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Wealthy Zionists Are Defunding the Left… Or Are They?

ERIC STRIKER • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 4, 2024

“October 8th Jews,” as the New York Times Bret Stephens baptized them, have been drafted to take Israel’s war on the Palestinians global as both generic Republican and Democrat voters sour on the Zionist project.

Members of the “New Right” have been enthusiastically reading into this. These conservative figures have interpreted high profile incidents, like the donor revolt against universities deemed insufficiently pro-Israel, as a sign that wealthy Jews are finally done financing the cultural left.

There are circumstantial reasons to believe this. One of the vectors for spreading Gen Z wokeness, Tik Tok, is feeling the gust of the flexing Jewish bicep. It was announced that Lucien Grainge’s Universal Music Group was banning the use of songs from its massive catalogue of pop stars from being accessed on the world’s most popular social media platform. It just so happens that this superficially bad business decision boycotting the music-driven app sensation came after protest from Jewish groups that Tik Tok was allowing anti-Zionist sentiment to flourish among the youth following October 7th.

On the surface, a person operating within a typical universalist or analytical frame could assume that billionaires who spend lavishly to take away Americans’ guns like Michael Bloomberg are having a change of heart when they dispatch 10s of millions to aid a foreign state that hands out military grade assault rifles to random pedestrians. But there is no incongruity or cognitive dissonance here. Just as the Israeli state forbids giving these guns to its minority of non-Jewish citizens on strictly racial grounds, Mr. Bloomberg insists that he and his should have the privilege to possess as many firearms as they want while stripping everybody else of this right.

It is increasingly common knowledge that the American anti-white/DEI/Woke left and its non-profits are funded largely by Jewish asset managers on Wall Street. When billionaires funnel big money to an institution, they feel entitled to set the beneficiary’s agenda, as Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz explained in a piece on the hedge fund Jews waging war on the Ivy Leagues.

In some instances, this money has been clashing with the morals of those employed by leftist organizations. Non-profit workers generally want to uphold their mission statements supporting racial equity and human rights in respects to Israel.

One casualty of this conflict between donors and the grassroots is the Democratic Socialists of America. Following the DSA’s decision to support Gaza without qualifications, an array of wealthy Jewish supporters and elected officials associated with the group resigned in unison. Just three months after the Jewish money walkout, the largest and most politically successful Marxist organization in recent American history is now ghettoized, approaching insolvency, and forced to lay off its staff.

In a separate instance, a pro-open borders NGO called CASA published a statement calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Palestine war. The group’s panicked executive quickly retracted the statement and apologized to the Jewish community when lawmakers in Maryland opened a retaliatory investigation threatening their funding. CASA’s top donors, like The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, announced that they were going to pull a six-figure donation earmarked for them in 2024 while sending more millions to support the virulently anti-immigrant state of Israel instead.

At woke Starbucks, Charles Schultz filed a SLAPP lawsuit against his stores own labor union because one of their Twitter accounts wrote “Solidarity with Palestine!” Artforum, which specializes in battling “whiteness” in art, canned its top editor for the same. In progressive-except-Palestine Hollywood, several actresses known for their loud support of trendy left-wing causes who have dared to remark on Israel’s crimes have been suddenly removed from movie sets and blacklisted. Radical pro-criminal New York public defender organizations aggressively suppressed any inkling of pro-Palestinian sentiment. The list of purged people in the broader world of the DEI/Woke activism, culture, media, university, law and foundation complex is so vast it would be safe to say every corner of the liberal and left-wing world has been visited by the Zionist inquisition.

For this reason, the perception that there is a “vibe shift” on wokeism could be a mirage. Many society-wrecking leftist groups are facing financial and staff problems due to the conflict of interests in the Israel-Palestine war, but this could be a temporary lull as both donors and greedy liberals recalibrate to continue to do what they were doing before except in a way Jewish “philanthropists” find more palatable on Israel.

One Marxist entity that appears to be weathering the storm is The Jacobin, a communist magazine with millions of dollars in assets closely tied to the DSA. The publication is registered as a non-profit and overwhelmingly funded by dark money, including major donations from the Jewish Communal Fund.

The Jacobin has been critical of Israel’s war, however, much of their reporting and commentary has fixated on posing a contradiction between the far-rightness of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and “left-wing” Zionists, all while framing Gaza’s elected government and official army, Hamas, as blood thirsty terrorists. The purpose of this tightrope walk seems to be to pander to their staunchly anti-Zionist readers while also appeasing their donors by welcoming the strain of Jewish racialism that is more critical of capitalism.

A stark example is the publication of a paper by Hayim Katsman, a left-wing Kibbutz Zionist critical of Netanyahu, who the Jacobin claims was “murdered by Hamas” on October 7th.

Omitted in this eulogy of the “good Zionist” martyr is the context in which Katsman lived and died. Katsman is an American Jew who, after getting his Ph.D in international studies at the University of Washington, moved to an illegal settlement near Gaza that was established as a civilian-military frontier outpost built in 1978 with the specific intent of killing Arabs. For this reason, Katsman likely died in the crossfire during a shootout between the IDF and Hamas that occurred in his Kibbutz/Settlement on October 7th, with growing mounds of evidence pointing to the Israeli military itself as culpable for the dead Jewish civilians. The Jacobin does not comment on the ludicrous contradiction of celebrating an American born adult choosing to move to land recently stolen from local Arabs in a militarized Israeli settlement being promoted as an enlightened Israel-Palestine peace activist.

It remains to be seen if this politicking will work for The Jacobin. Their coverage has been pressured into being more critical of Israel than the magazine’s editors have previously been comfortable with, which could put their yearly injection of Jewish Communal Fund cash for 2024 in jeopardy anyway.

By and large, most groups supporting anti-white and DEI causes quickly learned their lesson after the initial post-October 7th wave of firings of vocally pro-Palestine workers and activists. Organizations operating in this sphere are more reliant than ever on big donations from billionaires due to the rapid shrinking of the American middle class, which has subsequently caused a collapse in overall grassroots charitable giving.

The deafening silence of America’s self-described humanitarian and racial equity watchdogs on the genocide in Gaza has become a catalyst for antagonism between leaders and young, lower-level true-believers.

In an article published in late October in Devex, the author describes what she has been hearing from the NGO sphere on the matter,

“Philanthropy leaders tell Devex they are being very careful in how they discuss the heavily politicized war out of concern for how it might affect their relationships with colleagues, funding partners, or their careers.

Many people within the sector who historically have been vocal about equity and human rights are horrified by what is happening in Gaza but aren’t speaking publicly because they worry they will be labeled antisemitic if they criticize Israel’s airstrikes, one U.S.-based philanthropy leader told Devex.

Meanwhile, Jewish philanthropy leaders say their community feels abandoned and their trauma not taken seriously, as some liberal groups loudly line up behind Palestinians and their rights.”

An opinion piece in Non-Profit Quarterly complained that despite NGO activists privately supporting a ceasefire in Palestine, the majority have adamantly refused to use their money and influence to support the cause. It also added that Muslim-led “racial justice” outfits are largely avoided by donors and foundations. The cop out from these cowardly pro-immigration, anti-police, non-white racial advocacy parties is to become strategically myopic, suddenly claiming that they don’t want to focus on issues beyond their suddenly narrow missions. One of the only important leftist institutions that has held a full-throated anti-Zionist line is The Intercept, which is also exceptional in that it is the project of Arab businessman Pierre Omidyar.

In NonProfit AF, the furious author adds more fuel to the fire,

“Grassroots donors are pouring in, but the philanthropy community is basically absent. With very few exceptions, major funders are absent. The foundations sitting on billions are doing mostly nothing. Those that are doing something are making gifts of a few hundred thousand at best. Not nothing, but also nowhere near what they’re capable of. [Regarding] Funders 4 Ceasefire: what seemed like a noble effort at first is apparently a feel-good statement with no actual money behind the words. Only a small handful of foundation signers (out of ~150) seem to be funding anything remotely related to Palestine or related advocacy.”

There is no sign that groups supporting the rights and humanitarian needs of Palestinians are unpopular with the general public. People from all walks of life who are outraged at the systematic murder of women and children in Palestine are flooding aid and protest organizations with record amounts of small donations.

But even here, Palestine activists cannot avoid the foxes guarding the hens. It was recently reported in the Jewish Telegraph Agency that virtually all of the money donated to pro-Palestinian demonstrations and advocacy in the United States is managed by a single Orthodox Jew who is an Israeli citizen, Howard Horowitz. Horowitz’s support for Palestinians is couched in attacks on the legitimacy of Gaza’s leadership and the fundamental right of Palestinians to resist occupation by militant means.

Rather than America “turning the corner” on wokeness, what we are seeing could instead be an illusion. The brief reprieve from the left-wing social onslaught against normal people may be more to do with the fact that the organized Jewish community in the US has quickly produced an astonishing $638 million dollars to directly support the Israeli war effort out of their pockets, leading a Jerusalem Post opinion writer to rhetorically ask, “Is there enough left to go around?”

