Palestinians in Israel are the next target for the deal of the century
![Women in Gaza come together to protest against Trump's 'peace deal' on 5 February 2020 [Mohammad Asad/Middle East Monitor]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Women-in-Gaza-protest-against-US-peace-deal2.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&ssl=1)
Women in Gaza come together to protest against Trump’s ‘peace deal’ on 5 February 2020 [Mohammad Asad/Middle East Monitor]
MEMO | February 6, 2020
Israelis of all political persuasions welcomed the Trump “peace plan”, but the Palestinian citizens of the self-styled Jewish state are angry because the deal refers to land and population swaps between Israel and Palestinian Authority territory. This confirms that Israel wants to displace them, fulfilling right wing aspirations.
Arab members of the Israeli parliament have said that they will not agree to the deal of the century and its explicit annexation proposal. Nevertheless, the right-wing Israeli government now has a green light to strip citizenship from hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the “Triangle” in northern Israel.
It is clear that Trump’s plan is not just about taking more of the Palestinian land occupied in 1967, but that it also wants to “transfer” Palestinians from the areas occupied in 1948. Israel wants to “swap” the area with the PA; protests against this are not, therefore, simply in solidarity with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the refugees in the diaspora. There is also a conspiracy against their existence in Israel.
The Palestinians in Israel have held crisis talks about the implications of the deal, especially for those in the Triangle, which is a predominantly Arab area in Israel, near the West Bank, divided into the Northern Triangle and the towns of Kafr Qara, Ar’ara, Baqa Al-Gharbiyye and Umm Al-Fahm, and the Southern Triangle, which includes Qalansawe, Tayibe, Kafr Qasim, Tira, Kafr Bara and Jaljulia. It is a stronghold of the Islamic movement in Israel, led by Sheikh Raed Salah.
The part of the Triangle mentioned in the Trump plan covers 350 square kilometres. The area threatened by the swap proposal covers more than 42,000 acres, inhabited by 300,000 Palestinians, who make up 20 per cent of the total Palestinian population inside Israel and have Israeli citizenship. These villages are thus a source of demographic concern for Israel due to the steadily increasing population, which is expected to reach 500,000 in the next five years, tipping the demographic balance in favour of the Palestinian Arabs.
The Triangle is more conservative in nature than the more integrated Arab regions in Israel. Swapping the land and population out of Israel will see the loss of those who best preserve traditional Palestinian identity. Local political groups believe that the land and population swap is an extension of previous efforts by Israel to liquidate the Palestinian issue; Israel wants more land but without the people of Palestine on it. It is not the first time that the Israelis have sought to transfer the largest number of Triangle residents and the least amount of land. Such a move will not only hit the Palestinians directly involved, but also their extended families and social connections, many of which will be severed.
Efforts to Judaise the Triangle areas to provide Israel with some strategic depth have included a belt of settlements on the outskirts of the Arab towns. This has caused anxiety among the Palestinians, with almost daily attacks by settlers against them and their properties. There is also a fear that another massacre like that at Kafr Qasem in 1956 is on the cards in order to make the local population leave of their own accord.
A plan developed by the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, called the “Seven Stars” project, tried to change the demographic nature of the Triangle. A Jewish majority was to be created by establishing religious centres, hemming-in Umm Al-Fahm so that it could not be developed further, and linking the area to settlements in the West Bank. This would also have seen the removal of the so-called Green “Armistice” Line of 1949 dividing the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 from those occupied in 1967. The latter were supposed to form the “State of Palestine” according to the international consensus. Sharon’s project did not get beyond the discussion stage.
It is clear that Israel is seeking to buy enough time to impose a fait accompli on the ground by getting Knesset approval for the deal. Although the Arab MKs have the third largest coalition with 12 seats, their chances of thwarting the vote on the plan are almost non-existent in light of the general agreement within Israel to implement Trump’s plan.
Israelis have declared the Palestinian-Israeli population growth as a “demographic time bomb”. With a falling birth rate among Israeli Jews, the fear is that Palestinians will outnumber them across historic Palestine within the next ten years.
Land swaps to defuse this “threat” to the “Jewishness” of the state of Israel have been mooted before, of course. Post-1967, Israel’s policies in the newly-occupied territories have included the annexation of Jerusalem, still unrecognised by most countries in the world; land confiscation; house demolitions and the removal of residency rights.
In 1982 a secret document called for the Interior Ministry to crack down on the Palestinians and push them to leave their land. This was picked up by the racist General Rehavam Ze’evi in 1988, and notorious Rabbi Meir Kahane, who called for Umm Al-Fahm to be attacked as a means of provoking its residents.
By 2004, former Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman was proposing the swap of minor Israeli settlements in the West Bank with Arab villages and towns in the Triangle, based on similar agreements made post-World War Two in different parts of the world. Donald Trump’s “peace plan” is in many ways simply a US-endorsed Judaisation project giving Israel everything that it wants, for now. Its aims and objectives mirror those of earlier schemes.
Israeli security agencies are also concerned about the growing influence and activities of the Islamic movement within the “Jewish state”, particularly in the Triangle, as its ideas are similar to those of the Muslim Brotherhood. The movement also mobilises volunteers against Israeli violations at Al-Aqsa Mosque. The fear is that the conflict will spill over into serious clashes between Palestinian Muslims and religious Jews.
The timing of the release of the deal of the century helped Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces yet another general election next month — the third in less than a year — as well as indictments for corruption. The deal is a bit of a lifeline for the Israeli Prime Minister. Nevertheless, approval and implementation of its terms may be postponed until after the election, giving the Arab MKs time to try to prevent the displacement of citizens from the Triangle.
