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Attacking Yemen Is a Waste of Time, Money and Resources

By Declan Hayes | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 22, 2023

What to do with a problem like Yemen and its 2,000 km (1,200 mile) long Red Sea coastline? And indeed with Eritrea, Djibouti and Somali, all three of which share maritime borders with Yemen.

The issue is that Yemen’s Houthi have decided that all ships using the Red Sea that have any connection, near or far, with Israel, are legitimate targets for its batteries of missiles some of which, as previously discussed, are almost unstoppable ballistic missiles.

The problem is how to sail Israeli and other targeted ships through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and thence onwards to pay the $500,000-$1,000,000 toll to sail through Egypt’s Suez Canal. This problem is compounded by (Russia’s) dark and grey fleets, which transfer embargoed oil, being allowed free passage and the Chinese, which have a major naval base in nearby Djibouti, playing schlump about the whole matter. NATO’s problem is how to deal with the Houthi, whilst also marginalising China, Iran and Russia, all three of which have very big dogs in this very important fight.

Although diplomacy would seem an obvious candidate to help resolve matters NATO, in its wisdom, long ago discarded that card and China is, in any event, playing a totally different and far more incendiary global game.

On top of all that, NATO’s major shipping lines have their own profiteering demands, which further complicate matters. In essence, those major companies want NATO to escort all its ships, and not just those flying NATO flags, in convoy through the Red Sea. Although that would benefit them, NATO is primarily obliged to protect its own fleet and not the 40% of the world’s ships that fly the flags of open registry countries like Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands or, heaven forbid, that transport dark or grey cargo on behalf of Russia and its partners. And, if that were not enough, many non-eligible ships carry military ordnance for NATO and, most likely, Israel as well.

Even if NATO were, like Tom Hanks in Greyhound, to convoy some or all of those ships through the Red Sea, there is no guarantee that they would not be hit there or further up the chain, say in the Suez Canal itself. Although convoys are a risk those large shipping companies should probably run, their extreme risk aversion means they instead prefer to detour past the entire African continent and thereby weaken NATO’s already weak supply chains by needlessly extending them. NATO’s shipping companies are divided on how best to respond and, of course, a house divided cannot stand.

The second and third options are to plonk NATO armadas off the Yemeni coast, to send marines and French legionaries ashore and to bomb the living shit out of the Yemeni, to poke the Houthi hornet’s nest, in other words and make them bleed, something they are long inured to.

Although these are scenarios NATO’s High Command has yet to fully war game out, retired US Vice Admiral James Stavridris, who now fronts the Carlyle Group, summarises the main issues in this revealing article, where he points to the domino effect on global supply chains, where combatting swarms of cheap Houthi (and, later Iranian?) drones is a very expensive proposition and where alternative options to obliterate the Houthi threat are haram.

These other options include arming merchant shipping with appropriate weaponry, a solution that would be unacceptable to any neutral port the ships might like to dock in. Stavridris’ solution, unsurprisingly for NATO’s former military commander, is to bomb the living shit out of Yemen, “to carry out offensive strikes against targets ashore, perhaps using Tomahawk missiles and attack aircraft from the carrier USS Eisenhower, now patrolling the Gulf of Oman.”

All well and good but the Houthi are mobile and they have a lot of real estate to play about in, not only in Yemen itself but in contiguous countries. And that is before we consider Iran’s plans to have giant flotillas of small but highly armed speedboats causing mayhem in nearby waters, should the need arise. You can swat all the Houthi and Iranian mosquitoes you like but you will still get badly bitten.

Stavridris is undeterred by any of that. He believes that if saturation bombing does not work, “it would be entirely appropriate to strike the sponsor — Iran — especially its maritime infrastructure in the north Indian Ocean and the Gulf. This could include oil and gas platforms, port facilities and patrol vessels of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

All of which makes eminent sense if the problem is a solitary nail and NATO’s navy is, as it always seems to be, a hammer capable of hammering down only one defenceless group of people at a time.

The issue here is that the Houthi, perhaps in cahoots with Iran, have shown that global supply lines are easily interdicted and Stavridis, Hanks and their Hollywood armadas notwithstanding, NATO and its merchant marine fleet can no longer ride roughshod over even marginal players like the Houthi, Hezbollah and Hamas, never mind Russia and, with regards to Asian waters, China, whose Fishing Militia has helped inspire Iran to form its own Maritime Militia of some 55,000 voluntary forces with 33,000 vessels.

And then there is NATO’s very odd toehold of Djibouti, which is home to military bases belonging to Germany, Spain, Italy, France, the United States, Britain, China, and Saudi Arabia, with Russia and India also being eager to set up shop there. Not only does Djibouti depend on the rents from these bases to stay afloat but Djibouti’s growing national debt is such that she can have no independent diplomatic leverage. Djibouti’s increased debt to China, which promised to make it another Dubai, means that it is a “black box” of a looming danger in the region – a danger that arises from the competition over military bases that goes much beyond the Houthi’s pinpricks.

If the Houthi were not already sufficiently riled up, NATO’s plans to build a Ben Gurion Canal from the Gulf of Aqaba via a flattened Gaza to the Mediterranean is sure to really get up their noses. Leaving all other considerations aside, Aqaba is best known in the West from Lawrence of Arabia, where Hollywood heart throb Peter O’Toole led Arab tribesmen to a famous victory over the Turks embedded there, even though that assault put the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement to carve up Ottoman Arabia in jeopardy.

Though the consequences of the Sykes Picot Agreement and the related Balfour Declaration still have the noses of the Houthi and very many others out of joint, it seems NATO is prepared to play this game through to the end not only in the Gulf of Suez, the Gulf of Aqaba and the other West Asian choke points the Houthi and their allies have a presence in but much further afield to the Strait of Malacca and the Taiwan Strait as well. And, though the hammer happy US Vice Admiral James Stavridris no doubt has a solution for them factored around Tomahawk missiles, US marines and French paratroopers, one can only surmise that NATO’s adventurism in the Red Sea is the latest of several nails it is hammering into its own coffin.

December 22, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

DC-Based Think Tank: Red Sea Operation to Cost Biden Regime Highly

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 21.12.2023

The military op against the Houthis will be expensive for the US, especially if it escalates into a regional conflict, a DC-based think tank has warned.

The Houthis have made it clear that they are to proceed with attacks in the Red Sea following US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s announcement of a new US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian in the region.

As per the Pentagon, the Yemeni Shiite group has carried out 100 drone and missile attacks since October 7. The Houthis have recently stepped up their assaults in the Red Sea against US warships and Israeli-linked vessels in a bid to force Tel Aviv into halting its ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

The assaults have demonstrated that the Yemen militants possess a sizable and relatively advanced arsenal, according to the US press. What’s more, Houthi drones and missiles are cheaper than US interceptors used to shoot them down.

