By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 19, 2019
It’s pretty clear. Saudi Arabia has lost, and, notes Bruce Riedel, “the Houthis and Iran are the strategic winners”. Saudi proxies in Aden – the seat of Riyadh’s Yemeni proto-‘government’ – have been turfed out by secular, former Marxist, southern secessionists. What can Saudi Arabia do? It cannot go forward. Even tougher would be retreat. Saudi will have to contend with an Houthi war being waged inside the kingdom’s south; and a second – quite different – war in Yemen’s south. MbS is stuck. The Houthi military leadership are on a roll, and disinterested – for now – in a political settlement. They wish to accumulate more ‘cards’. The UAE, which armed and trained the southern secessionists has opted out. MbS is alone, ‘carrying the can’. It will be messy.
So, what is the meaning in this? It is that MbS cannot ‘deliver’ what Trump and Kushner needed, and demanded from him: He cannot any more deliver the Gulf ‘world’ for their grand projects – let alone garner together the collective Sunni ‘world’ to enlist in a confrontation with Iran, or for hustling the Palestinians into abject subordination, posing as ‘solution’.
What happened? It seems that MbZ must have bought into the Mossad ‘line’ that Iran was a ‘doddle’. Under pressure of global sanctions, Iran would quickly crumble, and would beg for negotiations with Trump. And that the resultant, punishing treaty would see the dismantling of all of Iran’s troublesome allies around the region. The Gulf thus would be free to continue shaping a Middle East free from democracy, reformers and (those detested) Islamists.
What made the UAE – eulogised in the US as tough ‘little Sparta’ – back off? It was not just that the Emirs saw that the Yemen war was unwinnable. That was so; but more significantly, it dawned on them that Iran was going to be no ‘doddle’. But rather, the US attempt to strangulate the Iranian economy risked escalating beyond sanctions war, into military confrontation. And in that eventuality, the UAE would be devastated. Iran warned explicitly that a drone or two landed into the ‘glass houses’ of their financial districts, or onto oil and gas facilities, would set them back twenty years. They believed it.
But there was another factor in the mix. “As the world teeters on the edge of another financial crisis”, Esfandyar Batmanghelidj has noted, “few places are being gripped by anxiety like Dubai. Every week a new headline portends the coming crisis in the city of skyscrapers. Dubai villa prices are at their lowest level in a decade, down 24 percent in just one year. A slump in tourism has seen Dubai hotels hit their lowest occupancy rate since the 2008 financial crisis – even as the country gears up to host Expo 2020 next year. As Bloomberg’s Zainab Fattah reported in November of last year, Dubai has begun to “lose its shine,” its role as a center for global commerce “undermined by a global tariff war—and in particular by the US drive to shut down commerce with nearby Iran””.
An extraneous Houthi drone landing in Dubai’s financial zone would be the ‘final nail in the coffin’ (the expatriates would be out in a flash) – a prospect far more serious than the crisis of 2009, when Dubai’s real estate market collapsed, threatening insolvency for several banks and major development companies, some of them state-linked – and necessitating a $20 billion bailout.
In short, the Gulf realised MbS’ confrontation project with Iran was far too risky, especially with the global financial mood darkening so rapidly. Emirati leaders faced off with MbZ, the confrontation ideologue – and the UAE came out of Yemen formally (though leaving in situ its proxies), and initiated outreach to Iran, to take it out of that war, too.
It is now no longer conceivable that MbS can deliver what Trump and Netanyahu desired. Does this then mean that the US confrontation with Iran, and Jared Kushner’s Deal of the Century, are over? No. Trump has two key US constituencies: AIPAC and the Christian Evangelical ‘Zionists’ to ‘stroke’ electorally in the lead up to the 2020 elections. More ‘gifts’ to Netanyahu in the lead into the latter’s own election campaign are very likely also, as a part of that massaging of domestic constituencies (and donors).
In terms of the US confrontation with Iran, it seems that Trump is turning-down the volume on belligerence toward Iran, hoping that economic sanctions will work their ‘magic’ of bringing the Islamic Republic to its knees. There is no sign of that however – and no sign of any realistic US plan ‘B’. (The Lindsay Graham initiative is not one).
Where does that leave MbS in terms of US and Israeli interests? Well, to be brutal, and despite the family friendships … ’expendable’, perhaps? The scent of an eventual US disengagement from the region is again hanging in the air.
The deeper meaning in the ‘lost Yemen war’, ultimately, is an end to Gulf hopes that ‘magician’ Trump would undo the earlier Gulf panic that the West would normalise with Iran (through the JCPOA), thus leaving Iran as the paramount regional power. The advent of Trump, with all his affinity towards Saudi Arabia, seemed to Gulf States to promise the opportunity again to ‘lock in’ the US security umbrella over Gulf monarchies, protecting these states from significant change, as well as leaving Iran ‘shackled’, and unable to assume regional primacy.
A secondary meaning to Yemen is that Trump and Netanyahu’s heavy investment in MbS and MbZ has proved to be chimeric. These two, it turned out were ‘naked’ all along. And now the world knows it. They can’t deliver. They have been bested by a ragtag army of tough Houthi tribesmen.