Perhaps key to the question of whether this will take the winds out of wokeness’ sails is what effect this experience will have on the zeal and energy of rank-and-file social justice warriors after realizing their generals are more barbaric, amoral, and unapologetically genocidal than the “Nazis” and MAGAs they have been trained to attack and hate. A person sound of mind would realize that they are being cynically and maliciously used to undermine the collective white West, just as Zionists do to Arab Palestine. Will this earth-shattering hypocrisy disenchant the Gen Z left?

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Flashpoints for War!

Where will WW3’s “Archduke Ferdinand moment” happen?

BY KEVIN BARRETT | FEBRUARY 4, 2024

I remember learning in school that the flashpoint for World War I was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Like most people, I never quite understood how the first-ever World War, involving over 30 nations and leading to almost 20 million deaths, resulted from a gratuitous murder by a handful of radical students. Apparently universities should keep a very close eye on student organizations!

I later encountered the realist school of geopolitics, which argues that the Great War was a disaster waiting to happen. The actual cause of the war, according to realists, was not a random assassination, but the rise of German (and to a lesser extent Russian and American) economic and military power, which threatened the then-British-dominated world order.

Realists say this pattern is not uncommon. A number one power, alarmed at the rise of a number two challenger, allies itself with the number three power, but ultimately fails to maintain its position. The shifting power dynamics, in which the number one power no longer has the economic and military might to back up its top ranking, produces a major war, whose aftermath establishes the new international pecking order. In the case of the two World Wars, which were really one war with two major episodes, the thalassocratic British empire exhausted itself fighting Germany, allowing the US to seize the number one spot.

Today, the US empire is in a position not unlike Britain’s circa 1914. Having industrialized first, built a huge navy, and developed the necessary skills to “rule the waves” and colonize the wogs, the Brits had benefitted from a huge head start; but by 1914 the Germans, Russians, and Americans were catching up, and the Brits no longer had enough relative power to enforce unipolar world domination.

Likewise, 2024 America is still coasting on the fumes of its gigantic post-World War II head start on the rest of the world. The US emerged from World War II with roughly 50% of global GDP. In 1960 it was still 40%. But the decline since then has been steady. Today the US only controls 13% of global GDP. But it still imagines itself as the global Goliath it was in 1960—or maybe even bigger, since the Soviet ideological challenger has disappeared, and the grandiosely narcissistic neocons have seized the helm of the ship of state.

A major war that will reset power relations and take the US down several notches seems almost inevitable.* The question remains, where will the flashpoint be?

The neocons, in their infinite wisdom, have made it difficult to guess, having alienated so much of the world that the coming take-down-the-US World War could break out practically anywhere. Russia and its borderlands…China and its southern sea and/or its errant province of Taiwan… and now, with the genocide of Palestine making the Islamic world even angrier than Russia and China, the whole middle belt of Eurasia and North Africa is equally hostile territory.

But before we start globetrotting in search of flashpoints, why not begin imagining the transforming event a bit closer to home? If the assassination of heir-presumptive Archduke Ferdinand, attributed to allegedly state-supported radical fanatics, could set off World War I, could an assassination of presumptive 2024 president Donald Trump, attributed to radical Iran-supported fanatics, unleash World War III?

Flashpoint Florida

Imagine: It’s October 2024. Trump is leading in the polls 55%-45% nationwide, with a clear edge in all the swing states. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a drone swoops down on Mar-a-Lago, smashes through a plate glass window like a supermosquito on steroids, and stings Trump with its explosive charge just as he’s breaking open his seventh can of diet coke. (Cinematographically, we cut from a close-up of the pssssssst as Trump opens the can to a medium shot of the almost simultaneous explosion.)

Fortunately, almost before what is left of Trump is declared dead, the media tells us who did it. A radical Iranian-Palestinian terrorist named Lee Harvey Atta is arrested on the seventh floor of the Palm Beach School Book Depository and accidentally defenestrated before he can be questioned. Luckily, on the floor of the book storeroom, authorities discover an Iranian-made Manlicher-Carcano drone control rig complete with instructions written in Farsi, signed by the Supreme Leader of Iran.

President Biden, whose cognition has been revived to functionality thanks to an Elon Musk (TM) brain implant, appears on television extravagantly praising the late and much-lamented Trump, canceling the election, declaring that all Americans are united in their thirst for vengeance, and calling for an all-out war on Iran to be personally commanded by a certain Bibi Netanyahu, who will be Lear-Jetted and then helicoptered in from Tel Aviv to take charge in the White House Situation Room. With the mutterings of conspiracy theorists silenced by the new AI-driven censorship algorithms, the US and the world are off to the races.

Other Potential Flashpoints

The above scenario, or some only slightly-less-ludicrous variation, may not be quite as unlikely as it sounds. Removing Trump, inciting Trump supporters to war hysteria, and blaming Iran—a plausible patsy given its stated desire for revenge for the assassination of General Soleimani—would kill three birds with one drone. The neocons may even have thought ahead to such a scenario when they conned Trump into approving the murder of Gen. Soleimani.

But don’t bet on Flashpoint Florida. It’s a big world out there, and—thanks to the neocons—most of it hates the US empire with a passion. The list of war-trigger possibilities is so long that guessing right would be like winning the lottery.

Another Mideast flashpoint, of course, is the Red Sea, especially the Bab al-Mandab. Yemen’s Houthi-led government, backed by everyone in the region, is continuing to attack Israel-bound ships in an effort to enforce the World Court’s anti-genocide order, despite the presence of a US armada unofficially known as Operation Genocide Guardian.

US ships are sitting ducks due to the proliferation of advanced anti-ship missiles. Instead of the long-awaited Persian Gulf of Tonkin incident, one iteration of which was thwarted in 2007 by US 5th Fleet advisor Gwenyth Todd, we could see a Red Sea Gulf of Tonkin incident… only it might involve an actual attack, albeit a false flag one, as in “remember the Maine.”

Another escalatory flashpoint could involve Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has demonstrated an ability to penetrate Israeli defenses to hit heavily-guarded military targets even under conditions of highest alert. The Israelis clearly want all-out war with Hezbollah, in order to drag the US into the ensuing war with Iran. Only a very firm “no” from the American side prevented Israel from going to all-out war with Hezbollah after October 7. Given subsequent US ineffectuality at restraining the mad-dog Zionists, it isn’t hard to imagine Israel getting its wish and setting off World War III via an all-out war with Hezbollah and the rest of the Resistance Axis and Muslim world.

Flashpoint Palestine

As the above examples suggest, there are many ways that the continuing Israeli genocide of Palestine could indirectly lead to World War III. But could Palestine become a direct flashpoint? The Palestinians don’t seem to have enough military power. But if the war goes badly enough for the Palestinian Resistance, other branches of the Axis of Resistance will escalate their support, with unpredictable consequences. Additionally, there is massive covert support for Palestine among wealthy and powerful elements of regional nations, in some cases among high-ranking members of the state apparatus who wouldn’t be caught dead—or rather would be caught dead—if they uttered their real feelings about the Zionists in public.

One nightmarish potential flashpoint is the specter of a no-return-address WMD attack on Israel. The technology of WMD—micronukes, bioweapons, and the like—has been advancing since the days of the Davy Crockett backpack nukes of the 1950s, and even since the US-developed COVID bioweapon attack on China and Iran of a few years ago (which turned out to be a pretty good proof-of-concept for deniable, no-return-address bioattacks in general). Anger at Israel, in light of the current genocide, has reached the point that it’s virtually inevitable that people will try such things within the next few decades, assuming Israel is still around, and barring unforeseen changes in Zionist behavior.

Flashpoint Ukraine

Zionist fanatics on the wrong side of history have made Palestine and its region a potential WW3 flashpoint. Likewise Ukrainian nationalist fanatics, also on the wrong side of history, have created a parallel danger.

Just as 10 million Zionist Jews cannot defeat two billion Muslims, 40 million Ukrainians cannot defeat 140 million Russians. But the fanatics insist on trying. They know that their only hope is to drag the US into their war in an ever-bigger way. The result would be the destruction of the US empire, which, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, is grossly overextended given its 13%-and-shrinking share of global GDP.

Currently the fanatic faction, led by Zelensky, is fighting the realist faction, led by Zaluzhny. If the fanatics win, their only hope is to false-flag the US into bringing NATO directly into the war. Which means, of course, World War III.

Flashpoint Taiwan

Though we didn’t talk about Taiwan in the latest FFWN broadcast, it’s clear that the anti-China faction of neocons is trying to turn Taiwan into China’s Ukraine, by stoking the forces of fanatical Chinese nationalism and trying to goad Beijing into direct hostilities. If they succeed, World War III could start in the “cleanest” possible way: An immediate, direct war between the sinking #1 power and the rising #2 power.

Other Flashpoints?

This brief discussion certainly doesn’t exhaust the list of potential WW3 flashpoints. I’m sure my readers can think of others. 


*At least if you are a realist. Since I am an idealist, accepting as I do the arguments of Bernardo Kastrup and the Holy Qur’an, not necessarily in that order, I reserve the right to believe that with God’s help we can avert World War III.

