Without America’s support, Israel in all likelihood would not by now exist and, without the neoconservatives, there would in all likelihood be no American support for Israel.
The interests of Israel have always been neoconservatism’s primary concern and it has been American neoconservatives that have lobbied the hardest to ensure American support for Israel. They have done this by integrating themselves into all levels of American society where they can be of influence including in government, public service, academia, political and social commentary, journalism, and think-tank organisations. Most but not all neoconservatives are, not unsurprisingly, Jewish and most of those that are Jewish hold dual citizenship with Israel despite many of them having no connection to Israel other than actually being Jewish. (All Jews throughout the Diaspora have ‘right of return’ to Israel even if they or generations of their ancestors have no connection to Israel – unlike Palestinians, who were forced from their lands in order to make way for Jews migrating to Israel after WW2, who have no right of return.)
Some neoconservatives, however, are not Jewish but have other motives, either religious or political, for supporting Israel. Others, who may or not be neoconservatives themselves, have close links with neoconservatives and have a financial interest in maintaining a heightened state of security awareness in Israel due to the amount of money the US provides for weapons and fuel, etc.
While neoconservative ideology predominately revolves around the interests of Israel, there are other interwoven ideas that neoconservatives have developed that have been designed to secure support from conservative Americans. One of the ideas taken up by neocons has been the notion of ‘America Exceptionalism’ which, in it’s neoconservative incarnation, promotes American nationalism and the American system of democracy and capitalism and holds these values up as being values that all the world, particularly the Middle East, should aspire to.
While neoconservatism for many remains a somewhat vague ideological concept, there are certain characteristics that are common to all neoconservatives and at the top of the list of those characteristics are: an unswerving loyalty to expansionist Zionism and the concept of a Greater Israel in which Arabs have no place. For some neoconservatives this is quite explicit but for most neoconservatives, particularly in the commentariat, the notion of a Greater Israel is presented only vaguely and usually only by inference. Neoconservatives prominent in government will, as a matter of policy, deny that Israel has any expansionist dreams. One, however, only needs to look at the quickly diminishing map of areas of the West Bank that are available to Palestinians and the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the already annexed Golan Heights to see the reality of Zionist dreams.
Israel’s modus operandi for realising its expansionist dreams is simple: Provoke Palestinians and Arabs in a myriad of small ways that don’t make headlines and then, when the Palestinians or Arabs retaliate, ensure that the retaliation makes the headlines around the world and pretend to be the victim thus justifying a militarily response which may include occupation and then retreat when things quieten down again giving the impression that occupation is only for ‘security purposes’, not territorial gain. This strategy of three steps forward and two steps back is played out over a long time until eventually there is a big enough war to justify permanent occupation, as in the West Bank, and eventual annexation, as in the Golan Heights.
After their success in the Golan Heights but failures in south Lebanon in the 1980s and again in 2006, the Zionists changed tack. They realise now that only a massive threat to their security can justify occupation. For the Israelis, the bigger the threat the better from now on – and there can be no bigger threat than an enemy nation threatening to ‘wipe you off the map with their nuclear weapons’. And Israel has no better ally than the neocons to perpetuate the myth of Iran ‘wiping Israel off the map with nuclear weapons’ thus providing the ultimate threat by which Israel, forever the victim, can react.
By attacking Iran, Israel hopes that the resulting turmoil created in a quickly escalating war that will drag in the US will provide enough cover for Israel to deal with all of its enemies including Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon and any resistance in the West Bank. Israel will use such circumstances to massively occupy all of these places on a more permanent basis using the war to deport Palestinians out of the Gaza into the Sinai peninsula and possibly out of the West Bank into Jordan. Meanwhile, the Israelis will leave it to the Americans to effect ‘regime change’ in Iran and Syria. Egypt will be both threatened if it tries to intervene and rewarded financially by the US if it co-operates. Judging by the latest events in the Sinai peninsula, it seems the current Egyptian government that overthrew the elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has opted to co-operate with Israel.
It is the neoconservatives who are driving the wars in the Middle East – and, while Americans are expected to pay for it, it is all only in Israel’s interests. And, in the end, it will be the people of the Middle East that suffer – Jews and Arabs alike – regardless of who wins or loses.
August 14, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Gaza, Golan Heights, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine, Syria, United States, West Bank, Zionism |
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The United States is engineering the ongoing civil wars across the Middle East to assist the Israeli regime in implementing its scenario of the Greater Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, a political analyst says.
“Why does the US feel the need to destroy Middle Eastern countries? Ironically, it isn’t even about US interests. It’s about Israel’s ‘Oded Yinon plan’ to annihilate Israel’s neighbors and seize all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates for Greater Israel,” Kevin Barrett wrote in a article for the Press TV website.
He laid the blame on Washington for the ongoing conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Egypt.
“Instead of simply murdering anti-government activists to prop up an American-owned puppet dictator, the US now sponsors death squads on both sides of the political-religious divide. The purpose: Create a civil war to weaken the targeted nation,” he pointed out.”
Regarding the appointment of Robert Ford, who is known to be the organizer of death squads in Iraq and Syria, as the next US ambassador to Egypt, Barrett said: “Ford’s appointment sends a clear message: US policymakers want to destroy Egypt in the same way they have destroyed Iraq and Syria – by using death squads and false-flag terror to incite civil war.”
Barrett noted that between 2004 and 2006, Ford was a key figure in creating US-sponsored al-Qaeda death squad units to “brutally and indiscriminately” attack Shia victims “in the hope that it would alienate the larger Sunni community and lead to sectarian civil war.”
“In 2011, Ford was made Ambassador to Syria – and suddenly a wave of violence created the same kind of civil war that still rages in Iraq,” the article read.
Barrett said Ford’s death squads in Syria comprise well-trained professional killers who disguise themselves as the Syrian army soldiers and fire from rooftop at people demonstrating against the policies of President Bashar al-Assad.
Other death squad members were stationed at different rooftops and fired at the Syrian security forces, creating the impression that they were anti-government demonstrators, the analyst wrote.
Barrett predicted that Ford will pursue a similar scenario in Egypt. “They will then encourage the Egyptian junta to arrest, torture, and murder even more peaceful protestors than it already has.”
Egypt has plunged into unrelenting unrest since July 3, when the country’s powerful army removed former president Mohamed Morsi from office and declared chief Justice of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, as the interim president.
Morsi supporters led by Muslim Brotherhood have condemned the move as “a military coup” and vowed to continue their street rallies against the interim government.
Barret argued that the only way to avert this “impending genocide” is that “all Middle Eastern people, regardless of religion or nationality, must unite and resist the Zionist-sponsored destruction of their lands.”