The region now observes that ‘war’ isn’t happening (although only by the merest hair’s breadth): Trump is not – of his own volition – going to bomb Iran back to the 1980s. And Gulf States now see that if he did, it is they – the Gulf States – who would pay the highest price. Paradoxically, it has fallen to the UAE, the prime agitator in Washington against Iran, to lead the outreach toward Iran. It represents a salutary lesson in realpolitik for certain Gulf States (and Israel). And now that it has been learned, it is hard to see it being reversed quite so easily.
The strategic shift toward a different security architecture is already underway, with Russia and China proposing an international conference on security in the Persian Gulf: Russia and Iran already have agreed joint naval exercises in in the Indian Ocean and Hormuz, and China is mulling sending its warships there too, to protect its tankers and commercial shipping. Plainly, there will be some competition here, but Iran has the upper hand still in Hormuz. It is a powerful deterrent (though one best threatened, but not used).
Of course, nothing is assured in these changing times. The US President is fickle, and prone to flip-flop. And there are yet powerful interests in the US who do want see Iran comprehensively bombed. But others in DC – more significantly, on the (nationalist) Right – are much more outspoken in challenging the Iran ‘hawks’. Maybe the latter have missed their moment? The fact is, Trump drew back (but not for the stated reasons) from military action. America is now entering election season – and it is fixated on its navel. Foreign policy is already a forgotten, non-issue in the fraught partisan atmospherics of today’s America.
Trump likely will still ‘throw Israel a few bones’, but will that change anything? Probably, not much. That is cold comfort – but it might have been a lot worse for the Palestinians. And Greater Israel? A distant, Promethean hope.
Days of Palestine – August 18, 2019
Israeli occupation police, on Saturday evening, stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque’s Bab al-Rahma prayer area and confiscated some furniture items.
Local sources said that Israeli police officers desecrated the Bab al-Rahma prayer area and embarked on carrying away shoe cabinets and patterned wood panels.
The sources added that the officers threatened Aqsa guards with arrest if they tried to prevent them from carrying out the confiscations.
The Israeli police had already removed furniture from the same prayer area recently, raising fears among the Jerusalemites about Israeli intents to reclose the place and turn it into a synagogue.
By Craig Murray | August 18, 2019
Following US National Security Adviser John Bolton’s talks with Boris Johnson and his ministers in London last week, FCO officials have been asked to speed up contingency planning for the UK to move its Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, with an eye to an “early announcement” post Brexit.
The UK is currently bound by an EU common foreign policy position not to follow the United States in moving its Embassy to Jerusalem. As things stand, that prohibition will fall on 1 November. FCO officials had previously been asked to produce a contingency plan, but this involved the construction of a £14 million new Embassy and a four year timescale. They have now been asked to go back and look at a quick fix involving moving the Ambassador and immediate staff to Jerusalem and renaming the Consulate already there as the Embassy. This could be speedily announced, and then implemented in about a year.
Johnson heads the most radically pro-Israel cabinet in UK history and the symbolic gesture of rejection of Palestinian rights is naturally appealing to his major ministers Patel, Javid and Raab. They also see three other political benefits. Firstly, they anticipate that Labour opposition to the move can be used to yet again raise accusations of “anti-semitism” against Jeremy Corbyn. Secondly, it provides good “red meat” to Brexiteer support in marking a clear and, they believe, popular break from EU foreign policy, at no economic cost. Thirdly, it seals the special link between the Trump and Johnson administrations and sets the UK apart from other NATO allies.
Bolton also discussed the possibility of UK support for Israeli annexation of areas of the West Bank to “solve” the illegality of Israeli settlements on occupied territory. My FCO sources believe this is going to be much more difficult politically for the Cabinet to agree than simply moving the Embassy, due to lack of support on their own backbenches.
This is an insight into the future of British foreign policy if the Johnson government, and the UK, both survive. In the massive defeat of the UK at the UN General Assembly two months ago over the illegal occupation of the Chagos Islands, the UK was in a voting block with only the USA, Israel, Australia, Hungary and the Maldives, against the rest of the world. The Maldives had a particular maritime interest there, but the leadership of the others – Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, Scott Morrison, Benjamin Netanyahu and now Boris Johnson – constitute a distinct and extreme right wing bloc. These are very worrying times indeed.
By Polina Strelnikova – Sputnik – 12.08.2019
US Ambassador Richard Grenell’s renewed criticism of Berlin’s failure to spend more on defence and praising an idea to withdraw American troops from Germany has prompted a backlash in one of Washington’s key allies in Europe. The head of the left-wing party Die Linke’s parliamentary group has welcomed this idea.
Member of the German Parliament Bundestag Dietmar Bartsch has told the German editorial network RND that the German government should “absolutely accept” US Ambassador Richard Grenell’s offer and not only discuss a plan to pull out US troops from Germany but also try to get rid of Washington’s nuclear weapons in the country.
“The US ambassador is right: US taxpayers should not have to pay for US troops in Germany. The US taxpayers also do not have to pay for deploying nuclear weapons in Germany. If the Americans pull their soldiers out, they should take their nuclear weapons with them”, he demanded.