Palestinians within Israel believe that the Trump “peace plan” is anything but peaceful, and will lead to violence. In fulfilling the aims and aspirations of the Israeli far-right, it looks set to entrench even further Israel’s status as an apartheid state, with the indigenous people facing ever more discriminatory legislation and displacement. It remains to be seen if they can prevent the implementation of the plan, at least the land swap clause, which seeks to rob so many people of their citizenship and transfer them against their will.
READ ALSO:
The PA will opt for losing Palestine if it means keeping its ‘authority’
Syrian Army captured Saraqib. Netanyahu and Erdogan come to the rescue
South Front | February 06, 2020
In Greater Idlib the defences of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other favorites of the foreign powers supporting ‘Syrian democracy’ are collapsing.
On February 5, the Syrian Army, supported by Russian airpower, took control of a number of villages in southeastern Idlib and southwestern Aleppo including Resafa, al-Dhahabiyah, Ajlas, Talafih and Judiydat Talafih. They besieged a Turkish observation post established near Tal Toqan and reached another one, near al-Sheikh Mansur.
Late on the same day, the army’s Tiger Forces captured the eastern entrance to Saraqib and established fire control over the open roads leading from the town. According to local sources, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda so-called freedom fighters started fleeing the town. The Turkish Army had stuck several observation posts right in the area, but these apparently did not help.
Early on February 6, pro-government forces seized the area of Duwayr, cutting off the M5 highway north of Saraqib. Thus, the road through Saramin remained the only way to flee for militants remaining in the town. However, it is under the fire control of the Syrian Army.
Several hours after this government forces took full control of Saraqib.
Saraqib Nahiyah is the largest subdistrict of the Idlib district of the province. The subdistrict is located on the crossroad of the M4 and M5 highways. Its pre-war population was approximately 88,000. The fall of Saraqib into the hands of Damascus and its allies will allow government troops to continue the operation clearing the entire M5 highway and open the road to Idlib city itself.
Right on cue, while the Syrian Army was storming Saraqib, the Israeli Air Force delivered a wide-scale strike on targets in the countryside of the Syrian capital, Damascus, and in the province of Daraa. The Al-Kiswa area, Marj al-Sultan, Baghdad Bridge and the area south of Izraa were among the confirmed targets of the attack.
Syria’s State media claimed that the Syrian Air Defense shot down most of the Israeli missiles before they were able to reach their targets. Pro-Israeli sources claim that the strikes successfully hit Iran-related targets destroying weapon depots and HQs of Iranian-backed forces. The Israeli leadership once again officially confirmed its participation in the club of terrorism supporters in Syria.
Another member of the al-Qaeda Rescue Rangers is Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
On February 5, he vowed that Turkey would deploy locally made air-defense systems along the border with Syria. The President did not provide many details on the matter, but the aforementioned systems were likely the HISAR-A low-altitude air-defense system which will be deployed along the border with Idlib.
Additionally, Erdogan delivered an ultimatum to Syria claiming that “if the Syrian regime will not retreat from Turkish observation posts in Idlib in February, Turkey itself will be obliged to make this happen.” In other words, the Turkish president threatened to declare war on Syria if the Syrian Army does not withdraw from the territory it liberated from terrorists.
Kurdish-led forces in Syria say they will keep conscription system
MEMO | February 4, 2020
A senior Kurdish official in the “Defence Board” of the so-called Autonomous Self-Administration in Syria’s northeast town of Ain Al-Issa has stated that there are no plans to stop the controversial forced military conscription of young men in the Syrian territory currently controlled by Kurdish-led forces, known as the Syrian Defence Forces (SDF).
According to Kurdistan24 Shirin Qamar, co-chair of the Board, reiterated the decision to keep the system in place, describing the military service as “for the sake” of the defence of their homeland.
“The process is known to everyone: it includes 45 days of patriotic education and self-knowledge, as well as military training. And later on, they serve their homeland in the position of border guards,” she explained.
The Kurdish administration passed their own law making conscription compulsory in the “autonomous areas” on 14 July 2014, which was implemented in November of the same year on military-aged men and applies to all men regardless of their ethnic or religious background and regardless of whether they have previously served in the Syrian-state army.
However, every local authority in Kurdish-controlled Syria has the right to decide its own military conscription age, leading to complaints against discrimination and inconsistency.
There are documented allegations of child soldiers serving in the SDF, despite an order issued banning their recruitment in 2018.
The SDF has received funding and arms from the US to aid its efforts to combat Daesh. The force consists largely but not exclusively of YPG fighters, which is considered to be the Syrian faction of the terrorist PKK organisation. It has recently been reported that Saudi and US officials have held talks on potentially financing Arab factions who are currently affiliated to the SDF, under the pretext of “resisting the Iranian expansion attempts” in the country.
Trump Green Lights Greater Israel
Palestinians lose again
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • February 4, 2020
Many interested parties have already weighed in on President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century.” Even though it sounds like a phrase that a used car dealer would use, the “Deal” is dead serious in that it effectively denies to the Palestinians in perpetuum any political entity that has attributes of genuine sovereignty. Israel, which has just postponed a vote to immediately annex some of its illegal settlements on the West Bank with the blessing of the White House, will completely surround the fragmented Palestinian holdings by virtue of the annexation of the entire Jordan River Valley. It is the Zionist dream of a Greater “Eretz” Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea finally achieved. The empty shell swiss-cheese-like completely disarmed state of Palestine will have no authority over its borders and airspace, no means to defend itself and no right to manage its own water resources.
Within the territory granted to Palestinians by Trump there will remain Israeli settler enclaves guarded by soldiers and police. Israel will have total control over the entire West Bank. Millions of Palestinians under its control will de facto be stateless people without basic civil rights whose land will be stolen by settlers. They will be unable to travel even within their “state,” forced to pass through checkpoints, arrested and imprisoned for speech harming “public order” and jailed through indefinite “administrative detentions” without any charges or trial.
