Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Collapsing Empire: Yemen Defeats US Navy

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 19, 2024

On July 12th, the Associated Press (AP) published an astonishing report, on the return of US Navy fighter pilots to Virginia after nine months of failing to thwart the righteous anti-genocide blockade of Red Sea shipping by Yemen’s Ansar Allah. The article was at pains to portray the pilots’ arrival Stateside as a heroic homecoming for courageous American flying aces. In reality, the Empire’s terminal weaknesses, and drastically ever-reducing power, were amply exposed.

AP described the pilots as “feeling relieved…after months of shooting down Houthi-launched missiles and drones off Yemen’s coast in the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.” Accompanying photos depicted them embracing their wives, and children waving the Star Spangled Banner. One pilot, “clearing the emotion from his voice,” boasted that he “couldn’t be prouder of his team” – the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group – and “everything that the last nine months have entailed.”

The pilot looked ahead to spending time with his family, and trying to “make up for nine months of lost time.” The wife of a Navy lieutenant commander and pilot lamented that she “initially thought this deployment would be relatively easy” – “it was going to be, if you could call it, a fun deployment where he’s going to get lots of ports to visit.” As it was, the USS Eisenhower became embroiled in a brutal, unwinnable quagmire, and “plans continued to change.”

The drastic prolongation of her husband’s deployment “was exacerbated” due to knowing “people” – in other words, Ansar Allah – “[wanted] to harm the ship.” She was forced to consult “counselors provided by the Navy,” and was not alone. AP records “months of fighting and extensions placed extra stress on roughly 7,000 sailors and their families.” Pentagon officials are now investigating how to care for pilots and sailors “when they return home, including counseling and treatment for possible post-traumatic stress.”

It’s been a hellacious nine months for the US Navy in the Red Sea, courtesy of God’s Partisans [literal translation of Ansar Allah]. AP notes the Eisenhower and its accompanying ships have been bombarded relentlessly by Ansar Allah drones, and ballistic and cruise missiles. Frequently, these attacks have penetrated multiple layers of on-ship defenses, which is totally unprecedented in modern history. AP reports many sailors “have seen incoming Houthi-launched missiles seconds before they are destroyed by their ship’s defensive systems.”

Battling an enemy that can actually fight back has been a deeply ravaging experience for the US Navy. One pilot remarked, “most of the sailors…weren’t used to being fired on given the nation’s previous military engagements in recent decades.” He described the experience as “incredibly different”, “traumatizing for the group”, and “something that we don’t think about a lot.” A new experience it may be – but it’s one the US military will need to promptly and permanently adapt to.

Given the pace with which events move in this epoch, many may have forgotten the tubthumping fanfare that accompanied Operation Prosperity Guardian’s launch in December 2023. This followed a flurry of ineffectual, flaccid British and US airstrikes on Yemen. Officials in Washington bombastically announced that a multi-country coalition led by the US, comprising Bahrain, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the Seychelles, and Spain would be dispatched to the Red Sea, to decisively end Ansar Allah’s blockade, and ensure “freedom of trade”.

Almost immediately though, the much-vaunted coalition came apart. France, Italy, and Spain all announced they wouldn’t actually be taking part. Despite this inauspicious debut, when footage emerged of a grand international naval flotilla dramatically slicing its way to the region, many prominent social media users shrieked that Yemenis were about to find out why Americans don’t enjoy universal healthcare. Fast forward to July this year, and the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) published a forensic report on the impact of AnsarAllah’s “attacks on international trade.”

It found that container shipping through the Red Sea, which typically accounts for approximately 10-15% of international maritime trade, had declined by approximately 90% since Operation Prosperity Guardian began. Due to Ansar Allah’s inexorable onslaught against corporations and countries supporting the Gaza genocide, many ships were forced to take alternative routes around Africa, adding approximately 11,000 extra nautical miles, up to two weeks further transit time, and approximately $1 million in additional fuel costs for each voyage:

“For many shipping companies, the combined costs of crew bonuses, war risk insurance (roughly 1000% more than pre-war costs), and Suez transit fees make the additional time and financial costs traveling around Africa less expensive by comparison…Threats to Red Sea transits are compounding ongoing stress to global maritime shipping…Insurance premiums for Red Sea transits have risen to 0.7-1.0% of a ship’s total value, compared to less than 0.1% prior to December 2023.”

The DIA calculates that “at least 65 countries’ interests have been affected” by Ansar Allah’s actions, and “at least 29 major energy and shipping companies have altered their routes to avoid Houthi attacks.” And this is while their anti-shipping aerial strikes have been subject to relentless bombardment by US missiles and pilots.

On July 15th, mere days after Associated Press surveyed the smoldering wreckage of Operation Prosperity Guardian, AnsarAllah announced three separate operations in response to the Zionist entity’s massacre at the UN al-Mawasi Khan Yunis refugee camp. Undefeated and indefatigable, God’s Partisans are not backing down, and are going nowhere. The Resistance fights to win.

July 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US not solution but obstacle in way of resolving international issues: Iran

Press TV – July 19, 2024

Iran’s interim foreign minister says the United States’ unilateral approach to international issues has proven to be a failure, stressing that Washington is not part of the solution, but an obstacle in the path of peace.

Speaking to reporters in New York on Friday, Ali Bagheri Kani criticized the US’s withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and its export of weapons to Israel amid the regime’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

“The Americans’ claims that unilateralism can bring about peace, stability and security to the world have failed,” he said.

“Practically, the American’s approaches to the Iran nuclear negotiations, as well as the Palestine issue and the Zionist’s aggression against Gaza, demonstrated that they cannot be part of the solution, but they are themselves the main obstacle.”

The top diplomat also noted that the US is not qualified to be a “neutral mediator” as it disrupted the JCPOA’s implementation and is even “encouraging” Israel to commit more crimes in Gaza by providing the regime with lethal arms.

Bagheri Kani made the remarks after he attended two United Nations Security Council meetings focusing on the developments in Palestine and multilateralism.

He said that in the meetings, he had underlined the need for an immediate end to the Gaza genocide and highlighted the consequences if the regime committed a “strategic mistake” by invading Lebanon.

“The Zionists are killing and injuring 20 oppressed Palestinians almost every hour. Thus, the world should not remain silent and passive in the face of these continued crimes that are being normalized,” he added.

The interim foreign minister further hailed resistance as an effective element in the region, saying it plays a major role in creating regional stability and prevents the Zionists from escalating their offensive and massacre in the region.

Israel unleashed its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 38,848 Palestinians, mostly women, and children, in Gaza, and injured 89,456 others in the besieged Gaza Strip.

July 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia Ready for Ukraine Peace Talks With Focus on Clear Security Agreements

Sputnik – 17.07.2024

Russia is ready for negotiations on Ukraine and European security issues and will incorporate safeguards against dual interpretations in any future European security treaty said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“We are ready for negotiations, but considering the sad experience of talks and consultations with the West and Ukrainians… I hope a treaty will be reached at some stage on European security, and in this context the Ukraine crisis will be resolved,” Lavrov stated during a press conference following a UN Security Council meeting.

“We will, of course, be very careful with the wording and will incorporate safeguards into this document against repeated unscrupulous, unreliable interpretations,” the foreign minister added.

Lavrov emphasized that, unlike China, the West does not address the root causes of the conflict in its initiatives on Ukraine.

“This already concerns the content of the dialogue; China has very clearly indicated in its first initiative the need to start with addressing the root causes of the current crisis in Europe and to work on agreements to eliminate these causes,” he said.

He noted that “no one at the Copenhagen or Burgenstock meetings even mentioned the root causes.”

Thus, the West is trying to push through Volodymyr Zelensky’s plan by all possible means.

“A course has been set to push through at any cost the so-called Zelensky plan, which has a clearly defined form of an ultimatum,” Lavrov emphasized.

Lavrov’s comments were in response to a question about Russia’s possible participation in the second summit on the Ukraine conflict and the outcomes of the recent conference in Switzerland.

On Russia-US Unofficial Contacts Regarding Ukraine

Russia and the United States have held unofficial and so-called “second level” expert level contacts to discuss issues related to the conflict in Ukraine, Minister Lavrov added.

“I will tell you in confidence — we have had unofficial contacts with the Americans involving political experts, political experts who know each other and understand the policies of their governments,” Lavrov told the press conference, adding that Ukraine was on the agenda of such contacts.

Despite the fact that the two countries are holding phone conversations from time to time, there is nothing significant in these talks, he noted.

On Russia’s Readiness to Work With a New US President

Russia will be ready to work with any elected president of the United States, the foreign minister claimed.

“Once again I want to say: we will work, we will be ready to work with any American leader that the American people elect and who … will be ready for an equal, mutually respectful dialogue,” Lavrov said at the press event.

On Israel Seeking to Involve the US in Regional Escalation

It appears that Israel’s goal is to involve the United States in the escalation of tensions with Iran, the minister observed.

“The sense is that they want to provoke them into full-scale involvement with Hezbollah. The purpose of such a provocation, analysts suggest, is to draw the United States directly into the involvement of its armed forces in this [regional] conflict,” Lavrov emphasized.