He insisted that they should take them back home and not to Poland, noting that the latter scenario “would be another dramatic escalation in relations with Russia, which does not coincide with European and German interests”.
However, not everyone on the left wing of the German political spectrum seemed to like the idea. German MP Carsten Schneider, who represents the Social Democrats, called Grenell’s statements, which echoed an earlier remark by US Ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher, “completely inappropriate for allies”. He stated that Germany cannot be blackmailed, and that the “general’s pose wears off”.
The criticism was prompted by Grenell’s recent interview with the German news agency DPA, in which he stated that it was “insulting to expect that the US taxpayer pays for more than 50,000 Americans in Germany, but the Germans use their trade surplus for domestic purposes” and backed Donald Trump’s idea to relocate troops from Germany to Poland.
Mosbacher earlier noted that Poland meets its payment obligation of 2% of GDP, as agreed upon within NATO, while Germany does not do that, so it would be better if American troops go to Poland.
Although Germany announced plans to increase military spending up to 1.35% in 2019 and hopes to boost the number up to 1.5% by 2023, it still falls short of planning to reach the 2% goal, set by NATO members in 2014.
Trump has persistently criticised Germany’s reluctance to comply with this voluntary goal since having taken office. He also previously suggested that a 2,000-strong increase to American forces stationed in Poland should be achieved at the expense of those based in Germany.
Meanwhile, US warheads deployed in Germany have been a point of heated debates within the country with many, including politicians from coalition junior partner, the SPD, demanding that US nuclear weapons be removed from its territory.
By Jeremy Salt | American Herald Tribune | August 11, 2019
Last week a car drew up alongside Dvir Sorek outside the West Bank settlement of Migdal Oz. Dvir was on his way back from Jerusalem where he had bought a book, a novel by David Grossman, as a gift for his teacher. He was almost home when a man jumped out of the car and stabbed him to death.
David Grossman did not know him but did not hesitate to add to the eulogies: the young man was clearly “a kind, sensitive youth who loved others and loved peace with the soul of an artist.” Netanyahu declared that the murderers would soon be found. Soldiers swooped on the nearby Palestinian village of Beit Fajjar, raiding houses and confiscating security camera footage. Later four Palestinians were arrested in another village.
Grossman’s son was killed during the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, and Sorek’s grandfather on his mother’s side, a rabbi, also a settler of occupied land, killed in an attack near Nablus in 2000. These other deaths made the killing of Dvir Sorek seem even more poignant. “Death as a way of life,” declared the Times of Israel, blaming Hamas for the attack, even though the identity and possible ideological affiliations of the attacker/s were not known, as if the death of others was not a way of life for the state of Israel.
The media described Sorek as a student at a yeshiva, or religious school, in his case the hesder (‘arrangement’) yeshiva at Migdal Oz. The programs in the hesder schools blend advanced religious instruction with military service. Government funding makes an application to be listed as a hesder yeshiva an attractive option. Not all courses are of the same duration. They may last for three, four or even five years, with the active military service component varying from about 17 months to two years. Almost all hesder yeshiva students join combat units.
Officially, the peace-loving Dvir Sorek was an IDF soldier even though he had not yet begun the military component of his course. No doubt this is the reason he was not armed when he was attacked.
In the West Bank yeshiva students, or former yeshiva students, especially those who fall under the heading of the ‘hilltop youth,’ are in the forefront of anti-Palestinian violence, from beating and occasionally killing to attacks on mosques, the destruction of olive trees and crops and the harassment, intimidation and abuse of the general population in general, women and children included. Their hatreds extend to all non-Jews and even ‘Hellenized’ or secular Jews, including those representing the state, including the soldiers who protect them. One has to wonder where this comes from if not religious instruction at the hands of their rabbis.
The history of the hesder schools go back to the 1960s. More recently, the lack of enthusiasm for war among Israel’s secularized youth, especially wars fought on the other side of what they regarded as Israel’s borders, has increased the appeal of religiously indoctrinated hesder zealots to the military command.
For secular Israeli Jews the enemies are Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and behind them, Iran, but for orthodox religious Jews, the enemy is Amalek, existential, taking different shapes and different forms at different stages of history but always there.
The injunction to destroy the tribe of Amalek is laid down in several passages of the Bible. According to Deuteronomy: “The Lord said to Moses ‘Write this down in a book to be remembered and tell it to Joshua: (God) will completely blot out any memory of Amalek … Remember what Amalek did to you on the road as you were coming out of Egypt, how he met you on the road, attacked those in the rear, those who were exhausted and straggling behind when you were tired and weary. He did not fear God. Therefore, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your surrounding enemies in the land the Lord your God is giving you as your inheritance to possess you (Israelites) are to blot out all memory of Amalek from under heaven. Don’t forget!’ (Deuteronomy 25/17-19).
The message to the first king of Israel and Judah, Saul, from the prophet Samuel is even more forceful: “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them: put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ (Samuel 1:15.3). Saul went to war against the Amalekites but did not kill them all, allowing their king to live and preserving the best of the livestock.