Rumble link Bitchute link

In our new “Flashpoints for War” episode of False Flag Weekly News, Cat McGuire and I began with the latest crisis: more than 85 US attacks on Iraq and Syriathreats of more to come, and counterattacks from the Resistance. With geriatric Biden under pressure from his right to act tough, it isn’t hard to see how a miscalculation, and/or a false flag by Israel, could set the dominoes falling in the direction of global war.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

FOR WESTERN MEDIA, ISRAEL’S BOMBING OF GAZA IS NOT ‘DEADLY’

Right across the Anglo-American mainstream media, the killing of Palestinians is seen as normal. It’s only Israeli lives that matter.

BY DES FREEDMAN | DECLASSIFIED UK | JANUARY 30, 2024

Twenty-four Israeli soldiers were killed in two separate incidents in Gaza on 22 January. Mainstream media outlets around the world reacted in unison: that this was the “deadliest day” for Israel since 7 October.

This exact phrase was used in headlines on 23 January carried by news agencies such as Reuters and AFP, and major broadcasters including the BBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC and ITV News.

The exact same phrase was also used by leading news titles including the New York TimesWashington PostWall Street JournalTime magazine, Daily Telegraph, the Sun, Jerusalem PostGuardian, London’s Evening StandardFinancial TimesIndependent and Yahoo News.

On the same day, Israeli forces killed almost 200 Palestinians in Gaza including at least 65 people in Khan Younis alone.

These deaths received no headlines in the above outlets. Where they were reported, they were listed as part of the regular daily round-up of events in an unfolding genocide that has now seen more than 26,000 people killed in Gaza.

How is it possible that the world’s media could embrace exactly the same phrase in relation to Israeli victims but largely ignore the identities of the much higher number of Palestinians killed?

Why would 22 January be described as “deadly” for one group of people but not for another?

Unequal value

You might expect that editors took the “deadliest day” phrase from press statements from the Israeli government or military.

Yet Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari did not use this phrase in his statement and neither did the IDF Chief of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi, who instead simply called it a “difficult day”.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanhayu also described it as “one of the most difficult days” while Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, spoke of “an unbearably difficult morning”.

He used the same language as both Knesset speaker Amir Ohana and minister Benny Gantz, both of whom referred to a “painful morning”.

Of course, it is possible the phrase was used in private and informal briefings to the press on the morning of 23 January. It is, however, equally conceivable that this was a trope that came “naturally” from a deep-rooted idea in the western media that the lives of Israelis and Palestinians are not of equal value.

And, therefore, that measuring the “deadliness” of a particular day should only be done for Israelis (where every life matters) and not for Palestinians (whose individual lives clearly appear to count for less).

‘Deadliest day’

Indeed, a search of the Nexis database of UK national and local news (including BBC broadcast bulletins) reveals that there were 856 uses of the phrase “deadliest day” from 7 October 2023 until 25 January 2024, none of which directly referred to evidence of Palestinian deaths in Gaza.

The only exception to this were some BBC bulletins on 25 October which mentioned “Palestinians reporting the deadliest day in Gaza” (emphasis added).

Otherwise, there was not a single reference during this period across the British media to “the deadliest day for Palestinians” or “for the people of Gaza”.

The other approximately 850 references directly related only to Israeli casualties. Some 28 per cent of them focused on the killing of IDF soldiers on 22 January.

The vast majority referred to the events of 7 October, described either as “the deadliest day for Jews” or “the deadliest day for the Jewish people” which accounted for some 25% of all references.

Many of these stories were focused on the words of US president Joe Biden who, in a much publicised speech to Jewish leaders at the White House, described the Hamas attack on 7 October as the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust”.

Biden’s words alone make up 20% of all references to the “deadliest day” trope.

Perhaps Biden’s words were on the minds of editors across the world as they listened to Israeli spokespeople on the morning of 23 January and that the deaths of 24 IDF soldiers merited such a phrase when talking about Israeli lives.

Framing the war

But why has the phrase not been used in relation to Palestinians and, indeed, why is there so little preoccupation with days when particularly large number of Gazans are killed?

Precisely because the war is not framed in a way which recognises the equal worth of all those affected – in other words, a situation where every instance of significant Palestinian casualties would deserve a headline – it’s hard to be certain of which have been the very deadliest days for the residents of Gaza.

However, it’s clear that the period immediately after the temporary ceasefire in the last week of November saw particularly intense airstrikes and there were, according to Al Jazeera, at least 700 Palestinians killed on 2 December alone.

Yet there was no mention in the UK media about this being the “deadliest day” for Palestinians. Instead, the Guardian simply ran with a headline of “‘Israel says its ground forces are operating across ‘all of Gaza’” while the Sunday Times wrote that “Fears for hostages as Gazans say bombardment is worse than ever”.

According to the Mail Online, “Israel says it is expanding its ground operations against Hamas’ strongholds across the whole of the Gaza Strip as IDF continues to bomb territory after terrorists broke fragile truce”.

The BBC’s TV news bulletins on 3 December carried distressing footage of casualties but also featured a quote from an adviser to Netanyahu saying that “Israel was making the ‘maximum effort’ to avoid killing civilians” without carrying an immediate rebuttal of this outrageous claim.

In other words, despite the fact that 30 times more Palestinians were killed on 2 December than when the 24 IDF soldiers were killed, there was no recognition of the “deadliness” of that day.

Instead, the framing was all about the strategic plans of the Israeli military rather than the mass slaughter of Palestinians.

‘Intensive strike’

On 26 December, a further 241 people were killed by Israeli bombs. Britain’s “newspaper of record”, The Times, responded with the headline: “Israel-Gaza war: Palestinians hit by ‘most savage bombing’” with a sub heading that “Israel launches most intensive strike since Hamas attack on October 7”.

You could be forgiven for thinking that there was nothing deadly about this episode because, after all, Palestinians were only being “struck” as opposed to brutally killed.

But this was hardly an exceptional day given that Oxfam reported earlier this year that Israel’s military was killing Palestinians at an average rate of 250 people a day, a figure it said exceeded the daily death toll of any other major conflict of recent years.

There is clearly a brutal politics to counting the dead. The New York Times ran an article on 22 January headlined “The Decline of Deaths in Gaza” arguing that average daily deaths across a 30-day period have now fallen below 150.

For the NYT, it is “plausible that a lower percentage of deaths are among civilians now that Israel’s attacks have become more targeted and the [average] daily toll has declined”.

Not only, however, is there little evidence that the IDF is in any way opposed to killing civilians but the idea that casualties are declining at a time when we are soon likely to see a total of 30,000 Palestinian deaths is profoundly shocking.

Any slowdown in the rate of killing is hardly a consolation to the millions who still live in fear of IDF raids and rockets.

Media consensus

The media consensus that only Israelis are the victims of the “deadliest days” in the region and not Palestinians, despite the latter accounting for 95% of deaths since 7 October, is one of the many illustrations of the unequal and profoundly distorted coverage of this war.

Until the South African government submitted its partially successful claim to the International Court of Justice, news organisations were unwilling even to investigate the genocidal language of Israeli political and military leaders.

The media also routinely uses dehumanising and differential language where Israelis are “massacred” while Palestinians simply “die”. This illustrates the awful role of the mainstream media in paving the way for the ethnic cleansing we are currently seeing.

The real reason you don’t see or hear the media talk about a “deadly day” for Palestinians is that every day is deadly when you live in Gaza.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

New wave of US, UK strikes target Yemen

The Cradle – February 4, 2024

US and UK warships and fighter jets bombed Yemen on 4 February, in a wave of missile strikes US officials claim hit 36 targets.

The US said in a CENTCOM statement that it hit “36 targets at 13 locations,” striking “underground storage facilities, command and control, missile systems, UAV storage and operations sites, radars, and helicopters.”

According to the statement, the US, UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand took part in the attacks.

The strikes were in response to Yemeni efforts to target Israeli-linked commercial ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. The Yemeni attacks are in response to Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza.

Rather than press its ally Israel to stop its military campaign, which has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, the US has joined forces with the UK to bomb Yemen.

Saturday’s strikes were launched by US F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, British Typhoon FGR4 fighter aircraft, and the Navy destroyers USS Gravely and the USS Carney firing Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea, according to US officials and the UK Defense Ministry.

The Yemen Armed Forces issued a statement detailing where the attacks took place, reporting 13 raids on Sanaa, 9 on Hodeidah, 11 on Taiz, 7 on Al-Bayda, 7 on Hajjah, and one on Saada.

“These attacks will not deter us from our moral, religious, and humanitarian stance in support of the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and will not go unanswered and punished,” read the statement.

The strikes come one day after the US sent B-1 bombers to target 85 locations affiliated with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq in eastern Syria and western Iraq, killing at least 16. This was in response to an operation by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that targeted US military outpost Tower 22 in Jordan last week, killing three US soldiers.

US officials reportedly told Al-Jazeera that the strikes on Yemen are “considered a next round of retaliation for the killing of the [US] soldiers in Jordan.”

Like Ansarallah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq coalition, formed after 7 October, has also targeted Israel, as well as US bases in Syria and Iraq. The groups say their attacks are in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which the US has supported militarily and diplomatically.

