strasbourg.
The rest of the session addressed the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and reiterated that a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital was the only solution to the conflict.
Israel and the US have long berated the PA for providing crucial subsidies to the families of those impacted by the occupation, framing the money as a reward for “terrorists”. In September, the Trump administration announced its backing for a bill that would suspend US aid to the PA until the latter ended payments to prisoners and their families.
“The Trump administration strongly supports the Taylor Force Act, which is a consequence of Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organisation’s policy of paying terrorists and their families,” the State Department said at the time.
Palestinian officials have said that the payments are support for relatives “who lost their breadwinners to the atrocities of the occupation, the vast majority of whom are unduly arrested or killed by Israel.”
In the aftermath of a resistance attack, the families of the alleged perpetrators often find their homes being demolished, their relatives arrested and their land taken. Amnesty International is one of many human rights groups that have repeatedly condemned such reprisals as a form of “collective punishment”. Consequently, many Palestinians find themselves reliant on the benefits from the PA in order to survive.
January 26, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Council of Europe, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Israel has many instruments with which to conduct its colonial project in occupied Palestine: cutting-edge military technology; its nuclear weapons and strategic alliance with the US that Israel’s deterrence factor relies on; and US diplomatic protection to contain countries attempting to stop the colonial-settlement of historical Palestine. Now even the dead are being involved, as the story of the Mamilla Cemetery in occupied Jerusalem attests.
Mamilla is a neighbourhood of Israeli-occupied Jerusalem, located to the west of the Old City’s Jaffa Gate. It is known mainly for its commercial activities in Mamilla Mall that was built in 2007.
As with all of Jerusalem’s neighbourhoods, Mamilla also hosts dozens of historical sites and structures. Mamilla pool is said to have been built by the Romans and gives the area its name. However, the name originates from the Arabic roots “Maman Allah”, which means “water of God” or “benefit from God”.
For centuries, Mamilla Cemetery has been a burial place for Muslims. Some of the Blessed Companions of Prophet Muhammad are buried there, as are some of Salahuddin Al-Ayyoubi’s soldiers and generals.
During the Ottoman period, in 1860, the cemetery was protected by a 2 metre-high fence and Jerusalemites continued to use it as a burial site. In 1927, the Muslim Supreme Court decided to declare the area as a historical site and maintain the tombs in good condition.
In 1948, though, that changed with the creation of the state of Israel and the occupation of West Jerusalem. Mamilla was deemed by the Zionist government to come under the jurisdiction of the Israeli Department of Absentee Landholders. Following the 1967 occupation of the rest of Jerusalem, the Islamic Waqf (Endowment) Department submitted a petition to get the cemetery back and resume burials there.
The Israeli authorities rejected this, and the Jerusalem municipality took the first step to erase Palestinian heritage from the area by turning a large part of the cemetery into a public space, called ‘’Independence Park’’. Many graves were removed in the process, as they were years later when cafes, a car park and, ironically, a “Museum of Tolerance” were planned for the cemetery.
“Museum of Tolerance”
In 2004, the Israeli government and the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre announced plans for the so-called Museum of Tolerance. By that time, only 8 per cent of Mamilla Cemetery was left, with only 5 per cent of the graves.
The museum is planned to be a multimedia centre for children and adults with theatre and education facilities. The Centre announced the project as a 21st century project dealing with “contemporary issues crucial to Israel’s future — intolerance, anti-Semitism, terrorism, Jewish unity and mutual respect and human dignity for all.”
Once the construction of the museum started, Palestinians and international supporters responded. In 2006, the families whose ancestors are buried in the cemetery, along with human rights organisations, submitted complaints to the Israeli Supreme Court. Petitions were also sent to the UN and UNESCO but to no avail.
According to the chief archaeologist of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, Gideon Suleimani, the human bones unearthed during the construction of the museum date back to 1278; those who were buried in that area were the political, military and religious elite of the Muslim community. His report led Israeli academics and media to raise concerns; the Supreme Court then suspended excavations temporarily. In 2008, the Court declared that the project could continue on the basis that a car park had been built in the area more than 40 years ago which had raised no objections.
Another effort to halt excavation was a petition presented to five different UN bodies in February 2010. Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi and other individuals from sixty families in Jerusalem whose ancestors were buried in Mamilla Cemetery organised a “campaign to preserve Mamilla Jerusalem Cemetery”. The Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York supported a petition to the UN but it didn’t stop Israel and the Israeli Antiquities Authority from digging up even more graves.