Learning of this, Samuel tells him he has been rejected by God and will lose his kingdom. He then kills the Amalekite himself. Saul lives until defeated by the Philistines in the battle of Gilboa, after which he either commits suicide or is killed by an Amalekite, according to differing Bible accounts but his death is seen as the consequence of having disobeyed God’s injunction to kill all the Amalekites.
All of this might have happened thousands of years ago – or did not happen as described – but it remains as fresh as yesterday in the thinking of orthodox religious scholars. In the modern age these injunctions are subject to numerous interpretations, partly based on what ‘blotting out’ could mean. Maimonides (12th-13th century) explains the commandment as meaning that if the Amalekites accepted Jewish law and agreed to pay a tax there would no need to kill them. There are numerous variations on the theme that ‘blotting out’ did not mean physical annihilation.
Steven Leonard Jacobs points out that the overwhelming majority of the world’s Jewish population does not draw such deadly conclusions, “much less the implication that they [the Palestinians] must be genocidally destroyed.” While those who do take the Biblical injunctions literally “are in the minority … they do exist and [they] present an ongoing challenge to how one reads history and sacred texts.” They keep the door open to violence: however wrongly understood, “there is an understanding that the enemies of the Jewish people are the literal and lineal descendants of the past.”
These genocidal invocations – as they would be regarded now – are read in synagogues at certain times of the year (during the ‘reading cycle’) and are emphasized again during the festival of Purim, celebrating the delivery of the Jews from Haman, the high Persian court official who planned to kill them all.
For the most extreme Jewish settlers, Amalek is still out there, waiting. According to Benzi Lieberman, former head of the Yesha settler council, “The Palestinians are Amalek … we will destroy them. We won’t kill them but we will destroy their ability to think as a nation. We will destroy Palestinian nationalism.”
However, Amalek is frequently invoked in the political mainstream, which has steadily shifted further to the right since the election of Menahim Begin in 1977 and now includes those once regarded as extremists if not outright fanatics. In the 1950s David Ben-Gurion referred to “the hosts of Amalek from north, east and south.” Begin opposed reparations from Germany, which he regarded as Amalek. During the siege of Beirut in 1982 he described PLO leader Yasser Arafat as Hitler hiding in his bunker, thus another manifestation of Amalek. Speaking in Cracow in 2010, without naming names but clearly thinking of Iran, Netanyahu said “A new Amalek is appearing and once again threatens to annihilate the Jews.” According to the ‘libertarian’ Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin “the Arabs engage in typical Amalek behaviour … I can’t prove this genetically but this is the behaviour of Amalek.”
Throughout history, while identifying Amalek as the existential enemy, Jews never had the power to destroy Amalek but now they do, in a state of their own that has an arsenal of nuclear weapons. According to Steven Jacobs “the propensity of rightwing settlers to identify the Palestinians with the Amalekites has sometimes had deadly consequences” The commandment to exterminate the Amalekites has been preserved by the rabbis “and for that reason, it remains a potential source of conflict.” Needless to say, Mr Jacobs does not regard the Palestinians as Amalekites.
Dvir Sorek was 18 and only a few days short of his 19th birthday when he was killed. He had not begun the military component of his course but in his religious studies he would have had to consider the injunctions to ‘blot out’ the Amalekites. What impact this would have had on his development as a soldier no-one can say.
In the eulogies Dvir was described as a gentle soul, as innocent and full of love for family and friends, all of which he probably was, but he was also living in occupied territory. Ofra, the settlement in which he lived, is illegal even under Israeli law because it was largely built on privately owned Palestinian land.
While a Palestinian drove in the knife, who must take ultimate responsibility for his death, if not the state which seized the land and the settler-colonists who have moved there, including Dvir’s parents? They may have shared the belief that the land was God’s selective gift to the Jewish people; they may have decided to live there because of subsidised housing and tax breaks but whatever their motives, they were living on the West Bank in breach of international law and they would have known it.
The UN General Assembly has passed numerous resolutions affirming the right to resist colonial domination and occupation by all means. It is only putting into print what has been human practice since the beginning of time. An occupied people will resist with all the means at their disposal. In the 1950s the white settlers of Kenya no doubt included loving gentle souls, but they were killed just as ruthlessly as anyone else by the Mau Mau. In the last stages of the Algerian war of independence (1964-62), the FLN (National Liberation Front) slaughtered many French settlers, including women and children innocent of any crime but part of a white settler community which had established itself through violence, collective punishment, the expropriation of land and the ‘purchase’ of land on the basis of forged or spurious documents. Needless, these are the precise tactics used by the Zionists in their occupation of Palestine.
For those whose land is being occupied, it is immaterial whether the colonial settler is a gentle soul or a ranting religious bigot or a family looking for subsidised housing and tax breaks. The settler is always the settler, the usurper of someone else’s lands and rights, to be resisted as long as possible.
It was the Zionists who began the cycle of violence in Palestine and logic demands that they must take the first steps to end it but for the Israeli government, logic is the logic of force and not the logic of justice, law, ethics and morality. The wrong, fateful, irreversible decisions Israel has made will mark its history forever: occupation instead of withdrawal, injustice instead of justice, war instead of peace, including more war, inevitably, beyond the borders of Palestine.