Gaza will be completely disarmed and connected to the West Bank by a tunnel controlled by Israel. Presumably, the Mediterranean will continue to be a restricted area for Gazan fishermen, patrolled by the Israeli navy with the offshore oil and gas reserves exploited by Israeli companies. In return for their complete surrender, the Palestinians will be required to express gratitude for being able to survive as helots in what will be largely an open-air outdoor prison. If they behave well, they may or may not get money doled out by Trump to Israel for distribution to the Palestinians as long as they keep quiet and smile as they writhe under the Israeli thumb.
One of the more interesting features of the Deal is that Trump insists that the Palestinians will have East Jerusalem as their capital while at the same time confirming that an undivided Jerusalem will be under total Israeli control. If one looks at the map provided by the White House when the Deal was unveiled, it appears that a piece of East Jerusalem is indeed shown as part of the Palestinian land. But obviously, even though it will have that area technically as its capital it will have no sovereignty over it. It is a detail that is clearly unsustainable and may in fact be a complete fiction designed to demonstrate how magnanimous Israel and the United States are in giving the Palestinians a “state.”
Trump’s one-sided Deal was crafted around Israeli interests, not those of the United States and without any input whatsoever from the Palestinians themselves. The team pulled together by presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner consisted of Orthodox Jews and they worked closely with U.S. Ambassador (sic) David Friedman, whose time in Israel has consisted mostly of being an apologist for Netanyahu, excusing accelerated Israeli settlement building as well as the weekly shooting party along the fence line in Gaza. Immediately after Trump and Netanyahu announced the outline of the Deal in Washington, Friedman stated that the Israeli government was at that point free to begin the annexation of any or all of the illegal settlements.
The sad part of what we see unfolding in front of our eyes is that the United States, long an enabler of Israel, is now openly a partner in Israeli war crimes. The Fourth Geneva Convention, adopted in 1949, was intended to protect civilians in time of war. It clearly states that occupying a territory obtained by war and colonizing it with your own people is a war crime. Germany’s demand for lebensraum for German colonists during the lead up to the Second World War and its defining the Slavs who would be displaced as Untermenschen was the crime that motivated the drafters of the Convention. Does that sound familiar? The words are probably somewhat similar in Yiddish.
Most of the mainstream media commentary on the Deal is neutral or even mildly critical, observing inter alia that it is a gift to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was at the podium and beaming alongside Trump. If the boost from the White House succeeds in getting Bibi reelected, Trump will expect payback big time in 2020 through the Israel Lobby’s influence over Jewish voters and from the generosity of Jewish billionaire donors named Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus.
That Trump has betrayed U.S. interests repeatedly in the Middle East and has also flipped on his pledge to remove American soldiers from its “loser wars,” makes him a disgrace as president, though he will likely be re-elected as the voters have been fed a steady diet of propaganda both by the mainstream media and government on Israel. That just might be because Jews are vastly over-represented both in the media and in the choke points in government that deal with the Middle East and foreign policy in general. Even liberal Jews who are critical of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians tend to rally round-the-flag at election time and vote for the candidate perceived as being “strongest” on Israel. One notes with interest that while Senator Bernie Sanders roundly condemned the Deal, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi saw “some areas of common ground here” in it. She would, wouldn’t she? And I am sure Senator Chuck Schumer, the self-proclaimed protector of Israel in the Senate, is secretly delighted.
In the rather less restrained alternative media, there is much banter about how the Deal is little more than a sweeping annexation plan that is really Apartheid by another name. That in itself is a bit of a fudge as the reality in Palestine is far worse than South African Apartheid ever was. Some braver individuals have observed how the United States is controlled by Israel in terms of its engagement in the Middle East, but the language used to describe the situation really misses the point. The United States vis-à-vis Israel is not controlled by Israel per se but rather by subversion from within, Jewish billionaires having bought both major political parties and a Jewish dominated media spouting nonsense about the “only democracy in the Middle East” and “America’s best friend and ally.” Israel is neither a democracy nor a friend. And the American Jews and their allies the Christian Zionists who are full time promoters of the Israel myth are little more than traitors to the United States and everything it once upon a time stood for.
The Palestinians have already rejected the Deal, but their refusal to participate will be seen by Trump and Israel as an insult, or at least it will be spun that way. Trump has already warned that his proposal is the Palestinians’ “last chance” and his United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft has advised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not to raise the issue at all with the world body. Unwillingness to embrace it will provide a good opportunity to really lower the hammer on the Arabs. The map provided by Trump shows a cluster of Bantustans surrounded by Israel soldiers and police who historically have regarded nominally Palestinian areas as a free fire zone. When violence erupts, which it will, the largely unarmed Arabs will be slaughtered and David Friedman, Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu will all conveniently blame it on the Palestinians as it was the Israelis who “wanted peace” and the only obstacle remaining was and is the obduracy of the Palestinians. If only they had accepted the Deal, the outcome would have been different the contrived narrative will go.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Organization of Islamic Cooperation rejects Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ peace plan for Middle East
RT | February 3, 2020
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which consists of more than 50 Muslim-majority countries, has asked member states not to cooperate in any way with US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Israel and Palestine.
During a special session in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Monday, the OIC’s executive committee called on all member states “not to engage with [Trump’s] plan or to cooperate with the US administration in implementing it in any form.” The body also asked members to refrain from any actions that “do not adhere to the inalienable rights of Palestinians.”
OIC Secretary General Yousef Al-Othaimeen said that the organization will support any international peace effort that is in accordance with international law.