Russia hopes the West will do everything to ensure that such ideas, “if they exist in the Israeli leadership,” will remain only ideas.

Moscow is doing everything to “calm down the situation,” Lavrov added.

On the Nord Stream Explosions

Russia will continue seeking the truth regarding the explosions of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Lavrov said.

“We will pursue the truth – since I’ve mentioned the Nord Streams, we’re going to seek the truth,” he highlighted.

July 17, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

JFK Jr. and the Jewish Curse on the Kennedys

BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 12, 2024

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. died 25 years ago, with his wife and his sister-in-law.

He was assassinated. I’ll summarize the evidence below.

He was assassinated because he was JFK’s son, and had political ambitions driven by a strong filial piety. He had to die for the same reason his uncle RFK had to die in 1968: no Kennedy should ever approach the White House again — unless, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin suggests, he is also a Schlossberg. And JFK Jr. could have reached the White House in eight years (he would have been 48 in November 2008; his father became president at 43).

“The Kennedy family is a clan, a tribe, a sovereignty, and a dynasty,” once wrote Arthur Krock, who knew them well.[1] None of the Kennedys can be understood as mere individuals. And so, in a deeper sense, the reason JFK Jr. had to die is that he was the grandson of the founding patriarch, Joe Kennedy. The point was candidly made by John Podhoretz in an op-ed piece for the New York Post, published on the very day when JFK Jr.’s body was recovered from the ocean floor, together with the bodies of his wife and sister-in-law. In that most disgusting piece of fiction, Podhoretz imagines that the Devil is telling Joe in Hell: “every time you think your family is on its way back to glory, I just have to do something. Like I did this weekend, with your grandson John.” According to Podhoretz, speaking in the name of the Devil to Joe, JFK Jr. died in retribution for what his grandfather did to the Jews, “when you were America’s ambassador to England, saying all those nice things about Hitler, doing everything you could to prevent Jewish emigration from Nazi Germany. Thousands of Jews died because of you.”

Note that, logically, the Jewish god Yahweh, not the Devil, should want to punish Joe by killing his grandson. Unless, of course, Yahweh is the Devil. Podhoretz took no time to ponder this question; he could not wait one day to voice his delight, while all Americans were mourning the prince of Camelot.

John Podhoretz is the son of Norman Podhoretz (his colleagues at the Washington Times used to call him “John P. Normanson” because he had been introduced to them as “John Podhoretz, Norman’s son”). Norman will be remembered as the man who wanted so much to launch World War IV. The Podhoretz love world wars because world wars are always good for Israel. Which is also why they have an eternal hatred for Joe Kennedy, the man who almost succeeded in averting World War II. As I explained in “Joseph P. Kennedy, the Cursed Peacemaker,” Joe Kennedy was not a friend of Hitler, but a friend of peace, just like Neville Chamberlain. “I am pro-peace, I pray, hope, and work for peace,” he declared on his first return from London in December 1938.[2]

For trying to prevent the Jews from drawing America into the war, Joe Kennedy was deemed a holocaustic arch-anti-Semite. It is quite astonishing, actually, that his sons could do so well in American politics, despite their father’s reputation as a Hitler-appeaser. It is, in part, a tribute to Joe’s political shrewdness. Here is a funny story told by John Hughes-Wilson:

Joseph Kennedy solved the problem in 1956 by secretly asking a prominent media and entertainment business mogul called Joe Hooker to orchestrate a right-wing press campaign against his son, by accusing the then Senator Jack Kennedy of being a “Jewish puppet”, secretly in hock to Jewish interests and influences. Hooker and his neo-Fascist contacts duly smeared JFK in the Press. “Kikes for Kennedy” ran one headline. The American Nazi party denounced him as a “Jew lover”. The Jewish lobby was impressed and so, when the request for campaign funds duly appeared, Jewish political financiers decided to back Kennedy.[3]

I doubt if the trick impressed the group of financiers gathered by Abraham Feinberg after the 1960s primaries. “Jack,” they said to JFK, “everybody knows the reputation of your father concerning Jews and Hitler. And everybody knows that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” They gave him $500,000 as campaign fund nonetheless, according to Seymour Hersh[4].

They thought they had bought Kennedy’s foreign policy, but they would soon feel cheated: as promised, Kennedy did name Mike Feldman as his advisor on the Middle East, but he treated him as the Israeli agent that he was, and went on befriending Nasser.

The Zionists thought Joe Kennedy’s background could provide them with some leverage on his son. Their preferred Democratic candidate had been Lyndon Johnson, who during the primaries had attacked John as being the son of a “Chamberlain umbrella man” who “thought Hitler was right” (the black umbrella had become a symbol of Chamberlain and the 1938 Munich Conference).[5] When LBJ lost to JFK, JFK was blackmailed, through Philip Graham and Joseph Alsop of the Washington Post, into picking Johnson as vice-president. No one knows for sure what the blackmail was about. Kennedy’s long-time secretary Evelyn Lincoln thought it was “about womanizing, and things in Joe Kennedy’s background.”[6] Since the sex life of politicians was not the type of things that the press reported back then — and the Washington Post was no exception — my guess is that it was more about “Joe Kennedy’s background”. Like Feinberg’s Jewish friends, Graham and Alsop must have reminded JFK of “the reputation of your father concerning Jews and Hitler.”

President Kennedy became a huge problem for Israel, not only for wanting to deprive Israel of the holy nuke, but also for trying to end the Cold War: a rapprochement between Kennedy and Khrushchev, both supporting Nasser’s secular nationalism and pan-Arabism, was Ben-Gurion’s worst nightmare. The Soviet minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko recalled in his memoirs a revealing conversation he had with President Kennedy in the White House, October 3, 1963 — a conversation which, he writes, “left a deep impression in my mind.”

As I entered his study, I found him smiling and as usual in a good mood. He said, ‘Why don’t we go out on to the terrace and talk one to one without interpreters?’

Naturally I agreed, and we left the room.

He immediately began to talk about the internal situation in the USA: ‘The fact is, there are two groups of the American population which are not always pleased when relations between our two countries are eased. One group consists of people who are always opposed to improvement for ideological reasons. They are quite a stable contingent. The other group are people “of a particular nationality’” — he meant the Jewish lobby — who think that always and under all circumstances, the Kremlin will support the Arabs and be an enemy of Israel. This group has effective means for making improvement between our countries very difficult.’ He ended briefly: ‘That is the reality. But I think it is still possible to improve relations, and I want Moscow to know that.’

… At the end of our conversation, Kennedy said, ‘I just wanted you to know some of the difficulties the President of the United States has to face when dealing with questions of Soviet-US relations.’

… I don’t know why, but when I first heard the Tass report of Kennedy’s murder it was that talk on the White House terrace that came into my mind — what he had said about there being opponents to his policy.[7]

From Israel’s point of view, JFK was definitely an appeaser like his father. Israel had needed WWII, and Israel now needed WWIII (as neocon Norman Podhoretz insists on calling the Cold War). “What’s wrong with the Kennedys? Why do they always want to prevent or end the wars that Israel needs? A curse on their house!”

The Kennedy curse is a kabbalistic concept that has been thrown to the public in such books as The Sins of the Father (Ronald Kessler) and The Kennedy Curse (Edward Klein). The title of the first book, written in 1997, is a reference to Exodus 20:5: “I, Yahweh, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” The second book, published in 2004, includes in its introduction a story “told in mystical Jewish circles”, of a rabbi who was “fleeing the Nazis” “shortly before the outbreak of World War II, and “put a curse on Kennedy, damning him and all his male offspring to tragic fates.”[8] It easy to see what the “Kennedy curse” has in common with John Podhoretz’s op-ed: blame it on Satan, but know it’s about messing with the Jews.

Implicit in Klein’s story is that the curse entered into action with the death of Joe Kennedy Jr., the eldest of the brothers, who was killed in action on August 12, 1944, as a patrol bomber pilot. He would have been President Kennedy. The destiny passed to the second son.

The Kennedy Curse fell again on November 22, 1963. In my article “The Umbrella Man, the Sins of the Father, and the Kennedy Curse,” I highlighted the significance of the 39-year-old man named Louie Steven Witt who had decided to open a black umbrella at the precise spot and time of President Kennedy’s execution. In 1978, he explained to the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he intended to “kind of do a little heckling” to JFK about his father’s support for Chamberlain’s appeasement policy. But the coincidence between the heckling and the killing was … well, pure coincidence, he said, and the HSCA asked him no more questions.

I had failed to pay attention to the fact that Witt was not alone in doing his “little heckling”. On the Zapruder film and on several photos, we can see, on his front right, a man saluting JFK. This “dark complected man,” as he is sometimes referred to by JFK researchers, has never been identified. This is odd, because he was obviously with Witt. Minutes after the shots that killed Kennedy, they were sitting beside each other. This suggests that their actions were a coordinated symbolic act. And this in turn suggests that the salute of Witt’s fellow was meant as a Nazi salute. The black umbrella by itself might not have been a clear enough message, so the nazi salute made the message much clearer.