Israel has never had such a degree of military, economic and political support from its great benefactor, the US. Drugged with the sense of its own power it builds even more settlements as it moves steadily towards annexation, thereby guaranteeing that there will be more Dvir Soreks, and far more Palestinian men, women and children killed in the struggle against occupation. Israel is dragging itself and the region into a future even darker than the past.
Jeremy Salt has taught at the University of Melbourne, Bosporus University (Istanbul) and Bilkent University (Ankara), specialising in the modern history of the Middle East. His most recent book is “The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.)
Al-Manar | August 8, 2019
Syria on Thursday lashed out at US and Turkey over a deal to establish so-called ‘safe zone’ in northern Syria, stressing that such agreement constitutes ‘blatant aggression’ against the country’s sovereignty.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Syrian foreign ministry said Damascus “expresses absolute rejection of the agreement announced by the US and Turkish occupiers on establishing the so-called ‘safe zone’ which constitutes a blatant aggression against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and a flagrant violation of the principles of the international law and the UN Charter.”
“This agreement has very clearly exposed the US-Turkish partnership in the aggression against Syria which serves the interest of the Israeli occupation and the Turkish expansionist ambitions,” SANA news agency quoted a source at the Syrian ministry as saying.
Turkish and US officials agreed on Wednesday to establish a joint operations center to coordinate efforts to carve out a buffer zone in northern Syria, in order to manage tensions between Ankara and US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria, according to statements from both governments.
Syria, meanwhile, slammed some Kurdish, saying they “have been misled and accepted to become a tool in this aggressive US-Turkish project” and “bear a historical responsibility” in this regard.
“It is time to reconsider their calculations and to stand by the side of all the Syrians and the Syrian Arab Army in defending the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic and its territorial integrity,” the source added.
In recent weeks, Turkish media have repeatedly shown images of military convoys heading for the border area, carrying equipment and fighting units.
Turkey has already carried out two cross-border offensives into Syria, including one in 2018 that saw it and allied militias overrun the majority Kurdish Afrin enclave in the northwest.
By Danielle Ryan | RT | August 7, 2019
The “rules-based international system” is under increasing threat, with laws flouted and “norms” violated at every turn by disobedient members of the world community, warns a preachy Sky News op-ed.
The dire warning, authored by Sky’s foreign affairs editor Deborah Haynes, defines this rules-based order as the “network of accords and institutions” which make up the“framework that helps to ensure security, rights, freedoms and justice” around the world.
Haynes hails the United Nations, the NATO alliance and various international treaties as examples within that framework, but, curiously, the central bogeymen of the piece allegedly eroding this so-called system are all Western adversaries.
Any truly honest assessment of the world today would acknowledge that this “rules-based international system” of which Haynes speaks is a myth; if it ever did exist, it has been battered ceaselessly by Western powers. The rules-based order is less a functioning system offering “rights, freedoms and justice” and more a tired catchphrase used by Western officials and their media partners to scold countries that refuse to obey their commands. In other words, it exists only in theory, rarely in practice.
Russia is accused by Haynes of having repeatedly attacked “the global rulebook of normal behaviour,” but what is normal behaviour? If we are to believe that Western actions are “normal,” then normal has taken an increasingly macabre turn.
Was the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan — a country still occupied 18 years later — a win for the rules-based system? If there were any lingering notions about a functioning international order after that, the 2003 invasion of Iraq should surely have put an end to them; oddly, it gets no mention in the article.
Britain’s misdeeds — including its enthusiastic support for that war — are also conspicuously absent from the opus. Speaking of Britain, one wonders do Yemenis, slaughtered and starved by Saudi Arabia, with generous help from London in the form of billions of pounds worth of arms, feel they are the lucky beneficiaries of this rules-based order?
Maybe Libyans, having had their once stable and prosperous country ravaged by NATO’s 2011 “humanitarian intervention” feel the same? The military bloc’s infamous “humanitarianism” was also on display during its earlier bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999.
Are the “rights, freedom and justice” touted by Haynes as by-products of this so-called system being offered to Palestinians? When Israel demolishes their homes and schools, tramples over their rights, and uses overwhelming military force to stamp out resistance — while the West turns a blind eye — is it adhering to this normal rules-based behaviour?
This phrase “normal behavior” is nothing more than a Washington talking point. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Iran last year to “act like a normal country, or see its economy crumble.”
Unfortunately, it has indeed become ‘normal’ for the US to crush under its boot any country which dares to object to its rule, through the use of deadly sanctions and often brute military force.
The same warnings were recently issued to Venezuela, which is now under a total economic blockade and where experts have assessed that deadly sanctions have led directly to the premature deaths of 40,000 people.
The other thing about the “global rulebook” is that the rules are constantly changing to suit the whims of Western powers. When asked why Washington’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights was good, but Crimea’s decision to rejoin Russia was bad, Pompeo referred senators to a particular “international law doctrine” which does not exist.
Haynes also deplores China’s erosion of freedoms for the people of Hong Kong and mentions ongoing pro-democracy protests in the region as another “symptom” of the unraveling of the rules-based system. Meanwhile, in her own country, one of, if not the most consequential journalist of modern times sits behind bars for the crime of doing real journalism and upsetting the global elites’ applecart.