Touted as the ‘deal of the century’ by the Trump administration, the plan describes the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital set up in the outskirts of East Jerusalem, currently controlled by Israel.
The plan, however, allows Israel to keep existing settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the UN considers illegal under international law. The proposed roadmap also rules out the return of all Palestinian refugees, which the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Arab world see as one of the key requirements for lasting peace.
The plan was endorsed by US ally Israel but universally rejected by the Palestinians and the Arab League, who view the plan as heavily skewed in favor of Tel Aviv.
Iran: Swiss-US channel for medicine too little, too late
Press TV – February 3, 2020
Iran has dismissed as insufficient a Swiss-US “humanitarian” channel set up to enable medicine transfers to the country, arguing that the United States is originally banned by the International Court of Justice from subjecting Iran’s much-needed medical supplies to sanctions.
“We do not recognize any such so-called humanitarian channel,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi told a press conference on Monday. “We do not recognize sanctions [for that matter]. Medicine and foodstuffs were never subject to sanctions in the first place so they can now create a channel [for their transfer] with much publicity,” he added.
The US returned its sanctions against Iran after leaving a historic nuclear accord with the country and others in 2018. The measures defied the agreement’s multilateral nature and the fact that it had been ratified by the United Nations Security Council.
Washington then began forcing others to toe its sanctions line. Britain, France, and Germany have stopped their transactions with the Islamic Republic, bowing under the pressure.
On Thursday, Switzerland launched the so-called Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement (SHTA), claiming it was aimed at facilitating the medicine trade, reportedly using the Central Bank of Iran’s credits. Swiss officials have, however, refused to clairfy how such transactions would continue if the CBI ran out of credit with Swiss banks.
On October 3, 2018, the Hague-based International Court of Justice, the UN’s principal judicial organ, issued a ruling ordering the US to halt its unilateral sanctions on “humanitarian” supplies to Iran. The verdict came following a lawsuit lodged by Iran in July of the same year.
Mousavi said Washington is well aware that as per the ruling, it bears an obligation not to block such transactions, adding that these “conditional waivers” from the sanctions will not result in the US war crimes passing into oblivion.
The medicine supplies, he added, were bound to enter the country a year and a half ago, but their imports were blocked by US obstructionism.
The Swiss company tasked with facilitating the transactions “has been paid to do so,” he said, noting, “Our expectations far exceed such measures. And their obligations are hundreds of times more than what they are offering.”
He noted that the Islamic Republic welcomes all efforts that are aimed at reducing the pressure faced by the country, but still Switzerland’s initiation of the SHTA, falls short of the expectations.
Also on Monday, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif dismissed the efficiency of the Swiss channel and drew attention to the ICJ ruling in this regard.
The top diplomat noted that the US keeps pursuing the policy of “maximum pressure” and denying Iran the financial channels that enable it to import medicine.
“This is a small step and we thank the Swiss government for its efforts … but this channel is not a sign of America’s goodwill at all,” he said.
Last October, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that the US’s harsh sanctions against Iran posed a serious threat to the Iranian people’s right to health, urging Washington to adopt swift measures aimed at facilitating trade of humanitarian goods with the Islamic Republic.
The sanctions are compromising Iranians “access to essential medicines—and has almost certainly contributed to documented shortages— ranging from a lack of critical drugs for epilepsy patients to limited chemotherapy medications for Iranians with cancer,” it said.
Though the US government has supposedly built exemptions for humanitarian imports into its sanctions regime, “broad US sanctions against Iranian banks, coupled with aggressive rhetoric from US officials, have drastically constrained Iran’s ability to finance such humanitarian imports,” the rights organization added.
A month later, an NGO said Iranian children suffering from a rare skin condition known as EB were losing their lives as US economic sanctions hampered the flow of vital medical products.
Hamid Reza Hashemi-Golayegani, the head of the NGO that helps such patients, said that at least 15 Iranian children with epidermolysis bullosa (EB) had died since the US restored the sanctions.
Stumbling into Catastrophe
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 1, 2020
There is a real danger for foreign policy advisors and analysts – and especially those they serve – when they are in a bubble, an echo chamber, and all of their conclusions are based on faulty inputs. Needless to say it’s even worse when they believe they can create their own reality and invent outcomes out of whole cloth.
Things seldom go as planned in these circumstances.
President Trump was sold a bill of goods on the assassination of Iran’s revered military leader, Qassim Soleimani, likely by a cabal around Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the long-discredited neocon David Wurmser. A former Netanyahu advisor and Iraq war propagandist, Wurmser reportedly sent memos to his mentor, John Bolton, while Bolton was Trump’s National Security Advisor (now, of course, he’s the hero of the #resistance for having turned on his former boss) promising that killing Soleimani would be a cost-free operation that would catalyze the Iranian people against their government and bring about the long-awaited regime change in that country. The murder of Soleimani – the architect of the defeat of ISIS – would “rattle the delicate internal balance of forces and the control over them upon which the [Iranian] regime depends for stability and survival,” wrote Wurmser.
As is most often the case with neocons, he was dead wrong.
The operation was not cost-free. On the contrary. Assassinating Soleimani on Iraqi soil resulted in the Iraqi parliament – itself the product of our “bringing democracy” to the country – voting to expel US forces even as the vote by the people’s representatives was roundly rejected by the people who brought the people the people’s representatives. In a manner of speaking.
Trump’s move had an effect opposite to the one promised by neocons. It did not bring Iranians out to the street to overthrow their government – it catalyzed opposition across Iraq’s various political and religious factions to the continued US military presence and further tightened Iraq’s relationship with Iran. And short of what would be a catastrophic war initiated by the US (with little or no support from allies), there is not a thing Trump can do about it.