Ansarallah leaders in Yemen say they have no intention of scaling back their campaign despite pressure from the US and UK bombing.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, an Ansarallah official, said, “military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” He wrote on social media that the “American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Wants All of Palestine, and Denies the Existence of the Palestinian People

Steven Sahiounie interviews Kari Jaquesson | Mideast Discourse | January 28, 2024

“There was no such thing as Palestinians,” said Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, in an interview with The Sunday Times on June 15, 1969.

In March 2023, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, denied the existence of a Palestinian people or nationhood just weeks after calling for a Palestinian town to be “erased.”

137 countries worldwide (70%) have recognized Palestine. In 2014 the EU voted to ‘Recognize Palestine in principle’. Within Europe as a whole, only the Czech Republic, Iceland, Malta, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, and Ukraine have recognized Palestine.

We know that the US supports the genocide in Gaza, but what do the Europeans think? In an effort to answer that question, Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed the Norwegian expert on the Middle East, Kari Jaquesson.

#1.  Steven Sahiounie (SS):  EU foreign affairs council held a Peace Summit in Brussels on January 22, chaired by EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell. The EU presented a proposal, which some have called bizarre, to create a framework for a Peace Plan, with the ultimate goal of a two-state solution by 2025. It ignores the genocide being committed in Gaza today, and fails to call for a ceasefire.

How is this proposal being viewed in Europe?

Kari Jaquesson (KJ):  Before we start, I just want to let your readers know who I am, Steven, and also that we know each other from when I first visited Syria in 2017 as an independent journalist and I did an interview with you on my stop-over in Beirut. It is a great pleasure to follow your work.

So, I am a Norwegian national, and Norway is not a member of EU, though much of our legislation is being dictated by EU-mandates. Much of our political cast is very pro-EU, even though Norwegians have twice voted not to become members.

I am a private citizen, do not belong to any political party, and participate in public discourse representing only myself. As more or less a household name in Norway, both because of a 20+ year-long TV career as a fitness and health expert, later as a presenter in different TV shows, and a debater and op-ed author of so-called controversial issues, I have been able to lift non-mainstream perspectives into the public eye. My profession is still in fitness and health, and in addition I work as a researcher, translator and occasional writer for steigan.no, the only truly independent major Norwegian non mainstream news portal, so I process daily a lot of news, discussion and commentaries from European, American, African and Arabic sources, as well as historical files. I just want to make it clear that I only speak for myself, I do not represent any organization or company.

The distance between the non-elected officials in the EU-administration and the peoples of Europe could hardly be greater. This has been ongoing for years, and the heads of state in West European countries have hardly any popular support at all. The people in Western Europe, and let me include Norway are in great numbers demoralized and struggling to make ends meet. The NATO proxy war against Russia is draining the state coffers, and even in a should-be wealthy country like Norway, we have long lines in the food banks, energy costs have gone through the roof, and the general cost of living is not sustainable for an increasing part of the population. The state is extremely wealthy, but people’s wallets are getting slimmer by the day. Most people have little or no time or interest in politics, and most people get their so-called news from the state-subsidized media, which includes not only the big newspapers and TV-channels, but also former so-called independent outlets.

So, quite frankly, most people do not know about nor care about, nor have the energy or will to reach out to more in depth coverage of such events as the announcement of EU’s proposal. But, on the other hand, there is an impressing engagement against both the genocide going on as we speak, and the occupation of Palestine as such.

“From now on I will not talk about the peace process, but I want a two-state-solution process,” Borell said to journalists ahead of a EU foreign ministers’ meeting.

This concept of two states has been dangled in front of the Palestinian people for decades, but I can’t see how anyone who has followed the history of the occupation for one minute can take such a stand seriously. The Zionist entity has made it perfectly clear, not only now, but through their actions since 1948 that they want all of Palestine, and more. Furthermore, the occupiers deny the mere existence of Palestine, and even of a Palestinian people.

The EU do not use the correct terminology, which is a sure give-away on the partiality. They keep saying conflict, but avoid at all cost the true description. The true description is occupation.

#2.  SS:  The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, showed EU foreign ministers a video about creating an artificial island next to Gaza to house Palestinians. Various Israeli plans to deport Gazans to the Sinai desert in Egypt, and the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to Jordan, have been openly discussed.

How do Europeans view the ethnic-cleansing of Gaza?

KJ:  In all European cities there have been, and are still huge demonstrations against the ongoing genocide. I am not sure all are aware of all the indecent remarks and proposals for “final solution” the occupiers are announcing. The news coverage is biased, and a notable part of the public are easy targets for the type of shock and awe reporting that dominated the news right after the October 7th incident. Their mind is still fixed on what has long since been debunked as flat out lies.

But even so, an engagement not seen since the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France is keeping its momentum, and some admissions are being made by some Western-European leaders.

According to a poll in Norway’s biggest newspaper earlier this month, almost every second Norwegian thinks it would be right to boycott Israel, but the government has no such plans.

Minister of foreign affairs Espen Barth Eide has previously called Gaza “hell on earth”, but has been adamant that Norway cannot implement its own national sanctions. We have no tradition in Norway of unilateral sanctions, he said, adding that Norway would do it if the Security Council agrees. Norway has since 2011 been practicing the same sanctions against Syria as the EU, although we are not a member.

#3. SS:  The EU is planning to impose visa bans on 12 or so of the most violent Israeli settlers soon, according to French foreign minister Stéphane Séjourné. However, many of the 700,000 illegal settlers in the West Bank are US citizens, so the ban would likely be meaningless.

Why would the EU propose something so insignificant, instead of calling for the end of occupation in the West Bank?

KJ:  First of all, what difference would this make? What is the purpose? And what is this other than a pathetic symbolic suggestion? As you point out, they have dual citizenship, and though the numbers vary, it is reason to believe that hundreds of thousands of dual citizenship-holders have returned to their country of origin. Which is a harsh contrast to the situation of the Palestinians who have no citizenship at all, and who know that if they leave, they will never be able to return.

After this week’s ruling there is a legal ground to accuse Europeans who have been fighting with the IDF to be prosecuted and punished for having participated in a genocide. And there are many who are doing this.

#4.  SS:  The US Biden administration refuses to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.  They are prevented in doing so, even though the majority of Americans are in favor of a ceasefire, because of the Israel lobby, AIPAC, which exerts overwhelming pressure on the politics in the US.

Does Europe have a similar Israel lobby which prevents EU leaders from demanding a ceasefire in Gaza?

KJ:  It is almost impossible to understand to what extent France and Britain is controlled by Jewish Zionist groups, but you may get an impression if you try to make count of who is allowed on the TV-debates and the biased perspective from the TV-presenters and who they invite for interviews and for commenting. However, this is a complete taboo and you will not find any serious discussion about this in any major news outlet. No mainstream politician will touch the issue, well knowing it would be political suicide.

Years ago, the former Israeli Minister Shulamit Aloni was a guest on the American channel Democracy Now, and she explained the inability for the Zionists to accept criticism without resorting to false accusations of antisemitism and the second world war. She called it “a trick that we always use”.

Most of the Western European countries, including Norway may be described as ‘vallas’, in other words, satellite states of the United States of America. We have no independent foreign policy.

#5.  SS:  The German government has been supporting the revenge killing of 25,000 Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli government. They keep reiterating the mantra, “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Many experts have characterized Germany as a country held hostage to the holocaust, as they have refused to call for a ceasefire.

Isn’t it time that Germany divorce itself from the crimes of Adolf Hitler, and be allowed to treat Israel like any other country?

KJ:  First of all, Israel is not a country, let me make that clear. It is an occupation. Secondly, the occupation is expanding with an insatiable appetite for more land, therefore this supposed country has no borders. Also, it has no constitution.

Is it really the alleged guilt from the second world war that is making Germany so docile vis-a-vis the genocidal Zionist? Maybe there is another reason, less noble. Unfortunately, this is verboten territory.

Germany and many other countries have made research and revisions of that period illegal, even for historians, and even if the number of alleged victims have been significantly reduced, yes, officially, it is forbidden to say so. Even the plaque at the most infamous concentration camp has been drastically revised, something few are aware of.

If the German leadership truly believed in their country’s history and crimes, wouldn’t they be the first to recognize and oppose new genocides? Yes, but they don’t.


Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Justification For Hitting Iran ‘Would Justify Russian Attacks on NATO’

By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 03.02.2024

On Friday, US President Joe Biden fulfilled his promise to strike Iranian targets in Syria and Iraq, further escalating the region even as the White House insists that it does not seek war with Iran.

Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst for the Office of the Secretary of Defense with nearly 30 years of experience, told Sputnik’s Fault Lines that the justification used by the White House could easily be applied by Russia to NATO countries supporting Ukraine.

“You’re hearing from congressmen and senators saying ‘but we need to hit Iran for supplying the Houthis and Hamas and Hezbollah,” Maloof explained. “Well, does Russia then have a right to hit US and NATO allies, as a result of supplying weapons to Ukraine to battle Russians?”

The United States has placed the blame on Iran for the Sunday drone attack that killed three US service members and injured dozens more on the border of Syria and Jordan. While the US admits that it has no evidence Iran helped plan the attack, the Biden administration has been clear it blames Iran because the country allegedly funds those groups and other militants.