Ultimately, the screed adds little of value to any discussion about international affairs. Yet, it is still valuable in the sense that it is a great demonstration of the delusion, hypocrisy, and total lack of self-awareness displayed by many Western journalists when attempting to make sense of the world around them.
Sarah Abed | August 7, 2019
In what would be Turkey’s third cross-border military operation in Syria since the war began, in as many years, Erdogan announced on Sunday that he would be launching a military operation east of the Euphrates river, to push back Kurdish militias on Turkey’s southern border.
Although Erdogan did not set a timeframe, preparations have been underway for well over a month. Increased deployment of Turkish military forces along with weaponry, and tanks, etc. have been reported by various sources, on the Turkish side of the southern border with Syria.
Preparations are also underway by Kurdish militias, to counter any possible Turkish aggression. Both sides have said that if the other attacks they will be ready to respond.
The same announcement, regarding a military operation east of the Euphrates, was made by Erdogan over nine months ago, but was then called off due to talks with US President Donald Trump who agreed to set up a safe zone on Turkey’s border to appease Erdogan. However, this never came into fruition, and a buffer zone was not created because of a difference of opinion on the depth. Erdogan now feels the US is stalling, and his latest threats seem to indicate that his patience is running thin.
Some believe that the chances of Erdogan carrying out his mission this time, are higher because he has notified Russia and the US, in advance of his plan.
However, if Turkey carries out this third operation, the outcome will most likely not be a swift defeat and take over by Turkish armed forces and their terrorist ally the Free Syrian Army (FSA) like we have seen in the past. The stakes are also much higher due to the presence of US troops, intelligence officers and US personnel stationed in northeastern Syria.
On Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that “the U.S. intends to prevent any unilateral invasion by Turkey into northern Syria, saying any such move by the Turks would be unacceptable.” Esper seemed hopeful that negotiations and talks would lead to some sort of agreement but did not disclose what that could be.
Some speculate that specific airstrikes targeting Kurdish militia installations are more likely to occur, than a unilateral land invasion. The demographics are such that all of the various ethnicities whether they be Syrian Muslims, Assyrians, Armenians, Kurds, Arameans, etc. would most likely bond together against any Turkish aggression.
The first cross-border Turkish operation Euphrates Shield in 2017, focused on targeting a “terror corridor” made up of Daesh and Kurdish fighters further east from Afrin along its southern frontier with Syria. After completing that operation, Turkey set up local systems of governance in the swath of land captured, stretching from the area around Azaz — located to the northeast of Afrin — to the Euphrates River and protected by Turkish forces present there.
The second, Operation Olive Branch, which began January 2018 and was completed in two months with Afrin being captured by the Turkish Armed Forces and their ally the Free Syrian Army. They quickly established control over Afrin and all of the villages that had remained under the control of Kurdish YPG (the People’s Protection Unit) north and northwest of the city. Many YPG fighters and their families fled to government-held parts of Aleppo.
In primarily the second operation, YPG fighters felt abandoned and betrayed by the US who stated that they would not get involved and seemingly allowed Turkey to carry out its operations without much objection. There was a noticeable silence from Russian and Syrian forces as well.
In order to understand Turkey’s contentions with the Kurdish militia’s it’s important to clarify the major players. The YPG is a Kurdish-majority militia that is the military wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Kurdish democratic confederalist political party in northeastern Syria. The YPG is the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is an organization based in Turkey and Iraq that has been engaged in armed conflicts with the Turkish state since 1984.
Turkey considers all these Kurdish organizations to be terrorists and has urged the United States for years to sever ties with them and has demanded a buffer zone. Both the United States and Turkey view the PKK as a terrorist organization.
The United States justified its military and economic support for the YPG by claiming they were the most reliable fighters in Syria against Daesh. Kurdish factions have been used throughout history to create chaos in the Middle East.
To disassociate the YPG from the PKK, General Raymond Thomas, the commander of the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM), revealed — at a Security Forum on July 21, 2017 at the Aspen Institute — that he personally discussed the importance of changing its name with the YPG. As he states in this video, he was impressed that they included the word “democratic” in their rebranding: their new name, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), would help them enter into political negotiations, where they had been excluded previously owing to their association with the PKK.
Recently tensions have been high between the United States and Turkey over the latter’s purchase of the S-400 missile defense system from Russia which the former disapproved of and then subsequently removed the latter from the F-35 fighter jet program. The United States has also threatened to impose sanctions if Turkey activates the S-400 system which Erdogan has stated they have every intention of doing by April 2020.
On Monday, an American military delegation met with Turkish officials in Ankara to continue negotiations and discuss an alternative Turkish military operation which wouldn’t threaten U.S. troops stationed in the area. The U.S. is urging Turkey not to carry out its proclaimed mission.
Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and analyst.
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | August 5, 2019
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is ready to “go to the White House and continue what [he] started with [US President] Donald Trump.” With this and other confusing statements, Abbas tried to articulate the new Palestinian political agenda to foreign reporters in Ramallah last month.