Iran’s retaliatory attack on two US bases in Iraq was initially sold by President Trump as merely a pin-prick. No harm, no foul, no injuries. This despite the fact that he must have known about US personnel injured in the attack. The reason for the lie was that Trump likely understands how devastating it would be to his presidency to escalate with Iran. So the truth began to trickle out slowly – 11 US military members were injured, but it was just “like a headache.” Now we know that 50 US troops were treated for traumatic brain injury after the attack. This may not be the last of it – but don’t count on the mainstream media to do any reporting.
The Iranian FARS news agency reported at the time of the attack that US personnel had been injured and the response by the US government was to completely take that media outlet off the Internet by order of the US Treasury!
Today the US House voted to cancel the 2002 authorization for war on Iraq and to prohibit the use of funds for war on Iran without Congressional authorization. It is a significant, if largely symbolic, move to rein in the oft-used excuse of the Iraq war authorization for blatantly unrelated actions like the assassination of Soleimani and Obama’s thousands of airstrikes on Syria and Iraq.
President Trump has argued that prohibiting funds for military action against Iran actually makes war more likely, as he would be restricted from the kinds of military-strikes-short-of-war like his attack on Syria after the alleged chemical attack in Douma in 2018 (claims which have recently fallen apart). The logic is faulty and reflects again the danger of believing one’s own propaganda. As we have seen from the Iranian military response to the Soleimani assassination, Trump’s military-strikes-short-of-war are having a ratchet-like effect rather than a pressure-release or deterrent effect.
As the financial and current events analysis site ZeroHedge put it recently:
[S]ince last summer’s “tanker wars”, Trump has painted himself into a corner on Iran, jumping from escalation to escalation (to this latest “point of no return big one” in the form of the ordered Soleimani assassination) — yet all the while hoping to avoid a major direct war. The situation reached a climax where there were “no outs” (Trump was left with two ‘bad options’ of either back down or go to war).
The Iranians have little to lose at this point and America’s European allies are, even if impotent, fed up with the US obsession with Saudi Arabia and Israel as a basis for its Middle East policy.
So why open this essay with a photo of Trump celebrating his dead-on-arrival “Deal of The Century” for Israel and Palestine? Because this is once again a gullible and weak President Trump being led by the nose into the coming Middle East conflagration. Left without even a semblance of US sympathy for their plight, the Palestinians after the roll-out of this “peace” plan will again see that they have no friends outside Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. As Israel continues to flirt with the idea of simply annexing large parts of the West Bank, it is clear that the brakes are off of any Israeli reticence to push for maximum control over Palestinian territory. So what is there to lose?
Trump believes he’s advancing peace in the Middle East, while the excellent Mondoweiss website rightly observes that a main architect of the “peace plan,” Trump’s own son-in-law Jared Kushner, “taunts Palestinians because he wants them to reject his ‘peace plan.’” Rejection of the plan is a green light to a war of annihilation on the Palestinians.
It appears that the center may not hold, that the self-referential echo chamber that passes for Beltway “expert” analysis will again be caught off guard in the consequence-free profession that is neocon foreign policy analysis. “Gosh we didn’t see that coming!” But the next day they are back on the TV stations as great experts.
Clouds gathering…
A New US Air Force Video Game Lets You Drone Bomb Iraqis and Afghans
By Alan MacLeod – MintPress News – January 31, 2020
The United States Air Force has a new recruitment tool: a realistic drone operator video game you can play on its website. Called the Airman Challenge, it features 16 missions to complete, interspersed with facts and recruitment information about how to become a drone operator yourself. In its latest attempts to market active service to young people, players move through missions escorting US vehicles through countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, serving up death from above to all those designated “insurgents” by the game. Players earn medals and achievements for most effectively destroying moving targets. All the while there is a prominent “apply now” button on screen if players would like to enlist and conduct real drone strikes all over the Middle East.
The game has failed to win over David Swanson, director of the anti-war movement World Beyond War, and the author of War is a Lie.
“It is truly disgusting, immoral, and arguably illegal in that it is recruitment or pre-recruitment of underage children to participate in murder. It is part of the normalization of murder that we have been living through,” he told MintPress News.
Tom Secker, a journalist and researcher into the influence of the military on popular culture was similarly unimpressed by the latest USA.F. recruitment strategy, telling us:
The drone game struck me as sick and demented… On the other hand, many drone pilots have described how piloting drones and killing random brown people is a lot like playing a video game, because you’re sat in a bunker in Nevada pushing buttons, detached from the consequences. So I guess it accurately reflects the miserable, traumatised, serial killing life of a drone pilot, we can’t accuse it of inaccuracy per se.”
Game Over
Despite the fact that they are rarely, if ever in any physical danger, the military has considerable difficulty recruiting and retaining drone pilots. Nearly a quarter of Air Force staff who can fly the machines leave the service every year. A lack of respect, fatigue and mental anguish are the primary reasons cited. Stephen Lewis, a sensor operator between 2005 and 2010 said what he did “weighs on your conscience. It weighs on your soul. It weighs on your heart,” claiming that the post traumatic stress disorder he suffers from as a consequence of killing so many people has made it impossible for him to have relationships with other humans.
“People think it is a video game. But in a video game you have checkpoints, you have restart points. When you fire that missile there’s no restart,” he said. “The less they can get you to think of what you’re shooting at as human the easier it becomes to you to just follow through with these shots when they come down,” said Michael Haas, another former USAF sensor operator. The Airman Challenge game follows this path, using red dots on the screen to represent enemies, sanitizing the violence recruits will be meting out.