“This afternoon, at my direction, U.S. military forces struck targets at facilities in Iraq and Syria that the IRGC and affiliated militia use to attack U.S. forces,” US President Joe Biden said in a statement released Friday by the White House.

“I think that if Biden were to follow through, then that raises a whole new specter of opening up NATO countries to potential attack,” Maloof continued, adding that the US is simply hoping Russian President Vladimir Putin “doesn’t follow through” with that justification.

Maloof argued that the US should reevaluate the situation in the Middle East but it’s difficult because the US looks “at the Middle East through the prism of Israel all the time.”

“We’ve got to somehow figure a way out of it. Instead, we’re digging that hole deeper and even though there might be some attempts to try and persuade [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to calm down and have a ceasefire and try to resolve things, it’s doing just the opposite.

“The problem is that Biden has left the conduct of the war up to Netanyahu, and Netanyahu knows this and he’s basically dragging us along – we’re captives of Netanyahu,” Maloof explained.

“You don’t have any, there’s no leadership [the US] left it up to Netanyahu. He’s the tail wagging the dog,” he added later.

Maloof further argued that Israel has been getting the United States to do its dirty work for decades. “We always hear Netanyahu wanting the United States involved, or us to bomb the sites… This is the way we’ve been conducting ourselves since… 2003 when we invaded Iraq.”

Asked by Co-host Melik Abdul how the US should have responded to the attack, Maloof argued that the US should leave the region.

“I think we shouldn’t even be in those locations. And I think we should have gotten out some time ago.”

Otherwise, Maloof warns “This thing has unlimited possibilities of escalation very rapidly.”

February 3, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

ADL defines genocide and civil disobedience within the FBI

The looming threat to Middle East peace activism

By Grant F. Smith | IRmep | February 2, 2024 

As politicians and the Anti-Defamation League call for crackdowns on Middle East peace protesters, the ADL’s undue influence within the FBI as a trainer is finally exposed.

Basic Field Training Course

The Department of Justice released the Anti-Defamation League’s Basic Field Training Course (PDF). The course is mandatory for all FBI New Agent Trainees (NATs) and New Intelligence Analyst Trainees (NIATs). This release follows a decade of Freedom of Information Act requests and denials by the Department of Justice (PDF) and evasion by publicly funded content contributors.

The ADL course is developed and conducted by Anti-Defamation League (ADL) instructors. It selects materials from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. Marcus Appelbaum, Museum Director of Law, Justice and Society Initiatives in 2014 resisted any public review of the curriculum, stating, “Unfortunately we do not randomly send out the curriculum.” Appelbaum also denied that any of the large amounts of U.S. taxpayer funding supporting the museum paid for the curriculum.

Museum Director of Law, Justice and Society Initiatives Marcus Appelbaum denied curriculum release in 2014.

The ADL course facilitates a discussion of the USHMM video The Path to Nazi Genocide by asking trainees to watch and then consider “the challenges that police officers faced, and decisions they made in Germany during the Nazi era.” The video depicts the rise of Nazi Germany from WWI to the final WWII liberation of concentration camps replete with emaciated images of the dead and barely living.

The final question the video puts to agents in training is why the word “genocide” had to be coined in the aftermath. “As the world struggled to understand what had happened, a new word, genocide, was needed for these crimes — crimes committed by ordinary people from a society not unlike our own.”

The ADL training also requires viewing the civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize: No Easy Walk. Supplemental reading exposes new FBI agents to the bureau’s past role undermining Martin Luther King Jr. and documents Bull Connor’s relentless fire hosing and mass arrests of black protesters engaged in civil disobedience. The video ends with the triumphant 1963 March on Washington and JFK’s proposal for a Civil Rights Act.

Taken in context, the entirety of the Basic Field Training Course makes it clear that FBI trainees are ADL subordinates who must strive to meet with its approval. Page 9 of the guide even states, “as a new hire, we would like you….”

The unstated purpose of the course is positioning Israeli activities in the US and the ADL itself outside the purview of law enforcement and especially FBI counterintelligence. The ADL today is framed as trusted trainers and civil rights partners. That was not always the case. The ADL’s current privileged insider role training all new FBI special agents is the result of a secretive influence campaign that began more than eight decades ago. Internal FBI files about that campaign reveal the ADL’s true reasons for infiltrating the FBI.

In 1940 the ADL launched an intense effort to liaise with the FBI by offering a list of undercover ADL investigators to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI was reluctant to accept the ADL list. One FBI special agent told Hoover he found a proposed investigator resource to be “mentally unbalanced.” Others offered up by ADL, such as longtime political campaign donation bundler Abraham Feinberg, was known to the FBI as a WWII surplus conventional weapons smuggler for Israel and alleged unregistered foreign agent. Feinberg later financed Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program.

The ADL offered to investigate persons of interest to the FBI. FBI Assistant Director P. E. Foxworth nixed that idea, telling Hoover the ADL was engaged in “shakedowns” of “loyal and innocent” Americans and “interested only in their own material benefit…”

This did not keep the ADL from announcing in 1942 it had conducted “373 investigations” on behalf of the FBI. This prompted Hoover to respond that private investigative agencies had “no excuse for existence” and that the FBI “had never asked the ADL to conduct an investigation.” On June 30, 1943, Luigi S. Crisculo, an American investment banker involved in Italian American causes, reported being baited by Anti-Defamation League operatives who claimed to be “unofficial auxiliaries of the Department of Justice” and were attempting to link him to Nazism.

The ADL also wanted to directly seed its operatives into the FBI. Arnold Forster (AKA Fastenberg) began developing ADL’s legal team in 1938 while simultaneously applying to become an FBI special agent in 1937 and 1939. Forster was formally rejected because in the view of the FBI he “dressed poorly, did not appear resourceful and would probably not develop.” Forster then became ADL’s chief investigator in 1940 and held formal and informal positions until 2003. Another longtime ADL investigator and operative named Frank Prince even campaigned to replace Hoover as FBI director. When caught out in 1942, the ADL offered to “disband within 24 hours.” The FBI did not take the ADL up on this offer since “we [the FBI] are not running the Anti-Defamation League.”

Throughout the 1940s the ADL continuously lobbied FBI field offices for meetings and joint events which befuddled some bureau insiders. One special agent in command reported to Hoover he could not “understand the insistence of the ADL that a representative of this Bureau address this group.” He felt, “there is some ulterior motive that causes them to be so insistent.”

One ADL motive was gaining privileged access to FBI files. In 1944 ADL’s Nissan Gross asked to periodically check FBI files to avoid “duplication of investigation.” Special Agent in Command Drayton rebuffed the ADL because “under the procedure…ADL would have an opportunity to learn of the informants being utilized…and those under investigation.”

In 1968 FBI Director J Edgar Hoover finally dropped his longstanding opposition and ordered field offices “to immediately make certain that you have established liaison with the head of the ADL regional office in your territory…” Such liaisons continue to this day. Since then, joint public events, training sessions and even FBI director “love letters” to the ADL have been ongoing.

Given its insider status at the FBI, growing piles of Palestinian corpses in Gaza and resultant mass protests and civil disobedience in the U.S. may not be a challenge for the ADL which, along with other nodes of the Israel affinity ecosystem, works to censor open debate and protests of concern to Israel. As an FBI trainer, the ADL has finally transcended scrutiny. The FBI previously, acting on credible evidence, investigated ADL for domestic spying before political pressure on former Attorney General Janet Reno quashed the investigation. Such investigations of the ADL today would be unthinkable.

Even before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and Israel’s attack on Gaza and settler rampages in the West Bank, the ADL was seeding the FBI with false threat reports conflating peaceful US based Palestinian rights groups with white nationalist movements.

ADL statistics and reports also attempt to reframe pro-Palestinian protests and civil disobedience in the United States as Antisemitism and “hate crimes” rather than anything resembling legitimate Civil Rights era nonviolent action. Under its forced “liaison” with the ADL, the FBI must pay close attention to and respond to all the ADL’s false and misleading allegations lest other nodes of the Israel affinity ecosystem work in concert to threaten its funding, political appointees or mundane issues such as a new headquarters.

The ADL and Israel lobby ecosystem acted quickly to compel Congressional “genocide threat” hearings—focused not on the reality of tens of thousands of dead in Gaza, but rather the discomfort felt by American Zionist students at elite Ivy league universities encountering campus cease fire rallies.

Following the ADL worldview, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently alleged that pro-Palestinian protesters picketing her home were acting on behalf of Russia and China and demanded that the FBI investigate them as foreign agents.

It is ironic that Pelosi, who has benefited all her career from support from AIPAC, an Israeli foreign influence operation set up with $60 million in foreign funds laundered into the US in the 1950s and 1960s, hurls foreign agent accusations at peaceful protesters.

Nancy Pelosi speaking at Israel’s Knesset in 2022Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaking at Israel’s Knesset in 2022

However, the threat of looming FBI crackdowns, covert or overt, on protesters calling for Middle East peace should not be discounted given the ADL’s success infiltrating its worldview into the bureau. Although FBI Director Christopher Wray has promised the FBI will not investigate or surveil peaceful pro-Palestine protests, his promise leaves out entrapment operations. The pressure for the bureau to “get results” by seeding plots, weapons and entrap mentally unbalanced individuals in “Palestinian terror plots” may soon become overwhelming. Such “successes” would instantly gain uncritical, widespread mainstream media diffusion and touch off more congressional hearings for further operations and funds to Israel.