According to Abbas, the PA is ready to return to negotiations with Israel if two conditions are met: Washington is to reverse its stance on East Jerusalem, thus recognising it as an occupied Palestinian city; and there is a renewed commitment to the so-called two-state solution. “I will not accept a one-state solution because one state will be an apartheid state,” Abbas insisted.
Aside from the Palestinian leader’s insubstantial logic, the official Palestinian discourse emanating from Ramallah these days seems oblivious to the massively changing political reality in Washington over the past two years or so. Remarks by Abbas, his recently-appointed Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh or other PA officials are apparently based on the logic of a bygone era, one in which the US claimed, however falsely, to be an honest broker for peace; a period that lasted for nearly 25 years and during which PA officials benefited from the massive “peace process” racket, bankrolled by the US and other countries.
However, the jig is up. The PA has ceased to serve any useful purpose for the Israelis and their American benefactors, apart from the continued and shameful “security coordination” aimed largely at suppressing any Palestinian resistance to Israel’s brutal occupation.
Everyone seems to acknowledge this seismic change, except the PA. While failing to understand the nature of the new challenge and redeem its past mistakes, the PA insists on remaining a major stumbling block to a new Palestinian strategy, one that should counter relentless US-Israeli efforts aimed at circumventing international law and, as a result, dismissing all Palestinian rights entirely.
Listening to PA officials speak makes one wonder if they are truly aware that the language coming out of Washington has shifted unmistakably, not only in its degree of bias towards Israel, but also in its complete adoption of the Israeli narrative in terms of nuances, religious fervour and political priorities. US officials now speak as one with members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist coalition. The following examples illustrate the new US rhetoric that requires a complete Palestinian departure from their tired and clichéd language of the past.
On 6 December, 2017, Donald Trump said in a White House statement: “Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs. But today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. This is nothing more, or less, than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do.”
Trump’s infatuation with Israel is paralleled by complete disrespect and disregard for Palestinians. On 2 January 2018, he tweeted: “We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”
US Vice President Mike Pence concurs. On 15 May last year, Pence said in celebration of Israel’s independence that Trump had done more to bring the US and Israel “closer together in a year than any president in the past 70 years.” He referred to him as “the greatest defender the Jewish state has ever had.” According to Pence, “President Trump made history now.”
For her part, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley played a major role in trying to marginalise Palestinians on the international stage. On 6 October last year she insisted that, “The Palestinians are not a UN Member State or any state at all. The United States will continually point that out in our remarks at UN events led by the Palestinians.”
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, meanwhile, has the perfect blend of Pence’s religious fanaticism and Haley’s political opportunism. In an interview with the New York Times published on 8 June, he said that, “Under certain circumstances, I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank.”
Friedman’s open support for Israeli colonialism was matched by comments made by US Middle East “peace” envoy Jason Greenblatt two weeks later: “We might get there [to a peace deal] if people stop pretending settlements, or what I prefer to call ‘neighbourhoods and cities’, are the reason for the lack of peace.” He brushed aside the fact that all of Israel’s colonial-settlements are illegal under international law since they have been built on Palestinian land under Israeli military occupation since 1967.
When the PA dared to protest against such political bullying, Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser Jared Kushner lashed out on 3 July at the “hysterical and erratic” Palestinian leadership. “The door is always open for the Palestinian leadership… If they stop saying crazy things,” he added.
According to the new American political lexicon, Palestinians have absolutely no rights; international law has no relevance; and supposedly democratic Israel is a model state incapable of erring. In Washington’s la-la land, there can be no room or tolerance for discussions about military occupation, illegal settlements, genocidal wars, sieges and apartheid if they involve even the slightest criticism of Israel.
Considering America’s complete and unconditional adoption of the Israeli agenda, Abbas should stop talking about negotiations and conditions. Instead, he should revitalise and unite the Palestinian front to counter the US-Israeli menace and its political lackeys across the Middle East.
By Andrew Korybko | EurasiaFuture | 2019-08-05
India defiantly responded to Trump’s mediation proposal by killing more Kashmiris and concocting yet another “politically convenient” conspiracy theory about so-called “Pakistani-backed terrorists” there in order to distract the world from its plan to unleash a wave of “Weapons of Mass Migration” that might forever change the demographic balance of this disputed territory to its long-term favor.
Modi’s Response To Trump
The situation in Indian-Occupied Kashmir (IOK) and along the Line of Control (LoC) is almost worse than it’s ever been before after New Delhi’s latest aggressive actions there that can be interpreted as an asymmetrical response to Trump’s recent mediation proposal. The US’ new military-strategic ally rejected the President’s earlier claims that Modi requested his assistance in mediating an end to the decades-long Kashmir Conflict, which coincided with increased shelling along the LoC that started during Pakistani Prime Minister Khan’s very successful visit to Washington last month and continues to this day. These provocations were shortly thereafter followed by the concocting of a “politically convenient” conspiracy theory about so-called “Pakistani-backed terrorists” there in order to distract the world from India’s egregious human rights abuses against the people of Kashmir and its illegal use of cluster bombs in targeting civilians on the Pakistani side of the LoC.