“We were very callous about any real collateral damage. Whenever that possibility came up most of the time it was a guilt by association or sometimes we didn’t even consider other people that were on screen,” Haas said, noting that he and his peers used terms like “fun sized terrorist” to describe children, employing euphemisms like “cutting the grass before it grows too long,” as justifications for their extermination. The constant violence, even from afar, takes a heavy toll on many drone operators, who complain of constant nightmares and having to drink themselves into a stupor every night to avoid them.
Others, with different personalities, revel in the bloodshed. Prince Harry, for example, was a helicopter gunner in Afghanistan and described firing missiles as a “joy.” “I’m one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful,” he said. “If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game.”
A Nobel Cause
Drone bombing is a relatively new technology. Barack Obama came into office promising to end President Bush’s reckless aggression, even being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. While he slashed the number of American troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, he also greatly expanded US wars in the form of drone bombings, ordering ten times as many as Bush. In his last year in office, the US dropped at least 26,000 bombs – around one every twenty minutes on average. When he left office, the US was bombing seven countries simultaneously: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan.
Up to 90 percent of reported drone casualties were “collateral damage,” i.e. innocent bystanders. Swanson is deeply concerned about the way in which the practice has become normalized: “If murder is acceptable as long as a military does it, anything else is acceptable,” he says, “We will reverse this trend, or we will perish.”
History did not exactly repeat itself with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, but it did rhyme. Trump came to power having made multiple statements perceived as anti-war, strongly criticizing Obama and the Democrats’ handling of the situation in the Middle East. Egged on even by so-called “resistance” media, Trump immediately expanded drone bombings, increasing the number of strikes by 432 percent in his first year in office. The president also used a drone attack to kill Iranian general and statesman Qassem Soleimani earlier this month.
Killing in the Game of
In 2018, the armed forces fell well short of their recruitment targets, despite offering a package of benefits very attractive to working-class Americans. As a result, it totally revamped its recruitment strategy, moving away from television and investing in micro-targeted online ads in an attempt to reach young people, particularly men below the age of thirty, who make up the bulk of the armed forces. One branding exercise was to create an Army e-sports team entering video game competitions under the military brand. As the gaming website, Kotaku wrote, “Positioning the Army as a game-friendly environment and institution is crucial, or even necessary, to reach the people the Army wants to reach.” The Army surpassed its recruitment goal for 2019.
Although the Airman Challenge game is a new attempt at recruitment, the armed forces have a long history being involved in the video game market, and the entertainment industry more generally. Secker’s work has uncovered the depths of collaboration between the military and the entertainment industry. Through Freedom of Information requests, he was able to find that the Department of Defense reviews, edits and writes hundreds of TV and movie scripts every year, subsidizing the entertainment world with free content and equipment in exchange for positive portrayals. “At this point, it’s difficult to effectively summarise the US military’s influence on the industry, because it’s so varied and all-encompassing,” he said.
The US Army spends tens of millions a year on the Institute for Creative Technologies, who develop advanced tech for the film and gaming industries, as well as in-house training games for the Army and – on occasion – the CIA. The Department Of Defense has supported a number of major game franchises (Call of Duty, Tom Clancy games, usually first or third-person shooters). Military-supported games are subject to the same rules of narrative and character as movies and TV, so they can be rejected or modified if they contain elements the Department Of Defense deems controversial.”
The video games industry is massive, with hyper-realistic first person shooters like Call of Duty being among the most popular genres. Call of Duty: WWII, for example, sold $500 million worth of copies in its opening weekend alone, more money generated than blockbuster movies “Thor: Ragnarok” and “Wonder Woman” combined. Many people spend hours a day playing. Captain Brian Stanley, a military recruiter in California said, “Kids know more about the army than we do… Between the weapons, vehicles, and tactics, and a lot of that knowledge comes from video games.”
Young people, therefore, spend huge amounts of time effectively being propagandized by the military. In Call of Duty Ghosts, for instance, you play as a US soldier fighting against a red-beret wearing anti-American Venezuelan dictator, clearly based on President Hugo Chavez, while in Call of Duty 4, you follow the US Army in Iraq, shooting hundreds of Arabs as you go. There’s even a mission where you operate a drone, which is distinctly similar to the Airman Challenge. US forces even control drones with Xbox controllers, blurring the lines between war games and war games even further.
Cyber Warfare
Although the military industrial complex is keen to advertise opportunities for pilots, they go to great lengths to hide the reality of what happens to the victims of airstrikes. The most famous of these is likely the “Collateral Murder” video, leaked by Chelsea Manning to Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange. The video, which made worldwide news, laid bare the callousness towards civilian lives Haas described, where Air Force pilots laugh at shooting dead at least 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists. While those commanders ultimately in charge of military operations in the Middle East appear on television constantly, trying to sanitize their actions, Manning and Assange remain in prison for helping to expose the public to an alternative depiction of violence. Manning has spent the majority of the last decade incarcerated, while Assange awaits possible extradition to the United States in a London prison.
The Airman Challenge video game, for Secker, is merely “the latest in a long line of insidious and disturbing recruitment efforts by the US military.” “If they feel they have to do this just to recruit a few hundred thousand people to their cause, maybe their cause isn’t worth it,” he said.
Trump’s Deal Is Bid to Complete the Evil ‘Plan Dalet’
The Zionist terror conspiracy to steal the land of Palestine is nearing its bizarre climax
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | January 31, 2020
After 70 years of pissing on the Palestinians, America and Israel suddenly want to “improve” their lives. But when you look closer at Peace to Prosperity it’s all about thieving more Palestinian land, stripping these good people of what remains of their self-respect and grinding them further into the Holy Land dust.