August 13, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism | Egypt, Greater Israel, Israel, Middle East, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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The neoconservatives are going to extraordinary lengths to try and convince the world (and probably themselves) that ‘al Qaeda’ is a huge complex homogeneous business organisation that deals in ‘terrorism’ through various franchise organisations scattered throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.
In a recent article by neocon writers Josh Rogin and Eli Lake in The Daily Beast it was actually claimed that the leaders of the various ‘franchises’ around the world held a conference call to plan acts of terrorism. According to the report from Rogin and Lake we are supposed to believe that up to 20 ‘al Qaeda’ franchise managers were in on the conference call – a call which ultimately led to the US and some of their allies shutting down embassies in the Middle East and elsewhere. What led the participants of the conference to believe that their calls were not being monitored remains unexplained by the writers and their sources.
According to Rogin and Lake, participants included:
…representatives or leaders from Nigeria’s Boko Haram, the Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and more obscure al Qaeda affiliates such as the Uzbekistan branch. Also on the call were representatives of aspiring al Qaeda affiliates such as al Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula… The presence of aspiring al Qaeda affiliates operating in the Sinai was one reason the State Department closed the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, according to one U.S. intelligence official. “These guys already proved they could hit Eilat. It’s not out of the range of possibilities that they could hit us in Tel Aviv,” the official said.
US intelligence official? ‘… hit us in Tel Aviv’? Surely a slip of the tongue; tell me he meant Washington.
Just to reinforce the delusion, Abe Greenwald, a neoconservative propagandist writing in Commentary attempts to paint a picture of ‘al Qaeda in the Sinai’ that’s not so much bigger than life but more from a vivid imagination.
Do these neocons honestly think that any real such organisations would be dumb enough to have such a link-up conference?
Clearly they do because they also think that ordinary folk around the planet are dumb enough to believe their delusional nonsense.
All we have here are neocons perpetuating the myth of a larger than life ‘al-Qaeda’.
(For those interested, there is apparently an ‘al Qaeda’ franchise currently available in the Gaza Strip due to the Israelis defaulting on the franchise fee for one they attempted to start back in 2002.)
August 9, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Daily Beast, Eli Lake, Josh Rogin, Middle East, Sinai Peninsula, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan |
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Last week the US and some of their allies shut up diplomatic shop in various places through North Africa and the Middle East due to a threat heard on the ‘al Qaeda’ grapevine that a big attack was being planned for the end Ramadan.
It seems now that the panic is over. The Guardian reports that the US on Wednesday carried out a number of drone strikes that apparently killed seven ‘al Qaeda’ operatives of the ‘al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’ (AQAP) franchise who had reportedly been planning to attack various towns and oil installations in south Yemen.
Meanwhile, US officials are using the entire experience to vindicate the existence of the NSA, recently brought into disrepute following the defection of ex-NSA operative turned whistleblower Edward Snowden to Russia, but, more importantly, the US is using the experience to justify the continued use of drones after international criticism following a large number of civilian deaths associate with their use.
The stories of ‘terrorist chatter about major attacks’ remain just stories. The subsequent publicity resulting from the shutdown of embassies throughout the region gave the stories the feel of imminent catastrophic terrorism – all of which is fed to the people of the world without an iota of any evidence to support the stories.
Do you feel safer now? Does the idea of drones roaming the skies over our planet killing America’s enemies at the whim of its President make you feel more secure? Are you happy to lose your right to privacy and judicial process in exchange for feeling safe from an Islamist in the Yemen who has been enraged by the deaths of family or friends by an errant drone missile?
If you do, then the latest propaganda exercise brought to you by the US government has worked. I you don’t feel safer and, indeed, feel more sceptical, then fear not; there will always be more threats to come to help convince you.
August 8, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism | al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Middle East, North Africa, United States, Yemen |
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The critical issue of the ever expanding illegal Israeli colonial settlements on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) in the West Bank (WB), which are peace killing in eastern Jerusalem in particular, will make or break the newly resumed Palestinian – Israeli negotiations.
On July 29, 2013, those negotiations were resumed in Washington, D.C.; they are scheduled to begin in earnest in mid-August. President Barak Obama hailed them as a “promising step forward.” However, in view of more than twenty years of failed U.S. – sponsored peace making, the new talks “promise” nothing more than being a new round of failure and “conflict management,” in spite of Obama’s belief that “peace is both possible and necessary.”
According to Albert Einstein, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is “insanity,” but that is exactly what John Kerry seems to have achieved after six tours of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East since he was sworn in as the U.S. Secretary of State.
Unless the issue of settlements is addressed in accordance with international and humanitarian law as well as in compliance with the resolutions of the United Nations, Kerry will be shooting himself in the legs and his success in his peace mission would be worse than his failure. The EU’s recent anti-settlement move highlighted this fact.
However, Kerry seems and sounds determined to pursue his mission on the basis of contradictory terms of reference, laid down by the official letter sent by the former U.S. president George W. Bush to former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon in April 2004, whereby the United States pledged to annex the major Jewish settlements to Israel, to redraw its borders accordingly and to exclude the right of return of Palestinian refugees from any agreement in the future on solving the Arab – Israeli conflict in Palestine peacefully.
Top on the agenda of the resumed negotiations are borders and security; Israel has never defined its borders nor respected the borders set by the United Nations resolution No. 181 of 1947; in the name of security, it demands borders that compromise the viability of any independent Palestinian state on the WB.
From U.S. and Israeli perspectives, “the resumption of negotiations is seen as an objective in itself,” in the words of Ghassan al-Khatib, the former spokesman of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
David Ignatius on August 2 described kerry’s efforts as a “mission impossible,” which if it fails “this time, it will cost the parties dearly;” he described the ensuing negotiations as “a kind of a benign trap, once the prey have been lured inside, it’s difficult for them to escape without either accomplishing .. peace or damaging themselves.”
Indeed in the long run, success of the resumed negotiations warn of creating a political environment that would give “legitimacy” to a new Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip to remove the “armed resistance” there to their outcome, with the overt blessing of the U,S. sponsor of the negotiations and the discreet blessing of the Arab “peace partners.”
However, the expected failure of kerry’s efforts could be worse than the failure of the Camp David summit meeting in September 2000 of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and U.S. former president Bill Clinton.
By sending his negotiators to Washington, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is again compromising his personal credibility, but worse still he risks a Palestinian implosion in the case of success, but in case the negotiations fail he risks a Palestinian explosion in rebellion against both his PA and the Israeli occupation.
Abbas has already antagonized his old allies among the members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is considered the third influential Palestinian power after the two rivals of Fatah and Hamas – who accuse him of reneging on their consensus not to resume negotiations without a stop to the expansion of Israeli colonial settlements first.
National reconciliation between the PLO and Hamas will be put on hold for at least the nine months which the negotiators set as the time frame for their negotiations.
His decision put on hold as well any Palestinian new attempt to join international organizations to build on the UN General Assembly’s recognition of Palestine as a non-member state in September 2012.
The new talks are merely “the beginning of the beginning” of “a long process” in which “there is no guarantee” for success, according to former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
All this boils down to winning Israel more time to dictate whatever borders it deems “secured,” by creating more facts on the OPT. For Palestinians, this is a waste of time that makes their dream of a national homeland in an independent state more remote. No surprise then the Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu on July 27 saw in the resumption of negotiations “a vital strategic interest of the state of Israel.”
Kerry’s personal success seems to have pressured Palestinians into being fooled again into jumping to “final status” negotiations as the best way to absolve Israel from honoring its commitments in compliance with the “interim” accords it had signed with the PLO.
Bitter Past Experience
The Palestinian wide –spread opposition to the resumption of talks is accusing Abbas of being a “believer” in peace who is about to get “stung from the same hole twice,” in reference to the bloody outcome of the U.S. – hosted Camp David summit in September 2000.
Then, the U.S. administration of Clinton pressured Arafat into “final status” negotiations. Barak, then the Israeli prime minister, found in the Camp David final status talks a golden pretext not to implement the third stage of the Oslo accords, namely to withdraw the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) from about 95% of the West Bank (WB) area and hand it over to the PA.
Linking the WB and Gaza by a “corridor” that allows free movement of people and goods between them was another commitment that has yet to be honored by Israel.
“Trying” and failing is better than “doing nothing,” Kerry said, but the failure of the Camp David trilateral summit led to the second Palestinian Intifada (uprising); ever since both the failure and the uprising were additional pretexts for the successive Israeli governments not to honor both commitments; moreover, both pretexts were the justification they used to reoccupy militarily all the PA areas and to coordinate with the U.S. the “removal” of Arafat and the “change” of his regime.
The critical issue of the illegal Israeli colonial settlements on the WB will make or break the new Kerry – sponsored talks. On July 29, James M. Wall wrote: “Israel plays the peace process game not to give away ill-gotten gains, but to protect them;” settlements come on top of those “gains;” they were “gained” under the umbrella of the “peace process,” with the tacit blessing of the well – intentioned Palestinian negotiator who did not make their removal a precondition to the resumption of peace talks right from the start.
The 2000 summit collapsed because of the Israeli insistence on continued building of colonial settlements, especially in eastern Jerusalem, which doomed to failure the peace process launched in Madrid in 1991. kerry’s resumed negotiations opened while the settlement expansion continues unabated. Now Abbas seems too late to rectify this grave mistake. No surprise the failure of the negotiations seems inevitable and will only revive the Palestinian – Israeli stalemate.
Israel’s 2013 Herzliya Assessment concluded: “The status-quo in the Palestinian territories is not sustainable, and definitely not durable… the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate is untenable. It will lead to a Palestinian mass public uprising with sporadic violence.”
Obama appealed to the negotiators to “approach these talks in good faith,” but the Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee, Yasser Abed Rabbo, questioned the “good faith” of the U.S. and Israel who were “conferring about security” without the Palestinians, as if it was “their bilateral security,” although security is “a central and fundamental issue of ours and concerns our future as a whole.” Abed Rabbo’s Israeli partner in the Geneva Initiative, former cabinet minister Yossi Beilin, writing in The Jerusalem post on July 30, questioned the “good faith” of Netanyahu who “has reneged on all that he has said throughout his political career.”
Defying the bitter experience of twenty – year old peace process and strong opposition at home, Abbas seems voluntarily dragged into his last test of U.S. credibility as the peace broker, which will make or break his political career at the age of 76 years.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com
August 7, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Camp David, Israel, John Kerry, Middle East, Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization, West Bank, Zionism |
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For 25 years now, Hezbollah has been engaged in a war with many powerful intelligence outfits from around the world. These intelligence agencies have devoted tremendous resources to collect information on the party, in addition to pursuing both its civilian and military activities, not to mention carrying out assassinations against its cadre and leadership.
Israel has played a key role in these efforts, but it is hardly alone. After the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005, Hezbollah was subjected to the most ferocious campaign against it, with former US ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman admitting before Congress that Washington spent $500 million to undermine the party’s image.
After the outbreak of the Syrian uprising and Hezbollah’s open declaration of its involvement in the country’s fighting, the campaign intensified, with mounting threats to the party and its supporters that they may be subjected to revenge attacks.
First, the Resistance’s Dahiyeh stronghold was shelled with rockets. Similar attacks followed on many towns and villages in Baalbeck and Hermel. These were followed by roadside bombs targeting Hezbollah members on the main Lebanese highway to Syria, culminating in the massive Bir al-Abed blast in the heart of Dahiyeh.
Hezbollah is in a state of high alert due to the fact that it has been forced to fight simultaneously on two fronts. This has prompted Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah to tell the party’s cadre that they must be prepared for attacks that may involve both Syrian and Lebanese groups, without dropping their guard against their main enemy – Israel.
On the eve of Hezbollah’s engagement in the battle of Qusayr, it initiated a plan that involved:
– a series of practical steps to prevent the killing of Lebanese civilians held by the Syrian opposition in the north of the country;
– securing areas that may become targets of reprisals, including the border areas, Beirut, and South Lebanon.
The question today is: Who thought up an adventure of this kind against the Resistance? I wonder whether they thought about the party’s reaction.
Who are these people? Are they groups within the Free Syrian Army or the Salafi al-Nusra Front? Are they jihadi elements in Lebanon active in the North and Bekaa? Could they be Palestinians who have abandoned their cause to work as agents serving another agenda?
Who is helping them inside Lebanon? What are the Internal Security Forces (who take orders from the Future Party) doing about it? They seem to care little about people’s safety and are mainly concerned with collecting information on the Resistance.
In any case, Hezbollah has surprised friend and foe on more than one occasion in their intelligence capabilities. So, will the Resistance surprise us again by revealing who is behind these attacks?
August 5, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Wars for Israel | Free Syrian Army, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Middle East, Rafic Hariri, Rafik Hariri, Zionism |
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Neoconservatives have quickly jumped on the ‘al Qaeda is still a threat’ bandwagon after the weekend’s shutdown of many Western embassies throughout North Africa and the Middle East due, so we are told, to as yet unexplained and unspecified threat chatter between various so-called ‘al Qaeda’ groups.
Con Coughlin, a British neoconservative journalist with the UK’s Daily Telegraph writes.
For an organisation that is said to be in terminal decline, al-Qaeda will draw immense satisfaction from the events of this past weekend, when it demonstrated its ability to disrupt the work of Western governments by forcing the temporary closure of dozens of diplomatic missions throughout the Arab world.
Coughlin concedes that he has no idea what the threat is; only that “American intelligence officials are convinced that al-Qaeda is planning a spectacular attack to mark the festival of Eid, which comes at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan” (Thursday 8 August 2013).
Coughlin takes the opportunity to expand the propaganda by mentioning ‘al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’ and referring to it as an “al Qaeda franchise”.
There are, it seems, a number of ‘al Qaeda franchises’ scattered around the broader region. Neoconservative writers are keen to mention them often in their various articles as they perpetuate the al Qaeda myth as being some kind of homogenous organisation that is well disciplined and structured and operating via a central ‘head office’ based somewhere in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
Well known warmonger and neocon, Max Boot writing in Commentary today lists some of these ‘franchises’. He writes:
News of al-Qaeda’s imminent demise was, it seems, greatly exaggerated… Far from going out of business, al-Qaeda has spread, via its regional affiliates, to North Africa (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), the Persian Gulf region (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), and Iraq and Syria (al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).
For Boot, the objective of his article is two-fold; first, to perpetuate the myth of a vast Islamic extremist organisation determined to destroy America and Israel, and, two, to justify the existence of a massive US security network and, in particular, the importance of the work of the NSA. This, in turn, justifies a massive expenditure on the military and especially in the new science of robotic surveillance and remote and robotically controlled weapons all aimed at keeping the West and the US in particular, as top dogs in the superpower stakes.
Ever since 9/11, al Qaeda has become a useful label that can be attached to any Islamic enemy of the West regardless of whether or not any of them actually do have any connection to the tiny hard-core original organisation that clustered around Osama bin Laden up until his demise in December 2001. The Israelis even tried to create a bogus ‘al Qaeda in Palestine’ group – but they were soon exposed as fakes.
Makes you wonder about the origins of the other groups. And, of course, if they’re such a tightly organised group, how come they’re fighting among themselves in Syria – and how come the most sophisticated ‘terror’ plot since several airliners were used to attack targets on 9/11 has been some bloke who tried to blow up his Y-fronts?
August 5, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Middle East, North Africa, Osama Bin Laden, United States |
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On July 17, a new Israeli news channel, dubbed i24 News and inspired by France24, began broadcasting from the city of Jaffa in occupied Palestine, where it is based. The channel was launched with the aim of showing the “true image” of Israel, especially in Europe, where public perceptions of the Jewish state have become drastically unfavorable.
Before anyone, in Lebanon or beyond, claims that Israel has launched a neutral news channel, we want to underscore the fact that the purpose of the channel is the opposite of “showing the true face of Israel,” as i24’s management has claimed.
i24 News began nearly two years ago, when the company established Guysen TV, a French-language Israeli channel. i24 hired Frank Melloul, a French-Israeli of Moroccan origin, as the channel’s CEO. Melloul previously served at the French foreign ministry, and later as a media adviser, then as director of strategy at Audiovisuel Extérieur de la France (AEF), before being appointed as head of international development at France24.
The French character of the new Israeli channel, which also broadcasts in English and Arabic (for a few hours only for the time being), does not stop here. Patrick Drahi, i24 News’ biggest shareholder, is a French-Israeli businessman. Drahi is also the controlling shareholder of the Israeli HOT Cable TV Company and HOT mobile, a major mobile network operator in the Jewish state.
For several years now, Israel’s racist and criminal side has been exposed to the European public, despite the European governments’ intricate ties with Israel.
i24 ostensibly belongs to the private sector, with its chief executives denying any financial ties with the state of Israel. Israeli media coverage of i24 has quoted sources at the channel as saying the channel will help Israel show the world that it is “vibrant” and “modern.”
After a year and half of preparations, the channel continues to encounter problems finding correspondents in the Arab countries – despite having “Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze journalists” in its crew of 170 Israeli reporters, according to the CEO Melloul. In October 2012, direct negotiations with foreign correspondents in Lebanon failed, prompting the channel to hire GRNlive, a London-based group, to secure reporters in the region, without disclosing the channel’s name or identity.
GRNlive produces and supplies reports, redistributing them to other TV channels, and also provides “correspondent on air within minutes,” according to the company’s official website. Still, foreign correspondents in Lebanon could not be fooled. One such correspondent we spoke to said, “A woman in London who is originally from Iraq negotiated with me to make a live report from Beirut. I asked her who the report was for, and she had no choice but to disclose the real identity of the end buyer.”
The journalist had been contacted by GRNlive a few days ago when the European Union designated Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist organization. He went on to say, “Naturally, I was upset because she would not tell me who the client was, but I refused and told her that I was based in Lebanon, and was not interested in anything that could jeopardize my career here.”
We also heard similar stories from two other foreign correspondents, including one who is French. It seems that the Israeli TV channel is desperate to get reports from here, albeit its attempts have all failed so far.
Meanwhile, one quick look at the channel’s website reveals its true intent to mislead public opinion. For instance, in an article about Mohammed al-Dura, the Palestinian child who was killed by the Israeli army while in the arms of his civilian father, in front of a French TV camera, the author – unsurprisingly – ends up dismissing the incident, and misleading the uninformed readers and viewers.
When it comes to coverage of Lebanon, all we could find is a French editorial about singer-turned-radical Islamist Fadl Shaker. As to why the channel’s website chose Shaker, I found the answer in the third paragraph, which described Shaker as a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights, before turning to jihad under the wing of Salafi cleric Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir, killing 17 soldiers in the Lebanese army.
In other words, the banal article sought to link one’s support of Palestine with one’s metamorphosis into a jihadi terrorist who kills soldiers. Despite this banality and the usual vitriol that [we] have become so much accustomed to in Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, we must remain vigilant about what i24 broadcasts, and we must counter it. Unfortunately, al-Manar TV’s French-language website is probably not sufficient for this task.
August 4, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | European Union, i24 News, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Zionism |
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Why, after 65 years, is the Palestinian homeland still under foreign military occupation and total blockade when international law and the United Nations say it shouldn’t be?
And why have the Palestinians been pressured – yet again – to submit to ‘direct negotiations’, lamb versus voracious wolf, to haggle and plead for their freedom?
The answer appears to lie in the deliberate hash made of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 of November 1967. Here is what it said:
The UN Security Council…
Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,
Emphasizing further that all Member States in their acceptance of the Charter of the United Nations have undertaken a commitment to act in accordance with Article 2 of the Charter,
1. Affirms that the fulfilment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:
(i) Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories [i..e. Gaza, West Bank including Jerusalem, and Golan Heights belonging to Syria] occupied in the recent conflict;
(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
2. Affirms further the necessity
(a) For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;
(b) For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;
(c) For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every State in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones;
3. Requests the Secretary-General to designate a Special Representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in this resolution;
4. Requests the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council on the progress of the efforts of the Special Representative as soon as possible.
It was adopted unanimously.
Article 2 of the UN Charter referred to states, among other things, that all Members “shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered” and “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”.
Nothing too difficult there for men of integrity and goodwill, one would have thought. But after 45 years nothing has happened to give effect to these fine words or to deliver the tiniest semblance of peace, or allow the Palestinians to live in security and free from threats or acts of force. As for law and justice, these words seem to have been dropped from the UN dictionary.
This dereliction of duty began with careless use of language – or more exactly the non-use of a particular word, the “the” word which should have been inserted in front of “territories” but was deliberately omitted by the schemers who drafted the resolution.
No Intention of Making Israel Withdraw
Arthur J. Goldberg, the US Ambassador to the UN in 1967 and a key draftee of Resolution 242, stated: “There is lacking a declaration requiring Israel to withdraw from the (or all the) territories occupied by it on and after June 5, 1967. Instead, the resolution stipulates withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal. And it can be inferred from the incorporation of the words ‘secure and recognized boundaries’ that the territorial adjustments to be made by the parties in their peace settlements could encompass less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories.”
According to Lord Caradon, then the UK Ambassador to the UN and another key drafter, “The essential phrase which is not sufficiently recognized is that withdrawal should take place to secure and recognized boundaries, and these words were very carefully chosen: they have to be secure and they have to be recognized. They will not be secure unless they are recognized. And that is why one has to work for agreement. This is essential. I would defend absolutely what we did. It was not for us to lay down exactly where the border should be. I know the 1967 border very well. It is not a satisfactory border, it is where troops had to stop in 1947, just where they happened to be that night, that is not a permanent boundary … ” In a 1974 statement he said: “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of 4 June 1967… That’s why we didn’t demand that the Israelis return to them and I think we were right not to.”
Professor Eugene Rostow, then US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and also helping to draft the resolution, went on record in 1991 explaining that Resolution 242 ”calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until ‘a just and lasting peace in the Middle East’ is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel is required to withdraw its armed forces ‘from territories’ it occupied during the Six-Day War – not from ‘the’ territories nor from ‘all’ the territories, but from some of the territories, which included the Sinai Desert, the West Bank, the
Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.” Israel was not to be forced back to the fragile and vulnerable Armistice Demarcation Lines (the ‘Green Line’).
So according to Rostow Israel would get to keep some unspecified territory it seized in war. Goldberg and Rostow were both Jewish by the way, and Zionists. Extraordinary how the US always wheels in such people to ‘resolve’ an Israeli-provoked Middle East crisis when there’s no shortage of non-Jews for the task. Like Kerry has recruited Martin Indyk to supervise the bogus peace talks in Washington…
In the meantime Arab leaders had picked up on the fact that the precious “the” word in relation to territories was included in other language versions of the draft resolution (e.g. the French document) and it was therefore widely understood to mean that Israel must withdraw from all territories captured in 1967. Unfortunately, under international law, English is the official language and the English version was the conclusive reference point.
For Israel Mr Eban said: “The establishment for the first time of agreed and secure boundaries as part of a peace settlement is the only key which can unlock the present situation and set on foot a momentum of constructive and peaceful progress. As the representative of the United Kingdom indicated in his address on 16 November, the action to be taken must be within the framework of a permanent peace and of secure and recognized boundaries. It has been pointed out in the Security Council, and it is stated in the 1949 Agreements, that the armistice demarcation lines have never been regarded as boundaries so that, as the representative of the United States has said, the boundaries between Israel and her neighbors: “must be mutually worked out and recognized by the parties themselves as part of the peace-making process” [1377th meeting, para. 65].
“We continue to believe that the States of the region, in direct negotiation with each other, have the sovereign responsibility for shaping their common future. It is the duty of international agencies at the behest of the parties to act in the measure that agreement can be promoted and a mutually accepted settlement can be advanced. We do not believe that Member States have the right to refuse direct negotiation with those to whom they address their claims. It is only when they come together that the Arab States and Israel will reveal the full potentialities of a peaceful settlement.”
‘Acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible’, right?
So here was Israel, cued by the devious drafters, pressing for direct negotiations as far back as 1967 sensing that defenseless and impoverished Palestine, conveniently under their military jackboot, would be ‘easy meat’.
But the Russian, Kuznetsov, wasn’t fooled. “In the resolution adopted by the Security Council, the ‘withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict’ becomes the first necessary principle for the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Near East. We understand the decision taken to mean the withdrawal of Israel forces from all, and we repeat, all territories belonging to Arab States and seized by Israel following its attack on those States on 5 June 1967. This is borne out by the preamble to the United Kingdom draft resolution [S/8247] which stresses the ‘inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war’. It follows that the provision contained in that draft relating to the right of all States in the Near East ‘to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries’ cannot serve as a pretext for the maintenance of Israel forces on any part of the Arab territories seized by them as a result of war.”
He insisted that this was the basic content of the resolution and how it had been interpreted by all the members of the Security Council. “In the resolution presented by Latin American countries [A/L.523/Rev.1] and in that submitted by non-aligned States [A/L.522/Rev.3], the provision relating to the withdrawal of forces was stated so clearly that it could not possibly have been misinterpreted.”
He added that the most important task was secure the withdrawal of Israel forces from all territory occupied by them as a result of aggression.
Your average native English speaker would not have been fooled by a missing word either. To the man on the Clapham omnibus “withdrawal from territories occupied in the recent conflict” plainly means “get the hell out of there”.
US Secretary of State Dean Rusk writing in 1990 remarked: “We wanted [it] to be left a little vague and subject to future negotiation because we thought the Israeli border along the West Bank could be “rationalized”; certain anomalies could easily be straightened out with some exchanges of territory, making a more sensible border for all parties…. But we never contemplated any significant grant of territory to Israel as a result of the June 1967 war. On that point we and the Israelis to this day remain sharply divided. This situation could lead to real trouble in the future. Although every President since Harry Truman has committed the United States to the security and independence of Israel, I’m not aware of any commitment the United States has made to assist Israel in retaining territories seized in the Six-Day War.”
1967 borders not good enough? Back to the ’47 lines, then,
Resolution 242 in any event should have specified a line to which Israel’s forces had to withdraw, even if it didn’t represent the fullest extent. How else was a genuine ‘peace process’ supposed to get off the ground? Was one party supposed to bargain from a position of intolerable weakness, still under brutal military occupation, half starved, isolated and imprisoned within the disconnected remnants of his homeland?
As to those much-bandied words “agreed and secure boundaries”, had UN members so easily forgotten about the Palestinian lands seized and ethnically cleansed before 1967? You know, those important towns and cities and hundreds of villages that had been allocated to a future Palestinian state but were seized by Jewish terrorist groups and Israel militia while the ink was still drying on the 1947 UN Partition Plan? Actually, recognized borders do exist. They were set down in the Partition and incorporated into UN Resolution 181. They are “recognized” because they were duly voted on and accepted by the Zionists and their allies, were they not?
As everyone knows, Israel has never declared its borders nor respected the UN-specified borders. It is still hell-bent on thieving lands and resources, so no border is ever secure enough or final. Nor is the Israeli regime likely to agree to secure borders for a Palestinian state, should one ever emerge. So going down the talks path again and again to seek sensible agreement is fruitless. Borders should be imposed by the proper international bodies and enforced. That has to be the start-point. Adjustments can then be made with mutual consent.
Incidentally, Article 33 of the UN Charter says that parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger international peace and security, shall first of all seek a solution by negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.
A judicial settlement? That would be something to see.
Article 37 then says: “Should the parties to a dispute of the nature referred to in Article 33 fail to settle it by the means indicated in that Article, they shall refer it to the Security Council. If the Security Council deems that the continuance of the dispute is in fact likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, it shall decide whether to take action under Article 36 or to recommend such terms of settlement as it may consider appropriate.”
Article 36 declares that “in making recommendations under this Article the Security Council should also take into consideration that legal disputes should as a general rule be referred by the parties to the International Court of Justice in accordance with the provisions of the Statute of the Court.”
What is this if not a legal dispute? The UN, having twiddled its thumbs, now has much to do to get to grips with the problem it created nearly 66 years ago.
With all these options apparently open to the Palestinians, why have they again allowed themselves to become locked in discredited ‘negotiations’ with a disreputable enemy that keeps them under brutal occupation and holds a gun to their heads? Indeed, why does that mighty guardian of world peace, the UN, permit it?
The UN, for its part, has proved itself time and again not fit for purpose. On the Middle East it remains especially dysfunctional. We all know it, and we’re all in despair. Except the Israelis and their loathsome pimps – they’re having a laugh.
July 31, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United Nations, United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, Zionism |
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At the heart of all politics lies cold, hard opportunism. New circumstances, changed alliances and unexpected events will always conspire to alter one’s calculations to benefit a core agenda.
In the Middle East today, those calculations are being adjusted with a frequency unseen for decades.
In Egypt and Syria, for instance, popular sentiment is genuinely divided on where alliances and interests lie. Half of Egyptians seem convinced that deposed President Mohammed Mursi is the resident US-Israeli stooge, while the other half believe it is Egypt’s military that is carrying out those foreign agendas.
In Syria the same can be said for Syrians conflicted on whether President Bashar al-Assad or the external-based Syrian National Council (SNC) most benefits Israeli and American hegemonic interests in the region.
But Egyptians and Syrians, who point alternating fingers at Islamists or the state as being tools of imperialism, have this wrong: Empire is opportunistic. It has ways to benefit from both.
There is another vastly more destructive scenario being missed while Arabs busy themselves with conspiracies and speculative minutiae: A third option far more damaging to all.
Balkanization of Key Mideast States
At a June 19 event at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger touched upon an alarming new refrain in western discourse on Mideast outcomes; a third strategy, if all else fails, of redrawn borders along sectarian, ethnic, tribal or national lines that will shrink the political/military reach of key Arab states and enable the west to reassert its rapidly-diminishing control over the region. Says Kissinger about two such nations:
“There are three possible outcomes (in Syria). An Assad victory. A Sunni victory. Or an outcome in which the various nationalities agree to co-exist together but in more or less autonomous regions, so that they can’t oppress each other. That’s the outcome I would prefer to see. But that’s not the popular view…First of all, Syria is not a historic state. It was created in its present shape in 1920, and it was given that shape in order to facilitate the control of the country by France, which happened to be after UN mandate…The neighboring country Iraq was also given an odd shape, that was to facilitate control by England. And the shape of both of the countries was designed to make it hard for either of them to dominate the region.”
While Kissinger frankly acknowledges his preferred option of “autonomous regions,” most western government statements actually pretend their interest lies in preventing territorial splits. Don’t be fooled. This is narrative-building and scene-setting all the same. Repeat something enough – i.e., the idea that these countries could be carved up – and audiences will not remember whether you like it or not. They will retain the message that these states can be divided.
It is the same with sectarian discourse. Western governments are always warning against the escalation of a Sunni-Shia divide. Yet they are knee-deep in deliberately fueling Shia-Sunni conflicts throughout the region, particularly in states where Iran enjoys significant influence (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq) or may begin to gain some (Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen).
“Seeding” Sectarianism to Break Up States
If ever a conspiracy had legs, this one is it. Stirring Iranian-Arab and Sunni-Shiite strife to its advantage has been a major US policy objective since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Wikileaks helped shed light on some of Washington’s machinations just as Arab uprisings started to hit our TV screens.
A 2006 State Department cable that bemoans Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s strengthened position in Syria outlines actionable plans to sow discord within the state, with the goal of disrupting Syrian ties with Iran. The theme? “Exploiting” all “vulnerabilities”:
“PLAY ON SUNNI FEARS OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE: There are fears in Syria that the Iranians are active in both Shia proselytizing and conversion of, mostly poor, Sunnis. Though often exaggerated, such fears reflect an element of the Sunni community in Syria that is increasingly upset by and focused on the spread of Iranian influence in their country through activities ranging from mosque construction to business. Both the local Egyptian and Saudi missions here, (as well as prominent Syrian Sunni religious leaders), are giving increasing attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue.”
Makes one question whether similar accusations about the “spread of Shiism” in Egypt held any truth whatsoever, other than to sow anti-Shia and anti-Iran sentiment in a country until this month led by the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.
A 2009 cable from the US Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia continues this theme. Mohammad
Naji al-Shaif, a tribal leader with close personal ties to then-Yemeni President Ali Abdallah
Saleh and his inner circle says that key figures “are privately very skeptical of Saleh’s
claims regarding Iranian assistance for the Houthi rebels”:
Shaif told
EconOff on December 14 that (Saudi Government’s Special Office for
Yemen Affairs) committee members privately shared his view that Saleh was providing false or exaggerated
information on Iranian assistance to the Houthis in order to
enlist direct Saudi involvement and regionalize the conflict. Shaif said that one committee member told him that “we know
Saleh is lying about Iran, but there’s nothing we can do
about it now.”
That didn’t stop Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lying through her teeth to a Senate Committee a few short years later: “We know that they – the Iranians are very much involved in the opposition movements in Yemen.”
US embassy cables from Manama, Bahrain in 2008 continue in the same vein:
“Bahraini government officials sometimes privately tell U.S. official visitors that some Shi’a oppositionists are backed by Iran. Each time this claim is raised, we ask the GOB to share its evidence. To date, we have seen no convincing evidence of Iranian weapons or government money here since at least the mid-1990s… In post’s assessment, if the GOB had convincing evidence of more recent Iranian subversion, it would quickly share it with us.”
Yet as Bahraini rulers continue to violently repress peaceful protest in the Shia-majority state two years into that country’s popular uprising, their convenient public bogeyman mirrors that of Washington: Iranian interference.
Washington was extremely quick to activate anti-Shia and anti-Iran narratives as the Arab uprisings kicked off. Barely three months into 2011, the US military ran a secret exercise to fine-tune a “storyline” that perpetuates differences between Arabs and Iranian, Sunni and Shia.
Here are some of the premises and questions included in CENTCOM’s Arabs versus Iranians exercise. (Note: The exercise refers to Iranians as “Persians.”)
Premise: “The Arab-Persian dynamic is a divide. History, religion, language and culture simply pose too many obstacles to overcome.”
Premise: “A general Arab inferiority complex relative to Persians means that many Arabs are fearful of Persian expansion and hegemony throughout the Middle East. In their minds, the Persian Empire has never gone away and it is more self-sufficient than most Arab states.”
Premise: “Barring a “clash of civilizations” – i.e., a modern crusades, Islam vs Judeo-Christians, warfare between the West/Israel vs Arabs/Persians – there does not appear to be a scenario where Arabs and Persians will join forces against the US/West.”
Question: “Is it appropriate to frame the discussion as Arab-Persian or is Sunni-Shia a more appropriate framework?”
Question: “Assuming a schism, what could unite Arabs and Persians, even temporarily?”
These narratives assume two things: that the division between Iranians and Arabs is a fact and that the greater unity of the two groups in the wake of the Arab uprisings is a potential threat to U.S. interests. Hence the worried question: What could unite them, even temporarily?
“Small States” Weaken Arabs
As manufactured conflict increases in the region, options too diminish. Because of the strategic importance of the Middle East and its vital oil and gas reserves…because of the desire to maintain stability in key states that safeguard US interests like Israel, Jordan, NATO-member Turkey, Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf…open-ended conflict in multiple states is, simply put, undesirable.
Over the course of the Syrian conflict – and certainly in the past year when Assad’s departure looked less likely – the West, through media and “pundit” intermediaries, has often floated the idea of dividing the state into several smaller parts along sectarian and ethnic lines. While framed as a means to “prevent further conflict,” this idea actually follows the American experiment of Iraqi federalism that effectively sought to carve Iraq into three distinct Sunni, Shia and Kurdish zones.
Forget that you cannot find five non-Kurdish Syrians or Iraqis of credible national renown who would back the idea of fragmenting their nation. This is distinctly a Washington vision. Or rather, a western one, with Israeli fingerprints all over it.
Israel’s vision of “Small States”
In 1982, as Israel warmed up its operation to invade multi-sect Lebanon, Israeli foreign ministry strategician Oded Yinon inked a master plan to redraw the Mideast into small warring cantons that would never again be able to threaten the Jewish state’s regional primacy:
“Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan.”
“Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority. If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt. The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized government as to date, is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run.”
“Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.”
“There is no chance that Jordan will continue to exist in its present structure for a long time, and Israel’s policy, both in war and in peace, ought to be directed at the liquidation of Jordan under the present regime and the transfer of power to the Palestinian majority.”
Beware the Artificial Break-up of States
As opposed to western narratives about Arab “revolutions” heralding the arrival of “freedom and democracy,” the Russians took a more cautious view of events.
As early as February 2011, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that revolutions across the Arab world could see fanatics coming to power, leading to “fires for years and the spread of extremism in the future.” The breaking up of states in the aftermath of these events, he says, is a distinct possibility:
“The situation is tough. We could be talking about the disintegration of large, densely-populated states, talking about them breaking up into little pieces.”
The Russians were right. The Americans – dangerously wrong.
The Mideast will one day need to make region-wide border corrections, but to be successful, it must do so entirely within an indigenously determined process. The battles heating up in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere are a manifestation of a larger fight between two “blocs” that seek entirely different regional outcomes – one of these being the borders of a new Middle East.
The first group, a US-led bloc aggressive in its pursuit of maintaining regional hegemony any which way, is using fiction and carefully-spun divisive narratives to sway populations into accepting “cause” for new western-backed borders. These borders will divide nations along sectarian, ethnic and tribal lines to ensure ongoing conflict between the newly minted states, and “redirecting” them from the vastly bigger imperial threat. A unified Mideast, after all, would naturally turn against the universally reviled Empire, with Israel’s borders being the first on the chopping board. And in this climate, western-fomented border revisions will be dramatically more chaotic than Sykes-Picot ever was.
The second bloc (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia, China and a smattering of independent groups/states) which opposes western-Israeli hegemony does not have the means or ability to impose border solutions except in their own direct geographical base, which looks increasingly like a line drawn from Lebanon to Iraq (and not accidentally, where most of the chaos is currently channeled). Theirs is a defensive strategy, based largely on unwinding divisive plots, minimizing strife and warding off foreign-backed insurgencies, through military means if necessary.
In this bloc’s view, Sykes Picot will be undone, but within an organic process of border corrections based on regional consensus and rational considerations. In truth, this bloc is focused less on redrawn borders than it is on dousing the fires that seek to create the harmful divides.
Arabs and Muslims need to start becoming keenly aware of this “small state” third option, else they will fall into the dangerous trap of being distracted by detail while larger games carve up their nations and plunge them into perpetual conflict.
~
Sharmine Narwani is a commentary writer and political analyst covering the Middle East. You can follow Sharmine on twitter @snarwani.
July 29, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Bashar al-Assad, Iran, Middle East, Syria, Yemen |
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By JASON HIRTHLER | July 24, 2013
After committing a half dozen acts of war across the Middle East in recent years, we’re now treated to the absurd spectacle of an American general warning us of the dangers of committing an act of war. On Monday, U.S. General Martin Dempsey starkly outlined options for military action in Syria in a letter to the Senate, ruefully adding a few caveats about costs and collateral damage that triggered some chest-thumping histrionics in the Senate. Dempsey’s menu of warmongering druthers included training and advising the opposition (the term ‘nonlethal’ is always excitedly appended to advisory activities); conducting limited missile strikes; establishing a no-fly zone; creating buffer zones; and controlling chemical weapons. These additional options come even as Congress approves arms shipments to Syrian ‘rebels’.
Importantly, though, Dempsey did emphasize that the use of force in any form would be “no less than an act of war”. This may appear to be a given, but it is not within the Washington bubble, hence the need to overstate the obvious. Outraged by this show of good sense, senior Senator John McCain threatened to block General Dempsey’s re-election as America’s top military appointment. McCain has been clamoring for a ‘no-fly zone’ for months, and finds the General insufficiently hostile to Syrian sovereignty. This is itself absurd, since Dempsey had just laid out five ‘acts of war’ for the White House to consider. While the various approaches appear quite different prima facie, they share a common objective—the end of the Bashar al-Assad government. As employed in Libya, a nominal no-fly zone bears little distinction from Dempsey’s “stand-off strikes,” the former providing rhetorical cover for a brutal aerial assault on a country’s military infrastructure, usefully evading Congressional interference and erecting a posture of last-resort humanitarian action.
Much to McCain’s continuing chagrin, Dempsey also usefully detailed some of the exorbitant costs of any of these actions, including the eye-popping $500 million upfront costs for a no-fly zone, followed by a mere billion dollars a month for maintenance. Controlling chemical weapons would run a billion a month, too. (Training unhinged Islamic jihadists came in comparatively cheaper, at just $500 million a year.) After laying out these costs, Dempsey couldn’t resist noting with dutiful trepidation that these expenditures arise even as we “lose readiness due to budget cuts and fiscal uncertainty”. This must have caused some discomfiture even among the most stalwart deficit hawks.
Dempsey also performed the tiresome hand-wringing pantomime, noting grave concerns that weapons or intelligence could fall into the hands of Al-Qaeda affiliates (such as those we are backing), as well as reminding us how heavily these decisions weigh upon our noble civilian leaders. (Perhaps we are meant to conjure Obama’s discerning visage, a gentle Caesarean wreath of laurels cresting his pate.) Any of the items on the a-la-carte menu, Dempsey noted, might produce “retaliatory attacks” and “collateral damage”, might inadvertently create “operational zones for extremists” or “unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control,” among a number of other regrettable forms of chaos. One has to wonder whether Dempsey is late arriving to the Syrian conflict, considering it is common knowledge that arming extremist is the cornerstone of our Syrian strategy, or that it is quite possible that the extremists in our employ have already deployed chemical weapons in service to their discredited rebellion. Perhaps Dempsey ought to look back to Libya again for a better sense of what “unintended consequences” really entail—namely, destabilizing delicately balanced communities inside neighboring nations (see Mali) and the indiscriminate diffusion of both weaponry and stateless jihad across the region. It might also behoove McCain to ponder the internal effect of the Libyan no-fly zone, which precipitated not only the aforementioned regional phenomenon, but also left Libya itself reduced to a confection of simmering sectarian strongholds with a cowering and nominally federated government in Tripoli. The only question that remains is whether these consequences are “unintended” or not.
It’s hardly absurd to suggest the possibility that the Pentagon sometimes likes to “trigger” failed states. Once achieved, several fortuitous opportunities emerge: large lending regimes move in, conditioning aid on the chaining of renascent economies to structural reforms designed to refashion the country as an unfettered market for Western multinationals; and also the use of the country as a staging hub for military actions across the region; and other surreptitious designs.
But nothing feels more disingenuous than Dempsey’s pronounced concern over committing an “act of war”. Is funneling cash, weapons, and intelligence to mercenary forces in an effort to unseat a sovereign government not itself an act of war? Are not the pernicious and unsanctioned drone bombings of civilians in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan not acts of war? Is conducting clandestine cyber warfare within Iran an act of war? What about funneling millions to opposition candidates in last year’s Venezuelan election—surely a serious provocation at least?
You’d be hard-pressed to imagine any of the above acts being taken against the United States that didn’t induce an instantaneous and vicious military reply—and a deluge of indignant rhetoric from the White House. Imagine an Iranian computer virus taking down half our Internet servers. Or a Pakistani drone liquidating a ‘threat’ in Iowa. Or Syria funneling arms to Islamist cells in Delaware.
Dempsey should at least be cognizant of the fact that we’ve been launching acts of war on a regular and unrepentant basis. And perhaps that’s why his modestly alarmist message—albeit couched in a freshet of regime-change mechanisms—will likely fall on deaf ears in our effete and enervated Senate.
Jason Hirthler can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.
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July 24, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Dempsey, John McCain, Martin Dempsey, Middle East, Syria, United States |
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(LONDON) – While the British government leads the charge to impose and tighten sanctions on Iran and makes other dire threats on the mere suspicion that the Islamic Republic may have nuclear weapons ambitions, its ministers continue to sidestep simple questions about Israel’s unsafeguarded nukes. Here is a recent example…
Written Answers — Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs: Israel (8 July 2013) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm130708/text/130708w0002.htm#130708w0002.htm_wqn31
Bob Russell (Colchester, Liberal Democrat)
“To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what estimate he has made of the number of nuclear warheads possessed by Israel; and if he will make a statement.”
Alistair Burt (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Afghanistan/South Asia, counter terrorism/proliferation, North America, Middle East and North Africa), Foreign and Commonwealth Office)
“We have regular discussions with the Government of Israel on a wide range of nuclear-related issues. Israel has not declared a nuclear weapons programme. We encourage Israel to sign up to the non-proliferation treaty and call on them to agree a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.”
Burt insults the intelligence of Parliament and the British public. So I have asked my MP Henry Bellingham to table another Parliamentary Question:
Dear Henry,
Mr Burt ducks the question. We all know that Israel is evasive about its nuclear weapons programme. Bob Russell asks for Her Majesty’s Government’s estimate of the number of nuclear warheads in Israel’s possession. We have an intelligence service, don’t we?
There can be no sensible discussion about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons plans (and certainly no sabre-rattling or other silly threats) without factoring-in Israel’s already established nuke stockpile and delivery systems. Why is the Israeli situation so ‘unmentionable’? Let’s take the lid off, so this nation can have a good look and be aware of the stark facts. Would you please lodge a written question, requiring a written answer, asking the minister to respond properly and in detail to Sir Bob?
Many thanks.
Mr Bellingham is a member of Agent Cameron’s ‘Torah’ party and was recently axed from his junior minister post at the Foreign Office. Let us see if he is prepared to pursue the truth about Israel’s nukes and coax it into the public domain.
Of course, our Muslim friends should prod their own MPs to table similar questions.
July 14, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Alistair Burt, Henry Bellingham, International Atomic Energy Agency, Israel, Middle East |
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