“Weapons Of Mass Migration”
While all of this might seem like a random flare-up of violence to the unaware observer, there’s actually a method behind the madness in that India is preparing to unleash a wave of “Weapons of Mass Migration” that might forever change the demographic balance of this disputed territory to its long-term favor. There were suspicions that the recent dispatch of over 20,000 more paramilitary forces to IOK wasn’t just to “protect Hindu pilgrims” like the Indian media alleged, but to reinforce the over half a million forces that are already there ahead of what turned out to be the repealing of constitutional clauses that guarantee a relative degree of “autonomy” for the region and prevented non-residents from purchasing property there. The implications of doing away with this special policy are enormous because they could lead to the large-scale influx of foreigners that would almost certainly provoke another wave of armed resistance from the desperate locals.
Machiavellian Perception Management
Anticipating this, India knew that it would inevitably have to dispatch more military forces to IOK, but it wanted to do so under the cover of a “publicly plausible” pretext in order to avoid international criticism, ergo the excuse of the latest reinforcement measures being due to what it claimed was the threat posed by “Pakistani-backed terrorists” to Hindu pilgrims. It then initiated a new round of shelling across the LoC, using cluster bombs in order to guarantee a response that it could then decontextualize and deceptively misportray as “Pakistani aggression”. This in turn led to New Delhi ordering non-Muslims to leave the region “in the interests of (their) safety and security” when the real reason that all of this is happening is so that they’re not caught up in the impending wave of violence that might soon be unleashed after the authorities revoked Kashmir’s “autonomous” status a little more than a week before India’s independence day later this month.
Exposing The Plot
This Machiavellian plot might very well backfire, though, because Pakistan is already preemptively exposing it in the international informational sphere and proving that there’s a reason why India can be regarded as a rogue state nowadays. Prime Minister Khan even tweeted about it too, thereby ensuring that the rest of the world pays more attention to Pakistan’s serious concerns about the deteriorating security situation along the LoC and the ever-worsening humanitarian one in IOK. In addition, India’s regional aggression is a personal affront to Trump’s peacemaking efforts, which might trigger him to double down on the game of “hardball” that he’s playing with it lately. The Democrats could also sense a self-interested political opportunity to put pressure on his administration by demanding that they cease further security cooperation with India until it stops its human rights violations in Kashmir, just as they’ve tried to do vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia and Yemen earlier this year.
Self-Inflicted Damage
Whichever way one looks at it, India’s recent aggression is counterproductive to its own interests. The country’s carefully crafted international image of supposedly being the peaceful land of Bollywood and yoga is shattered, and any revocation of Kashmir’s “autonomy” will return the region to being a global flash point, to say nothing of making it even more difficult for the military to indefinitely perpetuate its occupation in the face of heightened resistance from the locals. India had the chance to change history by admitting that it asked Trump to mediate in Kashmir and then taking his public disclosure of this secret as a signal to start that process, but it instead tried to make a fool out of him by pretending that no such request was ever made. Such strategic missteps as that one and the aforementioned risk isolating India even more in the international community and could even endanger its very existence in the event that they eventually lead to a hot war with Pakistan.
Press TV – August 5, 2019
The Indian government has scrapped the special autonomy status for the disputed region of Kashmir as part of attempts to fully integrate the Muslim-majority region with the rest of the country.
The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs announced on Monday that India’s President Ram Nath Kovind had signed a decree abolishing Article 370 of the constitution that grants a measure of autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, including the right to draft its own laws.
The decree declared the measure came into force “at once.”
The president also moved a bill proposing that the Indian-administered part of Kashmir be divided into two regions directly ruled by New Delhi.
The government in New Delhi lifted a ban on property purchases by people from outside Jammu and Kashmir, opening the way for Indians to invest and settle in the disputed region like any other part of India, a measure likely to provoke a backlash in the territory.
The controversial move came after large parts of the Muslim-majority territory was placed under lockdown, with mobile networks, internet services and telephone landline services having been cut.
Moreover, prominent political leaders in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir were placed under house arrest and the Indian paramilitary forces deployed thousands of extra troops across the region, raising fears of a crackdown.
Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, had earlier pushed for radical political changes in Jammu and Kashmir even before he won a re-election in May.
Modi said the old laws had hindered Kashmir’s integration with the rest of India.
Pakistan slams ‘illegal’ India move in Kashmir
The Indian government’s move on Monday to strip Kashmir of the special autonomy it has had for seven decades prompted a furious response from nuclear-armed rival Pakistan.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry denounced the move as “illegal” in a statement, saying, “as the party to this international dispute, Pakistan will exercise all possible options to counter the illegal steps.”
Meanwhile, a senior Pakistani security source said that a meeting of the Pakistani military’s top commanders had been called for Tuesday.
Kashmir has been split between India and Pakistan since it was partitioned in 1947. Both countries claim all of Kashmir and have fought three wars over the territory.
Indian troops are in constant clashes with armed groups seeking Kashmir’s independence or its merger with Pakistan. India regularly accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants and allowing them across the restive frontier in an attempt to launch attacks. Pakistan strongly denies the allegation.
In recent years, southern Kashmir has seen intense fighting between Indian forces and armed Kashmiri fighters, who are demanding independence for the Himalayan region.
The conflict has left tens of thousands dead, mostly civilians.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
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