The Trump document’s 180 pages are devoted to the self-aggrandizement of Israel and military domination of the Middle East, by proxy, by the warmongers of the US. And to achieve its aims Trump shamelessly circumvents international law, ignores existing UN resolutions and makes daft and insupportable claims.
How fitting that the unveiling ceremony was graced by an American president facing impeachment and an Israeli prime minister facing multiple corruption charges. Another party to the farce was Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s election rival, who commanded the infamous Operation Pillar of Defence (2012) and Operation Protective Edge (2014) onslaughts against Gaza and is no doubt wanted in many quarters for war crimes.
“This is clearly a serious proposal, reflecting extensive time and effort,” said Dominic Raab, UK’s foreign minister, in a statement. “We encourage them (the leaders) to give these plans genuine and fair consideration, and explore whether they might prove a first step on the road back to negotiations.”
Prime minister Boris Johnson in the House of Commons said: “No peace plan is perfect, but this has the merit of a two-state solution. It would ensure Jerusalem is both the capital of Israel and the Palestinian people.”
Can he not read? Trump’s plan says: “Jerusalem will remain the sovereign capital of the State of Israel, and it should remain an undivided city. The sovereign capital of the State of Palestine should be in the section of East Jerusalem located in all areas east and north of the existing security barrier, including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis, and could be named Al Quds or another name as determined by the State of Palestine.”
Does Johnson not know that the Old City is part of East Jerusalem which is officially Palestinian and the Palestinians obvious want a presence there – and why not? Doesn’t he understand that Al Quds is the Arabic name for the Holy City and it’s a grave insult to suggest calling some village miles away by that name. I can imagine the fury of ordinary Palestinians who have dreamed of self-determination in their homeland – as promised – ever since the British left in 1948.
The British government says “the best way to achieve peace is through substantive peace talks between parties”, as if negotiation between a strong party and a weak party, between one party with a gun to the other’s head, is ever going to work.
Fortunately MP Crispin Blunt put the matter in perspective: “Yesterday we welcomed the release of a proposal — which we described as serious — that ignored the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, the 1967 borders, international humanitarian law, and repeated United Nations Security Council resolutions, the last of which the United Kingdom signed up to in December 2016. I have to say to my right hon. Friend that this is an annexation plan. Annexation is going to start on 2 February — and there is the map.”
Yep, this is indeed an annexation plan and it’s flat-out contrary to international law. What’s needed is not more talks but enforcement of the law and the numerous UN resolutions applicable to this situation, and the sanctions to make it stick. But justice and law are no part of Trump’s deal, only ways of getting round it.
The document doesn’t say who is responsible for producing Peace to Prosperity, but it reads like the work of Israel’s hasbara Dirty Tricks department and edited by disinformation chief Mark Regev, currently Israel’s ambassador in London.
The Zionist terror plan to steal the land of Palestine
It’s plain to see that Trump’s ‘peace’ proposal is actually the climactic fulfillment of the long-running and thoroughly nasty Plan Dalet (otherwise known as Plan D). This was the Zionists’ blueprint, in anticipation of the British leaving, for the violent and murderous takeover of the Palestinian homeland as a prelude to declaring Israeli statehood – which they did in May 1948. It was drawn up by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency.
Plan D’s intention was not only to gain control of the areas of the Jewish state and defend its borders but also to control the areas of Jewish settlements and concentrations located outside Jewish borders and ensure “freedom of military and economic activity” by occupying important high-ground positions on a number of transport routes.
“Outside the borders of the state” may seem a curious thing to say when nobody knew where Israel’s borders actually ran, except where marked on the 1947 UN Partition Plan map. Israel has purposely kept her borders fluid in order to accommodate the Zionists’ perpetual lust for expansion.
Success would depend on, amongst other things, “applying economic pressure on the enemy by besieging some of his cities”, on “encirclement of enemy cities” and on “blocking the main enemy transportation routes…. Roads, bridges, main passes, important crossroads, paths, etc. must be blocked by means of: acts of sabotage, explosions, series of barricades, minefields, as well as by controlling the elevations near roads and taking up positions there.”
In other words, a reign of terror.
Jewish forces would occupy the police stations, described as “fortresses”, fifty of which had been built by the British throughout Palestine after the Arab unrest of 1936-39.
Plan D discussed “operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force”. These operations included:
- “Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.
- “Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”
Villages emptied in this way were then fortified.
If they met no resistance “garrison troops will enter the village and take up positions in it or in locations which enable complete tactical control,” said the Plan. “The officer in command of the unit will confiscate all weapons, wireless devices, and motor vehicles in the village. In addition, he will detain all politically suspect individuals… In every region, a [Jewish] person will be appointed to be responsible for arranging the political and administrative affairs of all [Arab] villages and population centers which are occupied within that region.
34 massacres are said to have been committed in pursuit of Plan D’s racist and territorial objectives. The massacre at Deir Yassin by Jewish terror groups set the tone in order to ‘soften up’ the Arabs for expulsion. More atrocities followed the declaration of Israeli statehood on 14 May 1948. 750,000 Palestinians were put to flight as Israel’s forces obliterated hundreds of Arab villages and towns. The village on which Sderot now stands was one such. To this day they have been denied the right to return and received no compensation.
And here are the chilling guidelines for besieging, occupying and controlling Arab cities…
- By isolating them from transportation arteries by laying mines, blowing up bridges, and a system of fixed ambushes.
- If necessary, by occupying high points which overlook transportation arteries leading to enemy cities, and the fortification of our units in these positions.
- By disrupting vital services, such as electricity, water, and fuel, or by using economic resources available to us, or by sabotage.
- By launching a naval operation against the cities that can receive supplies by sea, in order to destroy the vessels carrying the provisions, as well as by carrying out acts of sabotage against harbor facilities.
Plan Dalet is one of the sickest documents in history and shows why so many people question Israel’s legitimacy.
Atrocities occurred at Deir Yassin, Lod (Lydda) and Ramle. The Deir Yassin massacre was carried out by the two Zionist terror groups, the Irgun and the Stern Gang. On an April morning in 1948 (before the Israeli state declaration) 130 of their commandos made a dawn raid on this small Arab town with a population of 750, to the west of Jerusalem. The attack was initially beaten off, and only when a crack unit of the Haganah arrived with mortars were the Arab townsmen overwhelmed. The Irgun and the Stern Gang, smarting from the humiliation of having to summon help, embarked on a ‘clean-up’ in which they systematically murdered and executed at least 100 residents – mostly women, children and old people. The Irgun afterwards exaggerated the number, quoting 254, to frighten other Arab towns and villages.
The Haganah played down their part in the raid and afterwards said the massacre “disgraced the cause of Jewish fighters and dishonored Jewish arms and the Jewish flag”.
Deir Yassin signaled the beginning of a deliberate program by Israel to depopulate Arab towns and villages – destroying churches and mosques – in order to make room for incoming Holocaust survivors and other Jews.
In July 1948 Israeli terrorist troops seized Lydda, shot up the town and drove out the population. Donald Neff reported how, as part of the ethnic cleansing, the Israelis massacred 426 men, women, and children. 176 of them were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque. The remainder were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat leaving a trail of bodies – men, women and children – along the way. Of all the blood-baths they say this was the biggest. The great hero Moshe Dayan was responsible. Was he ever brought to book? Of course not. Lydda airport is now Ben Gurion airport.
The Israeli state’s greedy ambition overran the generous borders gifted to the Zionists in the UN Partition Plan and by 1949 the Zionists had seized nearly 80 percent of Palestine, provoking the resistance backlash that still goes on today.
Israel’s numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, and its continual defiance of international law and the UN Charter, undermine the Jewish state’s claim to legitimacy as far as Arabs and many non-Arabs around the world are concerned.
UN Resolution 194 called on Israel to let the Palestinians back onto their land. It has been re-passed many times, but Israel still ignores it. And so does the Trump plan. The Israelis also stand accused of violating Article 42 of the Geneva Convention by moving settlers into the Palestinian territories it occupies, and of riding roughshod over international law with their occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
But as Plan D shows, “expulsion and transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing) were always a key part of the Zionists’ scheme. According to historian Benny Morris no mainstream Zionist leader could conceive of future co-existence without a clear physical separation between the two peoples. Ben-Gurion, who became Israel’s first prime minister, is reported to have said in 1937: “New settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin…” The following year he declared: “With compulsory transfer we have a vast area [for settlement]… I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”
On another occasion, he remarked: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it is true, but 2,000 years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country.”
Ben-Gurion reminded his military commanders that the prime aim of Plan D was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. He was well aware of his own criminality.
Today under the Trump plan, as the Guardian points out, a Palestinian state would receive territory, mostly desert, near Gaza to compensate for the further loss of about 30% of the West Bank. And we are all asked to recognize the Jordan valley, which makes up about a third of the occupied West Bank, and the Old City of Jerusalem, as part of Israel.
Lebanon FM: We Categorically Reject Naturalization of Palestinian Refugees
Al-Manar | January 30, 2020
Lebanese FM Nassif Hitti has stressed via Al-Manar TV that Lebanon categorically rejects the naturalization of the Palestinian refugees, but that it supports their right to return to their land.
Hitti denounced the so-called “Deal of the Century”, considering that it infringes on the peoples right to choose their destiny and violates international laws.
“It is unacceptable to tamper with Lebanon’s borders,” Hitti said in a comment on one of the stipulations of the so-called “The Deal of the Century” which denied Lebanon its right to its Israeli-held territories.
The Lebanese to diplomat emphasized that he will convey Lebanon’s stance towards the US ‘deal’ during the meeting of the Arab foreign ministers in Cairo next Saturday.
Featured Video
Billionaires and Officials Are Just Blatantly Ignoring the Will of the People
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Villains of Judea
Samuel Zemurray
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Hamas leaders say targeting families will fail to extract concessions
- Harrowing testimonies expose Israeli torture of Gaza hospital director
- UAE provides $100m for US-backed Gaza police force vetted by Shin Bet
- Britain quietly approves $11.85m arms licence to Israel despite Gaza ban
- Britain’s population replacement has passed the point of no return
- US-Iran ‘Calibrated Escalation’ Risks Sliding Into All-Out War – Expert
- Iran – End of the Drought & the Destruction of US Radar Installations in the Middle East
- Prediction: NATO’s Collapse & Nuclear War
- ‘Operation Fauxios’: Axios, Israeli spy, and $2 billion oil scam to prop up Trump
- Iran blasts US ceasefire violations, says Washington trapped in ‘self-created quagmire’
- If Americans Knew
- A Conservative’s View: Trump’s War on Iran Is Destroying America
- Israel’s war on the West Bank comes for Palestinian greenhouses
- New $270 million Israeli-only roads project in the West Bank is Netanyahu’s latest bid to impose de facto annexation
- Gaza investigation: A family’s fight to find their missing relatives
- MSF: Israel’s deliberate restriction of food and aid led to alarming malnutrition levels in Gaza
- Israel earmarks $270M for Israeli-only roads (that’s apartheid) – Daily Update
- Two Supreme Court Justices were secret agents who helped Israel cover up its attack on the USS Liberty
- Bari Weiss ‘Meddles’ With ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ Story on Palestine
- Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech
- The horrors in Gaza continue: Here are the facts
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
Aletho News 