Were they cognizant Zionist agents? I don’t think so. Their sitting together after seeing JFK’s head blown before their eyes suggests that they were stunned and wondering what the hell they had been doing. I suppose they had been sent to do their “little heckling” without being told that it would spice up the killing. Who would be so crazy as to put himself in that position knowingly, standing almost in the line of the Grassy Knoll sniper? Perhaps they had been convinced to do it for money, or as a wager, or as a service to Witt’s Jewish boss at the Rio Grande National Life insurance Co where he worked.

Whatever the case may be, if there was still any doubt that Israel was the prime mover in the assassination of John Kennedy (the evidence is in my book The Unspoken Kennedy Truth), Umbrella Man and Nazi-Salute Man are the ultimate signature. But to see this, you need some spiritual insight into Jewishness and Kennedyness.

Jewishness is the evil soul of the U.S., best embodied today by the neocons (of whom Norman Podhoretz, editor-in-chief of Commentary for 35 years, is the founding father). Kennedyness was the good soul of America. Above anything else, the Kennedys stood for strong family values and service to country to the point of sacrifice. “Joseph P. Kennedy,” writes Laurence Leamer, “created one great thing in his life, and that was his family. . . . Joe taught that blood ruled and that they must trust each other and venture out into a dangerous world full of betrayals and uncertainty, always returning to the sanctuary of family.”[9] Joe also taught his children that they had to pay back to America what America had given them. The Kennedy family symbolized the America that Americans and the world loved.

This is why John F. Kennedy, Jr. was the “charismatic crown prince of America’s royal family,” as the New York Daily News wrote the day after his death.[10] He was Prince Hamlet haunted by the ghost of his murdered father, destined to avenge him and save the kingdom from the usurpers. The Kennedy tragedy is the most Shakespearian, the most paradigmatic, the most archetypal story in all American history. And America has not a worthy monument in their honor. So many Holocaust museums to honor the Jews’ dead, and not one chapel to pray for the Kennedys!

As a matter of fact, only Israel has a Kennedy memorial of any significance. It was explicitly designed to look like “the stump of a felled tree,” and it does. Do you get the idea? It symbolizes Israel’s plan for the Kennedy dynasty. You can trust Jews to choose their symbols carefully. And don’t imagine people can see any statue or even a single photo of Kennedy inside; it is as hollow as a dead stump. It is a memorial to erase the memory of Kennedy. It reminds me of the paradoxical command: “remember to erase Amalek’s memory” (Deuteronomy 25:19 and Exodus 17:14).

The Zionists’ hatred for the Kennedys runs deep, despite their histrionic “crocodile tears” after JFK’s death. When meeting the new president on May 30, 1961 in New York, Ben-Gurion could not help but see in him the son of a Hitler-appeaser. Abraham Feinberg (who arranged the meeting) recalls that “Ben-Gurion could be vicious, and he had such a hatred of the old man [Joe Kennedy].”[11] Ben-Gurion had no illusion about the fact that John was very much his father’s son. Had he not, in his 1956 Pulitzer-Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage, vindicated Senator Robert Taft for denouncing the Nuremberg Trials as a parody of justice, and the hanging of German officials as “a blot on the American record which we shall long regret”?[12] It certainly didn’t escape the Zionists that, on May 11, 1962, President Kennedy invited Charles Lindbergh and his wife at a grand reception at the White House, sitting them at the presidential table and hosting them overnight. Lindbergh had been the most prominent voice for the America First Committee in 1940, publicly accusing the Jews of pushing America into the war. Since then, he had been living in reclusion.

Moreover, Ben-Gurion believed that JFK was paving the way for a new Holocaust by preventing Israel from acquiring the indispensable nuclear deterrence against the Arabs. This is what Ben-Gurion meant when describing Nasser as a new Hitler and the Arabs as the new Nazis, in one of his last letters to Kennedy, May 12, 1963, in response to Kennedy’s demand for immediate inspections of Dimona: “Knowing them I am convinced that they are capable of following the Nazi example. … Mr. President, my people have a right to exist … and this existence is in danger.” Monika Wiesak has noted that, in that very letter, the father of the Jewish State made a cryptic digression about Jordanian King Hussein, writing: “there is always a danger that one single bullet might put an end to his life and regime.”[13]

Salvator Astucia has, I think, well captured the essence of the Kennedy problem for Israel:

The Israelis distrusted President Kennedy because of his father. It is widely known that Joseph Kennedy Sr. developed a strong loathing of Jews from his business dealings with them in finance, Hollywood, and politics. And the elder Kennedy had groomed four sons for the White House, but his oldest — Joe, Jr — had been killed in World War II. President Kennedy’s inauguration in January 1961 marked the beginning of a dynasty that would likely continue until 1985 (after the three surviving sons had each completed two terms). With this background information, it becomes clear that there was one primary motive for the assassination: to destroy the Kennedy Dynasty.[14]

Under a Kennedy presidency, there would be no Six-Day War, the Palestinian refugees would recover their land, AIPAC would be registered as a foreign agent, and the Holocaust would certainly not become a State cult enforced by ADL inquisition. And of course, Israel would never have become a nuclear State.

Destroying the Kennedy dynasty was probably a sacred oath taken by all B’nai B’rith top officials (Dallas was full of them). JFK Jr. was a marked man, if not from the moment he saluted his father’s coffin on his third birthday, at least from the moment it became clear that he had the ambition and the potential to reach the White House. Killing his political future was not enough, and probably not possible.

I wrote a long article in January 2019, titled “The Broken Presidential Destiny of JFK, Jr.”, reviewing the evidence that JFK Jr. was assassinated. I will now summarize it.

Evidence of assassination

It was Friday July 16, 1999, at 9:39 pm, when JFK Jr.’s voice was last heard by Martha’s Vineyard air traffic controller Buddy Wyatt, asking, in a calm voice, instruction for landing. (This was reported the next day by U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Todd Burgun in a live phone interview with anchor Susan Wornick of Boston WCVB-TV.)

About two minutes later, John’s plane suddenly plummeted into the ocean at the radar-recorded speed of 4,700 feet per minute. Victor Pribanic, an attorney from Pennsylvania who was fishing for striped bass that night and had noticed the aircraft flying toward the island, reported to the The Martha’s Vineyard Times (cited in the New York Daily News, July 21, 1999): “I heard an explosion over my right shoulder. It sounded like an explosion. There was no shock wave, but it was a large bang.”

Based on these facts, the only rational explanation is that the plane suffered a sudden structural damage by explosive, making it impossible to maintain in the air; blowing off a part of a wing or the tail would have been enough, and would have required only a very small device magnetically affixed to the plane.

These facts, however, were quickly removed from public awareness. Pribanic’s testimony never made it to the national news. And Kennedy’s 9:39 call to Martha’s Vineyard airport was quickly denied and erased from the narrative. Instead, on July 18, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) produced some “newly found” radar “evidence” which supposedly showed Kennedy’s flight exhibiting signs of difficulties and irregularities long before it disappeared from the radar.

The official narrative was a mix of two ingredients, bad weather and pilot recklessness, coated by a heavy layer of “the Kennedy curse”. Not a word of the possibility of foul play.

When the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded its investigation eleven months later, it issued a news release that attributed the plane crash to “the pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident were haze and the dark night.” That is all the corporate news retained. However, a close reading of the full report reveals many unanswered questions and even contradictions with its conclusion. For example, the NTSB final report quotes Martha’s Vineyard air traffic controller Buddy Wyatt as stating that the visibility was good: “I remember aircraft on visual approaches saying they had the airport in sight between 10 and 12 miles out. I do recall being able to see those aircraft and I do remember seeing the stars out that night.”

Also, the sudden drop of altitude from 2,200 feet to 1,100 feet in 14 seconds, stated in the full report, is hard to reconcile with the news release statement. Disorientation implies that the pilot was not aware that he was flying straight into the ocean. But that is impossible, as the NTSB Investigator-in-Charge, Robert Pearce, had admitted as early as July 20, 1999: “They were aware they were going down. With that kind of descent rate, it is going to be noisier than hell in the cockpit.”

In contrast to what the news media kept hammering, the NTSB report reckoned that JFK Jr. had a flight experience of “about 310 hours, of which 55 hours were at night.” During the last fifteen months, he had made 35 flights between Fairfield airport, N.J., and Martha’s Vineyard, including five at night. Three certified flight instructors (CFI) quoted in the report describe John as an “excellent”, “methodical” and “very cautious” pilot.

No matter how we twist or downplay all other data, the very conditions of the plane’s sudden dive, which is an undisputed fact, should raise a strong suspicion of a major and sudden mechanical failure. As Anthony Hilder put it:

A finely-tuned, well-kept first-class airplane doesn’t just drop out of the sky and head straight down into the ocean unless it’s blown out of the sky or the pilot deliberately sends it into a dive to kill himself and his passengers.