Even the dead are dangerous for Israel
For the Zionists, whatever is linked to Palestinian identity poses a threat to their colonial plan to Judaise Palestine. In their thinking, places like Mamilla Cemetery are evidence of the land’s Palestinian history and must be erased.
Even though the Wiesenthal Centre claimed that ‘’the [human] remains were handled in keeping with the highest standards and High Court’s guidelines’’, lawyer Ahmad Amara, who was responsible for defending the Mamilla Cemetery between 2004 and 2007, saw for himself that bones were desecrated and thrown into cartons and left on one side. What Suleimani described as an “archaeological crime” continued despite the legal protests by Palestinians. Between 2008 and 2009 alone, around 1,000 skeletons were dug up and removed from the site.
In 2010, the Israeli Land Administration bulldozed 300 Muslim gravestones in the cemetery. The following year, another 100 were destroyed. Vandals from the “Price tag” settlers’ group attacked the cemetery in 2011, spraying ‘’Death to the Arabs” on gravestones.
Also in 2011, eighty-four archaeologists demanded that the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the Jerusalem Municipality and the Israeli Antiquities Authority should end the museum construction. The project, they argued, was against all of the ethics of archaeology. ‘’The bulldozing of historic cemeteries is the ultimate act of territorial aggrandisement,” said Yale University Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology Harvey Weiss, “the erasure of prior residents.’’
Despite all of the objections, the “Museum of Tolerance” is expected to open in a few months’ time to coincide with the state of Israel’s 70th anniversary. That, of course, was the beginning of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe); the Nakba is ongoing.
January 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, Simon Wiesenthal Centre, United States, West Bank, Zionism |
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Ireland is set to discuss a new bill that seeks to prohibit the import and sale of goods originating in illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian Territory.
Independent Senator Frances Black, yesterday, launched the “Control of Economic Activities (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018”, which is scheduled for debate in Seanad Éireann on Wednesday 31 January 2018.
According to a press release announcing its launch the bill “seeks to prohibit the import and sale of goods, services and natural resources originating in illegal settlements in occupied territories”. “Such settlements,” said the statement, “are illegal under both international humanitarian law and domestic Irish law, and result in human rights violations on the ground”. Despite the illegality of the import and sale of goods from Israeli settlements, the statement points out that Ireland is still providing “continued economic support through trade in settlement goods”.
Drafters of the bill revealed that the legislation had been “prepared with the support of Trócaire, Christian-Aid and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), and applies to settlements in occupied territories where there is clear international legal consensus that they violate international law”. They insisted that the “clearest current example of these violations were the expansion of settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, which have been repeatedly condemned as illegal by the UN, EU, the International Court of Justice and the Irish Government”.
Speaking in advance of the bill’s introduction, Senator Black said:
“This is a chance for Ireland to stand up for the rights of vulnerable people – it is about respecting international law and refusing to support illegal activity and human suffering.”
Black said he is “passionate about the struggle of the Palestinian people”. He insisted that “trade in settlement goods sustains injustice” and explained that “in the occupied territories, people are forcibly kicked out of their homes, fertile farming land is seized, and the fruit and vegetables produced are then sold on Irish shelves to pay for it all”.
The bill is seeking more than mere denunciation of Israeli settlements and is trying to get governments around the world to treat settlements as illegal. Black pointed out that six years ago the Irish Government criticized the relentless progress of Israeli settlements, but they have failed to do anything about it since.
“In years since then it has only gone one way, with settlements expanding, more Palestinian homes being demolished and land being confiscated. It’s clear that empty promises have not worked but nothing has been done. Ireland needs to show leadership and act” Black protested.
The Occupied Territories Bill 2018 will be debated at Second Stage in Seanad Éireann on Wednesday and will be streamed live on Oireachtas TV. It has been co-signed by Seanad Civil Engagement Group Senators Alice-Mary Higgins, Lynn Ruane, Grace O’Sullivan, Colette Kelleher and John Dolan, as well as Senator David Norris.
January 25, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Ireland, Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Israeli settlement, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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According to Times of Israel former British chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks helped US Vice President Mike Pence write his Monday address to the Knesset.
A source with knowledge of the speech-writing process said “Rabbi Sacks provided input and editorial suggestions on various drafts throughout the writing process.”
As we are learning from the American press that the White House has lost contact with the Palestinian leadership, maybe the Palestinian should save time, cut the goy in the middle and just negotiate directly with Rabbi Sacks.
January 24, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism |
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