Therefore, it would cost Washington a “pretty penny” to defend the sea lanes going through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, according to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft:

  • Each US munition used to intercept the Houthi rockets and drones costs between $1 million and $4.3 million;
  • US missiles reportedly used to shoot down Houthi projectiles and UAVs include the SM-2 ($2.1 million); SM-6 ($4.3 million); ESSM Sea Sparrows ($1.7 million); and Rolling Airframe missile ($905,000);
  • US ships cannot reload in the Red Sea and will have to return to port if the kinetic activity goes on much longer, which also means additional costs.

The conflict in the Red Sea threatens to become protracted given that neither warring side is inclined to back down.

The Biden administration has already gathered a 10-nation coalition and sent additional warships to the region. Top Houthi commander Mohammed al-Bukhaiti tweeted on December 19 that “Even if America succeeds in mobilizing the entire world, our military operations will not stop … no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” Israel is also showing no signs of scaling down its military op in the Gaza Strip where civilian casualties are continuing to stockpile.

Under these circumstances, there is a serious threat of the Red Sea turning into a new war theater, according to the DC-based think tank.

In that case, the costs related to the US-led task force in the Red Sea could become much higher, especially at the time when the US has been depleting its military arsenals supporting proxy war efforts in Ukraine and Israel’s Gaza war.

To complicate matters further, the Red Sea op may expose US troops and sailors to danger. “It is important for the American people to assess if what happens next is truly in the national interest,” the DC-based think tank concluded.

December 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Journalist: The US and Israel are in a quagmire, and the end is clear for everybody to see

By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 20.12.2023

If the US decides to launch direct attacks on Yemeni forces imposing a blockade against Israeli shipping in the Red Sea, it will only make Washington’s tenuous situation in the Middle East worse and expand the conflict across the region at a time when the US public is increasingly opposed to such wars, a journalist told Sputnik.

Several major global shipping companies announced that they are to seek alternate routes from the Red Sea after the Yemeni militant group Ansarallah, better known as the Houthi movement, closed it to Israeli cargo traffic, throwing global trade into chaos. In response, the US has mobilized an international task force dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian to keep the sea lanes open.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is weighing whether its patrols will be purely defensive in nature or will also include offensive strikes against Ansarallah targets in Yemen, which the group mostly controls after eight years of brutal civil war and Saudi-led military intervention.

Ansarallah’s actions, which include capturing several Israel-linked vessels in the area in recent weeks, are in response to Tel Aviv’s invasion of Gaza, which has killed nearly 20,000 people and displaced almost the entire population of 2.3 million. The group has also fired ballistic missiles at the southern Israeli port of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba in the northern Red Sea.

Beirut-based broadcaster and journalist Laith Marouf told Sputnik that the multinational task force assembled by the US includes several European allies but also Bahrain, a small Persian Gulf state that hosts a massive US Navy base, and the Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean with a coast guard composed of nine small patrol boats used to combat piracy and illegal fishing.

“This is the alliance that the United States is going to face Yemen with to try to allow shipping to go through to the Zionist colony and not make it feel the pain that the Palestinians are feeling with the blockade in Gaza,” he said.

“The [recent] attack that the government in Sana’a did on the two ships in the Red Sea was the first attack recorded in any military of a ballistic missile hitting a naval target that is moving at 60-somewhat knots, which was [the speed at which] these ships were moving. So we see now that the Yemenis have actually some of the most advanced land-to-sea missiles in the world.

“Knowing that the American aircraft carrier is now parked on the shorelines of Somalia facing Yemen, they are in the range of these missiles. Probably the Yemenis will not need to hit this aircraft carrier if the United States actually attacks Yemen or any of the sites of launching these missiles from Yemen. The Yemeni forces, all they have to do is sink a few destroyers and that aircraft carrier will scurry running back home because it wouldn’t have any protection.”

“This is now a dangerous game that the United States is playing, all to defend this Zionist colony. And the American people hearing us right now must understand that the deaths of any American soldiers that are going to come in the next few days will be because the United States is defending the Zionist colony and is not defending itself. They will be dying for the sake of Israel,” he said.

“Canadian, French, British and American ships will be sinking if the United States or this coalition dares to attack Yemen. Yemen has been under attack for a decade by the United States and its vassals in the region, and even the vassals that were co-operating in the attacks on Yemen – namely the Saudi government and the United Arab Emirates government – have refused to join this coalition. Why? Because their assets will be fried if the United States attacks Yemen. And this is why we’re seeing right now: these vassals are each one of them being given a role.”

“The Emirates and the Saudis are continuing to allow trade to come through their ports on trucks to Jordan to the Zionist colony, and they’re all going to be kept out of this war. In this situation, it’s not only that their assets, their oilfields, would be attacked if they join this coalition, but also because they need to continue to be the lifeline of the Zionist colony in terms of trade in the future as this rolls out,” Marouf said.

Marouf added that “we will be entering a new stage of this war” if Yemen fires back on the coalition ships because it will trigger wider attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria by allied militia forces, which have been happening at a somewhat low intensity since early October.

The Axis of Resistance’s regional coordination against Israel and its allies “is going to be taught in military schools and strategists’ schools for decades to come,” Marouf told Sputnik.

“What has been rolling out for the last two and a half months, clearly, the Resistance Axis that includes all these groups in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Yemen and Iran are very coordinated,” he said.

“They have all now shared all their capabilities in terms of military and training. So we see units of each one of these components that fought in the different battlefields across the last 15 years in the region. And the technology knowledge on building capabilities has been passed along across this whole region. So now we have a more kind of homogeneous coalition between these groups.

“They all have one thing that they agree on, which is ending American presence in the region and then sovereignty for the peoples. So to see them, how they are playing out right now, each one of them, their own role separately is a brilliant thing to watch. And the United States and Israel are in a quagmire, and the end is clear for everybody to see.”

Growing US Public Opposition

He likewise noted that opposition to the Israeli attack on Gaza has continued to grow in the United States, where new protests are happening daily in hundreds of cities and towns, and constituents are pressuring politicians to take a stand against the war.

“For the American voters, it’s becoming problematic as we come closer and closer to the elections in the United States. Both parties are championing genocide and the Zionist colony, and the vast majority of Americans do not want to be associated with this genocide and do not want their country to carry the brunt of financing and weaponizing this genocide,” he said.

“So what happens in the next election? I think Palestine, just like Vietnam in the 1970s, is going to be one of the decisive things that drive this election and actually the conversation of the United States as a whole. And I hope people of all walks of life take advantage of how Palestine now has exposed all the true lines of power and the limitations of the so-called ‘democracy and freedoms’ that were touted to be given to them and figure out something before the next election. Maybe to push for a third party, if that’s even possible at this moment.”