One certainty is that even as the International Court of Justice demands Israel refrain from violations of the Genocide Convention, the ADL will certainly not teach such relevant current day lessons to new generations of special agents.

Review primary sources referenced in this article at the Israel Lobby Archive.

February 2, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Nearly two million at risk as Israel threatens assault on Rafah

The Cradle | February 2, 2024

Nearly two million Palestinians stranded in south Gaza’s Rafah were struck with panic after the Israeli defense minister said the southern city – previously described as a safe zone to which the displaced can flee – will be the next target of Israel’s brutal offensive on the strip. 

Around 1.9 million Palestinians live in increased fear following the Israeli threats, Al-Jazeera reported on 2 February. 

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed on 1 February that the presence of Hamas would be dealt with in Rafah as it is being dealt with in Khan Yunis. 

“Hamas’s Khan Yunis Brigade boasted that it would stand against the IDF, now it’s falling apart,” Gallant said, despite the fact that the Israeli army continues to face fierce resistance from the Qassam Brigades in the southern city. 

“I am telling you here, we are completing the mission in Khan Yunis and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate everyone there who is a terrorist who is trying to harm us,” the defense minister added. 

“They don’t have weapons, they don’t have ammunition,” Gallant said about Hamas fighters across Gaza, as RPG attacks continued to target Israeli tanks and troop carriers in Khan Yunis on 2 February. 

In the first months of the war, hundreds of thousands of residents in north and central Gaza were forced to flee to Rafah – where Tel Aviv repeatedly said civilians would be safe from harm. 

Despite this, Israeli warplanes bombarded Rafah several times. 

As the army began pushing into Khan Yunis in early December, hundreds of thousands more were forced deeper south into Rafah. Israel continues to order more forced evacuations – despite Rafah being severely overcrowded with the displaced. 

Last month, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported, citing Israeli and Egyptian officials, that Israel is planning a risky military operation to take control of the Philadelphi Corridor. 

The Philadelphi Corridor is the border area of the southern Gaza Strip, which includes the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. 

An Israeli operation in this area – and in the city of Rafah in general – would have catastrophic effects on the civilian population currently stranded there

Gallant’s threats came in the wake of new truce discussions. A Palestinian source told Al-Mayadeen on Thursday evening that Hamas has yet to agree to the proposal, and dispelled rumors that it sent a delegation to Cairo for negotiations. 

February 2, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

US Not Prepared for War Against Iran and ‘Axis of Resistance’

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 02.02.2024

Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for Washington, as the US is too internally weak to wage a new major in the Middle East, University of Tehran professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast.

US officials have reportedly signaled that plans have been approved for a series of strikes against targets in Iraq and Syria.

That would be in response to a recent drone attack on US personnel in the Middle East — which claimed the lives of three soldiers and left 34 wounded.

In the wake of the strike Bloomberg claimed the Biden administration was considering a covert strike on Iran or Iranian officials as possible options.

But University of Tehran Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik that directly targeting Iran would be a major mistake and a major miscalculation by Washington.

He suggested that scenario was very unlikely, given Iran’s missile defense and drone capabilities, as well as the vulnerability of US bases which are scattered across the Middle Eastern region.

“Let’s assume that the United States strikes Iran,” Marandi said. “The United States has bases all across the Persian Gulf. The Iranians will hit out at those bases, and then the Iranians will also punish those countries that host those bases.”

Message for Joe Biden: Don’t Mess with Iran

The professor warned the fallout from the tit-for-tat attacks would send oil and gas prices “through the roof.”

“The Red sea would no longer be safe for oil and gas. The Western economies would collapse if there was a major escalation in our region,” Marandi underlined. “The United States, its assets across Iraq would be crushed. It would be overrun and by extension Syria as well and Lebanon. The world has changed. This is not just Iran, by the way. This is the whole of West Asia.”
Given the latest US media reports, it appears far more plausible that the US would attack targets in Iraq and Syria, Marandi continued.

“[The US] will claim some sort of ‘victory over terrorists’ and that sort of nonsense which they usually say,” the professor said. “But it will be like in Yemen, they will have very little impact because the resistance to the US occupation, the illegal occupation in Iraq and Syria is very well hidden. Their assets are underground, they are spread out. And all the United States would do would be to make people angrier and make the resistance more popular, both at home and abroad. That’s exactly what we saw in Yemen.”

Marandi noted that most recently instead of pushing the Israeli regime to end the slaughter in the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the US tried to facilitate the genocide by attacking Yemen. Since early January the US and its allies conducted a series of strikes against the Ansar Allah-led government in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, also known as the Houthis after their leader.

“They launched many missiles, wasted a lot of money, but they were incapable of changing the balance of power. And Yemen continues to easily strike ships. Why?” the professor asked. “Because all of their assets are underground. Their mobile radar is well-protected underground. They are missiles and drones are well protected underground. They come out, strike the target and go back underground. So the Americans failed in Yemen. They made ‘Ansar Allah,’ or what the West likes to call the Houthis, very popular across the region and across the world, and they’ll only do the same in Iraq and Syria.”

In the aftermath of the strikes the Biden administrations came under criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. A bipartisan group of House representatives, comprising such strange bedfellows as Republican Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green and New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, argued that the US’ “unauthorized strikes in Yemen” violate the Constitution and US statute.

They called on Biden “to seek authorization from Congress before involving the US in another conflict in the Middle East,” and warned the White House against provoking Iran and Iran-backed militia in the region which could swiftly spiral out of control and lead to a broader regional conflict.

US legislators’ concerns are justified as the US cannot afford to wage wars on multiple fronts, the academic pointed out.

“The United States cannot win another war,” said Marandi. “I have no doubt that if the Republicans were in charge, they would be… Whoever is in the white House, the people around him would be saying these things in private, and the Democrats in public would be denouncing the president for holding back. But the truth is that the United States is not the United States of the past. They can launch an attack on Iran. But the price would be extremely high and the United States wouldn’t win.”
Marandi questioned when the US had last won an overseas war.

“As the United States ‘won’ in Iraq as it won in Afghanistan. Did it win in Libya? Did it win in the genocide that it supported in Yemen? Did it win in Ukraine? The United States has a very poor record when it comes to launching wars and destroying nations and countries,” the acdemic said.

“They are capable of ruining lives and murdering millions and they don’t care. We see that in Gaza every day, but they simply don’t have the power to win. And Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Yemen. Iran is not Vietnam,” Marandi stressed. “Attacking Iran would be a catastrophic mistake for the United States, and something that I don’t think those decision makers in Washington would ever seriously contemplate.”

“The Americans may be foolish enough to do so, but if they do so, then I think you’ll see the demise of the American empire take place much more rapidly than we’re seeing right now,” he concluded.

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

Why’s the US attacking the Houthis in the Red Sea?

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 02.02.2024 

When it comes to explaining this question, i.e., why the US is attacking the Houthis in the Red Sea, most mainstream western media gives a similar answer, i.e., the Houthis are part of Iran’s “axis of resistance”; the Houthis seek Israel’s destruction; the Houthis are a terrorist group seeking to bring Yemen under their exclusive control, etc. Almost every major western media outlet has singularly highlighted what they call is the central Houthi slogan: “Death to America, Death to Israel, curse the Jews and victory to Islam”. The purpose is to criminalize them. Therefore, retaliating against them is crucial for the West to ensure its own security. But the US and its allies also need to frame it in a way that can get maximum political sympathy from within their countries. Speaking to reporters in Bahrain on the 10th of January, the US Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, warned that continued Houthi attacks in the Red Sea could disrupt supply chains and in turn increase costs for everyday goods.

This particular framing of US counterattacks has direct appeal to the people, i.e., if the Houthis continue to attack ships in the Red Sea, it will disturb global supply chains, which will lead to the shortage of commodities, including food, that might contribute to inflation, making ordinary people’s lives difficult. Therefore, to ensure that people face minimum difficulties, the US is attacking the Houthis.

Contrast it with the fact that the Houthis’ target in the Red Sea are the Israel-bound shipments. But the West suppresses this reality. It is not untrue that the Houthis are against Israel and that the core purpose of their attacks is to dent Israel’s ability to wage its war. The US, on the other hand, has jumped on the anti-Houthi bandwagon to take care of the threat that the Houthis present to Israel so that the state of Israel can continue, safely, to wage its war on the Gazans.

But this is not how the US frames its attacks. The US-led task force called Operation Prosperity Guardian has been patrolling the Red Sea to, in Blinken’s words, “preserve freedom of navigation” and “freedom of shipping”. But the only freedom Washington cares about is its own ability to dictate geopolitics in its own exclusive ways; hence, the attacks. Still, if Washington and its allies see the Houthis as part of the “axis of resistance”, for the Houthis, for Iran, and for the people of Palestine, the “axis of resistance” exists, fundamentally, due to the ‘axis of domination’ the US wants to accomplish. For the Houthis and its allies, this ‘axis of domination’ includes the US and its NATO allies plus Israel and the West’s reluctant allies in the Middle East, i.e., states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

What the Houthis Say

For the Houthis, the main reason for their attacks is the collective inability or the unwillingness of the West to prevent the unimaginable loss of life at the hands of Israel in Palestine. A senior Houthi official said, in a statement released on ‘X’ (Twitter), in December that the Houthis would only halt their attacks if Israel’s “crimes in Gaza stop and food, medicines and fuel are allowed to reach its besieged population”. Later, in response to the US decision to launch a coalition force in the Red Sea, Houthi Major General Yusuf al-Madani said in a statement that “Any escalation in Gaza is an escalation in the Red Sea … Any country or party that comes between us and Palestine, we will confront it.”

The question, therefore, is: will the Houthis still be attacking if the West was playing a more responsible role, i.e., not allowing Israel to execute its own version of the so-called final solution to the Palestine question.  The answer is probably no. But if this was not the case, i.e., if there was no crisis in the Red Sea, the US would have little excuse to launch a coalition and use the war to augment its dwindling position in the Middle East.

The Coalition

The US-led coalition is the US entry point in what the US calculates could be a long war in the region, a war that would become long only because Israel needs a lot of time to execute its cardinal objectives. Apparently, Israel’s objective is eliminating Hamas. But, as the war has progressed and its current trajectory, i.e., the utter destruction of the entire Gaza and the displacement of millions of Gazans, shows, Israel’s objective is to fundamentally change the socio-political reality of the Gaza Strip in a way that would allow it to permanently annex this region in its pursuit of ‘Greater Israel’.

Israel confirmed earlier this month that the war is unlikely to come to an end in 2024. The West, in response to this warning, has practically sealed its lips. On the contrary, the Houthi attacks have allowed the West to practically shift the blame on them for creating tensions. This is a classic western way of giving spins to issues in a way that a) not only allow it to execute its plans and b) frames them in a way that minimizes the political risk.

For Biden, it is important to minimize the political risk now more than ever because of the seemingly unstoppable Trump resurgence. If Trump wins the next election in the US, it does not mean an end to the US support for Israel. It might increase, given that the Trump administration, by accepting Israel’s decision to declare Jerusalem as its capital and supporting the Abraham Accords, directly contributed to the present war. But for Biden, this is still a political nightmare. Therefore, the Biden administration is excessively framing the issue as existential not only for Israel but also for the US. This makes a lot of sense for him for the elections, given that Biden’s unflinching support for Israel and his willingness to expand US involvement in favor of Israel has led to nearly three-quarters of Jewish Americans [grossly over-represented in campaign finance and media control] approving his policies. Biden’s domestic imperatives in this sense trump the imperative of saving innocent lives and preventing the war from spreading. It is for this reason that Washington is attacking the Houthis.

Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.

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

Yemenis ditch UAE–Saudi coalition, embrace Ansarallah-led Sanaa government

The Gaza war and renewed US–UK strikes on Yemen are shattering what remains of the UAE–Saudi-led coalition. 

By Mohammed Moqeibel | The Cradle | February 1, 2024

While the Red Sea military operations of Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah have shaken up geopolitical calculations of Israel’s war on Gaza, they have also had far-reaching consequences on the country’s internal political and military dynamics. 

By successfully obstructing Israeli vessels from traversing the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Ansarallah-led Sanaa government has emerged as a powerful symbol of resistance in defense of the Palestinian people – a cause deeply popular across Yemen’s many demographics. Sanaa’s position stands in stark contrast to that of the Saudi and Emirati-backed government in Aden, which, to the horror of Yemenis, welcomed attacks by US and British forces on 12 January.

The US–UK airstrikes have offended Yemenis fairly universally, prompting some heavyweight internal defections. Quite suddenly, Sanaa has transformed into a destination for a number of Yemeni militias previously aligned with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, now publicly declaring their allegiance to Ansarallah.

One such figure, Colonel Hussein al-Qushaybi, formerly with the Saudi–UAE coalition forces, announced in a tweet:

I am Colonel Hussein al-Qushaybi, I declare my resignation from my rank and my defection from the Legitimacy Army [army backed by Saudi-led coalition] that did not allow us, as members of the Ministry of Defense, to show solidarity with Palestine.
My message to army members: Go back to your homes, for our leaders have begun to protect Zionist ships at sea and support the [Israeli] entity, even if they try to deceive, but their support has become clear and it is still there.

Qushaybi claims he was incarcerated in Saudi prisons for 50 days – along with other Yemeni officers – for his outspoken defense of Gaza, during which he endured torture and interrogation by an Israeli intelligence officer.

Major Hammam al-Maqdishi, responsible for personal protection of Yemen’s former Defense Minister in the coalition-backed government, has also arrived in Sanaa, pledging allegiance to Ansarallah.

Simultaneously, a leaked ‘top-secret’ document from the Saudi-backed, UN-recognized Yemeni Ministry of Defense instructs military leaders to suppress any sympathy or support for Hamas or Ansarallah, as “this might arouse the ire of brotherly and friendly countries” – an implicit reference to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Defections and dissent 

The wave of defections within the ranks of Saudi–Emirati coalition forces is not limited to officers. Many regular troops have openly rebelled against their commanders – abandoning their positions and pledging allegiance to Ansarallah – following the recent airstrikes on Yemen. Dozens of these soldiers have been arrested and detained for displaying solidarity with Gaza. 

Yemeni news reports claim the US government, in a missive to the coalition’s Chief of Staff Saghir bin Aziz, expressed “dissatisfaction” with the lack of solidarity among his forces and demanded action.

While this trend of defections in the Saudi–Emirati coalition is not entirely new, it has accelerated considerably since the onset of the war in Gaza and the recent US-UK strikes on Yemen. 

Last February, high-ranking coalition officers, including brigade commanders from various fronts, began a series of defections, though none as significant as the current rebellion. 

These earlier defections were primarily driven by financial conditions and dissatisfaction with Saudi Arabia and the UAE for their dismissal of military commanders associated with the Islah Party (Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen), who were replaced by members of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) militias and those commanded by Tariq Saleh, nephew of pro-Saudi former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh. 

Most of these defections were by officer and troops associated with the Islah Party during a time when the foreign coalition began marginalizing the party’s military and political leadership, and dismantling several military sectors under their control – in favor of the UAE-controlled STC.

Now, the Gaza war has the Islah Party leadership fully breaking with its old alliances. As party official Mukhtar al-Rahbi tweeted upon the launch of US-UK strikes:

Any Yemeni who stands with the US, UK, and the countries of the coalition protecting Zionist ships should reconsider their Yemeni identity and Arab affiliation. These countries protect and support the Zionist entity, and when Yemen closed the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea to the ships of this terrorist entity, this dirty alliance struck Yemen and punished it for its noble stance towards Gaza and Palestine.

In stark contrast, the UAE-backed STC and the Tareq Saleh-led National Resistance Forces expressed readiness to protect Israeli interests. On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, STC President Aidarus al-Zoubaidi reaffirmed his support for the British attacks against Yemen, conveying this stance to British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

Following these statements, an entire battalion under Saleh’s command defected to Ansarallah, while many other fighters now refuse his authority because they reject supporting US–UK strikes against Sanaa and its resistance leaders. 

A shift in public sentiment

In response to the latest western aggression against Yemen, media outlets affiliated with the STC and its supporters have launched a campaign against Ansarallah and the Palestinian resistance, casting doubt on the Yemeni resistance movement’s capabilities and motives. But, their efforts have backfired badly, instead leading to widespread public fury in the country’s southern regions controlled by the UAE and Saudi-backed government. 

Their anger is directed at the Aden-based government‘s perceived alignment with Israel’s regional projects, sparking both protests and symbolic acts, such as burning pictures of UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed and the Israeli flag.

According to Fernando Carvajal, a former member of the UN Security Council’s Yemen expert team, Ansarallah have managed to leverage – to their benefit – the untenable position of Abu Dhabi, which normalized relations with Israel as part of the 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords. This, he argues, has helped them gain widespread support both within Yemen and internationally.

In the wake of this unexpected public outrage, the STC has experienced a further wave of defections within its ranks. Several leaders have joined the Southern Revolutionary Movement, and openly expressed their objective of liberating southern Yemen from what they see as “Saudi–Emirati occupation.”

Amidst the wave of military realignments, prominent Al-Mahra tribal Sheikh Ali al-Huraizi – arguably the most influential figure in eastern Yemen – has come out to praise Ansarallah‘s military operations against Israel-bound shipping in the Red Sea, hailing its actions as a resolute and national response to the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Huraizi stressed that the US and British aggression against Yemen was launched to protect the Zionist state, because Ansarallah’s targeted strikes were negatively impacting Israel’s economy. Calling for unity among Yemenis, the tribal leader urged steadfast resistance against Israeli influence in the country. He also called on other Yemeni factions to follow the bold leadership of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi as a means to halt the genocide taking place in Gaza.

Countdown to the coalition’s collapse 

Yemen’s deteriorating economic conditions, currency collapse in coalition-ruled areas, and ongoing conflicts among southern militias have left many Yemenis disillusioned with Emirati and Saudi proxies, whom they had hoped would bring – at the very least – economic prosperity. 

In contrast, the Ansarallah-led Sanaa government has managed to maintain a relatively stable economic situation in the areas under its control, despite the foreign-backed war aimed at toppling it. This disparity has led to a growing sentiment among UAE-aligned soldiers that they are merely pawns fighting for the interests of Persian Gulf Arab rulers, without receiving due recognition from these governments.

The contrasting stances on Palestine between the coalition and Ansarallah have deepened the Yemeni divide since the events of 7 October. Sanaa’s support for the Palestinian cause has significantly boosted its domestic standing, while US–UK strikes on the country have complicated their Persian Gulf allies’ position by prioritizing Israeli interests over all other calculations. 

Disillusionment with the coalition will have profound political and military implications for Yemen, reshaping alliances, and casting the UAE and Saudi Arabia as national adversaries. Palestine continues to serve as a revealing litmus test throughout West Asia – and now in Yemen too – exposing those who only-rhetorically claim the mantle of justice and Arab solidarity. 

February 2, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Three Strands to the ‘Swarming of Biden’

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 2, 2024

“The Iranians have a strategy, and we don’t”, a former senior U.S. Defence Department official told Al-Monitor“We’re getting bogged down in tactical weeds – of whom to target and how – and nobody’s thinking strategically”.

The former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar has coined the term ‘swarming’ to describe this process of non-state actors miring the U.S. in the tactical attrition – from the Levant to the Persian Gulf.

‘Swarming’ has been associated more recently with a radical evolution in modern warfare (most evident in Ukraine), where the use of autonomous swarming drones, continuously communicating with each other via AI, select and direct the attack to targets identified by the swarm.

In the Ukraine, Russia has pursued a patient, calibrated attrition to drive hard-Right ultranationalists from the field of battle (in central and eastern Ukraine), together with their western NATO facilitators.

NATO attempts at deterrence towards Russia (that recently have veered off into ‘terrorist’ attacks inside Russia – i.e. on Belgorod) notably have failed to produce results. Rather, Biden’s close embrace of Kiev has left him exposed politically, as U.S. and European zeal for the project implodes. The war has bogged down the U.S., without any electorally acceptable exit – and all can see it. Moscow drew-in Biden to an elaborate attritional web. He should ‘get out’ quick – but the 2024 campaign binds him.

So, Iran has been setting a very similar strategy throughout the Gulf, maybe taking its cue from the Ukraine conflict.

Less than a day after the attack on Tower 22, the military base ambiguously perched on the membrane between Jordan and the illegal U.S. al-Tanaf base in Syria, Biden promised that the U.S. would provide a quick and determined response to the attacks against it in Iraq and Syria (by what he calls ‘Iran-linked’ militia).

Simultaneously however, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby stated that the U.S. doesn’t want to expand military operations opposite Iran. Just as in Ukraine, where the White House has been loath to provoke Moscow into all-out war versus NATO, so too in the region, Biden is (rightly) wary of out-right war with Iran.

Biden’s political considerations in this election-year will be uppermost. And that, at least partly, will depend on the fine calibration by the Pentagon of just how exposed to missile and drone attacks U.S. forces are in Iraq and Syria.

The bases there are ‘sitting ducks’; a fact would be an embarrassing admission. But a hurried evacuation (with overtones of the last flights from Kabul) would be worse; it could be electorally disastrous.

The U.S. seemingly aims to find a way to hurt Iranian and Resistance forces just enough to show that Biden is ‘very angry’, yet without perhaps doing real damage – i.e. it is a form of ‘militarised psychotherapy’, rather than hard politics.

Risks remain: bomb too much, and the wider regional war will ignite to a new level. Bomb too little, and the swarm just rolls on, ‘swarming’ the U.S. on multiple fronts until it finally caves – and finally exits the Levant.

Biden thus finds himself in an exhausting, ongoing secondary war with groups and militias rather than states (whom the Axis seeks to shield). In spite of its militia character, however the war has been causing major damage to the economies of states in the region. They have fathomed that American deterrence has not been showing results (i.e., with Ansarallah in the Red Sea).

Some of those countries – including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have initiated ‘private’ steps that were not coordinated with the U.S. They are not only speaking with these militia and movements, but also directly with Iran.

The strategy to ‘swarm’ the U.S. on multiple fronts was plainly stated at the recent ‘Astana Format’ meeting between Russia, Iran, and Turkey on 24-25 January. The latter triumvirate are busy preparing the endgame in Syria (and ultimately, in the Region as a whole).

The joint statement after the Astana Format meeting in Kazakhstan, MK Bhadrakumar has noted:

“is a remarkable document predicated almost entirely on an end to the U.S. occupation of Syria. It indirectly urges Washington to give up its support of terrorist groups and their affiliates “operating under different names in various parts of Syria” as part of attempts to create new realities on the ground, including illegitimate self-rule initiatives under the pretext of ‘combating terrorism.’ It demands an end to the U.S.’ illegal seizure and transfer of oil resources “that should belong to Syria””.

The statement thus spells out the objectives starkly. In sum, patience has run out over the U.S. weaponising the Kurds and attempting to revitalise ISIS in order to disrupt the tripartite plans for a Syria settlement. The trio want the U.S. out.

It is with these objectives – insisting that Washington give up its support of terrorist groups and their affiliates as part of attempts to create new realities on the ground, including illegitimate self-rule initiatives under the pretext of ‘combating terrorism’ – that the ‘Astana’ Russian and Iranian strategy for Syria finds common ground with that of the Resistance’s strategy.

The latter may reflect an Iranian strategy overall – but the Astana Statement shows the underlying principles to be Russia’s too.

In his first substantive statement after 7 October, Seyed Nasrallah (speaking for the Axis of Resistance as a whole) indicated a strategic Resistance pivot: Whereas the conflict triggered by events in Gaza was centrally connected with Israel, Seyed Nasrallah additionally underlined that the backdrop to Israel’s disruptive behaviour lay with America’s ‘forever wars’ of divide-and-rule in support of Israel.

In short, he tied the causality of America’s many regional wars to the interests of Israel.

So, here, we come to the third strand to the ‘swarming of Biden’.

Only it is not regional actors that are contriving to box-in Biden – it is America’s own protégé: Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and Israel are the principal target of the bigger regional ‘swarm’, but Biden has allowed himself to be enmeshed by it. It seems that he cannot say ‘no’. So here Biden is: boxed-in by Russia in Ukraine; boxed-in in Syria and Iraq, and boxed-in by Netanyahu and an Israel that fears the walls closing-in on their Zionist project.

There is likely no electoral ‘sweet-spot’ to be found here for Biden, between inserting America into an unpopular and electorally disastrous, all-out Middle East war, and between ‘green-lighting’ Israel’s huge gamble on victory over war against Hizbullah.

The confluence between the failed Ukrainian ploy to weaken Russia, and the risky ploy for Israel’s war on Hizbullah, is unlikely to be lost on Americans.

Netanyahu too is between a rock and a hard place. He knows that ‘a victory’ that boils down to just the release of the hostages, and confidence-building measures to establish a Palestinian state, would not restore Israeli deterrence – inside or outside the state. On the contrary, it would erode it. It would be ‘a defeat’ – and without a clear victory in the south (over Hamas), a victory in the north would be demanded by many Israelis, including key members of his own cabinet.

Recall the mood within Israel: The latest Peace Index survey shows that 94% percent of Israeli Jews think Israel used the right amount of firepower in Gaza – or not enough (43%). And three-quarters of Israelis think the number of Palestinians harmed since October is justified.

If Netanyahu is boxed in, so is Biden.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu former said:

“We will not end this war with anything less than the achievement of all its objectives … We will not withdraw the IDF from the Gaza Strip and we won’t release thousands of terrorists. None of that is going to happen. What is going to happen? Total victory.”

“Is Netanyahu capable of veering strongly to the left… entering into an historic process that will end the war in Gaza and lead to a Palestinian state – coupled with an historic peace agreement with Saudi Arabia? Probably not. Netanyahu has kicked over many other similar buckets before they were filled”, opined veteran commentator, Ben Caspit, in Ma’ariv (in Hebrew).

Biden is making a huge bet. Best to wait on what Hamas and the Gaza Resistance answers to the hostage proposal. The omens, however, do not look positive for Biden —

Senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials responded yesterday to the latest proposal:

“The Paris proposal is no different from previous proposals submitted by Egypt … [The proposal] does not lead to a ceasefire. We want guarantees to end the genocidal war against our people. The resistance is not weak. No conditions will be imposed on it” (Ali Abu Shahin, member of Islamic Jihad’s political bureau).

“Our position is a ceasefire, the opening of the Rafah crossing, international and Arab guarantees for the restoration of the Gaza Strip, the withdrawal of the occupation forces from Gaza, finding a housing solution for the displaced and the release of prisoners according to the principle of all for all … I am confident that we are heading for victory. The patience of the American administration is running out because Netanyahu is not bringing achievements” (Senior Hamas official, Alli Baraka).

February 2, 2024 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment