How does the China-brokered Saudi-Iranian normalization affect Israel?
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | March 17, 2023
A key goal of both the Israeli and American governments is to foster the normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and part of the strategy to make this happen was to unite the two against what has been depicted as a common enemy, Iran. The Saudi-Iranian rapprochement now appears to have thrown a spanner in the works of such efforts, and hence enraged the Israelis.
After five rounds of talks throughout the span of two years, Iran and Saudi Arabia were unable to reach a compromise for the re-establishment of diplomatic ties, something China has now managed to broker in a shocking turn of events. Based upon the long rivalry between Tehran and Riyadh, US and Israeli policy towards Saudi Arabia has been based on combating a common enemy shared between all sides. Although the US government itself has not reacted with open animosity to the sudden change in regional dynamics, the Israelis are publicly interpreting this as a negative development.
In June 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that a previously undisclosed meeting had taken place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, whereby a number of Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, had met with the Israeli military chief of staff at the time, Aviv Kochavi. Part of the discussions that took place was allegedly geared towards forming an Israeli-Arab defense alliance. Although no such alliance was formed, it was largely speculated at the time that US President Joe Biden’s visit to both Israel and Saudi Arabia the following month would include discussions on this topic. Despite the failure of the US and Israel so far to put together such an alliance, it is clear that part of the strategy for achieving normalization has been to secure defense interests.
Across the Israeli political spectrum, from both the coalition government and opposition, finger pointing has been taking place, in attempts to pin the blame for the perceived failure of Israel to prevent Saudi-Iranian normalization. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has attempted to shift the blame onto the former government, an idea refuted by former Israeli Mossad head Efraim Halevy as “factually incorrect.” On the other hand, former Israeli PM Naftali Bennett has called the agreement “a serious and dangerous development for Israel.” Yair Lapid, another former PM and current leader of the opposition, also said it is an “utter and dangerous failure of the Israeli government’s foreign policy.”
The big question now is whether the Chinese-brokered normalization agreement will negatively impact potential normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Reuters reported that, according to an unnamed senior Israeli official, the Saudi-Iranian deal will have no significant impact on Israeli-Saudi relations. It is also not clear whether the agreement has any clauses to do with Israeli normalization. According to Carmiel Arbit from the Washington-based Atlantic Council, the Saudis could be attempting to conduct a balancing act the way the United Arab Emirates has. The UAE, which signed its own normalization deal with Israel in 2020, has since 2019 managed to de-escalate tensions with Iran and is currently maintaining cordial ties with both sides.
It is not clear, however, whether the model of Abu Dhabi will be applicable for the Saudis. Riyadh, simply put, has a lot more to lose than the Emiratis, due to its wide regional entanglements and domestic constraints, and hence it has chosen to maintain a distance from the Israelis at this time. The internal political crisis in Tel Aviv may also play a crucial role in the Saudi decision to push forward with the normalization of ties with Iran, as instability within Israel, coupled with a potential escalation in the conflict with the Palestinian people, could severely hinder a formal diplomatic breakthrough.
One crucial result of Saudi-Iranian normalization, however, is not necessarily to do with Israel’s own relations with the Saudis. Combating Iran, specifically its nuclear program through coercive measures, is an active policy position on both sides of the political divide in Israel. Netanyahu placed the issue of combating Iran, even through direct force, at the forefront of his campaign to win the election late last year. Throughout the past unity coalition of Bennett and Lapid, the anti-Iran position also proved a cornerstone of Israeli regional policy.
Performing aggressive actions, such as a direct attack against Iranian nuclear facilities, could now be much more difficult for the Israelis to pull off, with Saudi Arabia taking a non-combative approach to Iran. Although the nuclear issue is perhaps the most pervasive issue for the Israeli public, Iran’s regional alliances and defense programs are the true threats posed to Israel. If Saudi-Iranian ties are able to flourish and the Chinese-brokered deal holds, this could mean that Riyadh’s efforts in Lebanon against Hezbollah could be curtailed, and this surely represents a concern for Israel.
Iran, through its relationships with regional political parties, governments, and localized militia forces, also possesses the ability to pull strings that could benefit Saudi Arabia if it reciprocates by doing the same. This is especially the case when it comes to the conflict in Yemen. One thing that Ansarallah, also known as the Houthis, have been able to prove in their efforts against the Saudi-led coalition since 2015 when the war began, is that they are capable of overcoming US-made defense equipment. Iran, as a close ally of Ansarallah, could aid in setting up a long-term truce or even lasting peace, which the likes of the US simply cannot offer. To end this war would be in the security interests of the Saudis, who will undoubtedly suffer if the violence resumes, especially if missiles and drones begin striking their vital infrastructure again.
Just as Beijing proved capable of fostering Saudi-Iranian normalization, Tehran could offer the ability to properly negotiate a peaceful solution in Yemen. However, it is simply too early to tell whether such a development will take place. What the deal undoubtedly does is prove the weakness in Israel’s regional capabilities, along with the waning influence of the US. Israel’s security concerns regarding Syria and Lebanon may be heightened if the Chinese-brokered agreement delivers a more peaceful approach inside both of these nations. Saudi Arabia could also re-establish ties with the Syrian government, as the UAE has already done, which could help Damascus on the road to recovery from its brutal war and current state of economic ruin. A strong and united Syria could in the future also pose a strategic threat to Israel. While Saudi-Israeli normalization is by no means off the table, the Saudi-Iranian agreement could pose a serious challenge regionally for Israel’s current policy approach.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News.
Saudi Arabia sticks to Arab Initiative in drive for ties with Israel
MEMO | March 16, 2023
Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief has said that the Kingdom is sticking to the terms of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative in its drive to normalise relations with Israel.
“The terms are well-known,” Prince Turki Al-Faisal told France 24. “The creation of a sovereign Palestinian state with recognised borders and Jerusalem is its capital, and the return of Palestine refugees.” He pointed out that these were the conditions that Saudi Arabia added to the initiative before it was adopted by the Arab League 21 years ago.
The Arab Peace Initiative has been rejected by every Israeli government since then. Moreover, several Arab states have bypassed it and forged ties with the occupation state.
Replying to a question about the potential normalisation of ties with Israel without fulfilling these conditions, Al-Faisal confirmed: “What I have said was not my opinion, but it was declared by officials. I trust the officials when they say anything, and anything made by media is nonsense.”
According to the New Khalij news website, reports in America claim that Riyadh has proposed to Washington that it will make diplomatic ties with Israel in return for a US pledge to protect the Gulf region, support a peaceful nuclear programme in the Kingdom and approve major arms sales to the Royal Saudi Armed Forces.
Israel and its US lobby Dealt Major Blow by China Saudi Iran Peace Initiative
By Grant F. Smith | Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy | March 12, 2023
On Thursday the New York Times ran yet another report about Saudi Arabia’s entry into an “Abraham Accord,” but if only certain conditions could be met. It quoted longtime Israel lobby heavyweight Martin Indyk and reported on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy “expert” delegation’s visit to Riyadh to finalize a deal. Then on Friday explosive news broke that China had successfully concluded a secret peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The plan aims to restore diplomatic relations by reopening embassies within two months. They also agree to restart their April 2001 Security Cooperation. Also back on the front burner is a 1998 General Agreement covering economic, trade, investment, technology, science, culture, sports and youth ties. It is well worth reading the entire statement.
As it often does, the New York Times quickly updated its March 9 story in an attempt not to look foolish having given too much credence to Israel lobby guidance.
Too late.
Israel and its lobby have for decades attempted to steer the United States into attacking Iran. The neocon policy coup of 2001 was not only a plan to get the U.S. to attack Israel’s arch enemy Iraq, it was also designed to steer the U.S. into attacking seven countries in seven years, most prominently Iran.
When the U.S. invasion of Iraq quickly turned into a quagmire, two American Israel Public Affairs Committee executives tried to place stolen classified Department of Defense information incriminating to Iran into circulation at the Washington Post. The operation failed, the Pentagon colonel leaking classified information was prosecuted, while the longtime AIPAC officials were dismissed.
Israel’s foreign influence operation AIPAC has steadily lobbied against Iran on behalf of Israel including punishing economic warfare from the U.S. Treasury’s OTFI unit, which AIPAC lobbied to set up for just this purpose in the aftermath of 9/11.
The Trump era “Abraham Accords” were yet another attempt to isolate Iran while harnessing Arab countries to Israel’s undue foreign influence and war on Iran machine. Under the scheme, the U.S. sacrifices its remaining international reputation to compel Arab governments to sign diplomatic and commercial accords with Israel their populations overwhelmingly reject. Target governments get access to advanced U.S. weapons, or recognition of illegal land grabs in exchange for normalization.
Saudi Arabia was always the toughest prospect for sticking its head into the yoke of an Abraham Accord. The Saudi Initiative, or Arab Peace Initiative endorsed by the Arab League in 2002, re-endorsed in 2007 and 2017 was a legitimate path toward a somewhat just settlement through the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital in exchange for Arab normalization.
Under constant Israel lobby pressure, there was never any serious U.S. consideration of the Saudi led plan. Instead, Israel surrogates Jared Kushner and former real estate lawyer turned ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman among others pushed the so-called “Deal of the Century” that offered tenuous promises of economic development to Palestinians in exchange for relinquishing their rights under international law. A 2019 IRmep poll revealed that 68 percent of Americans would have rejected a similar deal if they were in Palestinians’ shoes, and the deal collapsed.
The Abraham Accords then attempted to “transcend” the Palestine question by making Palestinian claims under international law and the Arab Peace Plan irrelevant.
The new Joint Trilateral Statement signals a rejection of the Abraham Accords and yoking Saudi Arabia to Israel and its lobby’s foreign policy intrigues and domestic meddling. Saudi Arabia may not want to become as subject to Israeli prerogatives as America and has obviously been learning how to avoid it. Saudi Arabia skillfully cushioned the bad news by end-running AIPAC and placated the American military industrial congressional complex by simultaneously agreeing to purchase $35 billion in Boeing passenger jets. That is nearly the same amount as military aid the US agreed to give to Israel gratis over ten years under the Obama administration.
Israel and its lobby will not take this bad news lying down and still have many levers to pull in the region, establishment U.S. media, Congress, the State Department, and the White House. But for now, the Saudi rejection of the Abraham Accords could signal the way out for UAE, squeezed by Israel and AIPAC to invest in sketchy Israeli schemes such as “Project Jonah,” and get into a war footing with Iran. UAE may be inspired and try to disentangle themselves from the Israeli undue influence and Palestine justice minimization machine.
© 2002-2023 Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, Inc.
Israel’s ‘right to exist’ challenged in expert testimonies
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | March 3, 2023
“Israel’s right to exist” has been challenged in expert testimonies by leading scholars Professor John Dugard and Professor Avi Shlaim. Dugard is an advocate of the High Court of South Africa. He has served intermittently as Judge of the International Court of Justice. His other high-profile appointment was at the United Nations where he served as Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 2001 to 2008. Shlaim, who is an author of several books on Israel and Palestine, is an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College and an Emeritus Professor in International Relations at the University of Oxford.
Dugard and Shlaim issued their testimonies in response to the UK government’s prohibition on schools and universities from engaging with organisations that question Israel’s “right to exist”. The testimonies are part of a legal action against the former Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, by UK human rights group, CAGE. In a 2021 letter to schools and universities, Williamson applied pressure to adopt the discredited International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. The letter also told schools that they were prohibited from engaging with organisations that reject Israel’s “right to exist”.
A judicial review of the government’s guideline was lodged by CAGE, it argued that no such right exists in international law that prohibits people and groups from questioning a state’s legitimacy. “For too long, the political phrase ‘Israel’s right to exist’ has been used as a weapon to silence any debate about the legitimacy of its creation, the right of return of Palestinian refugees displaced by its creation and the apartheid nature of the Israeli state,” CAGE said at the time. In July a British High Court ruled against a judicial review.
This week CAGE published the expert testimonies of Dugard and Shlaim. Both challenged the prevailing narrative pushed by the UK government on Israel’s “right to exist”. Their testimony gave a brief history of the creation of the State of Israel and explained why the claim of a “right to exist” in law and morality is debatable.
Shlaim described Williamson as someone who habitually conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. He also claimed that the former education secretary had used his ministerial position to restrict freedom of speech on Israel. Commenting on the IHRA and possible financial sanctions that may be imposed if schools refused to adopt it, Shlaim said: “This is a highly controversial and, in my opinion, discredited definition which was promoted by Israel’s friends. The two-sentence definition is vacuous, but it is followed by 11 ‘illustrative examples’ of what might constitute antisemitism. Seven of the 11 examples relate to Israel. The real purpose of the definition is not to protect Jews against antisemitism but to protect Israel against legitimate criticism.”
Shlaim was one of 77 Israeli academics in Britain who united in response to Williamson’s infamous intervention. In January 2021, they sent a letter to vice chancellors and academic senates in England urging universities not to adopt the IHRA document, which they viewed as being “detrimental not only to academic freedom and to the struggle for human rights, but also to the fight against antisemitism.”
Challenging Israel’s right to exist, the expert testimonies argued that such a claim has no basis in international law. The idea that states have rights is rejected outright. The point is often made in the following way: Human beings have a right to exist, and to live flourishing lives. The moral and legal justification for the existence of any nation-state is based on their ability to protect and defend the rights of human beings and through serving the interest and well-being of peoples cultures and communities living within the territory they control. When a state fails in this regard for enough of those people for a long enough time, its control comes under challenge and loses its legitimacy. The shelf-life of any state is to the degree it can guarantee the human rights of people in territory controlled by that state.
Though there are many examples, a classic case often cited to highlight that point is Apartheid South Africa. Arguments were raised that Apartheid South Africa should not be recognised as a state and should be expelled from the UN. Although South Africa was not expelled from membership of the world body, the credentials of the South African government were not accepted, and it was denied the right to participate in the work of the General Assembly. In effect, this meant that many countries believed that South Africa no longer had the right to exist as a state because of its policy of apartheid. South Africa lost its legitimacy because of its refusal to guarantee and protect the rights of black South Africans in the same territory.
The arrangement in Apartheid South Africa has many similarities with Israel, which is why every major human rights group has concluded that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. Within the territory controlled by the occupation state – known also as historic Palestine – seven million of Israel’s Jewish population enjoy full rights and privileges, while seven million of the territories’ non-Jewish population experience some form of discrimination depending on where they live. Twenty per cent of Israel’s Palestinian citizens for example suffer less discrimination than the five million Palestinians in occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. Not forgetting also, the six million Palestinian refugees who are refused their right to return while every Jew in the world is granted their “right to return”.
Returning to the expert testimonies, Dugard and Shlaim rejected Israel’s “right to exist”, explaining that such a right cannot be exercised because there is no basis for it in international law. According to Dugard, the rights of a state that are enshrined in international law are the right to territorial integrity; political independence and not to be forcibly attacked by another state. It’s not obvious therefore why Israel should be allowed to enjoy these rights given that it has no defined borders, and furthermore not only has it forcibly attacked and occupied the State of Palestine, it continues to annex territory beyond the internationally recognised borders of the apartheid state.
Further arguments rejecting Israel’s “right to exist” are demonstrated by the fact that a state may be recognised as a state by some states but not by others. Consequently, it is a state for those countries that recognise it but not for states that do not recognise it. Palestine, for instance, is recognized as a state by 138 countries, which is more than Kosovo, recognised by 100 states.
Perhaps the most powerful objection against Israel’s demand on others to recognise its “right to exist” are claims it had made about itself during the country’s founding. Israel’s declaration of independence was based on the Balfour Declaration, the Mandate of the League of Nations and the General Assembly’s Partition Resolution. Every one of those claims have been challenged on legal grounds since 1948. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 for example did not recognise the right of the Jewish people to a state in Palestine. It simply stated that the British government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a home for the Jewish people” but that this was to be without prejudice to the “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” The clear and obvious goal of the declaration was to create a “home” for the Jewish people “In Palestine,” not erase Palestine as Israel has done to supplant a new state on top of it.
Similar contentions exist with the British Mandate for Palestine and UN Partition Plan. Although the Mandate incorporated the provisions of the Balfour Declaration it made no provision for a Jewish State. As for the partition plan, Palestinians rejected Resolution 181 on account of its unfairness: it gave the Jewish community comprising 33 per cent of the population of Palestine 57 per cent of the land and 84 per cent of the agricultural land.
The message in the expert testimonies can be boiled down to the fact that not only is the British government’s suppression of a discussion on Israel’s “right to exists” preposterous, ahistorical and an attack on freedom of thought, there can be no discussion about Israel’s “right to exist” without a similar discussion about Palestine’s right to exist.
False hopes and broken promises litter the ground behind the UN Statement on Palestine
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | February 28, 2023
Rarely does the Palestinian Ambassador to the UN make an official comment expressing happiness over any official proceedings concerning the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Ambassador Riyad Mansour, though, is “very happy that there was a very strong united message from the Security Council against the illegal, unilateral measure” undertaken by the Israeli government.
The “measure” in question is a decision, on 12 February, by the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to construct 10,000 new housing units in nine illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. Predictably, Netanyahu was angered by the supposedly “very strong united message” from an institution that is hardly known for its meaningful action regarding international conflicts, especially in occupied Palestine.
Mansour’s happiness may be justified from some perspectives, especially as we seldom witness a strongly-worded position by the Security Council that is both critical of Israel and embraced by the US. The latter has used its veto in the council 53 times since 1972 — according to the UN itself — to block draft Security Council resolutions that are critical of the occupation state.
However, a close examination of the context of the latest UN statement on Israel and Palestine shows that there is little reason for Mansour’s excitement. The statement in question is just that; a statement, with no tangible value and no legal repercussions. It could have been meaningful if the language had been unchanged from its original draft. Not of the statement itself, but of a binding UN resolution that was introduced on 15 February by the UAE ambassador.
Reuters revealed that the draft resolution would have demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” That resolution — and its strong language — was scrapped under pressure from the US and was replaced by a mere statement that “reiterates” the Security Council’s position that “continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines.” It also expressed “deep concern”, actually, “dismay” with Israel’s 12 February announcement.
Netanyahu’s angry response was mostly intended for public consumption in Israel, and to keep his far-right government allies in check; after all, the conversion of the resolution into a statement, and the watering down of the language were all carried out with the prior agreement of the US, Israel and the PA. The Aqaba conference held two days ago is confirmation that such an agreement is indeed in place. Hence, the statement could not have come as a surprise to the Israeli prime minister.
Moreover, US media spoke openly about a deal, which was mediated by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The reason behind it, initially, was to avert a “potential crisis” which would have resulted if the US had vetoed the resolution. According to the Associated Press, such a veto “would have angered Palestinian supporters at a time that the US and its western allies are trying to gain international support against Russia.”
However, there is another reason behind Washington’s apparent sense of urgency. In December 2016, the then US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice refrained from vetoing a similar UN Security Council resolution that strongly condemned Israel’s illegal settlement activities. This happened less than a month before the end of Barack Obama’s second term in the White House. For Palestinians, the resolution was too little, too late. For Israel, it was an unforgivable betrayal. To appease Tel Aviv, the Trump Administration gave the UN post to Nikki Haley, an ardent supporter of Israel.
Although another US veto would have raised a few eyebrows, it would have presented a major opportunity for the strong pro-Palestine camp at the UN to challenge US hegemony over the matter of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It would also have deferred the issue to the UN General Assembly and other UN-related organisations.
Even more interesting, according to the Blinken-mediated agreement — reported by AP, Reuters, Axios and others — Palestinians and Israelis would have to refrain from unilateral actions. Israel would freeze all settlement activities until August, and Palestinians would not “pursue action against Israel at the UN and other international bodies such as the World Court, the International Criminal Court and the UN Human Rights Council.” This was the gist of the agreement at the US-sponsored Aqaba meeting as well. While the PA is likely to abide by this understanding — since it continues to seek US financial handouts and political validation — Israel will most likely refuse; in fact, practically-speaking, it already has.
Although the agreement reportedly stipulated that Israel would not stage major attacks on Palestinian cities, only two days later, on 22 February, Israel raided the West Bank city of Nablus. It killed 11 Palestinians and wounded 102 others, including two elderly men and a child.
Moreover, a settlement freeze is almost impossible. Netanyahu’s extremist coalition government is held together in large part by the common understanding that settlements must expand constantly. Any change to this understanding would almost certainly mean the collapse of one of Israel’s most stable governments in years.
Why, then, is Mansour “very happy”? The answer stems from the fact that the PA’s credibility among Palestinians is at an all-time low. Mistrust, if not outright disdain, of Mahmoud Abbas and his authority is one of the main reasons behind the brewing armed rebellion against the Israeli occupation. Decades of promises that justice will eventually arrive through US-mediated talks have culminated in nothing, so Palestinians are developing their own alternative resistance strategies.
The UN statement was marketed by PA-controlled media in Palestine as a victory for Palestinian diplomacy. Hence, Mansour’s happiness. But this euphoria was short lived.
The Israeli massacre in Nablus left no doubt that Netanyahu will not even respect a promise he made to his own benefactors in Washington. This takes us back to square one: back to where Israel refuses to respect international law, the US refuses to allow the international community to hold Israel to account, and the PA claims another false victory in its supposed quest for the liberation of Palestine. Practically, this means that Palestinians are left with no other option but to carry on with their resistance, indifferent — justifiably so — to the UN and its “watered-down” statements.
Israeli rampage on West Bank village leaves one dead, 390 injured, 75 burnt homes
The Cradle | February 27, 2023
Scores of Israeli settlers rampaged for several hours in the West Bank town of Huwara late on 26 February, leaving one Palestinian dead, at least 390 injured, and setting fire to at least 75 Palestinian homes and 100 cars.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 37-year-old Sameh Aqtash was shot and killed by Israeli fire. The Palestinian Red Crescent medical service said two other people were shot and wounded, a third person was stabbed, and a fourth was beaten with an iron bar.
The settlers descended on the Palestinian village brandishing firearms, knives, sticks, and stones under the protection of the Israeli army.
Images posted on social media show settlers killing an entire herd of sheep and uprooting olive trees and other crops from Palestinian farmers.
According to WAFA news agency, early on Monday, an Israeli settler tried to run over a group of journalists covering the raid in Huwara.
The attack on the Palestinian village came in response to the killing of two Israeli settlers on highway 60 near Huwara by a Palestinian gunman. Israeli Channel 12 reported that the man intercepted the settlers’ vehicle by ramming into it, got out and shot both of them, then escaped by foot.
Sunday’s violence occurred just as senior officials from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, and the US met in the Red Sea resort of Aqaba, where they announced that Tel Aviv and the Palestinian Authority (PA) reached an agreement to “de-escalate tensions” for a period of three to six months.
“They reaffirmed the necessity of committing to de-escalation on the ground and to prevent further violence,” the Jordanian Foreign Ministry announced in a statement.
The statement also claimed Israel agreed to “stop discussion of any new settlement units for four months and to stop authorization of any outposts for six months.”
However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swiftly denied this claim, tweeting that “the building and authorization in [the West Bank] will continue according to the original planning and building schedule, with no change.”
Tel Aviv has also tightened its siege on the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, imposing a closure on the checkpoints of Huwara, Awarta, Al-Murabaa, Zatara, and entrances to Beita.
Over the past year, the occupied West Bank has witnessed a severe uptick in violence, both from settler assaults and Palestinian retaliatory attacks, in addition to the intense, often violent raids the Israeli army carries out on a near-daily basis.
Israel kills 10 Palestinians, injures a hundred in Nablus
MEMO | February 22, 2023
Ten Palestinians have been killed and over a hundred wounded this morning following an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus.
The Israeli occupation’s military stormed the city with armoured vehicles and blocked off all entrances before surrounding a home with two wanted Palestinians inside. Hossam Isleem and Mohammad Abdulghani, who were both killed.
The Israeli forces demolished the building while the two were inside; their bodies were later identified by the occuption’s forces. Israeli military sources claim the two Palestinians were involved in numerous resistance attacks against illegal Israeli settlements and in the death of a soldier last October.
The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that ten people were killed and 102 others were wounded as a result of gunfire by Israeli occupation soldiers.
Palestinian victims among the dead include 72-year-old Adnan Saabe Baara, 61-year-old Abdul Hadi Abdul Aziz Ashqar, 16-year-old Mohammad Farid Shaaban, 25-year-old Mohammad Khaled Anbousi and 33-year-old Tamer Nimr Minawi.
Is the EU thanking Israel for stealing Palestinian gas to sell to its members?
By Motasem A Dalloul | MEMO | February 17, 2023
Early this week the European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson delivered the opening speech at the Egypt Petroleum Show 2023 Strategic Conference, the largest oil, gas and energy conference and exhibition across Egypt, North Africa and the Mediterranean.
Simson highlighted the EU’s need to diversify its energy sources, pointing out that this became a necessity after the Russian-Ukrainian war. In an attempt to decrease the bloc’s energy imports from Russia, Simson said, it had started to look for new energy sources. Fortunately, the EU found Israel and Egypt.
“The EU is serious about investing in trusted, reliable energy partnerships,” Simson told attendants. “That describes Egypt perfectly.” Referring to the base of their partnership, she said: “In the immediate wake of the crisis a year ago, the very first energy agreement the EU concluded was the Memorandum of Understanding with Egypt and Israel on trade, transport and natural gas cooperation.”
Simson referred to that MoU as a “remarkable political milestone for energy,” stressing that it was “something we are very proud of,” reiterating “how grateful” she is “to both Egypt and Israel, for their cooperation to turn the political vision of mutual cooperation into a reality.”
The European commissioner for energy also made it very clear that “the EU could count on the partnership” with Israel and Egypt due to the “landmark” agreement, which came “at the height of the energy crisis,” stressing “it was central to our efforts to diversify and stabilise the supplies for our citizens.”
But has Simson thought about the source of this energy? How much blood was shed, how many people were forced out of their homes, or how many villages and cities were destroyed in order to get this energy? Has she questioned the human rights situation of the countries which are selling this energy?
The energy which comes from Israel is stolen from Palestinians from whom the Zionists stole land with the help of many countries, mainly the United States and the United Kingdom. Israel was created on bodies of thousands of Palestinians, the ruins of their homes, mosques, schools, villages and cities. Israel has been stealing Palestinian land, resources, history and culture.
Has Simson not seen reports of the daily killing of Palestinians, their detention, the demolition of their homes, stealing of their land, suppression of their freedoms, the night raids, desecration of their holy sites, restriction of their movement, the apartheid policies imposed on them and the deadly blockade hindering life for those living in Gaza over the past 16 years?
Numerous international rights groups, even Israeli rights groups, have investigated Israeli aggression on the Palestinians and found that the Israeli occupation state has committed war crimes against the Palestinians. In February last year, Human Rights Watch issued a report that proved Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.
Gerry Simpson, associated crisis and conflict director at HRW, said: “Israeli forces carried out attacks in Gaza in May [2021] that devastated entire families without any apparent military target nearby.” The UN and many other official bodies have condemned the Israeli occupation and its continuous aggression against Palestinians.
In a statement issued in 2020, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Palestinian Territory Occupied since 1967 said: “The Israeli occupation continues to deepen. The number of announced new Israeli settlement units has risen dramatically. Gaza remains besieged and beleaguered.”
Throughout its occupation, Israel has prevented Palestinians from accessing their natural resources, water, land and the offshore gas fields.
The UN Special Rapporteur said in his statement: “Israel has maintained a comprehensive land, air and sea blockade on Gaza … and it controls virtually everything and everybody that enters or leaves the Strip. The blockade has contributed mightily to the civilian suffering in Gaza, which has a collapsed health care system, an aquifer with almost completely undrinkable water, enormous rates of unemployment and poverty, intermittent electrical power and densely packed housing.”
While Simson is praising Israel for selling stolen Palestinian gas to the EU to help it through its energy crisis, Palestinians are languishing under a brutal occupation and suffering in the cold without access to electricity and gas.
There is so much I could highlight about the brutality of the occupation and how deals with it are emboldening it and encouraging the oppression of Palestinians. But here I lay down only the foundations for what Simon has to learn about the deal she is praising.
It is very clear the EU deals with the Russian occupation of Ukraine differently from the Zionist occupation of Palestine; ending trade deals with Moscow while strengthening ties to Tel Aviv. Proof of apartheid practices have done little to change the ‘moral’ EU’s stance on the occupation state because its needs are greater than its will to protect the lives and rights of others.
Israeli soldier filmed assaulting Palestinian activist in occupied West Bank
This screengrab shows an Israeli soldier assaulting Palestinian activist Issa Amro on February 13, 2023.
Press TV – February 14, 2023
An Israeli soldier has been filmed assaulting a prominent Palestinian human rights activist in front of a famous American journalist in the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil.
In a video posted on Twitter by Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker on Monday, the Israeli soldier is seen grabbing Issa Amro by his jacket and neck and throwing him to the ground. He then kicks Amro before being pulled away by another soldier.
“I never had a source assaulted in front of me until today when an Israeli soldier who stopped my interview did this … I can’t stop thinking how dehumanizing the occupation is on the young soldiers charged with enforcing it,” Wright, the author of The Looming Tower, wrote in a post on his Twitter account.
The Israeli military claimed in a statement that the incident occurred after the soldier, who was guarding a military post, asked the Palestinian activist who approached the post, to step away.
It further claimed that in response, the Palestinian began recording and cursing at the soldier, and that a verbal confrontation followed, which soon became a physical confrontation, during which the soldier hit the Palestinian.
However, Wright tweeted that Amro had done nothing to justify the “violent assault,” adding that the Israeli military is “misrepresenting” the build-up to the assault on the Palestinian peace activist.
“The soldier initiated the encounter, Amro did not curse him, [he] only asked to call his commander. Nothing to justify the violent assault that followed,” he said.
“Before the assault the other soldiers were afraid to intervene although I warned them it was getting out of hand,” he added.
Amro also posted several videos of the run-up to the incident on Twitter, saying the Israeli military has lied about what happened.
“I was detained outside the military post, I started shouting to bring the commander out, the soldiers refused to tell him, it was a trap for me by them. The commander came out only after I was beaten and grabbed by the throat and kicked and pushed on the ground,” he wrote n another post.
He said that the video is not just about the activist as it tells the story of every Palestinian in Palestine.
“It is not about Issa Amro, it is about the Palestinian women and children who are attacked frequently by Israeli soldiers and settlers. All Palestinians are living under Israeli occupation and apartheid. The video of the attack tells the story of each Palestinian in Palestine,” he added.
The Israeli military said the soldier was jailed for 10 days in a military prison following the incident.
Far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has defended the soldier’s actions, describing the decision to put him in a military prison as a “disgrace.”
Amro, an engineer by profession, is a well-known human rights defender in his hometown of al-Khalil. He is the founder of Youth Against Settlements (YAS), which aims to empower the Palestinian community in the face of Israeli settlers in the Old City of al-Khalil.
He was detained in November days after filming a soldier assaulting an Israeli activist during a visit by Israeli anti-occupation activists to meet Palestinian residents near the Old City of al-Khalil.
Israeli occupation soldiers and Israeli settlers have noticeably been escalating their attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and other areas, in an attempt to forcibly expel Palestinians from their lands and make way for expanding illegal Jewish-only settlements.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
All the settlements are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions. – View videos
Does Israel Seek a “Final Solution for Palestinians?”
Diaspora Jews choose to look the other way as the carnage increases
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 14, 2023
There is what passes for a sick joke among those who watch the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians with increasing shock over what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his thugs have been allowed to get away with. It goes something like this: Israel has succeeded in killing or driving out the remaining three million or so Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, describing them as “terrorists.” President Joe Biden, his cabinet and virtually all of Congress respond afterwards by saying how the move was unfortunate but “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Such is the power of Israel as manifested through its Lobby in the US, and the saddest part of the joke is that it reflects quite likely exactly what would happen. The Palestinians have no constituency in the United States, where Israel and its friends rule the roost. But one of the real ironies of watching a genocide being carried out now in the twenty-first century is that the killers come from a group that constantly flaunts its claimed status as history’s perpetual victims. This duality is a convenience, to be sure, providing as it does immunity from its own crimes as it also escalates the criminal policies that might lead to the genocide of a whole category of potential “enemies.”
Israel’s new government, again headed by the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu, has shifted hard to the right, incorporating as it does the extremist settlers’ movement as well as parties that have spoken casually of forcing the Palestinians out and even of extermination if it comes to that. Half of Israelis are comfortable with the Arabs having minimal civil rights even if they are Israeli citizens and many accept the desirability of forced expatriation of the Palestinians to neighboring states like Jordan or Lebanon. Arab residents of Israel have only limited legal rights and, contrary to the US domestic Israel Lobby’s constant assertion that the Zionist entity is a “democracy,” Israel in reality became an apartheid state by law when it in 2018 declared itself to be legally the nation state of the Jews with “exclusive right of self-determination.”
More recently Netanyahu has made clear exactly what his government stands for. In late December, he stated that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel.” He was explicit that “all parts” was intended to include the West Bank and even Gaza, which have long been presumed to be the basis of a future Palestinian state. With Washington’s support, they presumably will become part of Eretz Israel, which will stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
To be sure, Israel and its powerful US lobby know very well that the constant claim of victimhood combined with labeling its perceived enemies as antisemites and holocaust deniers to discredit them is little more than a tool employed in part to excuse war crimes and human rights violations committed by the Israelis. In 2002 a former Israeli government minister Shulamit Aloni revealed in an interview how labeling a critic as an antisemite to discredit what is being is little more than “a trick.” She said “Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country [the US] people are criticizing Israel, then they are antisemitic.” She added that there was an “Israel, my country right or wrong” attitude and “they’re not ready to hear criticism”. Antisemitism, the holocaust and “the suffering of the Jewish people” are used to “justify everything we do to the Palestinians.”
Indeed, there is every indication that Prime Minister Netanyahu will be taking a much harder line not only with the Palestinians, but as well with its foreign “enemies” the Syrians, Iranians and Lebanese. And there is every sign that he has drawn the United States into his web. President Joe Biden, a self-declared Catholic “Zionist”, is politically too weak to take on the Israel Lobby even if he wanted to, and he has in any event surrounded himself with Zionist Jews as a foreign policy and national security team that would consider any weakening of ties with Israel to be unimaginable. Quite the contrary. Jewish power in the US demands unconditional military, financial and diplomatic support for Israel, even as its government moves to the right and becomes more dangerous regionally, threatening to involve the United States in new wars. Seemingly blind to what is developing, the US last month proceeded with the largest wargames ever involving the Jewish state. The games simulated an attack on Iran and could be a model for a series of pointless conflicts initiated by the more hawkish Israeli government.
And there is almost certainly much more to come, including a bill in the Knesset that will make it nearly impossible for Arab citizens to organize political parties. The new government in Israel has also placed police under the control of ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party head Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister. He is exploiting his position to already call for a war to destroy Hamas in Gaza. Meanwhile, the shoot to kill policy vis-à-vis Palestinians has increased the number of deaths already in 2023, totaling twelve on January 25th and 26th alone when a refugee camp at Jenin on the West Bank was raided by the army and two teenagers elsewhere were shot dead. Another shooting a week later took 5 Palestinian lives. Many more Palestinians were wounded in all the army attacks and the Israelis, as is their practice, routinely deny them any access to medical help. The army’s Chief of Staff has declared that its policy on using firearms will not be changed in spite of the large number of civilian deaths. Israeli soldiers and policemen who kill Palestinians, who are routinely described as “terrorists,” are almost never investigated or prosecuted and have been, in some cases, praised in the media and promoted.
And Ben-Gvir is not the only fanatic who has surfaced as a worrisome character in the new government. Another is Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionism party and now finance minister, who has called for Israel’s annexation of the entire West Bank and the imposition of citizenship requirements that would make Jewishness a prerequisite for inclusion.
Smotrich’s party aspires to make Israel a theocracy governed by the racist Talmud, and both he and Ben-Gvir have supported the expulsion of Arabs who fail to agree that “the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.” Smotrich has stated that his immediate plans include authorizing dozens of new and completely illegal West Bank outposts to include continuing the demolition of what he claims are unauthorized Palestinian homes there. Smotrich is also enthusiastically racist when it comes to the Palestinians, asserting that new Jewish mothers in hospitals should be separated from new Palestinian mothers. “[My wife] would not want to sleep next to someone who just gave birth to a baby who might want to murder her baby in twenty years.”
Zvika Fogel, another prominent right wing Israeli member of parliament, has called for genocide in his promotion of a “final war” against the Palestinians to “subdue them once and for all,” saying in an interview that Israel’s policy of going to war with Palestinians “every two or three years” was no longer good enough and that there should be one last war to “subdue them once and for all. It would be worth it because this will be the final war…”
Home demolitions, property seizures, checkpoints and other round the clock harassment of Palestinians also are increasing in frequency as the Israelis accelerate their expansion into areas that are nominally Palestinian. Palestinians who marry foreigners are not allowed to enter the country with their spouses while the Palestinian flag has now been declared illegal. The possibility that the Arabs will stage a general uprising increases daily, leading to more demands from some Israelis that remaining Palestinian centers of resistance be utterly destroyed.
To be sure, many young Jewish Israelis have recently been demonstrating against their own government’s shift rightwards. And in the United States many liberal Jews are concerned at developments, though they are critical of what is happening for all the wrong reasons. An increasing number of American Jews believe that Israel is indeed an apartheid state and that its treatment of the Palestinians is inhumane to say the least. But they, at the same time, oppose doing anything to punish the Israeli government to make it draw back from its most brutal and dangerous policies. They argue that the Netanyahu government is risking a confrontation with the US government, and the Jewish community will splinter over Israeli human rights abuses, weakening political support in Washington for a strong and enduring relationship with the Jewish state. In a sense the power of the Jewish diaspora both in the US and elsewhere thereby becomes the enabler of Israeli bad behavior even as it disapproves of what is taking place.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
The new US plan for calming Palestine-Israel tensions is already failing
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | February 11, 2023
The US Biden administration has reportedly presented a plan to cool tensions between Palestinians and Israelis, which have dramatically escalated since the formation of Israel’s new right-wing government.
As reported by Axios, following up on a request made by US secretary of State Antony Blinken, during his visit to the Middle East late last month, his Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Barbara Leaf, stayed behind and worked on presenting a roadmap towards preventing a violent escalation in the region. Antony Blinken had urged both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to “pause” provocative steps in order to avoid further hostilities.
The requests made by the Biden administration were originally geared towards the Palestinian Authority (PA) taking significant steps, whilst minimal requirements were put on the Netanyahu government. Antony Blinken urged Mahmoud Abbas to implement a “security plan” presented by US security coordinator Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel, who proposed creating a special PA Security Force wing that would be trained by the US to fight Palestinian militias that have formed over the past two years in the Jenin and Nablus areas. Later on, the US also requested that Israel reduce the number of raids on Palestinian towns and refugee camps, in addition to halting their plans for significant settlement expansion; both of which Israel refuses to follow through on.
Rogue militias
In September of 2021, the Jenin Brigades armed group announced its formation out of the Jenin refugee camp, later growing and expanding its areas of operations to the wider Jenin area. The armed group does not have any traceable command-and-control structure. It consists primarily of men between the ages of 18 and 25, mostly formed of members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement and Fatah Party members who are no longer loyal to the ruling clique in the party that commands the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. Later, in September of 2022, the Lions’ Den armed movement also announced its formation in the old city of Nablus, claiming to belong to no political party. Due to the rise of newly formed armed groups, which hasn’t happened in the West Bank since the early 2000s, the Palestinian Authority’s security forces have lost control of much of the northern West Bank.
The US proposal for the Palestinian Authority to form a special force to fight against the armed militias is an extremely dangerous intervention in the affairs of the region. It is reminiscent of the UK-backed “peace bands” formed under the British Mandate in the late 1930s, when the British took the initiative to use Palestinians to fight each other. However, unlike then, there is no support for anti-militia activities from the Palestinian public today. In fact, the overwhelming majority support the Jenin Brigades, Lions’ Den and other armed groups, according to all available polling data. The PA has been significantly weakened over the past three years due to a financial crisis, corruption, the lack of any diplomatic breakthroughs, the postponement of national elections, and the killing and detention of Palestinians for the sake of Israeli security.
Third Intifada coming?
The Palestinian Authority has even been engaged in limited armed exchanges with the newly formed militias in the West Bank over the past year, triggering mass protests from angry West Bank residents. The number one issue that Palestinians in the West Bank have with the PA is its ‘security coordination’ with Israel, which essentially means that the PA’s security forces work with the Israeli military, intelligence and border police, in order to combat Palestinian threats against Israelis, but not the other way around. When Israel raided the Jenin refugee camp last month, killing 10 Palestinians, including three civilians, one of whom was an elderly woman, the PA announced the suspension of security coordination in response.
The US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs met last week with Israel’s National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi, and President Abbas’ senior advisor, Hussein al-Sheikh, to propose that the Palestinian Authority return to security coordination with Israel, in exchange for Israel slowing down settlement expansion. The US also sought for the PA to pause its attempts to take Israel before the International Court of Justice and the UN for alleged war crimes – a move for which the PA has been punished with Israeli sanctions.
Last Thursday, CIA director Bill Burns expressed his concern over the possibility of a ‘third intifada’ [Palestinian uprising] erupting inside the West Bank, stating that “a lot of what we’re seeing today has a very unhappy resemblance to some of those realities that we saw then [during the Second Intifada] too”. His concern is congruent with the reality on the ground, where last year was the deadliest for West Bank Palestinians since the end of the Second Intifada in 2005, according to the United Nations. Palestinian attacks against Israeli settlers and soldiers are also a daily occurrence now.
Two-state solution blocked
Despite the US government clearly identifying the nature of the escalation, it shows complete ignorance of its own role in creating the current hostilities. The bulk of the US secretary of state’s visit to Palestine-Israel was tailored to forwarding Arab-Israeli normalization efforts and to expanding the ‘Negev Forum’, which Morocco, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt form with Israel, in order to advance their own ties. At the same time, Antony Blinken spoke of reaching a “two-state solution” between Palestinians and Israelis as being the only path to any lasting peace.
Under the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 (also known as the Saudi Initiative), a “two-state solution” (meaning the recognition by Israel of a Palestinian state and the end of occupation of Palestinian territories) is a precondition for the normalization of ties between Israel and Arab states. By pushing for normalization without that precondition, Blinken effectively seeks to deprive the Palestinian Authority of its best bargaining chip and leaves it powerless to extract any concessions from the Israeli government, whose officials will not even consider sitting down for meetings with their Palestinian counterparts.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already stated that he is not willing to halt settlement expansion, as proposed by the US government, with Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, openly announcing that there will be no freeze on settlement construction, which is considered illegal by the UN and most world powers. Israel has also announced its intention to increase raids and further military activities in the West Bank, in what it deems to be a preparation for likely hostilities during the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan.
Hope for Palestinians is the only way to peace
Despite the PA having announced the end of its security coordination with Israel, it is clear that some coordination is still occurring and that the announcement was more of a public relations move for President Abbas, who is feeling the pressure from a disgruntled Palestinian population. This in itself is a key indicator that the PA is feeling the pressure from Palestinian society at large and a sign that any US-trained PA force to combat the militia groups could lead to a disaster, whereby the Ramallah-based authority could even be overthrown due to the outrage such a step would cause. When the CIA worked to create the “new PA security force” during the latter years of the Second Intifada, it only worked after the PA itself had participated in the fight against the Israeli military and still maintained some degree of popular support. In addition to this, the Israeli army had conducted ‘Operation Defensive Shield,’ which led to the assassinations or arrests of the most prominent militia leaders inside the West Bank.
The only way the PA could possibly regain control of Jenin and Nablus is by proving to the Palestinian people that it is on their side, and not fighting for the US and Israel. It is also the reality that many of the leading fighters in the militia groups, especially in Jenin, are actually members of the PA’s security forces that have gone rogue. Armed militias also seem to be forming in areas like Bethlehem, al-Khalil and even Jericho, which proves that the re-emergence of the armed struggle in the West Bank is not only limited to the north of the territory.
The only way to properly combat the escalation and to stop this from growing into a much larger confrontation, is to provide hope for the Palestinian people inside the West Bank, something that the US will not even consider. Instead of the US working as an objective mediator, it works solely for Israel’s immediate interests and accepts the political restraints of each Israeli government as an excuse for repeatedly violating its own red lines. The US considers every single Palestinian political party as a terrorist organization, other than the mainstream branch of the Fatah Party, meaning that they will not even talk to any Palestinian representatives other than those that adhere to their own demands. The obsessive pursuit of Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel, seemingly for political gain on behalf of the Biden administration, also contributes to robbing Palestinians of any hope for peace.
The situation inside the West Bank cannot be resolved using bombs and bullets. Even if every single member of all the armed groups were to be killed, the same problem would again emerge for Israel in the future. Despite this, Washington will never look critically at what is going on and realize that there are two sides to this conflict. At this time the US government is dealing with the escalation as if Israel has a termite problem and not that there are people who are rising up in an ongoing struggle for statehood.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News.
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Major rabbi says non-Jews are donkeys, created to serve Jews
By Khalid Amayreh, in occupied East Jerusalem | The People’s Voice | October 18, 2010
A major Jewish religious figure in Israel has likened non-Jews to donkeys and beasts of burden, saying the main reason for their very existence is to serve Jews.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the religious fundamentalist party, Shas, which represents Middle Eastern Jews, reportedly said during a Sabbath homily earlier this week that “the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews.”
Yosef is considered a major religious leader in Israel who enjoys the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of followers. … continue
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