“But if the United States is in a regional war that is spilling into a global war before this election, it may be that this election will never happen in the United States. I’m maybe too pessimistic, but I see things from now till next year, if this war keeps on going in the stages that are and how long these stages are taking us, as we see it now, it’s taking us two and a half months to get to the stage of real possibility of a regional war. And once this a regional war, how long is it going to take for it to become a global world war? Those are things that may be indicating that all this experiment of democracy in the West is dead.”

Israel’s Economy in Dire Straits

Marouf noted that Israel was suffering severe economic repercussions due to the war, not just from the recently imposed Yemeni blockade, but also due to the constant bombardments from Gaza, the simmering border war with Hezbollah, and simply due to having mobilized hundreds of thousands of citizens into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

“There are 7 million ‘Jewish colonists’ in Palestine and already close to a million of them have left. And you know, many of them already have second citizenships, and we heard countries like Portugal all talk about 10,000 Israeli families applying for citizenship. These are the ones that don’t have citizenship that are already applying to European countries. And so we have an exit from the Zionist colony on a scale that we haven’t seen ever since 1948. And now we also, of course, all the economy of the state is at a total standstill because they have mobilized so many people into the military.”

“Ansarullah, the government in Yemen, has been able to shut down all trade, almost 88% of trade has stopped into the [Israeli] ports, even the ones in the Mediterranean. Because remember now, although all the ones that were supposed to go to the Red Sea port in the Aqaba Gulf had to turn around.

“So now there’s a delay in an empty space in Israeli ports for the next two weeks. So, the country is in a total standstill and it’s now living off the handouts coming from the West. And the American public has an ability to make a difference if they cut these handouts, because this country cannot continue to exist at this moment without that.”

December 20, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

If US can clear way for ‘cease-fire in Gaza’, Red Sea problem would be solved

By Yang Sheng | Global Times | December 19, 2023 

The US-led joint patrol in the Red Sea following Houthi militia attacks against ships heading toward Israel shows that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in Gaza is not only affecting the whole region, but also the international community. Chinese analysts pointed out that the root cause of the trade route problem is the ongoing conflict in Gaza, and only a sustainable cease-fire and allowing humanitarian aid to enter Gaza via land and sea routes can solve the problem in the Red Sea.

China will pay close attention to the situation, and Chinese naval vessels that conduct UN authorized anti-piracy missions in the region will keep performing their duty, analysts said, adding that China will stick to the priority of realizing a cease-fire and clear the way for humanitarian aid for the people in Gaza, rather than joining the US to conduct any military operations without UN authorization to escalate the crisis in Gaza.

The US and a host of other nations are creating a new force to protect ships transiting the Red Sea that have come under attack by drones and ballistic missiles fired from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Tuesday in Bahrain, the AP reported.

The UK, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain have joined, Austin said. Some of those countries will conduct joint patrols while others will provide intelligence support in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The Houthi militia attacked two commercial ships in the Red Sea with naval drones on Monday. The recent attacks have caused concerns about the impact on the passage of oil, grain and other goods on what is an important global trade route, and have pushed up the cost of insuring and shipping goods through the Red Sea, Reuters reported.

The Shanghai-based news website The Paper reported on Tuesday that following other international shipping companies including Denmark’s Maersk and France’s CMA, Chinese shipping giants like COSCO and Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) also suspended transport through the Red Sea.

Ma Xiaolin, dean of the Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean Rim at Zhejiang International Studies University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the trade route via the Red Sea is truly important for China as it connects Europe, Asia and Africa, so China will pay close attention to the situation.

“However, although China has naval vessels in the region, their mission is about anti-piracy, rather than intervening in regional issues and other countries’ internal affairs. Only a solution to the ongoing crisis in Gaza can effectively solve the problem in the Red Sea,” Ma said.

On December 9, Al Jazeera reported that the armed group in Yemen claimed that “it will target all ships heading to Israel, regardless of their nationality, and warned all international shipping companies against dealing with Israeli ports.”

“If Gaza does not receive the food and medicines it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” the group’s spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday, according to Al Jazeera.

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the “Houthis are specifically targeting Israel, so it’s unlikely it will attack Chinese vessels. China doesn’t need to be too worried about the situation and the Chinese warships in the region will stick to their plan.”

“China will keep making efforts to realize a sustainable cease-fire and clear the way for humanitarian aid to get into the Gaza Strip. This is the real priority that needs to be done,” Wang Jin, an associate professor at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwest University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

If Washington and its allies want to solve the Red Sea problem, they should play a responsible role in the UN Security Council to pass a cease-fire resolution and to put concrete efforts into improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which would be more effective than sending warships to conduct joint patrols, experts said.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains severe. According to Reuters on Tuesday, Israeli missiles and air strikes on the Rafah area in southern Gaza struck three houses killing at least 20 Palestinians, Gaza health officials said on Tuesday. Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have crammed into Rafah on Gaza’s border with Egypt to escape Israeli bombardments.

The lack of unity in the UN that is mainly caused by the US is another key reason why the situation is far from easing. The UN Security Council delayed until Tuesday morning a vote on an Arab-sponsored resolution calling for a halt to hostilities in Gaza to allow for urgently needed aid deliveries to a massive number of civilians as members intensified negotiations to try to avoid another veto by the US, the AP reported.

Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a routine press conference on Tuesday that “the UN General Assembly has adopted two resolutions with an overwhelming majority. We hope the US will listen to the voice of the international community, stop single-handedly blocking Security Council resolutions, and play its due role to promote an immediate cease-fire and prevent an even larger humanitarian catastrophe.”

December 20, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Escalation in the Red Sea – A Lose/Lose Proposition

By Russell Bentley – Sputnik – 19.12.2023

The latest escalation in world military affairs, the situation in the Red Sea and Yemen, has the real potential to eclipse both the war in Ukraine and the invasion of Gaza, both in terms of military and economic impact, on a global scale.

The hubris and abject idiocy of US plans to open yet another conflict that they cannot hope to win, and that cannot lead to anything but the destruction of the world economy can only be described as criminally insane.

In a recent letter to “Dear America”, the Houthi leaders wrote, “A desperate plea for reflection. The consequences are dire, and the responsibility lies with the guardians of the American dream. Beware, for the path you tread upon carries weighty consequences, reverberating across oceans and continents. Choose wisely…” The choice is between demanding an end to the Gaza humanitarian tragedy or escalating the conflict into a war that will have global consequences. The US has already announced its intention to choose the latter. It is a choice for which the American people, if they allow it to happen, will suffer gravely.

The US and UK have moved at least 24 combat ships into the seas off the coast of Yemen, ostensibly “to protect global shipping lanes”. This is a lie. The Houthis have clearly stated that, one, that they are only targeting ships serving Israeli interests, and that all other shipping is under no threat, and two, that they are willing to cease all military operations against Israeli shipping as soon as Israel stops its attacks on Gaza and the West Bank.

It is ONLY Israeli shipping that is under threat, and it is ONLY Israeli shipping that US and UK naval forces are deployed to protect. But by escalating the situation in the Red Sea, they are putting at risk ALL shipping passing through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, which accounts for 12% of all global trade and 30% of all container shipping, as well as about 8% of world trade in both oil and LNG, for a total annual value of over a trillion US dollars.

As things stand now, only Israel-linked shipping is at risk, and even that risk can be completely eliminated by the cessation of Israeli attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. But if the US attacks Yemen, the Houthis will respond, and they do have the capability to sink US Navy ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. And once that happens, the Red Sea becomes an active war zone, and then, all bets are off, along with all shipping in the Red Sea, and 12% of all global trade. Think about it…

US Navy and allies deployment in the Middle East © Russel Bentley

The economies of the EU nations are already in serious decline. The US national debt stands at over $33 TRILLION, and the era of the US dollar’s reserve currency status in global trade is closing fast. A 12% overnight decline in global trade would almost certainly lead these economies into economic depression equivalent to the Great Depression of almost 100 years ago. As I have said many times before, economic war and military war are two sides of the same coin. The Houthis have a major economic advantage based on their geography to influence and even threaten global economic activity, and have proven their ability and willingness to use it. And it is by no means certain that the Western armada assembled along the Yemeni coast can even defeat the Houthis militarily without unacceptable and unsustainable losses.

According to Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Houthis are known to possess two types of larger anti-ship ballistic missiles: The Asef, which has a 450km range, and the Tankil,which has a range of 500km. These missiles can travel at speeds up to Mach 5, and carry warheads of between 300 to 500 kg. (By comparison, Chinese anti-ship missiles with 600 kg warheads have been dubbed “Aircraft Carrier Killers”.) The range of these missiles allows the Houthis to cover not only the southern third of the Red Sea, but all of the Gulf of Aden and much of the Arabian Sea as well. With the exception of the USS Indianapolis and the USCG ships in the Gulf of Oman, all of the US/UK naval ships in the graphic above are already within range of Houthi missiles.

After almost ten years of civil war against the Yemeni government backed by the US and a Saudi-led coalition, the Houthis remain an undefeated and powerful fighting force, still in control of about 20% of Yemen, in the northern and western parts along the Red Sea. Though a recent ceasefire was brokered by China and based on Saudi – Iranian rapprochement, the situation in Yemen remains volatile, exacerbated by Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. With the US threatened escalation, the global military and economic risks increase by orders of magnitude.

The Houthis demands are clear and precise: Stop the attacks on Palestinians, and the threats to Israeli shipping will cease. Escalate, and the Houthi response will be asymmetrical and world-changing. To any who might scoff at the idea of a rebel army in an impoverished 3rd world country being able to take on the US military, I would simply remind them of the fact that the US has failed to achieve any meaningful victory in any of the wars it has started over the last 30 years.
The choice is clear – either end the Palestinian tragedy, or unleash a global catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. The US government has announced its ill-advised decision to choose the latter option. It is up to all good people in the world, and US citizens in particular, to prevent this global and suicidal miscalculation from taking place, or suffer the consequences.

December 19, 2023 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

US pressures Saudi Arabia to postpone imminent peace deal with Yemen

The Cradle | December 18, 2023

The US is exerting pressure on Saudi Arabia to delay the signing of a peace agreement with Yemen and instead join an expanded maritime protection task force to confront Yemeni attacks against Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea.

According to a report by Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, a draft peace deal between Sanaa and Riyadh has been finalized. It could be signed before the end of the year, potentially ending a NATO-backed war that has decimated the Arab world’s poorest country for eight years.

“Saudi Arabia is going through a difficult test between two options […] Either it will emerge from the Yemeni quagmire under a roadmap agreed upon with Sanaa, or it will submit to US dictates and join the international maritime coalition, and this means remaining vulnerable to [western] blackmail,” the Al-Akhbar report details.

Despite the pressure from Washington, the kingdom is reportedly “continuing on the path to peace” and is working to “speed up” the completion of the peace agreements to avoid “further obstruction by the Emiratis or local agents.”

Saudi and Yemeni negotiators have given their final comments on the agreement. The revised version was recently delivered to UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, who has started coordinating an official peace ceremony.

According to Al-Akhbar’s sources in Riyadh and Sanaa, the peace deal includes the complete lifting of a land, sea, and air blockade imposed on Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition, a “consensual mechanism” to pay the salaries of public employees, and the free export of oil from Saudi-controlled regions.

“The ball is in Riyadh’s court, which is under US pressure to delay the signing and enter into a war alliance against Yemen in the Red Sea,” Al-Akhbar highlights, adding that UAE-backed forces are also looking to derail the peace process.

A peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Yemen would significantly hamper US efforts to deploy an international naval task force to the Red Sea to protect Israel’s maritime trade.

“The force, provisionally entitled Operation Prosperity Guardian, is due to be announced by the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, when he visits [West Asia],” UK daily The Guardian reported on 17 December.

The US war chief is set to visit Israel later this week to meet with senior officials. According to the British outlet, western officials believe Washington has secured the involvement of Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, and Bahrain.

For the past several weeks, the Yemeni armed forces have been launching attacks on Israeli-linked commercial vessels attempting to cross the Bab al-Mandab Strait south of the Suez Canal.

In response, five of the world’s largest shipping companies have announced a complete cessation of activities in the vital sea route. These are Hong Kong-based OOCL, France’s CMA CGM, the Danish Maersk, the German Hapag-Lloyd, and the Italian-Swiss-owned Mediterranean Shipping Co.

December 18, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Sends Carrier Strike Group to Gulf of Aden Amid Houthi Attacks – Reports

Sputnik – 17.12.2023

The US Department of Defense has recently dispatched a carrier strike group to the Gulf of Aden in response to attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Ansar Allah rebel movement, also known as the Houthis, American press reported, citing anonymous officials.

Earlier in the day, the War Zone website reported, citing an unnamed Pentagon official, that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will announce the launch of an international operation dubbed Prosperity Guardian during his trip to the Middle East next week to protect ships in the Red Sea from the threat posed by the Houthis.

“The Pentagon has in recent days moved the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group from the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen, to support a potential US response to attacks,” the official told the newspaper.

Another official was quoted as saying that the US military also gave commanders the option to “strike the Houthis.”

On Saturday, the Semafor news portal reported, citing officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden, that the Pentagon was considering the possibility of striking Houthi military targets in response to increased attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

On Friday, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Iran should take steps to end the threat to shipping posed by the Houthis in the Red Sea.

The Houthis have earlier said that they would continue to prevent the passage in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea of ships linked to Israeli companies or bound for Israel until Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip ends.

After the armed conflict between Israel and Palestinian movement Hamas resumed on October 7, the Houthis have conducted multiple missile and drone attacks, threatening civilian infrastructure in Israel and commercial shipping operating in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

December 17, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US warns Ansarallah against attacking Israeli ships

The Cradle | December 15, 2023

The White House has sent back-channel messages to Yemen’s Ansarallah warning them to stop their attacks on ships in the Red Sea and against Israel, Axios reported on 15 December.

US special envoy for Yemen, Tim Lenderking, recently visited the Gulf to meet his Saudi, Omani, and Qatari counterparts to discuss the attacks by Ansarallah and convey a message to the Yemeni group. 

The Axios report said that Lenderking emphasized that the “US is highly concerned about Houthi attacks that threaten freedom of navigation in international waters.” 

However, the warnings sent by the US to Ansarallah against the actions that the group is taking in the Red Sea have not done much to deter the solidarity of the Yemeni resistance group with the Palestinian people. 

In a statement from the Yemeni Armed Forces yesterday, spokesman Yahya Sarae said that the Yemeni Armed Forces Navy “carried out a military operation against the container ship Maersk Gibraltar, which was headed to the Israeli entity. It was targeted by a drone, and it was directly hit.” 

“The targeting operation came after the ship’s crew refused to respond to the calls of the Yemeni Naval Forces,” Sarae added.  “The Yemeni Armed Forces have successfully prevented several ships headed to the Israeli entity from passing through in the last 48 hours.”

Sarae affirmed Yemen’s continued efforts to prevent ships heading to Israeli ports from navigating in the Arabian and Red Seas until necessary food and medicine are allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. 

In response to the attacks and seizures of commercial vessels by Ansarallah, the US envoy for Yemen has told Reuters that the US wants to form the “broadest possible” maritime coalition to protect ships in the Red Sea and send an “important signal” to Yemen that these attacks will not be tolerated. 

“There’s a very, very active assessment going on in Washington about the steps necessary to get the [Ansarallah] to de-escalate,” Lenderking said, while also calling on Ansarallah to release the crew of the Galaxy Leader, a ship seized on 19 November. 

In response to the US Red Sea coalition proposal, Iran’s Defense Minister Mohammed Reza Ashtiani said that Washington and its Gulf allies would face “extraordinary problems.” 

“If they make such an irrational move, they will face extraordinary problems. Nobody can make a move in a region where we have predominance,” Ashtiani told Iranian media.

Israel’s National Security Council has ordered ports to hide their shipping schedules in response to Yemen’s attacks against Israeli ships and vessels headed toward Israel.

Yemen’s refusal to allow these Israeli-linked ships to pass the Bab al-Mandab strait has forced companies to change course and take the long route around Africa, further increasing Israel’s war costs. 

December 15, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Thomas Massie (R-KY) speaks honestly about Israel, AIPAC, and “anti-Semitism”

If Americans Knew | December 13, 2023

December 15, 2023 Posted by | Video, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

A Week Like No Other

Washington’s shameful behavior marks a new low for the Biden Administration

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 14, 2023

The first week in December of this year was all about America’s apparent inextinguishable love for the state of Israel. After a short pause to exchange hostages for prisoners, the Israelis re-launched their drive to exterminate the Gazans and steal what remains of their land and property. President Joe Biden, ably assisted by his ever-present sidekick State Department honcho Antony Blinken, welcomed the Jewish state’s onslaught by pushing the pedal to the metal on aiding the loveable Bibi Netanyahu while at the same time suggesting that the twenty thousand dead Palestinians and counting just might be a tad too much. Of course, the suggestion was limited to demonstrating what a great humanitarian, who is up for reelection, now sits in the Oval Office and was not supported by any real consequences for Israel should it ignore the advice, which it did. Biden then demonstrated where his heart truly was by expediting through the State Department a new shipment of munitions, an apparent gesture that keeps on giving to help the war effort, with some reports suggesting that upwards of two hundred US military aircraft have already made deliveries of more than 15,000 bombs to help Bibi kill more Pals.

The decision to provide more weapons to Israel coincides with a recommendation from Jerusalem’s right wing deputy mayor that captured Palestinians, whom he described as subhuman, should be buried alive, which elicited no comment from the White House. The Administration explained the rush delivery of the tank cannon munitions circumventing established congressional review procedures by saying that Israel urgently required the materiel to defend itself and that complying with Israeli demands is “vital to US national interests.” A State Department press release described the unusual procedure as having been “determined and provided [with] detailed justification to Congress that an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale to the Government of Israel of the above defense articles and services in the national security interests of the United States, thereby waiving the Congressional review requirements under Section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act, as amended. The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability. This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives. Israel will use the enhanced capability as a deterrent to regional threats and to strengthen its homeland defense.”

As Hamas has no heavy weapons and it is not occupying or penetrating into Israeli territory, the explanation would appear to be more in the nature of another government “big” lie, somewhat similar to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech before the UN in 2003 affirming that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was preparing to use them. And it also challenges those who believe the United States is making an honest effort to reduce casualties among civilians. Josh Paul, the former State Department official who resigned to protest the provision of American weapons for use against the people of Gaza, reacted to the news with “…this expedited provision of lethal arms to Israel should cause some serious consideration of whether the secretary’s repeated assertions that the US seeks to minimize civilian casualties in Israel’s operation in Gaza are sincere.”

So, what made the first week in December different than any other in which the White House looks the other way and gives Netanyahu whatever he wants while Israel kills and kills and kills? Well, there was also more going on than just the provision of thirteen thousand nine hundred eighty-one (13,981) 120mm M830A1 High Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose with Tracer (MPAT) tank cartridges, worth a paltry $106.5 million. There was also a bit of bother at the United Nations, where a motion came to a vote that would have demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to permit negotiations to end the genocide that Israel is pursuing to end the Palestinian problem forever. The motion had been endorsed earlier in the week, by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who invoked a rarely used article of the UN Charter to urge the Security Council to “press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe” and pass a resolution for a “humanitarian cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militants.” Guterres warned that the civilian death toll was approaching what he described as an “apocalyptic” level due to the bombing of infrastructure, starvation and disease. He called for the UN Security Council to stop the killing in Gaza as a basic responsibility under the UN Charter. Each day, UN officials on the ground in Gaza heroically struggled to feed, shelter, and protect the population from Israeli bombs and more than 100 UN staff have been killed, a higher death toll than for any other operation ever. The motion would have passed unanimously but for one little problem: the United States vetoed it, clearly acting under orders from Netanyahu, who later thanked Biden. The final vote was 13 to 1 with Britain abstaining and not voting. Blinken defended the move on the Sunday talk shows, saying that Israel’s effort to eliminate Hamas was a “legitimate goal.” He added that “When it comes to a cease-fire in this moment, with Hamas still alive, still intact, and again, with the stated intent of repeating October 7th again and again and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem.”

The US deputy representative to the UN Robert Wood, clearly acting under orders from the White House and State Department, explained his veto vote, saying that “… the resolution’s authors declined to condemn Hamas’ October 7th attack that killed 1,200 people, including women, children and elderly.” Wood added that the draft also “failed to acknowledge that Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism.” Israeli Ambassador to the US Gilad Erdan thanked the White House “for standing firmly by our side.”

Frustrated by the US veto in the Security Council, on December 12th the UN General Assembly voted on the same resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel/Gaza conflict. The result was an overwhelming Yes: 153; No: 10; Abstain: 23. The US was again a “no” vote, together with Israel and the usual “associated” south Pacific island territories and Austria, Papua New Guinea, the Czech Republic, Guatemala, Liberia and Paraguay . The vote took place at an “emergency special session” under a “Uniting for Peace” resolution introduced when the Security Council fails to act due to the veto of a permanent member, and there have been legal arguments made that such votes, like Security Council votes, can be construed as legally binding. Of course, that may be viewed as irrelevant, since Israel has rarely if ever complied with any UN resolution that it opposed, whether of the “binding” variety or not, and also since Israel’s effective control of the US government has guaranteed that its defiance will not produce any adverse consequences.

It was, reportedly, the forty-fifth time that Washington has used its veto to protect the state of Israel in the UN, which is why the Jewish state has never been held accountable for anything. Nor has the United States, which has started more wars against countries that did not actually threaten it than anyone else since the founding of the UN and, presumably, it could always use its veto to block such a motion against itself. The result is that the United Nations Security Council only exists to take action against countries that are not one of the permanent members of the Council or against Israel, which is protected by Washington.

One would think that all of the above would constitute a far above average week from hell, but there’s more, including yet another sustained attack on freedom of speech being mounted by politicians, the media and Jewish billionaires to block all and any criticism of Israel. The attacks started several months ago when students at a number of public and private universities began protesting over Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilians, leading to a death toll that is almost certainly currently approaching or exceeding 20,000 when all the corpses are dug up from the rubble of bombed buildings. Some politically ambitious scumbags like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis immediately declared that pro-Palestinian student groups were “antisemites” and banned them from Florida state universities while also declaring that no Palestinian refugees should be admitted to the US because they too were “Jew haters.”

As the anti-Palestinian narrative took shape in political, media and Zionist circles, it adopted a familiar line, which goes something like this: Israel is the Jewish state. If you criticize the Jewish state and/or Zionism you are therefore by definition an antisemite. Antisemitism is a “hate crime.” If you advocate or argue for any Palestinian group like Hamas, which the US government has labeled “terrorist,” you are providing “material assistance to terrorism” which is a crime for which you can be fined or imprisoned. Even if you merely criticize Jewish groups supporting Israel you are likewise an antisemite and have committed a “hate crime.” Neat, isn’t it? and the end result is that Israel, which is immune from the consequences of its actions internationally, also increasingly cannot be criticized at all without serious consequences for the critic. In other words, freedom of speech in the United States only exists, insofar as it does, if you are not disparaging Israel or even its friends due to their demonstrable behavior.

Some of those consequences were experienced recently by three presidents of prominent American universities, responding to a congressional grilling that was set up by allegations that colleges are hotbeds of antisemitism and are responsible for major increases in incidents targeting Jews. There is a certain irony in the allegations since Jews in America are the wealthiest, best educated, most politically powerful, most prestigiously employed and most protected by Homeland Security of all ethno-religious groups. And there is not much real evidence that Jews are in any way increasingly “victims” in the United States or in Europe. The antisemitic incidents that are “surging” are frequently based on criticisms of what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians and often consist of a Jewish college student being offended or annoyed by a poster or a speaker criticizing Israeli behavior. Instances of actual physical confrontation are few and far between and are immediately reported in the accommodating mainstream media to heighten the sense that Jews in America and even worldwide are threatened. Certain groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are heavily into the promotion of the narrative of Jew hatred as it is in their bottom line to do so given their donor base which likes to hear exactly that. In other words, it is all largely a contrivance to obtain political and economic benefits as well as a free pass on bad behavior that might not otherwise be forthcoming.

The three university presidents, all of whom were women, represented Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT and all three were highly respected in their respective professions prior to their presidencies. They did not anticipate New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a Jewish Harvard product, who was out to nail them and make the case that academia hates Jews and is encouraging antisemitism. Stefanik was backed up by Jewish oligarchs who have threatened to sharply cut donations to the respective universities that do not toe the line, doing what Jews are often accused of doing, i.e. using their money and the power that it buys to stop all discussion on subjects that they find troubling.

Stefanik and company were particularly incensed by student pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanting “Intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” She interpreted both expressions being calls for the destruction of Israel, which they are not. Intifada is “shaking off” in Arabic and is a call for liberating the Palestinian people and their land from the Israeli tyranny. The “river to sea” is somewhat similar, a call for a Palestinian state with actual sovereignty and neither is an explicit call for killing Israelis or Jews. They are generic cries for freedom. Stefanik curiously, though not surprisingly, did not mention the concurrent actual demands by senior Israeli government officials to displace or kill all Palestinians, something that they actually have the power to do and which might be regarded as a threat.

The university presidents were pilloried by congress, the White House, the Israel Lobby and the media by refusing to label all criticisms of the Zionist project and Israeli behavior as unacceptable “free speech” and through their assertion that the meaning of political slogans often depends on the context. For something or someone to qualify as a source of harassment, which is forbidden at the colleges in question, there has to be a direct threat made to another person. When that is present, it is harassment. When it is not, it is protected speech on a university campus, even if it is critical of group behavior or even racist. That is as it should be.

And if you thought that the week’s nastiness ended there, you would be wrong. There was also some disgraceful action during the week from Congress which rejected a Senator Rand Paul motion to withdraw US troops from Syria by a vote of 13 votes in favor and 84 votes against. Ironically, on the same day December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, US bombers committed a war crime in killing 36 Syrian villagers in retaliation for a series of attacks on US bases. American soldiers are in Syria illegally basically to bring down the legitimate government of Bashar al-Assad, though they claim it is to confront ISIS terrorists. They are also sitting on Syria’s oil producing region and stealing the oil. Both Syria and neighboring Iraq would like to see the “Yankees go home” but the Pentagon alleges that the attacks on the bases have been carried out by groups affiliated with Iran, Washington and Israel’s prime enemy in the region, so the White House has decided that killing Syrian farmers is justifiable reciprocity. Meanwhile, Israel is bombing Syrian airports in Damascus and Aleppo on a regular basis, arguing that they are being used by the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guards.

During the week the Congress also passed a motion which partly explains why US foreign policy in the Middle East region is so incoherent. Congress declared by way of a GOP drafted and backed resolution that antizionism is to be considered antisemitism by a vote of 311 to 14, drawing the support of all but one Republican. Ninety-two Democrats voted “present” — not taking a position for or against the measure — while 95 supported it, paving the way for more hate crime persecutions and increasing legal liabilities for critics of Israel. Antizionism is, of course, not antisemitism as Zionism is a political movement and Judaism is a religion. In fact, many religious Jews reject the idea of a Jewish state and many secular Jews are currently active and even prominent in the humanitarian protests against Israel’s massacre of the Gazans.

Finally, the week also saw presentations by Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, both of whom explained their view of why Congress must pony up multiple billions of dollars for Ukraine. Biden warned explicitly and almost certainly incorrectly that “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there. We’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops.” Biden and Austin’s delusion centers on a presumption that Russia’s Vladimir Putin will move to reconstruct the Soviet Union by taking the Baltic states, which are NATO allies, after he gobbles up Ukraine. It is a scare tactic based on no evidence whatsoever and Russia does not even have the desire or ability to take all of Ukraine, let alone recreate the USSR, which its leadership clearly recognizes. Fortunately, few in Washington and Europe have been buying the bullshit and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who made a surprise visit to Biden a few days later to plead for money, went home basically empty handed.

There probably is still more from that action packed week if I dig a bit deeper, but I am sure that readers get the point. It was a disastrous week for genuine United States’ interests and I don’t see anything that benefits the average American, quite the contrary. But this has been the pattern for a whole series of US administrations that have unfortunately done their best to destroy the United States as it once was along the lines of George W. Bush’s pledge to be the new sheriff in town ready and willing to engage in warfare against the whole world. Who will rid us of these monsters or are they too deeply entrenched in the system to be removed? That is the real question.

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.

December 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Senate Blocks Resolution Calling for Removal of US Forces From Syria

Sputnik – 07.12.2023

WASHINGTON – The US Senate on Thursday blocked a joint resolution introduced by Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul directing the Biden administration to remove US military forces from Syria within 30 days.

Senators rejected a motion to advance the resolution in a vote of 13 members in favor and 84 opposed.

“The American people have had enough of endless wars in the Middle East. Yet, 900 US troops remain in Syria with no vital US interest at stake, no definition of victory, no exit strategy, and no congressional authorization to be there,” Paul said in a statement on the resolution.

The resolution would direct the president to remove US troops from hostilities “in or affecting Syria” within 30 days of adoption, unless a declaration of war or other authorization for use of force was enacted by Congress.

Thursday’s resolution was the second time this year that anti-interventionist, pro-‘America First’ Republicans in Congress have attempted to force the Biden administration to pull US troops out of Syria. In March, the House of Representatives voted down a resolution put forward by Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz to remove American forces from the Middle Eastern country, with the lawmaker and his fellow pro-Trump Freedom Caucus Republicans getting a rare show of support from the Democrats’ Congressional Progressive Caucus, resulting in more than 100 lawmakers voting in favor of the bill (the measure ended up failing by a vote of 103 to 321).

US forces have occupied the oil and food-rich northeastern third of Syria since 2017, and have engaged in the smuggling of billions of dollars worth of Syrian oil out of the country to enforce a strategy by Washington to try to economically suffocate the government of President Bashar Assad into submission.

During his presidency, President Trump casually admitted on multiple occasions to the legacy media’s horror that US forces in Syria were in the country “only for the oil.” The Biden administration has insisted American troops are in the country only to prevent the resurgence of Daesh (ISIS), the Islamist extremist terrorist group vanquished from the region in 2017.

December 7, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

The Fools On Capitol Hill

Washington is run by Israel’s proxies

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 1, 2023

Americans remain largely ignorant about the extent to which foreign influence pervades the United States government, and I am not referring to the fraudulent claims made by Hillary Clinton that Russian has interfered materially in US elections. The real threat comes from elsewhere. Few outside the government itself are likely to be aware of the extent to which the state of Israel and its domestic affiliate-lobby operating out of Washington and New York have corrupted the United States political system, to the point where nurturing and enabling the Jewish state in its ambitions to dominate much of the Middle East has become effectively US policy. As the exchanges surrounding the recent fighting in Gaza, rightly referred to as a war crime and ethnic cleansing, perhaps even the first steps in a planned genocide, demonstrate that even when the US has genuine interests at stake Israel believes itself empowered to say “no” to the president of the United States. The assault on Gaza and the ongoing killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians started again on Friday after a week long pause for hostage/prisoner exchanges. It will continue and Washington is complicit in the deaths as it has politically shielded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government no matter what it does while also arming and funding the Israeli actions.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once said that “We the Jewish people control America.” Indeed, the Israeli dominance of the “fools on the hill” in DC has been carefully contrived, cultivated and sustained. One prime example is the regular rush to the Israeli door whenever Congress is in recess. It is not widely reported how large gaggles of congressmen usually drawn in separate groups from each major party travel to Israel on all expenses paid trips where they are wined and dined and subjected to round after round of presentations that drill into their otherwise empty heads all the virtues of Israel and what it represents. This is propaganda combined with indoctrination at its finest with many “facts” presented by the speakers conveniently fabricated to support Israel’s perpetual victimhood and to hide the fact that Israel is a strategic liability for the US rather than an actual ally or asset. Nor is it a democracy. It is a formula for dissimulation and lying that worked with the Jewish officials in the Pentagon under George W. Bush to provoke a war against Saddam Hussein that killed one million Iraqis and cost the US taxpayer nearly $2 trillion.

The trips to Israel are funded by the “educational” affiliate of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) called the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF). One might reasonably ask why an organization connected to AIPAC, which describes itself on its website as having the “mission” to “…strengthen, protect and promote the US-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the United States and Israel,” should be able to fund the annual mass migration of congress-critters to promote Israeli interests without having to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as an agent of the Jewish state’s government? The answer is actually quite simple. Congress and the Justice Department have been so corrupted by pro-Israel money and other manifestations of Jewish power that they do not enforce the law when it comes to Israel. The venal creatures in Congress are a large part of why that is so.

And the trips are structured in a way that discourages any actual discussions of real issues affecting the two countries. The payoff is exceptional from Israel’s point of view, with the United States serving as, in Netanyahu’s own words, a near unlimited source of money and weapons from a country in thrall, an “America [that] is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction” possessing “an inherently dupable people.”

One particularly tone-deaf recent trip to Israel occurred in 2019. In the wake of two heavily reported mass killings in Dayton and El Paso that were attributed both by the media and the Democrats to “racism” a senior US Congressman led a delegation of 41 of his Democratic Party colleagues plus spouses on a week-long luxury all-expenses-paid trip to Israel, which is one of the few countries in the world that defines its full citizenship as a matter of race and religion and which was at that time as now widely criticized for its human rights record. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland led the annual excursion, having made the pilgrimage to Israel more than fifteen times. “I am pleased to join so many House Democrats in traveling to Israel to reaffirm our support for a critical US ally and to continue learning about the opportunities and the challenges facing Israel and the Middle East,” he said shortly before departing for Tel Aviv.

Other politicians at state levels have followed the federal government lead by making their way to Israel to kiss Benjamin Netanyahu’s ring. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is a presidential aspirant, has gone way overboard in expressing his love for the Jewish state. He transported his whole cabinet to Jerusalem to publicize his legislation to combat what he views as antisemitism and has followed through on that by banning Palestinian student groups at the state universities. He also opposes allowing Palestinian immigrants into the US because they are “antisemites.”

More recently, California governor Gavin Newsom has made the pilgrimage trip and his office has released his comments on just how wonderful Israel is. He wrote his heart out, meaning that the memo is totally phony and contrived bullshit which demonstrates no sympathy at all for the tens of thousands of Palestinian victims: “As I reflect back on the extraordinary people I just met today in Israel, I am reminded of the deep connections between my home state and this country. A country that has faced many dark times before, and certainly is in one now. But amid this present struggle against terrorists are stories of unimaginable heroism — and unspeakable tragedy. I grieved with families in mourning, I met with young soldiers fresh from bomb shelters and battlefields, and I sat with leaders who bear the responsibility of response to it all. Despite the horror, what I saw and heard from the people of Israel was a profound sense of resilience. A commitment to community and common purpose, especially in these most difficult of times. That’s the Israeli spirit. And it’s also the California spirit…”

Republican presidential wannabe Chris Christie has also recently shown up in the Jewish state to kiss the ring and we expect that Nikki Haley will soon arrive bowing and scraping, particularly as it is Jewish money honoring her passion for Israel that is floating her campaign. And there is lots of love even at the bureaucratic level in a number of states to make sure Israel is getting enough American money. In some states including Virginia Israel trade commissions have been funded which have benefited Israeli businesses and investors much more than local workers or companies. In Virginia the commission is staffed by American Jews and Israelis even though it is funded by the state.

The Israeli power over Congress is also reflected in billions of tax dollars that flow from the US Treasury to the Jewish state each year in spite of the fact that Israel is a wealthy country. Also one might consider the White House’s supine behavior vis-a-vis Netanyahu and its large percentage of senior level staff appointments that are given to Jews. Donald Trump gave away the house to Netanyahu by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, approving the annexation of the Golan Heights, and giving the Israeli government a free hand to “deal with” the illegally occupied Palestinian areas on the West Bank and Gaza, which has produced thousands of Arab arrests without trial. Trump’s Ambassador to Israel was his lawyer David Friedman, who spent four years covering for Israel and represented its interests rather than those of the United States. Biden arguably has done even worse by becoming complicit in war crimes by enabling Netanyahu and his band of criminals to perform a developing genocide in Gaza.

One must look at how the power of the Lobby has influenced senior staffing decisions coming from the White House in Israel’s favor because that is where foreign policy is made. President Joe Biden personally considers himself to be a “Zionist.” The president’s Chief of Staff and the State Department’s top three officials have been Zionist Jews. Jews also head Treasury, Homeland Security, the Office of National Intelligence, the Justice Department, the National Security Council and the deputy director slot at CIA.

Regarding some other appointments that smell very bad, two recent stories stand out. The first, entitled “Tel Aviv’s Man in Washington”, comes from journalist James Carden. It concerns Amos Hochstein who, has been reportedly tapped as President Joe Biden senior adviser for consultations with top Israeli officials in order to mediate between Israel and Lebanon. Hochstein is an odd choice as he was born and raised in Jerusalem and is a Jewish Israeli-US dual national who served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the early 1990s and who still has a mother and father living in Israel. He moved to Washington after military service and began his unusually rapid ascent to the highest levels of the US government, beginning with a staff position for Jewish Congressman Sam Gejdenson and then as Staff Director of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It is not clear how he obtained a security clearance given his background, but he obviously was given highly sensitive assignments. Carden cites the Lebanese news source L’Orient which reported that Hochstein, as a congressional staffer in the 1990s,” met with an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official to discuss a plan to resettle Palestinians in Iraq in return for sanctions relief.” This background suggests that Hochstein is a bit of a specialist in removing Palestinians from Israel.

After that job, Hochstein joined the Obama administration, eventually being placed in charge of the energy portfolio at the State Department, an astonishing leap in status for a man billed as “Biden’s favorite energy guy” who appears to have no college degree. And what about a biographical sketch that mentions Hochstein’s ownership interests in two Washington restaurants and a movie theater? And then there is his obtaining a well remunerated board seat on the Ukrainian state oil and gas giant Naftogaz, which positively exudes a Hunter Biden odor? And it was reported that early in the Biden administration, Hochstein was the president’s choice to lead efforts to block or destroy the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which presumably would have inter alia enhanced his own likely financial interests in Ukrainian energy companies.

Carden also poses the big question, which is “How could someone of Hochstein’s (opaque) background possibly be viewed as an honest broker in the Middle East?” He responds to that himself with “He isn’t” and then goes on to explain “The practice of appointing foreign nationals in sensitive positions of public trust are wildly inappropriate and lead, inevitably, to a subversion of US national interests. As Biden and his staff of bought and paid for political appointees drag us deeper and deeper into two wars 5,000 miles from our shores, the pernicious influence of foreign nationals at the highest levels of the US government is a danger the American people need to awaken to.”

To that expert analysis I would add that naming an Israeli as US-envoy for dealing with a highly manipulative Israel is completely delusional. Hochstein will lean strongly towards benefitting his country, which is Israel, and when it comes to energy there are large gas and oil fields just off the Gazan coast, which would fall into Israeli hands if the Gazans were completely eliminated. The fields are worth many billions of dollars. It will be interesting to watch the development of what Hochstein will contrive to hand them over to his Jewish countrymen while also benefitting his own interests.

The other story is similar in that it illustrates why you should not send Israelis or even American Jews who feel very strongly about Israel to deal with the Israeli government or even anywhere near the Middle East. I say this not to punish them for being Jewish but rather to avoid placing them in situations where there would be a presumption of serious potential conflict of interest. A former senior US official fitting that profile is facing a backlash after being caught on video included on the link repeatedly harassing a halal food vendor in New York and aggressively calling for the deaths of more Gazan children. Stuart Seldowitz previously served as deputy director of the United States Department of State’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs where he must have been quite a lot of fun to be around. How does a man like that get a senior diplomatic post dealing with the Middle East? Well, the only answer must be that he is given the job precisely because he is Jewish and will do the “right thing” for the state of Israel. And you wonder why US foreign policy might be politely described as “completely screwed up”? It did not happen by accident!

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.

December 2, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

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