Evidence of cover-up

Some testimonies used in support of the theory of JFK Jr.’s incompetence and recklessness are highly suspicious. A case in point is Kyle Bailey, “the last man to see Kennedy alive at the Fairfield airport,” who claimed to have had bad a premonition on seeing him take off: “I told my family, ‘I can’t believe he’s going up in this weather’,” he said on July 18. Bailey went on becoming an aviation analyst specialized in plane crashes, and regularly working for major network such as Fox News, CBS, ABC, NBC, and BBC. Bailey appeared in the documentary Curse on the Kennedys? and then in the ABC documentary The Last Days of JFK Jr., aired in January 2019, in which he repeated his story. Kyle Bailey is to JFK Jr.’s death what Mark Walsh is to 9/11.

The search for the plane and the bodies was entirely controlled by the military, although JFK Jr. had never been in the army. A 17-nautical mile no-fly zone and no-entry zone was established around the crash site. No civilians or media crew were allowed in this area. On July 20, 1999, as we read in the NTSB report, “the airplane wreckage was located by U.S. Navy divers from the recovery ship, USS Grasp.” Why was the Navy, rather than civilian rescue craft, tasked with the retrieval of JFK Jr.’s crashed airplane? More disturbing still, why did the Pentagon take exclusive control of news reporting from July 18?

There are issues also with the botched autopsies, as Joanna Weiss and Matthew Brelis of the Boston Globe wrote on July 23, 1999 in an article titled “JFK Autopsy Rushed.”

But the most suspicious thing of all is the way the bodies were disposed of: they were cremated, then their ashes were taken aboard a Navy destroyer, and scattered into the sea, near the place where they had met their death. “The burial for the 35th president’s son was reportedly carried out in keeping with his expressed wishes,” noted journalist Paula Maxwell. What? At age 39, JFK Jr. had expressed his will not to be buried with his father and mother at Arlington cemetery and instead to be cremated and his ashes spread above the ocean? Who can believe such a thing? The Boston Globe reported on July 22 “Kennedy’s family requested a burial at sea, and the Pentagon granted that request.” But, the next day, the same newspaper expressed surprise:

The cremated remains of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and her sister were cast from a warship to the ocean currents in a manner not favored by the Catholic Church and in a ceremony that occurred only after the intercession of Pentagon brass. The Roman Catholic Church prefers the presence of a body at its funeral rites. And the Defense Department rarely accords the honor of burial at sea to civilians.

No other Kennedy had ever been cremated. The reasons given for cremating JFK Jr. body do not make any sense and are contradictory. The New York Times wrote:

“Kennedy family members, citing his wishes and hoping to avoid having a spectacle made of Mr. Kennedy’s final resting place, have decided to have his body cremated and his ashes scattered at sea in a Navy ceremony, a family adviser said.”

That is utterly unbelievable. The bodies must have been cremated and scattered for another reason: to prevent any possibility of ever finding traces of explosives in the bodies.

But the idea of wanting to deprive JFK Jr. of a final resting place that could possibly encourage a popular Kennedy cult has also a strong biblical and B’nai B’rith smell. Who, among “Kennedy family members”, could possibly have wanted this? It happens that, according to information found in RFK Jr.’s diary, published by the New York Post, Ann Freeman, Carolyn and Lauren Bessette’s mother, “began asking that her two daughters be buried near her home in Greenwich, Connecticut.” It was Edwin Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy’s Jewish husband, who convinced her to have her two daughters cremated and their ashes spread in the ocean. “He bullied, bullied, bullied the shattered grieving mother,” writes RFK Jr.

The heir and the Avenger

JFK Jr. had grown up with a sense of destiny. According to biographer Christopher Andersen (The Good Son): “Jackie made sure that John was constantly exposed to the people who knew John [President Kennedy] best.” In her last letter to her son before dying to lymphoma in 1994, she wrote: “You, especially, have a place in history.” John told Lloyd Howard in 1997: “She expected me to follow in my father’s footsteps, and of course I will. But I don’t think the time is right just yet.” Just like his father before him, John Jr. first pursued a career in journalism: in 1995, he founded the magazine George, which engaged in controversial issues of deep politics. His longtime friend Robert Littell wrote, in The Men We Became: My Friendship with John F. Kennedy Jr. (St. Martin’s Press, 2004): “George was also an opportunity for John to build a platform from which he might possibly move into political life.” George was also a means for John to interact with political actors and thinkers.

Brought up in the worship of his father, John had taken a keen interest in “conspiracy theories” about his death at least since his late teens. His knowledge deepened in his thirties, and motivated him to publish in a special “conspiracy issue” of his magazine George, eight months before his death, a cover article by Oliver Stone, director of the groundbreaking film JFK, titled “Our Counterfeit History”.

At age 39, John had made up his mind to launch his political career by seeking an electoral mandate in New York State, and he was about to announce it publicly. According to his friend Billy Noonan (Forever Young: My Friendship with John F. Kennedy, Jr., Viking Press, 2006), he was about to enter the race for the New York Senate seat left vacant by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, which Hillary Clinton also coveted (and ultimately got). John was a New Yorker, and Clinton would have stood no chance against him.

JFK Jr. had also voiced privately his ambition to ultimately reach for the presidency. Given his personality and his popularity, he had high chances to make it in less than 20 years. Pierre Salinger, one of the men Jackie had asked to educate John about his father, had become very close to him, and declared on French radio Europe 1, on July 19, 1999: “I felt that in the coming year John Junior would also become a politician. It’s my point of view. And with other people, we thought he was going to be a Democratic candidate for the next presidential election.” Others, such as John’s assistant at GeorgeRoseMarie Terenzio, thought “he would’ve run for president … in 2008.”

In 1968, John Kennedy’s brother ran for President with the intention, not just to save the Kennedy legacy, but to reopen the investigation on his brother’s death (as David Talbot has demonstrated in his book Brothers). He was assassinated. In 1999, Robert Kennedy’s nephew was about to announce his entry into politics, with the clear intention to go all the way to the White House. There is no question that one of his goals in life was to expose the murderers of his father. His old high school girlfriend Meg Azzoni, in her self-published book, 11 Letters and a Poem (2007), writes that as a teenager, “his heartfelt quest was to expose and bring to trial who killed his father, and covered it up.”

I rephrase my conclusion from my longer 2019 article:

So, was JFK Jr. himself assassinated? Here is man whose road to the presidency seemed traced. No other man of his age had better chances to reach the White House one day. And no other man in the world had more reasons to want the 1963 Kennedy assassination reinvestigated. He was already trying to educate the public through his magazine, at the risk of exposing his own beliefs, something no other Kennedy had ever done (even RFK had kept his doubt on the Warren report private, and his plan to reopen the case secret). And this man, his friend Billy Noonan believes, was just about to announce his candidacy for a New York Senate seat, which everyone would have understood as the first step toward the White House. Pierre Salinger and others even believe he would have run for president in 2000. What are the odds that he would die at this precise moment by accident? … If it was an accident, then the Devil caused it. Or was it Yahweh?

One more thing: JFK Jr. died two years before 9/11. Who knows what influence he would have had on the American public, either as a senator or as the editor of a magazine with a strong interest in conspiracies? He may very well have stood in the way of the War on Terror, the WWIV that Norman Podhoretz was calling for. You never know, with those Kennedy peacemakers!

Israel believes in preemptive assassinations, as demonstrated by Ronen Bergman in Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations.

Israel killed JFK Jr.

A curse on Israel!

Notes

[1] Arthur Krock, Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line, Funk & Wagnalls, 1968, p. 328.

[2] Michael R. Beschloss, Kennedy and Roosevelt: The Uneasy Alliance, Open Road, 1979, p.187.

[3] John Hughes-Wilson, JFK: an American coup d’état, John Blake, 2013, pp. 88-89.

[4] Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, Random House, 1991 p. 96.

[5] Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol. IV: The Passage of Power, Alfred Knopf, 2012, p. 104. Also in Krock, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 362.

[6] Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, Little, Brown & CO, 1997, p. 129.

[7] Andrei Gromyko, Memoirs, Doubleday, 1989, pp. 181-182.

[8] Edward Klein, The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America’s First Family for 150 Years, Saint Martin’s Press, 2004.

[9] Laurence Leamer, Sons of Camelot: The Fate of an American Dynasty, HarperCollins, 2005, kindle l. 262-267.

[10] Dave Saltonstall, Austin Fenner, Helen Kennedy and Greg B. Smith, “John F. Kennedy Jr. went missing after taking a flight with his wife and her sister in 1999,” New York Daily News, July 18, 1999, on nydailynews.com

[11] Hersh, The Samson Option, op. cit., p. 103.

[12] Robert Taft, October 6, 1946, quoted in John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, 1956, Harper Perennial, 2003 p. 199.

[13] Monika Wiesak, America’s Last President, 2022, p. 214.

[14] Salvador Astucia, Opium Lords: Israel, the Golden Triangle, and the Kennedy Assassination, 2002, p. 5, on www.whale.to/b/astucia.pdf.

July 13, 2024 Posted by | Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

“Our” Man in Israel

By Ted O’Keefe | The Occidental Observer | July 7, 2024

The issue of dual loyalty is an ancient one. As noted in a previous TOO article,

[Stephen] Walt points out that [Dennis] Ross has a long involvement with pro-Israel activist organizations, such as being director of WINEP [Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank headquartered in Washington, DC].

But Ross’s ties to Israel are even deeper than that. Until his appointment as Middle East envoy in the Obama Administration, from 2002–2009 Ross was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. This organization has assumed the role of long term planning for the Jewish people, not only in Israel but also the Diaspora. The JPPPI is an independent think tank that reports to the Israeli government and has close ties with other Jewish organizations. Its mission is “to promote the thriving of the Jewish people via professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry. JPPPI’s work is based on deep commitment to the future of the Jewish people with Israel as its core state.”

The JPPPI’s report Facing Tomorrow 2008 is interesting because it focuses on the threat of Iran and but also because it sees people like Stephen Walt as a threat to Israel:

The Jewish people must, as the highest priority, develop an appropriate response to the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and to global stability as a whole. While there is no ambiguity about the need to do so in Israel, it is necessary to mobilize Jewish opinion around the world as well. The American Jewish community cannot be intimidated either by a post Iraq syndrome in the United States, or by the false and pernicious allegations of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, or former President Carter.

In other words, Jews around the world are encouraged to mobilize to combat the threat to Israel represented by Iran. The assumption is that Jews have common interests as Jews no matter what country they happen to live in. Dennis Ross is doing his best to promote exactly this view within the Obama administration.

One might think that such a view would leave Jews in the Diaspora open to the charge of disloyalty, but the problem is easily finessed: Jews in the Diaspora are told to frame Israel’s concerns about Iran as a global threat, not simply as a threat to Israel.

Of course, that’s what we are seeing now. But we needn’t be naïve. Jews like Dennis Ross are clearly far more loyal to Israel than to the US. Speaking as a psychologist, they wouldn’t be able to see a conflict of interest between the US and Israel if it was staring them in the face. Indeed, as Gore Vidal said of Norman Podhoretz, they are unregistered agents of a foreign government.

In a sane society, there would be a huge groundswell of public opposition to Ross’s appointment–as there has been for a number of Obama’s appointments. But that won’t happen.

Since there has been no groundswell of media or public opposition to pro-Israel operatives like Ross at the highest levels of the U.S. government, it’s not surprising that the practice continues. Amos Hochstein is a good contemporary example. Israel and the powerful Lebanon-based Shiite Hezbollah militia are on the brink of open warfare, conflict that could trigger U.S. intervention and escalate to a regional or even a world war. To date these dangers have attracted little notice from the American mass media, ever eager to divert and dissemble from the direr consequences of the Washington regime’s one-sided support for Israel. Small wonder, then, that the media should evince the same reluctance in investigating the shadowy past and dubious allegiance of Hochstein, the emissary the U.S. recently dispatched to “mediate” between Hezbollah and Israel. The following is a brief foray into the workings of the Israel Lobby in the Biden Administration, as well as a primer on the perks of being Jewish in America.

Hochstein’s importance

To be sure, media reports have not slighted Hochstein’s great influence in the Biden White House or his meteoric career. He has been described as “one of President Biden’s closest confidantes [who] has worked with him for many years,” while another Washington insider calls Hochstein “the person who bridges State, Treasury, the White House and Energy”

Fittingly, one of Hochstein’s titles is “Special Presidential Coordinator.”

Yet the media have underplayed, and often ignored, a key fact about Hochstein in his role as an impartial arbiter between Hezbollah and Israel: his birth, youth, and military service in Israel.

Beyond those bare facts about his origins, Hochstein has been remarkably unforthcoming about his life before he arrived in the United States in 1974. While nearly every successful denizen of the D.C. is eager to brandish Ivy League/Seven Sisters (or the equivalent) educational credentials, one may scour the internet (including his page on the usually resume-rich LinkedIn job-hunting site) without finding anything about Hochstein’s education, college or secondary.

Just as murky are the circumstances by which Adam Hochstein, a 21-year-old immigrant with unknown credentials, became a congressional staffer within a year of his arrival in this country, working for Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-CT) who, like Hochstein, is a Jew.

Despite his youth and inexperience, Hochstein carried out important assignments for Gejdenson. Not yet 25, he traveled to North Korea in 1997 to report on its economic and military situation; still in his twenties, he undertook negotiations with the Iraqi government (against the advice of the U.S. State Department) aimed at “resettling” thousands of Palestinians there in exchange for loosening some of the crippling sanctions then in force there.

Well before 9/11, Hochstein advocated acting against Iraq for harboring “weapons of mass destruction” in a press release issued by Congressman Gejdenson, and soon afterward he was serving as senior advisor to a senator and a governor. Like many members of the permanent government, Hochstein has used hiatuses between his party’s dominance to work in lobbying and industries close to government, in his case capitalizing on energy policy expertise that he seems to have acquired with no expertise in the field. He’s evidently done well, at some point becoming a partner in two D.C. restaurants and a movie theater.

Under Obama, Hochstein (without known diplomatic training or experience) rapidly climbed the ladder at the State Department to become America’s chief energy negotiator, deeply involved in efforts to block Russian natural gas from Europe and to facilitate Israeli access to energy.

During the Trump presidency, Hochstein served on the board of Ukraine’s natural gas company, Naftogaz.

Hochstein’s knowledge of the ins and outs of Ukraine’s shady corrupt energy industry is evidently considerable. In his testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives, Hunter Biden stated that Hochstein had advised him merely to be “very careful” in serving on the board of the notoriously corrupt Burisma corporation.

Hochstein also seems to have had a role in the “whistle blowing” that led to Trump’s first impeachment resulting from a phone call interpreted by Democrats as pressuring Zelensky to investigate Biden family corruption in Ukraine, and to have been advising Zelensky before his election.

It’s also interesting that there is a lack of definitive information on Hochstein’s current citizenship:

According to one report, a State Department source has claimed that he is “not a dual national,” but refused to state if he has renounced his Israeli citizenship, and in fact gave no [details as to Hochstein’s American citizenship.] So the question raised, unanswered— Hochstein’s citizenship is evidently a “carefully guarded secret.” Not acknowledging Hochstein’s Israeli citizenship would be useful because, for example, in Lebanon, where Hochstein has been involved as an American negotiator on the Israeli conflict with Hezbollah, “it is normally illegal for an Israeli” to visit Lebanon.

Even Hezbollah at the time did not comment on the mediator’s nationality or military past, with leader Hassan Nasrallah saying they will “not express an opinion or position related to the demarcation of borders”.

Given all this, it’s hard to disagree with this quote originally from Ha’aretz:

… the American brokerage farce, whose players are almost all American Jews, some of them former or future Israelis. If the United States is a side in the conflict, then it should say so and conduct the negotiation as though Israel is its protégé. And if it really wants to be an honest broker, then come on – Amos Hochstein?…

July 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Will Iran’s Foreign Policy Be Under New President Pezeshkian?

Sputnik – 06.07.2024

Masoud Pezeshkian has emerged as the winner of the presidential runoff in Iran this week, receiving 54 percent of the votes.

The newly elected President of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian spoke to Sputnik on the eve of the election about the main priorities of Iran’s foreign policy, which include: strengthening relations with Russia and China; Iran’s active presence in BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation; restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the lifting of sanctions.

“Russia is a friend and partner of Iran, and I consider it a priority to deepen and expand relations with Russia and China, as well as intensify foreign policy activities in the Asian direction in general,” Pezeshkian said. “And we, of course, at all levels – bilateral, regional and international – will continue our efforts to expand interaction with the Russian Federation.”

According to him, Iran “opposes the policy of unidirectionality” and supports “the principle of multipolarity.”

“One of the priorities of my foreign policy program is regional cooperation, and for this purpose, Iran will expand its presence in BRICS and the SCO, as well as strive for more active cooperation with the Eurasian Economic Union to more fully realize the potential of trade and economic relations with the member countries of these organizations,” Pezeshkian explained.

Regarding the JCPOA, Pezeshkian pointed out that it is “an international agreement approved by the UN,” and that the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from this agreement “caused serious damage to Iran and the Iranian people.”

“As the Russian side has repeatedly emphasized, Iran has fulfilled its obligations, and we see our task as returning the other participants to this agreement as soon as possible and achieving the lifting of sanctions. I am confident that the friendly governments of Russia and China will support Iran and assist it in resolving this issue,” he added.

July 6, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hamas, other factions reject deployment of foreign troops in Gaza

Al-Mayadeen | July 5, 2024

Palestinian Resistance factions opposed any plans or proposals for the governance of the Gaza Strip that go beyond a solely Palestinian administration of the besieged territory.

The Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas released a strong-worded statement rejecting any proposals or remarks that support plans for the deployment of foreign troops in the Gaza Strip “under any justification.”

The movement said that the administration of affairs in the Gaza Strip, after the war on Gaza ends, is solely a Palestinian matter, which only the Palestinian people will determine.

Hamas stressed, “We will not allow any guardianship or the imposition of any external solutions or [plans] that detract from [the Palestinian people’s] principles,” which are based on their right to freedom and self-determination.

It invited all Islamic and Arab nations to press for an end to the Israeli genocidal war on the Palestinian people and to assist the besieged people of the Gaza Strip.

The statement also called upon Islamic and Arab states to “fulfill their obligations toward [the Palestinian] people, their land, and the Islamic and Christian sanctities,” which have been desecrated by “fascist settler criminal gangs.”

Saudi Foreign Minister remarks stir up controversy

On Thursday, the Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister, Faisal Bin Farhan, said that Riyadh would back the deployment of an international force in Gaza, via a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decision aimed at assisting the Palestinian Authority.

Bin Farhan made the remark while participating in a panel discussion at the European Council on Foreign Relations conference in Madrid.

Talks for the deployment of forces to manage affairs in the Gaza Strip, after the war on the besieged territory ends, have long been circulating in Israeli circles and international media outlets.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also suggested that “friendly” Arab states take on the responsibility of security and cultural affairs in the Gaza Strip. Among the top candidates to complete such tasks are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

However, there has been no official confirmation by both states on whether they are willing to participate in such a plan. The only public announcement backing the deployment of international peacekeeping forces came via the final statement of the 33rd Arab Summit in Bahrain.

Bin Farhan’s remarks are of importance as it marks the first public support of Riyadh for the deployment of international forces in the Gaza Strip.

PFLP, Popular Resistance Committees warn against international forces plot

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) also put out a statement condemning the remarks of the Saudi foreign minister, reiterating the Palestinian people’s indisputable right to self-determination.

The PFLP expressed its “outright rejection” of the remarks, adding that any attempt to deploy troops, whether via an international decision or not, would constitute a new occupation of the Gaza Strip.

It stressed that Resistance fighters will confront any foreign plot to undermine the Palestinian people.

Moreover, the Popular Resistance Committees affirmed positions similar to those expressed by Hamas and the PFLP, underlining that such a move would constitute an aggression against the Palestinian people.

It emphasized that it would deal with such foreign troops the way it dealt with Israeli occupation forces.

July 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel vs Hezbollah: Strategic stakes and regional implications

By Shivan Mahendrarajah | The Cradle | July 5, 2024

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. — Former US secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld

As tensions escalate between Hezbollah and Israel, analysts are meticulously wargaming potential conflict scenarios. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his religious-nationalist coalition, a confrontation with the Lebanese resistance movement is more than speculation – it is a strategic consideration. This coalition views a potential war as a means to address longstanding security concerns and strengthen its political position.

A key part of Tel Aviv’s strategic thinking is the hope that the US might be forced into taking a more active role in confronting Israel’s adversaries – Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran – thereby neutralizing threats that have persisted for decades. This concept of “clearing the decks” of regional enemies remains a central theme in Israeli strategic discussions.

Historical roots of Israel’s strategic confidence

For the occupation state, this potential conflict is a “war of choice” driven by historical and ethnonationalist motivations. But it is also premised on past Israeli military advantages that are long gone in today’s missile-laden West Asia.

The Six-Day War of 1967 fostered a belief in the invincibility of the Israeli military, the superiority of Zionism, and the manifest destiny of its ‘chosen people.’ It was with similar hubris that Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in 1941. Fast forward eight decades, and today, Israelis are informing US officials “that it can pull off a ‘blitzkrieg’” in Lebanon.

In 1967, the psychological impact on neighboring Arab states was profound due to the decisive defeat of their armies. This sentiment persisted until 2006, when Lebanon’s Hezbollah emerged politically victorious, shattering the perception of Israeli invulnerability and altering regional power dynamics.

Further shaping Israeli delusions of military superiority is the ethnonationalist rhetoric prevalent in Tel Aviv’s policy decision-making circles, embodied by extremist ministers like Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have revived the ideologies of the once-banned Meir Kahane. While a few sober military voices in Israel advocate for a diplomatic solution to the northern border crisis, hubris and ethnonationalism currently dominate the discourse.

Strategic imperatives for Hezbollah and Iran

Conversely, for Hezbollah and Iran, this conflict is a “war of necessity,” something neither can publicly admit nor provoke directly. Both have been marginalized and sanctioned by the US on Israel’s behalf, causing untold domestic pressures and economic hardships – an untenable situation that demands a direct challenge of Israeli policies.

But reversing sanctions cannot happen at the negotiating table. Israelis are arrogant and obstinate; they will not negotiate in good faith. Take, for example, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Iran nuclear deal. When former US president Barack Obama finalized the agreement, Netanyahu whined that Israel needed “compensation.” Obama offered Israel a military package, but as soon as he left office, Netanyahu, Jared Kushner, and AIPAC manipulated the “very stable genius,” former president Donald Trump. JCPOA was annulled. The compensation package, by the by, was not returned to US taxpayers.

Iran–Hezbollah must drag Israel to the edge of the precipice. Tel Aviv must stare into the abyss and realize that with a gentle push by the region’s Resistance Axis, it will lie mangled at the bottom of the chasm. Iran–Hezbollah, however, cannot push it over the edge, as this could lead to a nuclear nightmare. Today, in its “war of choice,” Israel has already hinted at using “unprecedented” and “unspecified” weapons against Hezbollah, implying a possible nuclear threat.

The Axis must instead show Israel a path back from the edge: a treaty that settles outstanding concerns. Tehran offered Tel Aviv and Washington a “Grand Bargain” in 2003 but was rejected. A new grand bargain is indispensable for Israel and the Axis of Resistance, yet the conditio sine qua non for a lasting treaty is Israel’s military defeat by the Axis.

The threats and counter-threats are flying, each aiming to gain “leverage” and deterrence.

Earlier this month, Iranian foreign affairs adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Kamal Kharrazi, said that were Israel to launch an all-out offensive against Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic and other factions of the Axis of Resistance would support Lebanon with “all means” necessary.

Iran has previously warned that it may be compelled to revise its nuclear doctrine in response to Israeli aggression. It is suspected that Iran may have already crossed the nuclear threshold. Even without nuclear capabilities, Iran has the ballistic missile and warhead capabilities to destroy Tel Aviv, Haifa, and other major cities. Israel is a “one-bomb country”: it is minuscule, and its population is concentrated in a few central hubs. Iran and the Axis do not have any need for multiple nuclear warheads.

As General Hajizadah explained in a speech, the Khorramshahr missile can deliver 80 warheads. If the IRGC launched 100 missiles, that’s 8,000 warheads on major Israeli cities. Israel would be foolish to trust in its integrated air defense system after the IRGC’s successful strikes on 13 April.

2024 is not 2006

Comparing the potential 2024 conflict with the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war is a popular frame of reference, but both sides have learned lessons since then. In particular, there have been significant advancements in military technology and tactics over the past 18 years.

Hezbollah has developed new tactics and weapons, such as the Almas Anti-Tank Guided Missile (ATGM), which has proven effective against Israeli military assets. Additionally, Hezbollah’s air defense capabilities have posed new challenges for Israeli drone offensives.

The Israeli air force ruled the skies in 2006, but whether it can do so in 2024 is unclear. Hezbollah has air defense capacity (such as the Sayyad-2 medium-range surface-to-air missile). It is not known if it has newer models, like Iran’s Khordad-3. This could be a surprise.

Israeli intelligence assessments of Hezbollah’s capabilities are likely to be imprecise. Past successes against groups like the PLO and Black September are no longer relevant. Recent failures, such as Tel Aviv’s inability to foresee Hamas Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October, underscore the limitations of Israeli intelligence.

US involvement

This has been Israel’s objective since 9/11: have Americans fight Israel’s wars. Although Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Charles Brown stated that the US may be unable to assist Israel, this must not be taken as a serious military assessment. It is a political statement on behalf of the Biden Administration, which does not want to join a major war until after the 5 November election. Netanyahu, however, knows that Israel controls Congress and American media. Congressman Thomas Massie is the exception, among 435 Representatives and 100 Senators, who AIPAC has not bought. Once war begins, Israel’s minions in the White House, media, and Congress will campaign for US military participation. As Netanyahu said, “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily; move it in the right direction.” He is correct.

If the US intervenes – a high-probability event – Hezbollah and Iran will (reluctantly) welcome it. For the Axis to secure a “Grand Bargain,” it must inflict catastrophic damage on US land-based and sea-based assets in West Asia. Washington will only abandon Israel if ships, bases, and hundreds (or thousands) of American lives are destroyed because of Israel.

Russia

Russia is a wildcard, a “known unknown.” The US security apparatus warring against Russia and supporting Israel is top-heavy with Zionists/neo-cons. Iran’s enemies and Russia’s enemies are nearly congruent: Victoria Kagan née Nuland; Kagan family (Robert, Fred, Kim, their ISW); Antony Blinken (grandson of a founder of Israel); Avril Haines (Director of National Intelligence); deputy director CIA David Cohen, Alejandro Mayorkas (Secretary of DHS), and more. It behooves Russia to punish its tormentors by damaging the only country to which they are loyal: Israel.

Moscow has been chafing at US support for Ukraine. Elena Panina, Director of the Institute of International Political and Economic Strategies, wrote on her Telegram channel in December 2023, “The best option for Russia is to respond to America in a similar way: with a hybrid war far from its own borders. The most obvious at the moment is a proxy attack on American forces in the Middle East.” In May 2024, Putin said the same thing. Terror attacks in Belgorod and in Sevastopol on a religious holiday may tip the scales in favor of Iran, especially if the US jumps into the fray. Defeating the US will increase popular support for Russia among global Muslims and help eject the US from West Asia – a goal supported by Russia and China. Iran is “too big to fail”: Moscow has made military and economic investments and alliances with Tehran, particularly after the Ukraine War began, and is on the cusp of signing a new comprehensive cooperation agreement with Tehran. The Kremlin cannot allow Iran to be defeated and the republic to collapse. It will most likely provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support through Russian satellites and aircraft in Syria. Russia allows IRGC to use its Humaymim/Khmeimim air base in Syria because IDF tries to prevent supplies from Iran from arriving at airports in Aleppo and Damascus. Russia could (if not already, given recent air traffic between Russia and the air base) deliver air defense batteries, missiles, and more for the Syrian Army and Hezbollah.

Unknown unknowns

The factors outlined above, along with China and North Korea’s investments in and relationships with Iran, complicate any predictions about the looming war between Israel and the Lebanese resistance. While their direct military participation is unlikely, these nuclear powers could supply Iran with essential weapons and ammunition. The “known unknowns,” a few of which are noted, are enough to complicate wargaming, but the “unknown unknowns” may render such scenarios moot.

July 5, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US presidential candidates competing to appease ‘Israel’: Al-Houthi

Al Mayadeen | July 4, 2024

Yemeni leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik Badreddine al-Houthi underlines that the US presidential candidates are competing for who supports the Israeli occupation more.

The United States faced immense difficulty in its efforts to halt Yemeni military operations at sea, and facing the operations was not an easy task, the leader of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, Sayyed Abdul Malik Badreddine al-Houthi, said on Thursday

Sayyed al-Houthi revealed during his weekly address that this week’s support operations for the Yemeni front included 12 operations as part of the fourth escalation phase. He noted that last week’s operations involved the use of 20 ballistic and cruise missiles, a drone, and a boat across the maritime theater of operations.

Discussing the targets, al-Houthi mentioned that six ships were targeted, bringing the total number of ships attacked since the beginning of the support operations to 162. “The Americans recognize the strength of our strikes and have acknowledged that we have forced their entire naval fleet to retreat, a valuable lesson for them,” al-Houthi asserted.

He further explained, “The Americans are re-evaluating their capabilities, tactics, and methods of combating and confronting this level of threat and danger.”

Al-Houthi also highlighted the ongoing challenges faced by US naval warships in the Red Sea, stating, “American warships in the Red Sea are being chased by missiles and drones, and they are fleeing at the highest speed they can muster.”

He concluded by affirming the resilience and advancement of Yemeni forces, “Our army and people remain steadfast, and the development of our capabilities continues to surpass and counter enemy technologies. The enemies have acknowledged the advancement of our missiles, drones, and naval boats due to the intensity and precision of recent strikes.”

Silence serving Israelis

The lack of engagement and concern regarding serious events within Arab and Islamic countries is a crisis afflicting both communities, al-Houthi said.

“One of the most dangerous points of weakness that the enemies count in their favor in the reality of Arabs and Muslims is the weakness of interaction and interest in serious events,” al-Houthi stressed.

Al-Houthi expressed concern over the diminishing attention to the prolonged aggression on Gaza, noting that many people lose interest in following events and reacting to them over time. In that light, he emphasized, “What is happening in Palestine is not ordinary news that one can get used to hearing and remain indifferent to. It is a crime of genocide against an oppressed and Muslim people, a horrific and criminal bloodbath unparalleled.”

Recalling the atrocities committed by the Israeli occupation forces, Al-Houthi cited a particularly heinous act where Israeli soldiers killed an elderly woman by running her over with tanks in front of her relatives in the al-Shujaiya neighborhood. “The Israeli enemy boasts about its horrific crimes, and it is unfortunate that they are completely ignored by Arab regimes,” he said.

July 4, 2024 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

The Debate Should Be a Wake-Up Call For Americans

By Ron Paul | July 1, 2024

There were plenty of surprises in last week’s presidential debate. For one, Americans who rely on the mainstream media for their news learned that they had been lied to for the past three years about President Biden’s capability to do the job he was elected to do.

The realization that the media has been lying for years about Biden is a positive development, as, hopefully, thoughtful Americans might begin wondering what else the media has been lying about. For example, they will find out that the media has been lying to them for years about Russia and Ukraine and about the Middle East and elsewhere. They will find out that our hyper-interventionist foreign policy does not make us safer and more free, but the opposite.

Unfortunately for most Americans, foreign policy is something that happens “over there,” with few direct effects back home. Dumping nearly $200 billion into the lost cause called “Ukraine” may at most seem like an annoyance to many Americans, but it’s not like they are being snatched up by gangs of military recruiters and sent to the front line as is happening to Ukrainian men.

However, $200 billion is real money and the effect on our economy is also real. The bill will be paid by each American family indirectly through the inflation “tax.” Each dollar created out of thin air and spent on the Ukraine debacle devalues the rest of the dollars in circulation.

The danger posed by our foreign policy seemed to escape both candidates, who each tried to convince us they were “tougher” than the other. Despite Donald Trump’s sober and accurate warning that Joe Biden has taken us to the brink of World War III, his solution to the problem is doing more of the same. His stated foreign policy seems to be that were he in office the rest of the world would not dare do anything against his will.

He would have been so tough that Russian president Vladimir Putin would never have dared to invade Ukraine, he claimed. He would have been so tough that Hamas would never have dared attack Israel on October 7th. It’s only Joe Biden’s “weakness” that leads to these disastrous foreign policy outcomes.

But the world does not work that way. Decades of US sanctions placed on any country that fails to do what Washington demands have backfired and led to the emergence of a block of countries united in their resistance to American dictates. Being “tough” on less-powerful countries may work… until it doesn’t. That’s where we are today.

Neither candidate seems to realize that the world has changed.

I have always said that real strength in foreign policy comes from restraint. To prevent these bad outcomes everywhere, stop intervening everywhere. It is not “toughness” that would have prevented Russia from taking action against Ukraine. It is restraint. Not launching a coup in Ukraine in 2014 would have prevented the disastrous war in Ukraine. Just like not stirring up trouble in the South China Sea would prevent a war with China. Not continuing to occupy and intervene in the Middle East would prevent a major regional war which might include Iran and other big players in the region.

Restraint is the real toughness. Non-intervention is the only foreign policy that will keep us safe and free. We’ve tried it the other way and it does not work. Let’s try something different.

July 2, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Turkey resumed oil imports from Iran in March after 4 years: data shows

Press TV – June 30, 2024

Figures by the European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat, show that Turkey resumed importing oil from Iran in March this year nearly four years after it cut shipments to zero to comply with US sanctions on Tehran.

Eurostat data cited in a Sunday report by Iran’s official IRNA news agency showed that Turkey had imported 576 metric tons (mt) of oil from Iran in March and another 485 mt in April.

Turkey’s last oil shipment from Iran had been reported in August 2020 when the country bowed to US pressure and stopped the imports.

The figures are yet another sign that more countries have stopped complying with US sanctions on Iran and are taking delivery of oil shipments from the country.

Eurostat figures showed that Bulgaria and Poland were the two EU members that had imported oil from Iran this year.

Bulgaria raised its oil imports from Iran in the quarter to March by 113% compared to the same period last year to 314 mt.

Poland’s oil imports from Iran, a first reported in the past two years, was a 19 mt shipment that took place in March.

Georgia, an EU candidate country, imported 544 mt of oil from Iran in the March quarter, down from 974 mt reported in the same quarter last year.

Reports suggest more European countries are willing to ignore US sanctions on Iran and import oil from country now that Tehran is selling record volumes of oil to Asian markets.

Iran’s oil exports reached more than 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) in some months of this year and in 2023, up from records lows of 0.3 million bpd reported in 2019 when the US toughened its sanctions Tehran.

June 30, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

If the war expands, will western facilities become the new target banks?

The Cradle | June 28, 2024

Israel’s brutal, nine-month military assault on Gaza has full support from several western-allied states, not only in supplying the occupation army’s war machine with a broad range of armaments and ammunition but also through direct military participation. The United States and Britain, for example, have provided vital reconnaissance and intelligence data and have sent their special forces to assist Israel in military operations.

An 8 June New York Times report revealed that US forces assisted the Israelis in retrieving four Israeli captives from Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least 274 Palestinian civilians and three additional captives and leaving over 698 wounded. According to the paper’s Israeli sources, the US and UK provided intelligence from the air and cyberspace that Israel could not obtain on its own.

On 29 May, the Declassified UK media project reported that London authorized an unprecedented 60 Israel-bound flights using cargo planes that took off from the UK’s RAF Akrotiri air base in Cyprus, a facility covertly used by the US Air Force to move weapons to Israel.

The British government has not revealed the content of the air cargo transported – and maintains that no “lethal aid” is included. London instead claims that RAF flights to the occupation state are used to support its “diplomatic engagement” with Tel Aviv and repatriate British subjects – an odd use of military aircraft when Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport is still operational for regular passenger travel.

London has vigorously invoked its D-Notice since just after the war’s onset, a military and security directive aimed at preventing media outlets from publishing information that could harm national security, specifically relating to British airborne Special Forces (SAS) operations in Gaza. No further information has been revealed since the directive was issued on 28 October 2023.

How western intel penetrates West Asia

But all those concealment efforts were cracked open during Israel’s disproportionate military operation to secure the release of captives during the recent Nuseirat camp fiasco. Trending videos appeared of an Israeli helicopter landing next to the recently-installed $320 million US’ aid pier’ and of ‘aid trucks’ carrying special ops teams that were flanked by armored vehicles during the operation.

Media then reported that dozens of US and UK drones assisted in the Nuseirat camp assault, ostensibly by providing reconnaissance services to the Israeli military.

These incidents highlight not only direct western military participation in the war on Gaza but also the brazen exploitation of diplomatic cover or humanitarian work to prepare and carry out military actions that have led to mass civilian casualties and war crimes, as described by many United Nations institutions.

The question now is whether western facilities and troops will come under target as the war expands, potentially to Lebanon, given the evident collusion of western states in Israel’s aggressions – especially those in flagrant violation of international norms and law.

Although the use of embassies and civilian institutions – in the modern sense – as bases for intelligence gathering and launching special missions is not a new practice and dates back to at least the nineteenth century, current developments in technology and computing have enabled these facilities to act as spying and eavesdropping centers, monitoring and storing information for an entire country.

What was previously impossible has become reality through wireless communication and the Internet. Signal intelligence formerly gained by planting eavesdropping and listening devices can now be accessed via the common smartphone – with data funneled to these centers inside sovereign states.

Aerial view of the US embassy complex, northern Beirut.

‘Second-biggest US Embassy in the world’

Spawling approximately 174 thousand square meters, around 13 kilometers from the Lebanese capital of Beirut, lies the second largest embassy in West Asia – and the world. The new US Embassy in Beirut is surpassed in size only by its counterpart in Baghdad’s “Green Zone.”

Subtracting from the massive size of the embassy and its cost of nearly a billion dollars, there are many questions about the need for such facilities and what they contain.

The computer-generated images published by the embassy show a complex featuring multi-story buildings with tall glass windows, entertainment areas, a swimming pool surrounded by greenery, and views of the Lebanese capital. According to the project website, the complex includes an office, representative housing for employees, community facilities, and associated support facilities.

In May 2023, the Intelligence Online website reported that the massive billion-dollar complex will include a data collection facility, preparing the site as the new regional headquarters for US intelligence. The report says that because of its proximity to Syria, “Lebanon is considered a safe and strategic location for the deployment of intelligence agents already in the region as well as new personnel, who are selected directly from Washington-based agencies.”

Construction of the new US embassy, 13 kilometers north of the Lebanese capital of Beirut.

Although it is not possible to obtain precise information about the design of this embassy, the excavations below surface level, the use of reinforced concrete in the structure, and its fortified location on top of a hill suggest that there is more to its operations, especially since several precedents of the US Beirut diplomatic mission being implicated in the work of intelligence services exist.

The 1983 bombing of the American Embassy revealed a high CIA death toll, with eight killed, including the CIA’s chief West Asia analyst and Near East director, Robert Ames, station chief Kenneth Haass, James Lewis, and most of the CIA’s Beirut employees.

The embassy was not only used as a CIA hub but also as a key regional intelligence base due to Lebanon’s proximity to both the sea and two British NATO bases in southern Cyprus, Dhekelia and Akrotiri, from which reinforcements or helicopter transfers can arrive rapidly onto Lebanese soil. A recent example, in 2020, is Washington’s smuggling of its agent Amer al-Fakhouri from the US embassy using an Osprey helicopter.

British Watchtowers on Lebanon’s borders

On 3 May, Lebanon announced the visit of an official delegation and a senior British intelligence officer the previous month to discuss the construction of new UK-built watchtowers. These are in addition to the more than three dozen watchtowers built by Britain during the Syrian war along the sensitive border between Lebanon and Syria.

According to leaks reported by Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper, the British delegation had asked the Lebanese army “to approve a plan to establish watchtowers along the border with occupied Palestine, similar to those existing on the eastern and northern borders with Syria.”

Following the low-profile visit, Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati disclosed: “Establishing the towers and taking measures along the border are Israel’s conditions for stopping the war with Lebanon.”

Last February, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry received an official Syrian protest note classifying the British watchtowers as a threat to Syrian national security on several levels. The main threat is the tower systems’ sensitive intelligence and espionage equipment, which “shines deep into Syrian territory and collects information about the Syrian interior.”

According to Al-Akhbar’s report, “the information output from this equipment reaches the hands of the British, and the Israeli enemy benefits from the output to target Syrian territory and carry out strikes deep inside Syria.” The Syrian memorandum also refers to “the presence of some British officers at the towers.”

 A 30-foot British watchtower near the Lebanese-Syrian border

Security cameras monitor the surrounding area at a border point on Lebanon’s border with Syria (Photo by the Lebanese Army Command, Orientation Directorate)

The 38 British watchtowers that claim to assist Lebanese authorities in “combating smuggling” raise many questions instead, among them the reasoning behind the erection of such a large number of these structures. Why, too, do the towers contain thermal monitoring, eavesdropping, signal intelligence, and communications equipment – especially in light of the close relationship between Tel Aviv and London and the periodic presence of British officers in these towers under the pretext of training the Lebanese army?

A commanding officer of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), interviewed at length by The Cradle in August 2021, contradicts London’s public claims about the towers, saying: “The aim of the towers today is to monitor the movements of Hezbollah and the Syrians.”

Dutch special forces in Dahiyeh

In March, Hezbollah captured several Dutch military forces operating covertly in Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut, which hosts several offices of the Lebanese Resistance. The detainees claimed they were operating under cover of the Dutch Embassy in Lebanon and were found with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of military equipment and advanced communications devices on their persons and in their vehicles.

During investigations, the Dutchmen claimed they had entered the southern suburb as part of a training exercise for evacuating Dutch citizens and diplomats in the event of a war. However, no Dutch nationals of the embassy resided in that area. It was also found that the servicemen had not communicated about their mission with the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Lebanese security services, or their country’s embassy.

That same month, a Spanish citizen was arrested for filming inside the same southern suburb of Beirut, only to discover later that he had a diplomatic passport and that his phone contained advanced software that prevented access to its data.

These events and a myriad of other examples show that some western governments continuously use western diplomatic and civilian facilities to gather intelligence or conduct special missions training in sovereign Lebanon.

These actions constitute a clear violation of the Vienna Convention on International Relations and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which prohibit embassy diplomats from carrying out espionage activities. These actions don’t only place civilian populations in danger but also the thousands of professional diplomats in the country, all diplomatic missions, and the civilian facilities used as cover for illicit operations. They also drag otherwise immune diplomatic facilities into the legal framework of “hostilities,” intentionally or accidentally.

This danger is reinforced by Israel’s repeated violations of diplomatic and international norms, which are either ignored or protected by western allied states. Israel’s unprecedented military strikes against Iran’s consulate building in Damascus in April, for instance, did not receive the deserved condemnation from most western capitals, which helped it avoid the requisite UN Security Council censure.

Since the basic value of international norms is the precedent and event on which this law is built, the possibility increases that such western-supported attacks will backfire wildly and lead to the retaliatory targeting of western facilities and embassies – all in the context of new legal precedents and customs created that no longer prohibit strikes on suspect non-military facilities.

It is yet unknown to what extent western governments can expect to maintain their double standards in the application of international law and customs, especially if the Gaza war they are materially supporting expands to Lebanon or other West Asian regions.

The Resistance Axis, which has, in the past nine months, normalized military strikes on Israel, missile attacks on Israel-destined shipping vessels, and weekly strikes on US and UK naval fleets, are but one escalation away – as in, a declared war on Lebanon – to create a new set of target banks that surpass their last ones.

Does that then include the US embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the region – and the world – hosting 10 thousand American employees and troops, or, closer to home, the second largest embassy in West Asia, the US embassy in Beirut?

It is difficult to imagine that such facilities will remain immune if western involvement remains apparent, which we already know to be a constant, daily flow of armaments to fuel Israel’s war machinery and provide Tel Aviv with military intelligence and target banks.

It will be even harder to protect diplomatic missions if they reveal themselves to essentially act as military command centers or intelligence hubs during the conduct of war. Targeting these facilities – which are already in breach of the Vienna Convention – can easily fall within the framework of self-defense and reciprocity as long as western states and Israel continue to normalize these illicit activities.

If the Gaza war established entirely new rules of engagement throughout the region, do Israel’s western allies expect to escape unscathed in an expanded war? How do they think they can arm military aggression against a country and yet remain safely in its capital city?

June 28, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment