Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was born April 28, 1937 and died December 30, 2006. He was the fifth President of Iraq, holding that position from July 16, 1979 until 9 April 2003. He was one of the leading members of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, and afterward, the Baghdad-based Ba’ath Party and its regional organization Ba’ath Party, Iraq Region, which advocated ba’athism, an ideological marriage of Arab nationalism with Arab socialism. (Patricia Ramos, july 2013)
An especially dangerous threat to liberty occurs when members of the press collude with government agencies instead of monitoring and exposing the abuses of those agencies. Unfortunately, collusion is an all-too-common pattern in press coverage of the national security state’s activities. The American people then receive official propaganda disguised as honest reporting and analysis.
"The national security of America and the security of the world could be attained if the American leaders [..] become rational, if America disengages itself from its evil alliance with Zionism, which has been scheming to exploit the world and plunge it in blood and darkness, by using America and some Western countries. What the American peoples need mostly is someone who tells them the truth, courageously and honestly as it is.
They don’t need fanfares and cheerleaders, if they want to take a lesson from the (sept. 11) event so as to reach a real awakening, in spite of the enormity of the event that hit America.
But the world, including the rulers of America, should say all this to the American peoples, so as to have the courage to tell the truth and act according to what is right and not what to is wrong and unjust, to undertake their responsibilities in fairness and justice, and by recourse to reason..."
Saddam Hussein, INA 15-9-2002
Do not hate the individuals who do evil, hate only the evil deed itself
Saddam Hussein, Last Will, 26-12-2006
(Quran 25: 72) As a general rule the servants of Merciful God remain away from all kind of absurdities
and would bypass nonsense with dignity
“O brothers and great people, I call on you to preserve the ideals that made you worthy of being believers, of being the bright lamp of civilization, and of belonging to the land that gave birth to the father of prophets, Abraham, and also of other prophets. These ideals have made you the bearer of the official and authentic greatness...
“I call on you not to hate the peoples of the countries that have committed aggression on us. I call on you to distinguish between the decision-makers and the people. Hate only the deed. Even if someone's deeds deserve to be fought and combated, do not hate him as a human being. Do not hate the individuals who do evil, hate only the evil deed itself, and repel that evil as it deserves.
Firmness is a must whenever necessary. However, in order that firmness is acceptable to the people and the nation, it ought to be on the basis of the law, and to be fair and just, and not aggressive and based on malice or illegitimate ambitions.
Joe Biden & Truth - 2009
US Vice President Joe Biden said that the new administration would seek the
unvarnished truth from its spies, whether or not their information supported
the goals of the government.
The Vice President's address was greeted with loud cheers by the several hundred CIA employees who gathered for the swearing in ceremony in the foyer of the Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
Standing before the wall of 89 stars representing the CIA staff who have died in the line of duty, Mr Biden said:
"We expect you to provide independent analysis, not to engage in group think. We
expect you to tell us the facts as you know them wherever they may lead, not
what you think we want to hear." (Tim Shipman. 20-2-2009)
"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign
ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid
to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation
that is afraid of its people …
The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. …
Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind." John F.Kennedy
“Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you can not retain.”
Saadi Shirazi
(Persian poet & humanist, born in Shiraz, Iran, c. 1210)
"The post-September 11 era in the US has heralded in a new age of ideology whose discourse and world views have served not only to accommodate such extremist views as those held by Sharon, but also to provide him with a platform and an influence that were unthinkable only a year ago.
Thus while the American President is busy devising a new Manichean universe of absolute good and absolute evil, pronouncing policy on the basis of a simplistic polarization of the world, and unilaterally defining the terms while categorizing state and non-state actors accordingly, Sharon’s Israel has maneuvered itself into a position of even greater power on the world stage provided explicitly by the US."
"Holism is the most fundamental discovery of 20th century science. It is a discovery of every science from astrophysics to quantum physics to environmental science to psychology to anthropology.
It is the discovery that the entire universe is an integral whole, and that the basic organizational principle of the universe is the field principle: the universe consists of fields within fields, levels of wholeness and integration that mirror in fundamental ways, and integrate with, the ultimate, cosmic whole...." "For many thinkers and religious teachers throughout this history, holism was the dominant thought, and the harmony that it implies has most often been understood to encompass cosmic, civilizational, and personal dimensions. Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Lord Krishna, Lao Tzu, and Confucius all give us visions of transformative harmony, a transformative harmony that derives from a deep relation to the holism of the cosmos."
About political holism
Political holism is based on the recognition that "we" are all members of a single whole. There's no "they," even though "we" are not all alike. Because "we" are all part of the whole, and therefore interdependent, we benefit from cooperating with each other. Political holism is a way of thinking about human cultures and nations as interdependent. Political holists search for solutions other than war to settle international disagreements. Their model of the world is one in which cooperation and negotiation, even with the enemy, even with the weak, promotes political stability more than warfare.
In an overpopulated world with planet-wide environmental problems, the development of weapons of mass destruction has rendered war obsolete as an effective means to resolve disputes.
Political dualists consider political holists unpatriotic for questioning the necessity to defeat "them." In times of impending war, political dualists tend to measure patriotism by the intensity of one's hostility to the country's immediate enemy. Naturally, they would view as disloyalty any suggestion that the enemy is not evil, any call for cooperation with the enemy, any criticism of one's own country.
To political dualists, cooperation with the enemy means capitulation, relinquishment of the nation's position of dominance. At its extreme, political dualism is essentially tribalism. (Betty Craige, 16-8-1997)
Desmond Tutu & Ubuntu
"A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
"We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World.
When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity." (Ubuntu info)
Almost a year after the calamitous events of Oct. 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is finally getting what he always wanted: an all-out regional war.
Make no mistake, the dangerous escalation on Israel’s northern front can only be described as a full-fledged war, with all cards laid on the table. Forget about the tactical euphemisms, it is everything short of an open war. The reality is that Israel is hitting Hezbollah all over Lebanon, from the south to the Bekaa and from the Lebanese coast to Beirut’s southern suburbs.
In return, a badly injured and humiliated Hezbollah is trying to salvage its reputation and ability to respond. It is now firing missiles deep into northern Israel, as well as the suburbs of Tel Aviv. No one knows how far the two parties will go in this latest exchange of blows.
Israel has hit southern Lebanon hard right after carrying out a series of “below the belt” blows to the pro-Iran militia. As far as one can tell, Hezbollah has suffered critical losses to its top military leadership, has lost confidence in the integrity of its command and control communication system and has suffered severe blows to its underground missile bases in southern Lebanon.... The foremost goal of Israel’s military operation against Hezbollah is to force the Shiite group’s hand into accepting the delinking of its support of the Gaza resistance.
In his most recent TV speech, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah vowed to maintain that link at any price. The Israeli operation ostensibly seeks to convince him to drop that demand, accept a truce and allow thousands of Israelis to return to their homes in northern Israel.
While a shaken Nasrallah ponders this offer, Israel is bent on creating a buffer zone in southern Lebanon that extends way north of the Litani River. It is using a Gaza-like carpet bombing of south Lebanon, causing tens of thousands of Lebanese to flee. A week or more of the Israeli bombing of south Lebanon will render this area a parched and empty space. There is no way that Hezbollah can reclaim this territory.
More than 11 months of war on Gaza has decimated the Palestinian enclave.
More than 70 percent of the civilian infrastructure has been destroyed. More than 41,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed. More than 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza are cramped into a 40 sq. mile area. It is no longer about Hamas, but about the fate of almost all Gaza residents. Netanyahu was never interested in the fate of the Israeli captives. He wanted to destroy Hamas, which he almost did while pushing for a master plan: Occupy most of Gaza and force the Palestinians to Egypt’s borders, while allowing his extremist partners to terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank.
Aside from his legal ordeals, Netanyahu has always believed that he has a mission to debunk any attempt to create a Palestinian state. In later years, he thought that he could carry out such a scheme with the help of extremist coalition partners. The reality today underlines Israel’s far-right plan to annex most of the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians in ghettos with limited self-administration.
Once this war ends, Israel will still face hard questions. What to do with more than 7 million Palestinians between the river and the sea?
This latest cycle of violence may well end in a partial Israeli victory. But it will prove to be a pyrrhic victory for Netanyahu. Hezbollah, like Hamas, will survive in one way or another.
The threat to Israel will never disappear. The only way for Israel to survive is to make peace with the Palestinians. So far, Netanyahu has not seen this...
In his address to the UN General Assembly on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, displayed two maps, which did not identify the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but showed all the territory as part of Israel, Anadolu Agency reports.
Holding the maps, Netanyahu said the world must choose between a “blessing” and a “curse”. The first one showed Israel’s potential Arab allies in the region, while the second, Iran and its allies. Both the maps expunged Gaza and the West Bank.
Netanyahu issued stern warnings to Iran, saying: “I have a message for Tehran, if you strike us, we will strike you.”
“There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that’s true of the entire Middle East,” he added.
He condemned the world for “appeasing Iran for too long”, asserting that such appeasement “must end now”.
He reaffirmed Israel’s commitment to continue its military operations in Gaza, where it has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians since last October, demanding that Hamas “surrender, lay down its arms and release all the hostages.”
The Israeli leader insisted that Hamas should not be involved in post-war Gaza, calling it “inconceivable and ridiculous” for the group to play a role in the enclave after the war.
He expressed support for any peaceful civilian governance in the Palestinian enclave. “We are ready to work with regional and other partners to support a local civilian administration in Gaza.”
Netanyahu also announced the continuation of military actions in Lebanon, where its forces have killed hundreds in extensive air strikes this week, saying: “I’ve come here today to say enough is enough. We won’t rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes.”
“We will continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met,” he added.
As Netanyahu took the stage, a large number of delegates, including that of Turkiye, left the hall.
Israel’s fundamentalists are some 2,600 years out of step
with today’s acceptable forms of statecraft and international law Jeffrey D. Sachs • September 30, 2024
When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium at the U.N. General Assembly last week, dozens of governments walked out of the chamber. The global opprobrium of Netanyahu and his government is due to Israel’s depraved violence against its Arab neighbors. Netanyahu purveys a fundamentalist ideology that has turned Israel into the most violent nation in the world. Israel’s fundamentalist credo holds that Palestinians have no right whatsoever to their own nation.
The Israeli Knesset recently passed a declaration rejecting a Palestinian State in what the Knesset calls The Land of Israel, meaning the land west of the Jordan River.
The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region. To call the land west of the Jordan the “heart of the Land of Israel” is breathtaking. Israel is one part of the land west of the Jordan, not the entire land. The International Court of Justice has recently ruled that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian lands (those outside of Israel’s borders as of June 4, 1967, before the June 1967 war) is plainly illegal.
The U.N. General Assembly has recently voted overwhelmingly to back the ICJ ruling and called on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories within one year.
There are many sources of this Israeli brazenness, the most important being the backing of Israel by U.S. military power. Without the U.S. military backing, Israel could not possibly rule over an Apartheid regime in which Palestinian Arabs constitute nearly one half of the population yet hold none of the political power.
Future generations will look back in amazement at the success of the Israel Lobby in manipulating the U.S. military to the severe detriment of U.S. national security and global peace.
Yet in addition to the U.S. military, there is another source of Israel’s profound injustice to the Palestinian people, and that is religious fundamentalism.
Fanatics such as the self-proclaimed fascist Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Minister of Finance, and Minister of National Defense Itamar Ben-Gvir hold fast to the biblical Book of Joshua, according to which God promised the Israelites the land “from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.” (Joshua 1:4).
At the U.N. last week, Netanyahu once again staked Israel’s claim to the land on Biblical grounds: “When I spoke here last year, I said we face the same timeless choice that Moses put before the people of Israel thousands of years ago, as we were about to enter the Promised Land. Moses told us that our actions would determine whether we bequeath to future generations a blessing or a curse.”
What Netanyahu did not tell his fellow leaders (most of whom had in any event vacated the hall), was that Moses laid out a genocidal path to the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 31):
[The LORD] will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, just as the LORD has spoken. “The LORD will do to them just as He did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land, when He destroyed them. “The LORD will deliver them up before you, and you shall do to them according to all the commandments which I have commanded you.”
Israel’s violent extremists believe that Israel has the Biblical license, indeed a religious mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people.
Their Biblical hero is Joshua, the Israelite commander who succeeded Moses, and who led the Israelites’ genocidal conquests. (Netanyahu has also referred to the Amalekites, another case of a God-ordained genocide of foes of the Israelites, in a clear “dog-whistle” to his fundamentalist followers.) Here is the Biblical account of Joshua’s conquest of Hebron (Joshua 10):
Then Joshua and all Israel with him went up from Eglon to Hebron, and they fought against it. They captured it and struck it and its king and all its cities and all the persons who were in it with the edge of the sword. He left no survivor, according to all that he had done to Eglon. And he utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it.
Jewish fundamentalists adhere to a 6th century BCE text that is most likely a mythical reconstruction of purported events several centuries earlier, and a form of political bravado that was common in ancient Near Eastern politics.
The problem is 21st century Israeli politicians, illegal settlers, and other fundamentalists who propose to live by—and kill by—6th century BCE political propaganda. Israel’s violent fundamentalists are some 2,600 years out of step with today’s acceptable forms of statecraft and international law. Israel is duty bound to the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, not to the Book of Joshua.
Iran's President Pezeshkian meets Saudi Foreign Minister
amid fears of regional escalation The National, October 03, 2024
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan in Doha amid mounting fears of regional escalation following Iran's massive missile attack on Israel.
The two leaders discussed the latest regional and international developments in their meeting late on Wednesday in Qatar's capital, the official Saudi Press Agency said, without giving details.
Saudi Arabia and Iran, among the region's powerhouses, restored diplomatic ties in March last year, ending a seven-year rift. Their rapprochement has opened the door to top-level contact but caution remains a defining characteristic of their relations. The meeting in Doha came a day after Iran launched 180 ballistic missiles on Israel to avenge the killing on Friday of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah – Iran's main regional proxy – and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh earlier this year.
Mr Pezeshkian warned at the news conference that if Israel acts against Iran, then Tehran will respond in a more severe way. “We are not in pursuit of war with Israel,” he said. “They promised us peace. But Israel has terrorised our guests in Tehran during our presidential inauguration. We want to establish peace. If you disagree, peace will not be established.”
Tension in the Middle East and fears of a wider conflict have escalated since the war between Hamas and Israel began nearly a year ago.
Iran's proxies in the region, including Yemen's Houthis and armed Shiite groups in Iraq – have attacked Israel in efforts to stop its bombardment of Gaza that has killed about 41,700 people.
Hezbollah's daily exchange of cross-border fire with Israel has inched closer to a full-fledged war over the past fortnight, with Israel carrying out a ground invasion in Lebanon this week, and significantly stepping up air strikes, mostly in southern Lebanon, the group's stronghold, and the eastern Bekaa Valley. Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim said on Wednesday that Doha will continue mediation efforts to end the war in Gaza.
In a joint press conference with the Iranian President, he said: “The recent surge of conflict in Lebanon is what we have been warning against since the beginning of Israeli aggression.” Israel, he added, must “cease its unjust war in Gaza, and the West Bank and its aggression on Lebanon”.
The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University's Costs of War project, released on the anniversary of the war.
An additional $4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up U.S. military operations in the region since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said in findings first provided to The Associated Press.
That includes the costs of a Navy-led campaign to quell strikes on commercial shipping by Yemen's Houthis, who are carrying them out in solidarity with Gaza.
The report — completed before Israel opened a second front, this one against Hezbollah group in Lebanon, in late September — is one of the first tallies of estimated U.S. costs as the Biden administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. The financial costs were calculated by Linda J. Bilmes, a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, who has assessed the full costs of U.S. wars since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and fellow researchers William D. Hartung and Stephen Semler.
Here's a look at where some of the U.S. taxpayer money went:
Record military aid to Israel
Israel — a protege of the United States since its 1948 founding — is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in history, getting $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report says.
Even so, the $17.9 billion spent since Oct. 7, 2023, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year.
The U.S. committed to providing billions in military assistance to Israel and Egypt each year when they signed their 1979 U.S.-brokered peace treaty, and an agreement since the Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.
The U.S. aid since the Gaza war started includes military financing, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in drawdowns from U.S. stockpiles and hand-me-downs of used equipment. Much of the U.S. weapons delivered in the year were munitions, from artillery shells to 2,000-pound bunker-busters and precision-guided bombs.
Expenditures range from $4 billion to replenish Israel's Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems to cash for rifles and jet fuel, the study says.
The Biden administration has bolstered its military strength in the region since the war in Gaza started, aiming to deter and respond to any attacks on Israeli and American forces.
Those additional operations cost at least $4.86 billion, the report said, not including beefed-up U.S. military aid to Egypt and other partners in the region.
The U.S. had 34,000 forces in the Middle East the day the Gaza war began. That number rose to about 50,000 in August when two aircraft carriers were in the region, aiming to discourage retaliation after a strike attributed to Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The total is now around 43,000.
Over the weekend, the Commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Michael Kurilla, arrived in Israel to “coordinate” with the Israeli military and plan a military strike against Iran.
Think about that for a moment: one of the highest-ranking officers in the US military is planning a war in a foreign country against another foreign country which will be fueled by American weapons, American intelligence, and American tax dollars.
Did that foreign country – Iran – attack the United States or threaten Americans? No, it did not. What did Iran do to warrant a CENTCOM commander bringing the weight of the US military into play to plan a war – possibly WWIII? It retaliated against Israeli airstrikes including the assignation of a Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.
It was the Israeli missile attack on Tehran – an unprecedented event – that set off this chain of escalation, but few would know if from media coverage. This war fever between Israel and Iran not only has nothing to do with us, but our increasing involvement actually hurts our national interests in the region.
After a deadly and futile three-year proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the last thing we need is another war in the Middle East, especially against Iran.
But make no mistake, war is what we are getting. This Administration has even offered to “compensate” Israel with even more weapons and diplomatic support if they hit targets of the US choosing and avoid others in Iran.
The neocons have wanted this war for decades and for them it’s always America last.
We are sleepwalking into a catastrophic war, lulled into compliance by non-stop media propaganda. More billions will be drained from our economy and many more innocent lives will be lost in this madness.
Almost a quarter of a century later we still have not learned the lessons of 9/11. When we go abroad wreaking havoc and destruction on foreign populations who have not harmed us we create enemies who will seek revenge. We harm ourselves.
The time to oppose this impending war is NOW!
UNITED CENTRAL STATES COMMAND: DETER IRAN
3 Aug 2022
-- Iran's malign activity is one of the main challenges we face in the central region; for more than 40 years, the Iranian regime has funded and aggressively supported terrorism and terrorist organizations
-- Our mission is to deter Iran and its proxies from continuing malign activities that destabilize not only the region, but global security and commerce as well
-- Iran continues to conduct state-on-state missile, UAS, and cyber attacks, as well as attacks through proxies and aligned groups that kill and injure innocent civilians and Coalition forces
-- We will counter Iranian activity through multilateral approaches, capitalizing on collective security mechanisms like the Combined Maritime Force, IAMD-focused Regional Security Construct, and International Maritime Security Construct (Centcom Website Info)
It was April 2022, and the diplomatic delegations from Ukraine and Russia were meeting in Istanbul just weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine had begun. Although there were details—especially on the size of the Ukrainian armed forces after the war and on the nature of security guarantees for Ukraine—to be worked out, a draft agreement had been signed by both sides. According to the Ukrainian delegation, Putin “demonstrated a genuine effort to find a realistic compromise and achieve peace.”
Oleksandr Chalyi, a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, said, “We managed to find a very real compromise. We were very close in the middle of April, in the end of April, to finalize our war with some peaceful settlement.”
Another member of the team, Oleksiy Arestovych, says that negotiations could have worked and that they were “90 percent prepared.” The Istanbul Communiqué, a Ukrainian summary of the negotiated deal, states that “the parties consider it possible to hold a meeting on… 2022 between the presidents of Ukraine and Russia with the aim of signing an agreement and/or making political decisions regarding the remaining unresolved issues.”
That draft treaty stipulated that Ukraine could pursue European Union membership but would provide a written guarantee that they would not join NATO. This was the key point.
It provided protection for ethnic Russians in Ukraine, security guarantees for Ukraine and limits on the Ukrainian armed forces. The Donbas would be autonomous, Crimea would be Russian. The Kherson and Zaporozhye regions that Russia has now incorporated were, at that time, still part of Ukraine.
But instead of encouraging and nurturing the promising talks, the United States and Britain discouraged them.
Davyd Arakhamiia, who led the Ukrainian negotiating team, has confirmed that “when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight.”
In December 2022, Ukrainska Pravda reported that on April 9, 2022, Johnson hurried to Kiev to tell Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, “the West was not.”...
"Instead of nurturing diplomacy, “the West ramped up military aid to Kyiv and increased the pressure on Russia,” according to a former U.S. official “who worked on Ukraine policy at the time.”
Then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder both acted as intermediaries to the talks at the request of Ukraine.
Bennet says that “there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire,” but the West “blocked it.” Schröder agrees: “Nothing could happen because everything else was decided in Washington… The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed.”
Russia has frequently said that the Istanbul agreement could still be “the basis for starting negotiations.”
Putin has recently set out a peace proposal based on the Istanbul agreement, but adjusted for the new territorial realities.
And that is the tragedy of Ukraine. In April 2022, Ukraine was on the threshold of a diplomatic end to the war with Russia that satisfied its goals. But they were encouraged by the West to fight on in pursuit of Western goals.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died since then. Many more have been wounded: many irreparably. Over six million Ukrainians have fled the country. Infrastructure has been demolished and the environment devastated. And after all that, Ukraine has arrived again at the same settlement that was in their grasp in April 2022.
The time may be coming when Zelensky, U.S. President Joe Biden, Johnson, and a large supporting cast, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, will have to answer the question of what was gained by going to war.
Albert Einstein defined “insanity” as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
This is precisely what the Israeli prime minister has been doing since he launched his genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza in retaliation for the stunning attack by Hamas on 7 October a year ago.
Even worse, Benjamin Netanyahu is currently on a mission to drive the entire Middle East into an all-out war, expanding the bloody Israeli policy of indiscriminate killing and destruction to Lebanon, and seeking every means to drag the United States into direct confrontation with Iran.
Horrific bloodshed that hasn’t been seen since World War II, with the death of over 42,000 Palestinians, the injury of more than 100,000 and the near total destruction of the Strip’s buildings and infrastructure, resulting in worldwide condemnation of Israel — now widely regarded as a pariah and a rogue state — did not deter the Israeli premier and his extremist government.
Instead, Netanyahu has left no doubt that he is determined to stay the course of insanity, chasing the illusion that excessive military might, use of advanced technology, and the assassination of top resistance leaders will force Palestinians to give up their legitimate demands to end the world’s last racist occupation and fulfil their right to independence and self-determination.
Feeling squeezed by the criticism, steadily mounting both domestically and internationally, that he has failed to achieve any of the war’s declared goals since the 7 October attacks, and becoming a suspected war criminal by the International Criminal Court, Netanyahu decided to escape his failures by opening a new war front against Lebanon.
Knowing that the first anniversary of the 7 October attack was near without any “victory image” he could exploit to extend his stay in power, Netanyahu decided to escalate the confrontation against Hizbullah in Lebanon and its main backer, Iran.
The opening move revived a clearly well-crafted Israeli espionage operation that has been in the works for years, detonating thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hizbullah members in mid-September.
This was followed by the assassination of top Hizbullah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who has been the group’s façade and its symbol for more than three decades.
For nearly 10 days, the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and key Lebanese cities have been subject to indiscriminate, barbaric bombing similar to what Gaza experienced the day after the 7 October attacks.
After Iran launched an expanded attack against Israel a week ago, using nearly 200 ballistic missiles to target Israeli air bases and the headquarters of the Mossad in Tel Aviv, the entire region is now on edge awaiting a “painful” Israeli response to Iran’s unprecedented attack. This is nothing but the prescription for a doomsday scenario for every country in the region, as well as the United States, and an expansion of the insanity we have been experiencing for a year now. With its own interests at risk, the United States is obliged to restrain Israel and force Netanyahu to see the truth that his strategy will never achieve long-term security for the Israeli people.
This aim can only be achieved by recognising the fact that the source of all violence and instability in the region is Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Without dealing with this reality, or comprehending Einstein’s definition of insanity, new forms of resistance to Israel’s occupation will continue and new groups and tactics will always emerge in Palestine and neighbouring Arab countries that cannot but express solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Thursday that Israel has no designs on Turkey, denying charges by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan that “the Israeli government, which has gone mad in the Holy Land, will possibly target our homeland with its religious fanaticism after Palestine and Lebanon.”
Unfortunately for Herzog, on the same day, remarks surfaced from 2016 by Minister of Finance and Civil Administrator of the Palestinian West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, which gave credence to Erdogan’s fears of Israeli expansionism. Smotrich belongs to the Kahanaist, Religious Zionism Party, the Israeli equivalent of Neo-Nazism.
Herzog is a member of the center-left Labor Party, which at some points has been willing to accept a Palestinian state. Labor itself, however, has attempted to expand Israeli territory at the expense of its neighbors on some occasions, as with its seizure of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Palestinian Gaza in 1956, and again in 1967 with its seizure of the Palestine territories of Gaza and the West Bank, along with the Sinai and the Syrian Golan Heights.
The Jordanian foreign ministry on Thursday condemned the remarks by Smotrich as a “reflection of religious fanaticism.”
In a television interview that has resurfaced on social media, Smotrich said that a prophecy predicted that Jerusalem would extend to Damascus. He also said that Israel would extend to the east of the Jordan River into the country of Jordan, and would have parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Smotrich in 2016 was a member of parliament for the Jewish Home Party (HaBayit HaYehudi), one of the components of his present Religious Zionism Party.
Smotrich is allied with Jewish Power extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security. Although the two are often underestimated, they appear to have a hold on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and have been central to the prosecution of the total war on Gaza and now Lebanon.
The two are advocating an Israeli military occupation of Gaza like that in the Palestinian West Bank, as well as the establishment of Israelis squatter-settlements in Gaza.
smotrich 2019 - netanyahy & the right wingers - smotrich 2023
Iran-Russia-News
Pezeshkian, Putin hail ‘strategic’ ties between Iran and Russia
Press TV [Iran] Friday, 11 October 2024
President Vladimir Putin has told his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian that relations with Iran are a priority for Russia and these relations are developing successfully. The two presidents met on the sidelines of a forum in Turkmenistan’s capital of Ashgabat where Putin said the positions of Tehran and Moscow regarding international developments are very close. “Moscow and Tehran actively cooperate with each other in the international arena and often agree on their assessments of world events,” the Russian leader said. “This year, we are witnessing an increase in the volume of trade between the two countries and its good trend,” Russian media quoted him as saying. Pezeshkian said Iran’s relationship with Russia is “sincere and strategic”. “From the economic and cultural point of view, our relations are getting stronger day by day,” he said. Iran and Russia, Pezeshkian said, have good complementary capacities that they can use to help each other. “Our positions in the world are much closer to each other than other countries,” he added.
The Iranian president touched on a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement between Iran and Russia, hoping they will speed up the signing of the document.
“I hope we will finalize this agreement during the BRICS summit” in the Russian city of Kazan this month, he added. The summit of emerging economies starts on October 22, with the leaders of 24 countries expected to attend it, including China’s Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The conference in Ashgatat is being attended by other regional leaders including Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and the heads of the other Central Asian nations, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Speaking as the forum opened, Putin said the countries want to create a “new world order” to counter the West.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has dismissed the notion that the two-state solution could bring sustainable peace to the region. Peace will be established in the region only through solving the issue of Palestine based on democracy in the Palestinian lands, the Egyptian Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper quoted Araghchi as saying.
The Islamic Republic of Iran will support any decision to be taken by the Palestinians to draw their future through a democratic process, Araghchi said.
Under such a government and through a referendum, all in Palestine, including Muslims and Christians would live shoulder by shoulder with the Jews, the Iranian foreign minister underlined.
A year after the beginning of the Zionists’ genocide in the Gaza Strip and after Israel’s expansionist plans were revealed, it is now clear that the Zionist regime is a big threat to the region and regional countries, he said.
Israel seeks a broad war while Iran does not want it, Araghchi noted, adding that Tehran is after regional peace and stability.
No one except Benjamin Netanyahu supports a broad war scenario in the region, he stressed. “We won’t be caught in Netanyahu’s trap.”
The one-state solution is a proposed approach to resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, according to which one state would be established in former Mandatory Palestine. Proponents of this solution advocate a single state encompassing the currently recognized state of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The term one-state reality describes the belief that the current situation in Israel/Palestine is de facto a single state. The one-state solution is sometimes also called a bi-national state, owing to the hope that the state would be a homeland for both Jews and Palestinians.
Various models have been proposed for implementing the one-state solution.
One such model is the unitary state, which would comprise a single government on the entire territory with citizenship and equal rights for all residents, regardless of their ethnicity or religion.
A second model calls for Israel to annex the West Bank and create an autonomous region for the Palestinians there.
A third model involves creating a federal state with a central government and federative districts, some of which would be Jewish and others Palestinian.
A fourth model, described by A Land for All, involves a confederation in which independent Israeli and Palestinian states share powers in some areas, and Israelis and Palestinians have residency rights in each others' nations.
Though increasingly debated in academic circles, the one-state solution has remained outside the range of official diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict, where it is eclipsed by the two-state solution. A Palestinian poll conducted in September 2024 revealed that only 10% of respondents supported a single state that would provide equal rights for both Jews and Palestinians.
Israel rejects the two-state solution because it claims that a sovereign state of Palestine would profoundly endanger Israel’s national security.
In fact, it is the lack of a two-state solution that endangers Israel. Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, its continuing apartheid rule over millions of Palestinians, and its extreme violence to defend that rule, all put Israel’s survival in jeopardy, as Israel faces dire threats from global diplomatic isolation and the ongoing war, including the war’s massive economic, social, and financial costs.
There are three basic reasons for Israel’s opposition to the two-state solution, reflecting a variety of ideologies and interests in Israeli society.
-- The first, and most mainstream, is Israel’s claim that Palestinians and the Arab world cannot live alongside it and only wish to destroy it.
-- The second is the belief among Israel’s rapidly growing religious-nationalist population that God promised the Jews all of the land from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, including all of Palestine. We recently wrote about that ideology, pointing out that it is roughly 2,600 years out of step with today’s realities.
-- The third is straightforward material gain. With its ongoing occupation, Israel aims to profit from control over the region’s freshwater resources, coastal zones, offshore natural gas deposits, tourist destinations, and land for settlements.
These various motives are jumbled together in Israel’s continued intransigence. Yet taken individually or as a package, they fail to justify Israel’s opposition to the two-state solution, certainly not from the perspective of international law and justice, but not even with regard to Israel’s own security or narrow economic interests. Consider Israel’s claim about national security, as was recently repeated by PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations on September 27th. Netanyahu accused the Palestinian Authority, and specifically President Mahmoud Abbas, of waging “unremitting diplomatic warfare against Israel’s right to exist and against Israel’s right to defend itself.”
After Netanyahu’s speech, Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, standing beside Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa replied to Netanyahu in a press conference:
All of us in the Arab world here, want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, accepted, normalized with all Arab countries in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from Arab territory, allowing for the emergence of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital. Minister Safadi was speaking on behalf of the 57 members of the Muslim-Arab committee, who are all willing “to guarantee Israel’s security” in the context of a two-state solution.
Israel and its boosters often claim that the failure at Camp David in 2000 proves that the Palestinians reject the two-state solution.
camp david 2000
This claim is not correct. As documented by many, including Clayton E. Swisher in his meticulous account in The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process, the Camp David negotiations in 2000 failed owing to Bill Clinton’s last-minute approach to deal making, combined with then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s political cowardice in failing to honor Israeli obligations under the Oslo Accord. As time ran out at Camp David, Clinton was a dishonest broker, as were the blatantly pro-Israel US negotiators, who refused to acknowledge Palestine’s legal claim to the borders of 4 June 1967, and prevarications about Palestine’s right to its capital in East Jerusalem. The “final offer” abruptly pushed by the Israelis and their American backers on the Palestinians did not secure basic Palestinian rights, nor were the Palestinians given time to deliberate and respond with alternative proposals. The Palestinians were then falsely blamed by the Americans and Israelis for the failure of the negotiations.
"After the talks failed and Arafat flew home, there still seemed time to work something out in the last three months of 2000, with Clinton still eager to make a deal. The problem was Ariel Sharon and his Likud Party, who knew the deal-breaker was the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Sharon knew Arafat could never accept a "generous deal" on the West Bank and Gaza – which he was clearly prepared to do – if he could not give the Islamic world of 1.2 billion people assurances that they would not have to go through Jewish checkpoints to visit their holy places. In this high stakes chess game, Sharon then made it known that he would make a personal visit to the Temple Mount, a clear signal that it was Israel's and all the Palestinians could expect in any deal was to be able to collect the garbage, Barak's "custodial" offer.
It is part of conventional wisdom that Arafat was responsible for the second intifada, when he returned to Ramallah empty-handed. But "The Truth About Camp David" makes it clear Arafat did everything he could to prevent Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, knowing it would incite violence. " (Source: The Truth about Camp David, By Jude Wanniski, January 05, 2005 )
Israel persists with its intransigence because it believes that it has the unconditional backing of the United States. Trump, Biden, and Netanyahu all believed that Israel could “have it all”—Greater Israel and peace with the Arab states, while blocking a Palestinian state—through a US-brokered normalization process.
The Abraham Accords (which established diplomatic relations of Israel with Bahrain and the UAE) was to be the role model for normalizing relations between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This approach was always cynical (as it aimed to block a Palestinian state) but is surely delusional now.
The Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia has made crystal clear in his op-ed in the Financial Times on October 2, that the two-state solution is the only pathway to peace and normalization.
In a measure that should have garnered bold headlines, the Biden administration has announced the deployment of some 100 US soldiers to Israel who will be responsible for operating the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.
They are being sent to a conflict that resembles a train travelling at high speed, with no risk of stopping. As Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant promised in the aftermath of Iran’s October 1 missile assault on his country, “Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all – surprising.” It would be of such a nature that “They will not understand what happened and how it happened.”
In an October 16 meeting between the Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Gallant, the deployment of a mobile THAAD battery was seen “as an operational example of the United States’ ironclad support to the defense of Israel.”
Largely meaningless bits of advice were offered to Gallant: that Israel “continue taking steps to address the dire humanitarian situation” and take “all necessary measures to ensure the safety and security” of UN peacekeepers operating in Lebanon’s south.
The charade continued the next day in a conversation between Austin and Gallant discussing the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. THAAD was again mentioned as essential for Israel’s “right to defence itself” while representing the “United States’ unwavering, enduring, and ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.” (“Ironclad” would seem to be the word of the moment, neatly accompanying Israel’s own Iron Dome defence system.)
A statement from the Pentagon press secretary, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, was a fatuous effort in minimising the dangers of the deployment. The battery would merely “augment Israel’s integrated air defense system,” affirm the ongoing commitment to Israel’s defence and “defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks from Iran.”
The very public presence of US troops, working alongside their Israeli counterparts in anticipation of broadening conflict, does not merely suggest Washington’s failure to contain their ally. It entails a promise of ceaseless supply, bolstering and emboldening. Furthermore, it will involve placing US troops in harm’s way, a quixotic invitation if ever there was one. As things stand, the US is already imperilling its troops by deploying them in a series of bases in Jordan, Syria and Iraq.
Polling, insofar as that measure counts, suggests that enthusiasm for enrolling US troops in Israel’s defence is far from warm.
In results from a survey published by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations in August, some four in ten polled would favour sending US troops to defend Israel if it was attacked by Iran.
Of the sample, 53% of Republicans would favour defending Israel in that context, along with four in 10 independents (42%), and a third of Democrats (34%).
[Iranian] Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned that Iran has “identified all its targets” in the occupied territories for a retaliatory attack against Israel.
Araghchi made the remarks in an interview with the Turkish broadcaster NTV on Saturday amid Israeli threats to launch strikes on Iran.
“Any attack against Iran means crossing its red line. We will not leave it unanswered. A necessary response will be given to any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities or a similar raid,” he said. “Now, we have identified all our targets there (in the occupied lands) and a similar attack will be carried out on them.”
Araghchi also referred to Iran’s October 1 missile attack on the Israeli military, espionage, and intelligence bases that came in response to the regime’s barbaric acts of assassination against the resistance front’s top leaders.
During the operation, he said, 90 percent of Iranian missiles hit their targets, which were only military facilities, not economic or civilian ones.[..] He denounced the United States’ support for Israel, saying the regime cannot live and commit crimes in Gaza and Lebanon without Washington’s assistance.
“If the Americans had real political will, they would be able to halt the attacks and stop Israel,” the top Iranian diplomat emphasized. “For us, the US is an ally of the Zionists. If a large-scale war breaks out in the region, the United States will be drawn into it, something we do not want at all.”
He further warned that the war may spread to the Persian Gulf countries, noting, however, that “here is still a chance for diplomacy; we cannot leave everything to the will of one person in the Zionist regime.”
In mainstream Western media, the coverage of Israel’s year of scorched-earth destruction often touches on the victims and events happening in Gaza in the passive voice.
Death and destruction befall Palestinians the way a city suffers from a hurricane or an earthquake—though in those cases, the media has little difficulty identifying the natural disaster as the cause of the destruction. When it comes to Gaza, buildings mysteriously explode and people die.
Rarely do we see the Israeli military identified as having carried out the act—and never do we see individual members of the military named and identified, their actions described in detail, broken down by unit and task. In fact, doing so in Israel is illegal.
Journalists Younis Tirawi and Sami Vanderlip have managed to find and archive all the Instagram stories and daily posts shared by the soldiers of one key unit, Israel’s 749 Combat Engineering Battalion.
They’ve mapped out the structure of the unit and identified the individual soldiers and officers involved, along with their various roles in operations. They have tracked the activities of each company in the battalion, including what they were doing, when, and where, as the force shred their way through Gaza.
Some fragments
“Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
This is what the deputy commander of Israel’s 749 Combat Engineering Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Adi Bekore, posted on his personal Facebook account on October 9, 2023, just two days after the Hamas attacks of October 7.
Numerous soldiers from the battalion he had command over liked the post. It is a quote from a biblical passage in which the biblical nation of Israel is commanded to attack the Amalekites, an ancient biblical nation that was a recurrent enemy of the Israelites. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also invoked this reference early in the war...
“You must ‘remember what Amalek has done to you,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admonished on October 28, announcing the “second phase,” a ground invasion, of Israel’s war in Gaza. Amalek, in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), is a nation that ambushed the Israelites making their way to the Promised Land.
Following the attack, which they were able to beat back, God instructed that they must never forget and must wage an eternal war until no trace of Amalek’s existence remains. Generations later, King Saul killed all but the Amalekite king, whose descendent, Haman, generations after that, in the story of Purim, plotted to kill all the Jews in Persia. Netanyahu is notoriously secular in his private life. But, ever the shrewd politician, scripture is his language of choice to sell his war to Jewish supremacists in Israel and right-wing Evangelicals in the U.S.
It’s not the families of those murdered on October 7, Netanyahu is invoking Amalek to, but the ideological descendants of Kach.
The religious-nationalist Kach party was founded in 1971 by Brooklyn-born Rabbi Meir Kahane who argued for “the immediate transfer of the Arabs,” whom he referred to as “dogs.” In 1984, the one time his party secured a single seat in the Knesset, Kahane introduced legislation to ban all Jewish-Gentile marriages and sexual relations and revoke the Israeli citizenship of non-Jews.
The Kach party was so violently racist that it was prohibited from running in Israel’s next election, banned entirely in 1994, and defined as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.
In what could be perceived as another iteration of Amalek, in 2019, Kahane follower Itamar Ben Gvir formed the Jewish Power party, an ideological offshoot of Kach. Merging with other far-right fundamentalist parties to form Religious Zionism, in 2022, they won the third-largest share of Israel’s parliament seats. This is the audience Netanyahu is addressing, but not only them.
On October 8, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), which claims to represent millions, sent out an email stating that Hamas’ attack, “was not launched due to grievances over the Israeli ‘occupation’ or any real dangers to the al-Aqsa mosque. Rather, it was driven by the ancient “Spirit of Amalek.”
On October 24, Christians United for Israel, which boasts a membership of over 10 million, raised $25 million in a single night in support of Israel (they raised and donated $100 million over the week). Standing beside CUFI’s Pastor John Hagee, who in 2008 referred to Hitler as a “hunter” sent by God “to help Jews reach the promised land,” was Israeli Ambassador to Israel Gilan Erdad.
Danny Danon, UN 2019: Read the Bible, God is our God
Over the past year, the 749 Battalion has played an indispensable role in Gaza.
Its soldiers are reservists—alumni of the combat engineering corps, which trains soldiers in demolition. The battalion comes in after combat units, toppling buildings and homes that managed to survive air strikes.
The 749 Battalion was among the first to enter the strip through the Netzarim corridor, the four-mile-long road separating Gaza City and Deir al-Balah that Israel occupied early in the war in order to divide the north and south of Gaza.
After helping to cement control of south Gaza City, including the Netzarim corridor, the battalion later advanced into areas like Shuja’iya in Gaza City, the Bureij Refugee Camp in Central Gaza, and even Rafah. At the time of writing, the 749 Battalion is operating in northern Gaza and Jabalia, where, even following Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s killing in southern Gaza, Israel’s campaign has intensified to the point of executions and depopulation. There, the battalion is seemingly racing to destroy as many buildings as possible. As one soldier put it, “We will leave them nothing!”
December 2023: Blowing Up Al-Azhar University
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined”
In December 2023, Company A of the 749 Battalion was tasked with rigging up the south Gaza City campus of Al-Azhar University with explosives and detonating them, reducing Gaza’s second-largest university to rubble.
First Master Sergeant David Zoldan, the operational officer of Company A of Israel’s 749 Battalion attached several photos and videos of the entire operation “from the unloading stage to the massive explosion.”
In one of the videos, he cheers as the three buildings of the university campus are prepared to be blown up. “This is the explosion before redemption. December 2023.”
As the university is blown up, Zoldan tells his fellow soldiers, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, did you see?!”
The destruction of the university campus by the 749 Combat Engineering Battalion, a reserve unit within the IDF’s 5th Brigade, was a reflection of the unit’s special mission: to destroy the livelihood and symbols of Gaza’s future—from mosques, shops, universities, and even homes.
June 2024: The D9 Company Enters Rafah
In May, Israel’s offensive pushed south to the city of Rafah, blowing past Biden’s supposed “red line.”
The next month, June 2024, the D9 Company of 749 Battalion was deployed to the city for a two-week mission aimed at flattening the remaining homes.
The company was under the command of Major Tal Peretz and its Operational Officer Sergeant Major Sahar Antonitch. Footage from June 2 uploaded to the battalion’s Instagram page shows an Israeli soldier named Yossi Nahari from the “Tzama” D9 company demolishing a house in the southern city.
On June 14, another video was uploaded, showing the destruction of yet another home, captioned: “Once, there was a home here (Rafah).”
Their mission complete, they withdrew from Gaza...
September 2024: South Gaza City
“Our Job is to Flatten Gaza”
In September, the 749 Battalion was brought back into Gaza, this time mainly positioned in south Gaza City, where the Israeli military has been engaged in a project of rampant destruction and depopulation.
“Our job is to flatten Gaza,” read the caption on a video first posted by a soldier in the D9 company in September and later uploaded to the official D9 company’s own Instagram page. In the video, the unit is in the process of bulldozing several homes in the neighborhood of Zaitoun. The company’s comment on the post reads, “No one will stop us.”
749 Battalion: Race Against Time
The footage Drop Site News has documented in this investigation comes from just one battalion and yet the level of destruction remains absolutely staggering. It seems as if the battalion is in a desperate race against time, flattening as much as possible with disturbing intensity even as it becomes a daily routine. None of this is actual combat. It’s pure devastation aimed at civilians, aided and abetted by the staggering level of impunity given to them by their western benefactors in the Biden White House.
Nowhere in these videos is there any mention of Hamas. Instead, soldiers make mocking comments, calling it “Urban Renewal,” while others joke about “pre-registration for lands within walking distance of the sea.”
More than 10 chiefs of research institutions uniting experts from the BRICS countries are taking part in the first BRICS Think Tanks Summit, which opened in Moscow, TASS correspondent reports. The UAE-based information and analytical center TRENDS Research and Advisory is the main organizer. Mohammed Abdullah Al-Ali, its Director-General, is participating in the conference, which has brought together research centers from Russia, Brazil, Egypt, China, Iran, India, Ethiopia and South Africa, as well as media outlets. The organizers say that in a multipolar world think tanks are growing in importance as "a major driver of intellectual development and policy making."
"The BRICS countries are asserting themselves as an important economic and political force in the international arena. The purpose of this conference is to enhance the role of think tanks in these countries in supporting government policies and developing innovative strategies to achieve sustainable development and expand international cooperation to achieve the desired goals of the BRICS alliance," the conference’s founders said.
Key objectives Mohammed Abdullah Al-Ali said in his opening remarks that the conference would discuss, among other things, the BRICS summit in Kazan and its impact on political developments, taking into account the accession of new states to the alliance.
"The BRICS countries aim to develop relations and cooperation. We wish to use this opportunity to share our solutions and ideas in order to see that long-term, permanent cooperation and mutual understanding has come to the home that the BRICS countries are building together," Mohammed Abdullah Al Ali said.
"We proceed from the assumption that think tanks can and should play an enabling role in the activities of the BRICS countries...." he added.
The BRICS Plus/Outreach meeting highlights the increasing importance of the association and reflects its desire to intensify contacts with non-member states, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi stated at the summit in Kazan.
"Today's meeting demonstrates the growing importance of BRICS as an organization based on the principles of cooperation and mutual respect among countries.
It reflects the desire to enhance contacts with influential states outside the association in order to achieve common goals," the Egyptian president said, as reported by his office. El-Sisi also expressed his gratitude to Russian President Vladimir Putin for organizing the BRICS Summit in Kazan.
According to el-Sisi, the BRICS Plus meeting can foster greater cooperation among the countries of the Global South and contribute to reaching agreements on the implementation of joint projects.
"Egypt is ready to engage with all willing parties" to work in this area, the president assured, emphasizing that "developing countries should cooperate further to counter any attempts to impose one-sided political solutions on them."
The BRICS group was founded in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with South Africa joining in 2011. As of January 1, 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates became full-fledged members. This summit in Kazan is the first attended by the new members of the association.
South Africa and Palestine “will always be together,” President Cyril Ramaphosa told his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas when they met for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan city of Russia yesterday. South Africa is a founding member of the emerging economic bloc while Palestine is an invitee attending the 16th summit of heads of the BRICS states.
The two leaders discussed opportunities to “strengthen political and economic relations in line with South Africa’s national interests and foreign policy priorities,” said a statement from Ramaphosa’s office.
“We are well when you are well, and you are all the time with us,” Abbas told Ramaphosa. “Yes, of course… of course, without any doubt,” replied Ramaphosa, reiterating South Africa’s support to Palestine. “We will always be together,” he added. South Africa filed a case with the ICJ in the Hague in late 2023, accusing Israel, which has bombed Gaza since last October, of failing to uphold its commitments under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Several countries, including Turkiye, Nicaragua, Palestine, Spain, Mexico, Libya and Colombia, have joined the case which began public hearings in January.
Earlier, addressing the BRICS summit, Ramaphosa said the countries of the world “have a responsibility not to fund or facilitate” Israel’s genocidal actions against Palestinians.
Egypt condemned Tuesday the Israeli Knesset’s approval of a bill banning the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and restricting its ability to provide support to Palestinian citizens in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a statement by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Egypt considered this action part of a long series of Israeli violations of international law and international humanitarian law, which indicate a growing lack of respect for the international community and the UN.
Cairo called on the international community and UN institutions, particularly the UN Security Council (UNSC), to take a strong stance against these clear and systematic Israeli crimes and violations.
"Egypt stresses that UNRWA’s role is irreplaceable and essential," the ministry said, urging the UNSC to fulfil its primary role in maintaining international peace and security.
The ministry also reaffirmed its categorical rejection of all Israeli practices aimed at displacing Palestinian residents from their lands and undermining the rights of Palestinian refugees to return and receive compensation.
Cairo further denounced the Israeli approach, which not only commits crimes against innocent Palestinian civilians but also seeks to hinder all efforts aimed at alleviating the suffering caused by Israeli policies and practices.
Moreover, Egypt warned of the continued failure of the international establishment to uphold its principles and humanitarian values, which are increasingly compromised by Israeli practices amid disappointing international inaction, the statement added.
On Monday, the Israeli Knesset approved a bill banning the UNRWA from working in Israel, following years of harsh Israeli criticism of UNRWA, which has only increased since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza in October 2023.
Several of Israel's Western allies voiced concern over the move, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying Britain was "gravely concerned." Germany, which has been a steadfast defender of Israel's security, warned of Israel’s deliberate hindering of UNRWA's work in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem impossible, jeopardizing vital humanitarian aid for millions of people.
In addition, UN Chief Antonio Guterres warned the Israeli action could have "devastating consequences" if implemented and "would likely prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work."
Meanwhile, UNRWA Chief Philippe Lazzarini warned that the vote "sets a dangerous precedent."
Earlier this month, Israel announced plans to confiscate the UNRWA headquarters in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem to build illegal settlement units on its site, according to media reports.
UNRWA, operating across several countries, was established in 1949 to assist Palestinian refugees displaced during the Nakba, following Israel’s creation in 1948.
The Israeli Knesset on Monday passed two laws banning the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) from operating inside Israel and occupied Palestine. The laws would effectively ban Unrwa from being able to operate inside Israel, Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and occupied East Jerusalem. Ninety-two members of the Knesset voted in favour of the legislation, while ten voted against it.
The first law says that Unrwa is not allowed to "operate any institution, provide any service, or conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly", in Israel, as reported by The Jerusalem Post.
The second law states that no Israeli government official or agency may contact Unrwa, effectively prohibiting Israeli officials from providing services or dealing with Unrwa employees.(Middle East Eye, 29-10-2024)
The Israeli parliament on Monday passed legislation declaring the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, authorized by the UN General Assembly in 1949, to be a terrorist organization.
It is an extraordinary and dangerous step for a UN member state. The legislation has the effect of preventing the Israeli government from dealing with UNRWA, which in turn results in a ban on it operating in Israel and the illegally Israeli-occupied territories of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza.
This move underlines yet again that the Israelis are deliberately harming the health and well-being of Palestinian civilians because they are Palestinians.
That is the technical definition of genocide in International Humanitarian Law. It has nothing to do with numbers. Under the Genocide Convention or the Rome Statute you do not need to kill millions to be guilty of genocide. You just have to destroy a people “wholly or in part” because of their ethnic identity. The attempt to destroy UNRWA will now become part of the case brought against Israel for genocide at the International Court of Justice by South Africa.
South Africa submitted a 5,000-page report on Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza to the ICJ on Monday. It seeks to show a specific intent on the part of the Netanyahu government to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza.
On October 28, the Israeli Knesset passed a second reading of two bills that effectively ban the United Nations agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) from carrying out “any activity” in Israel and occupied Palestine.
Simply put, the decision is catastrophic, because UNRWA is the main international body responsible for the welfare of millions of Palestinians throughout the occupied territories, and throughout much of the region.
Israel followed its decision by attacking and damaging an UNRWA office in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. It was the Israeli government’s way of demonstrating its seriousness regarding the matter.
Israel’s problem with UNRWA has little to do with the organization itself, but with its underlying political representation as a UN entity whose mission is predicated on providing “assistance and protection to Palestine refugees”.
UNRWA was established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV). It began its operations on May 1, 1950, and with time, it became central to the survival of a large number of Palestinian refugee communities in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
Many have rightly criticized the UN for failing to supplement UNRWA’s humanitarian mandate with a political equivalent that would ultimately help Palestinians achieve their Right of Return in accordance with UN Resolution 194. For Israel, however, UNRWA remained problematic. According to Tel Aviv’s thinking, UNRWA’s existence is a constant reminder that there is a distinct group of people called Palestinian refugees.
And though UNRWA is not a political organization, the Palestinian refugee crisis and all related UN resolutions that emphasize the ‘inalienable’ rights of these refugees are very political.
Iran says the result of the US presidential election which shows Donald Trump on course to the White House is a non-issue, even though it may spell more sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
The US, under then-president Trump, unilaterally withdrew in 2018 from a nuclear accord signed in 2015 with Iran and imposed a series of draconian sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
flashback 2018
Reacting to Trump's election victory, Government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani told reporters in Tehran Wednesday that Iran does not see any difference between Trump and his election rival Kamala Harris. "The election of the US president has nothing to do with us. The general policies of the US and Iran are constant," she said.
"It doesn't matter who becomes the president in the United States because all the necessary planning has been made in advance," Mohajerani said, explaining that Iran is prepared to deal with any new sanctions.
"More than five decades of sanctions have made Iran hardened and we are not worried about Trump's re-election," she said.
"Basically, we do not see any difference between these two people [Trump and Harris]. Sanctions have strengthened Iran's internal power and we have the power to deal with new sanctions."
Trump officially became the 47th US president on Wednesday, securing a second non-consecutive term nearly four years after he left the White House following a major defeat to his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
Polls for weeks had shown a knife-edge race between Harris and the twice-impeached Trump, who would be the oldest ever president at the time of inauguration, the first felon president and only the second in history to serve non-consecutive terms.
The businessman-turned-politician also faces sentencing in a criminal case over hush money payments to an adult movie actress, while the controversy over his unprecedented attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden still persists.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced on 13 May 2023 the appointment of Adam Abdelmoula of Sudan as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Syria. Mr. Abdelmoula will also serve as United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator. He took up his post on 14 May.
Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Syria, Adam Abdelmoula, announced Monday the launch of UN plan for Early Recovery Strategy in Syria for the years 2024 and 2028, during a press conference held Monday at Four Seasons Hotel in Damascus. The importance of this strategy comes from enabling the Syrian people to earn their own living and rebuild their lives, and thus, Syria will regain its position, particularly in education and health, as it was producing 97 % of its pharmaceutical needs and export medicine to 50 other countries, Abdelmoula said.
He added that Syria did not have external debts, in addition to its self-sufficiency in food and all that comes from the energies of the Syrian people, the ability to produce, and the state’s policy before the crisis in Syria. Abdelmoula noted that priority will be given to health and nutrition, followed by education, as well enhancing social cohesion and obtaining electricity, in addition to many other fields.
The strategy will begin with the establishment of a dedicated fund that will enable the United Nations and humanitarian actors to provide aid for Syria, according to Abdelmoula.
He also indicated the fund needs to be registered with the office responsible for registering funds in New York, in order to contract directly with donors to provide donations and contributions, stressing that these programs will be implemented in all Syrian provinces.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made clear Türkiye is ready to collaborate with the United States following the re-election of Donald Trump to resolve regional crises like the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.
"Trump has made promises to end conflicts ... We want that promise to be fulfilled and for Israel to be told to 'stop,'" Erdoğan told reporters on a flight back from an EU summit in Hungary on Thursday. Erdoğan, a staunch Palestine supporter, has been a virulent critic of the Netanyahu administration as Israel’s attacks have killed more than 42,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, as well as of Washington for enabling Tel Aviv. Türkiye has halted trade with Israel and applied to join a genocide case against Israel at the World Court.
"Mr. Trump cutting off the arms support provided to Israel could be a good start in order to stop the Israeli aggression in Palestinian and Lebanese lands," Erdoğan said.
The U.S. is Israel’s main ally, providing $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel since Oct. 7, 2023, alone, according to a report from Brown University last month. U.S. military support to Israel has steadily increased since 1978, with the largest share approved under the Biden administration.
Trump's presidency will seriously affect political and military balances in the Middle East region, Erdoğan said, adding that pursuing Biden-era policies would deepen the deadlock and spread the conflict in the region.
War in Ukraine could end easily if Trump’s administration takes a solution-based approach, Erdoğan continued, arguing that efforts of the Western countries led by the U.S. to end war in Ukraine would accelerate a solution.
Erdoğan believes under Trump, Türkiye and the U.S. will get to discuss Washington’s withdrawal from northern Syria and support to the PKK/YPG terrorists in the region.
The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 to achieve so-called Kurdish self-rule in southeastern regions and is designated a terrorist organization by Ankara, as well as the United States and the European Union. The YPG is its Syrian offshoot that has occupied oil-rich Syrian territories since 2015.
Washington calls the YPG its ally under the pretext of driving out remaining Daesh terrorists, something Ankara considers as support of a threat against its national security. Turkish cross-border airstrikes have targeted the YPG in the region since 2016.
According to his political ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump wants to pull American troops out of northern Syria instead of leaving them as "cannon fodder" if fighting breaks out between other parties.
Libya's interior minister has announced the reintroduction of the morality police to the streets to enforce what he called "society's traditions" and restrict women's freedom of movement.
On Wednesday, Emad al-Tarabulsi said the patrols would resume next month. They would target people with "strange" haircuts, ensure women wear "modest" clothing and prevent gender mixing in public spaces.
He also suggested that women would be barred from travelling within the country without a male guardian, adding that those "seeking personal freedom should go to Europe".
Libya has faced deep instability since a Nato-backed uprising overthrew longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
In 2014, the country split between eastern and western factions, each governed by rival administrations.
The internationally recognised Government of National Unity (GNU), of which Tarabulsi is a minister, is based in the western city of Tripoli. A rival administration based in Benghazi refuses to recognise GNU Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah
International diplomacy to resolve the conflict in Libya has focused on pushing for new elections to replace interim institutions such as the GNU. Dbeibah has said he will not cede power to a new government without national elections.
Since 2011, Libya has seen a decline in religious freedoms in the predominately Muslim country.
The circulation of non-Islamic religious materials, missionary activity and speech considered “offensive to Muslims” is illegal. In May, the GNU's General Authority of Endowments and Islamic Affairs established what it called the “Guardians of Virtue” to protect Islamic values.
Non-Muslims and members of Muslim minority sects have faced persecution from both the state and armed groups in Libya.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed Yechiel Leiter, a long-time advocate for the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, as Israel’s ambassador to the United States.
Leiter, a close associate of Netanyahu, previously served as his chief of staff when Netanyahu was finance minister. He was also an aide to the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon when he was a member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
Leiter, who will replace Michael Herzog as ambassador, was born in the US and moved to Israel four decades later. He resides in the Eli settlement, north of Ramallah, and founded the US-based charity One Israel Fund, which provides security equipment and financial assistance to settlements. Leiter has previously called for the annexation of the West Bank in an article published in 2020, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. He has consistently supported Jewish settlements over the years, particularly in Hebron.
Israel Ganz, the head of the Yesha Council, the umbrella body for Jewish settlements in the West Bank, welcomed Leiter’s appointment.
Ganz called Leiter "a key partner in English-language advocacy for Judea and Samaria", a term many Israelis use to refer to the West Bank, which Israel illegally occupied during the 1967 conflict.
Leiter's appointment suggests that Netanyahu plans to advance policies in line with the settler movement's agenda, which includes the annexation of the West Bank.
Leiter was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and immigrated to Israel at the age of 18. He holds an undergraduate degree in law, a Bachelor of Arts in political science, a Master of Arts in international relations, and a PhD in political philosophy from the University of Haifa.
Dr. Leiter has served in senior public service positions in Israel, including Education Ministry Deputy Director General, Chief-of-Staff to the Finance Minister, and acting Chairman of the Israel Ports Company. Leiter lost his son Maj. Moshe (Yedidya) Leiter in a battle in northern Gaza a year ago.
At his son's funeral, Dr. Leiter conveyed a message to US President Joe Biden.
"What I want to say to you here and now about our dear Moshe is that he was fighting your fight, Mr. President. He was fighting our fight. He gave his life so the barbarians wouldn't get through the gates of democracy and the Judeo-Christian Western values. He was fighting for human freedom and against all the lies and distortions of the freedom deniers who fooled so many Americans with their double talk. He was fighting against Hamas-ISIS.
"There are rumors now that you are putting pressure on Israel to hold off, to cease the offensive...
Mr. President, don't pressure us. Let us do what we know how to do and what we must do: defeat evil. This is a war of light against darkness, of truth against lies, of civility against murderous barbarism" he declared.
"Take it from one clean-speaking Scrantonian to another: we're going to win this one, with you or without. We're going to win it hands down. Never have the people of Israel been so united. This is our job; it's what the Jewish people are here in this world to do: to fix the world! Sometimes, fixing the world needs strength and force. Stand with us, Mr. President. Maybe, as we read in the Biblical book of Esther, it is the whole reason you are the leader of the free world. All of your long and illustrious career of leadership was preparation for this very moment.
Those who stand with us will be blessed. Those who do not stand with us will fail.
Flashback - Rabbis to John Kerry:
Cease mediation or face divine retribution Haaretz, 5-2-2014
A group of rabbis warned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to cease his pursuit of the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians or face divine retribution in a letter sent by them Sunday (2-2-2014).
The group, calling itself "The Committee to Save the Land and People of Israel," wrote that Kerry's "incessant efforts to expropriate integral parts of our Holy Land and hand them over to Abbas’s terrorist gang, amount to a declaration of war against the Creator and Ruler of the universe!"
The letter went on to warn that if Kerry went through with his plans he would win himself "everlasting disgrace in Jewish history for bringing calamity upon the Jewish people," joining the likes of Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II and Roman emperor Titus. The rabbis warned Kerry that like these monarchs and Haman, the villain of the Book of Esther, he will suffer divine retribution for his affront to God's chosen people.
Comment by Gilad Atzmon: If you really want to understand the real meaning of Purim and the Book of Esther. You better read Counterpunch's 2007 Purim Special - From Esther to AIPAC.
What Rough Beast?
President Biden’s Gaza Policy Leaves the Middle East in Flames Juan Cole 11/11/2024
President Joe Biden has now joined the ranks of Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush as a president whose Middle East policy crashed and burned spectacularly.
Unlike Carter, who was stymied by the Iranian hostage crisis, or Bush, who faced a popular Iraqi resistance movement, Biden’s woes weren’t inflicted by an enemy.
Quite the opposite, it was this country’s putative partner, the Israeli government, that implicated the president in its still ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as its disproportionate attacks on Lebanon and Iran, for which Biden steadfastly declined to impose the slightest penalties. Instead, he’s continued to arm the Israelis to the teeth.
Israel’s total war on Palestinian civilians, in turn, significantly reduced enthusiasm for Biden among youth and minorities at home, helping usher him out of office. It also created electoral obstacles for Kamala Harris’s presidential bid. By his insistence on impunity for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden has left the Middle East in flames and the U.S. and the world distinctly in peril....
The Israeli and U.S. response to the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, can fairly be said to have entirely undone all of Biden’s diplomatic work in the region.
While the United States and some other Western governments viewed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s never-ending devastation of Gaza and his country’s deployment of American 2,000-pound bombs against residential complexes as forced on him by Hamas’s alleged tactic of using civilians as “human shields,” virtually no one in the global South agreed. Even some European Union states and Israeli journalists dissented.
South Africa brought a case against Israel at the International Criminal Court charging it with genocide, which the Court found “plausible”...
Somehow, Biden seemed unaware that the government of extremists formed by Netanyahu in late 2022 was anything but the Israel of the 1960 film Exodus, with a blue-eyed Paul Newman as the protagonist. It was instead a witch’s brew of virulent ethnonationalism and religious apocalypticism...
Netanyahu used the cover of his Gaza atrocities to expand the war further.
He deliberately bombed an Iranian diplomatic facility (considered Iranian soil under international law) in the Syrian capital of Damascus last spring. Iran later responded with a rocket barrage. Netanyahu went on attempting to get Tehran’s goat, aware that if he could turn his conflict into an actual war with Iran, American jingoists would give him even more knee-jerk support.
In the process, he had smail Haniyeh, his chief, if indirect, civilian Hamas negotiating partner, assassinated in Iran’s capital of Tehran on the occasion of the inauguration of a new president there.
He then launched a terrorist onslaught of booby-trapped pager bombs against an Iran-allied group, Hezbollah, in Lebanon before invading that country and subjecting significant parts of it to a Gaza-style bombardment, as a response to Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel in support of Gaza.
Such provocations led to yet another Iranian missile barrage against Israel on October 1st to which Israel replied with attacks on Iranian military facilities. Biden was reduced to pleading with Iran to be reasonable in response, while declining to demand any similar restraint from Israel.
And here’s the truth of the matter: President Biden could undoubtedly have halted Netanyahu’s total war on Palestinian civilians at any point in 2024, given Israel’s dependence on U.S. ammunition and arms.
Instead, his gung-ho support of the insupportable in Gaza has helped turn the Middle East into a genuine powder keg, which he is bequeathing to his successor...
flashback: the neocon project, 2002
In the end, Biden’s unfaltering bear hug of Benjamin Netanyahu ensured that even the last vestiges of the George W. Bush administration’s neoconservative project of reshaping the Middle East to America’s and Israel’s advantage have now gone down the drain. Washington continues to send ever more bombs and sophisticated weaponry to a Middle East in flames and, with Donald Trump set to take office in January, such dangerous arms deals will likely only multiply...
Israel's far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich pledged on Monday to annex Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank in 2025, calling the return of Donald Trump to power in the United States "an important opportunity." "The year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria," he said, referring to the occupied Palestinian territory.
Smotrich, whose ministerial portfolio also includes some areas of the defense ministry's work, said he had ordered preparations for "applying sovereignty" over Israeli settlements.
Smotrich congratulated U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on his "incredible and sweeping victory", which the far-right politician said "also brings an important opportunity for the State of Israel."
"During his first term, President Trump led dramatic moves," Smotrich said. "We were on the verge of applying sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria," Smotrich said. "Now it is time to do it."
He said he would push the government to work together with the new U.S. administration on the matter.
Flashback 2020: Trump's Peace Plan
takes Israeli settlements off the table.
Thirty percent of the West Bank will be annexed to Israel
and recognized by the US as Israeli territory.
Earlier on Monday, Israel's newly appointed Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Palestinian statehood was not "realistic," after Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas reiterated his demand for a "sovereign" country.
"I don't think this position is realistic today and we must be realistic," Saar told reporters.
The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned Saar's remarks as an "extension of the war of extermination and displacement against our people."
It also said the comments were in "disregard for international legitimacy... and the international consensus on the two-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Excluding East Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to three million Palestinians alongside around 500,000 Israelis living in settlement that are illegal under international law.
President-elect Donald Trump has asked Mike Waltz, a hawkish House Republican from Florida, to be his national security advisor in the incoming administration, multiple media outlets reported on Monday night.
Waltz (a former Army Green Beret) was a staunch supporter of the Ukraine proxy war early on and was one of the few members of Congress to suggest the US send “military advisors” into the country. He was also critical of President Biden for supposedly not being aggressive enough.
In an interview with NPR last week, Waltz suggested that he would advise the president to end the war in Ukraine by escalating.
When explaining how he thinks Trump could bring both sides to the table, Waltz said the US could ramp up sanctions enforcement on Russia and support Ukraine using NATO-provided weapons for long-range strikes inside Russia..
“First and foremost, you would enforce the actual energy sanctions on Russia. Russia is essentially a gas station with nukes. Putin is selling more oil and gas now than he did prewar through China and Russia. And you couple that with unleashing our energy, lifting our LNG ban, and his economy and his war machine will dry up very quickly,” Waltz told NPR.
“So I think that will get Putin to the table. We have leverage, like taking the handcuffs off of the long-range weapons we provided Ukraine as well.
Discussing Iran, Waltz said that the US must go back to “maximum pressure,” referring to the previous Trump administration’s Iran policies, which involved withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, imposing crippling economic sanctions, and assassinating Iranian Quds Force Commander Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Waltz is a staunch supporter of Israel and has repeated Trump’s calls to allow Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza.
Waltz argued in the Economist essay that the US is too bogged down in the Middle East and Ukraine and should be more focused on China.
He is known as one of the biggest China hawks in Congress, declaring back in 2021 that the US was in a Cold War with China. He frequently calls for the US to send more weapons to Taiwan, saying last year that the US should arm the island “to the teeth.”
Trump chooses pro-Israel congresswoman as US ambassador to UN
By MEE staff, 11 November 2024
US President-elect Donald Trump has picked New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik as his ambassador to the United Nations, choosing an ally with little foreign policy experience and staunch pro-Israel views to represent Washington at the international organisation.
Since the Israeli war on Gaza began in October 2023, Stefanik has supported bills targeting pro-Palestinian student encampments that were erected this past spring in protest against the war, calling on their administrations to cut economic ties with Israel or companies they say support the war.
Stefanik increased her name recognition in December 2023 after aggressively going after several university presidents during a hearing on antisemitism, which focused on the pro-Palestinian protests taking place on US campuses. Those protests were labelled as antisemitic by some US lawmakers, including Stefanik, on the basis that they were critical of Israel.... Since the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza, Stefanik has attacked the UN and accused it of antisemitism for its criticism of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
Last month, Stefanik called for a "complete reassessment" of US funding for the UN, and she has pushed for blocking Washington's support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as Unrwa.
Mike Huckabee - Zionist and pro-Israel activist - receives the Adelson Defender of Israel Award and addresses attendees of the annual Zionist Organization of America Dinner. (ZOA, 7-11-2013)
President-elect Donald Trump has picked Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, to be his ambassador to Israel, putting a figure who has rejected the existence of the Palestinian people at the centre of US diplomacy with Israel amid its wars on Gaza and Lebanon. Huckabee is a prominent leader in the pro-Israel evangelical Christian movement.
He was governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007 and ran twice for the Republican presidential nomination, in 2008 and 2016.
“Mike has been a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years,” Trump said in a statement. “He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”
It’s unclear how Huckabee would advance Trump’s pledge to end the war in Gaza.
"There’s no valid reason to have a cease-fire with Hamas," Huckabee said in June. Huckabee has also advocated for the forcible displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s war on Gaza:
“If the so-called Palestinians are so loved by the Muslim nations of the world, why wont any of those nations at least offer to give temporary refuge to their brothers and sisters in Gaza,” Huckabee said in October 2023.
Huckabee’s nomination underscores the growing sway of evangelical Christians in the Republican Party’s ties to Israel.
Huckabee was an evangelical pastor before he rose to the top of Arkansas politics. Followers of Christian Zionism believe that modern Israel is a manifestation of biblical prophecies and that the US's fate is linked to it.
Huckabee has been an outspoken advocate for Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria,” he told Politico in 2017, using the Hebrew language terms for the occupied West Bank.
“There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
He has rejected the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine question outright, saying that to prevent Israeli Jews from being a minority in one state, there should be an “aggressive interest in bringing Jews from around the world to the homeland”.
In a stirring speech delivered at the annual Bet El Institutions dinner earlier this week, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said that the United States should immediately cease its funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and allocate the same amount to housing for Jews in Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank).
Huckabee is "America’s leading Christian Zionist politician." He believes that the land of Israel was promised to the modern-day Jews by God. He has written that, "the Jews have a God-given right to reclaim land given to their ancestors and taken away from them."
Huckabee is a Rapturist. Rapturists believe in the physical return of Jesus to greater Israel. The Jews remain the apple of God’s eye, the land promised to the patriarch Abraham being their inheritance. The land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River must be secured for Israel. Solomon’s Temple will be rebuilt... Huckabee on Israel and Palestine
He supports the creation of a Palestinian state. He believes that such a state should be formed outside “Israel.” He suggested Saudi Arabia and Egypt as prospects for such a state...
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee slammed UN Security Council Resolution 2334 as an act of hate and contempt against the State of Israel and criticized Secretary of State John Kerry's speech against construction in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria during a visit to the Knesset Tuesday. Kerry argues that Israel can be Jewish or democratic, but not both. How did he come to that [conclusion]? He took the faith and the religion out of the equation of what Israel is."
About Resolution 2234:
The Security Council reaffirmed that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and Army veteran, to serve as his secretary of defense.
Hegseth’s selection was a surprise, as he was not among those considered as a likely pick by members of Trump’s team, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.
Sources said that it came down to Trump having a longstanding relationship with Hegseth, noting that the president-elect always thought he was “smart” and was impressed by his career. Trump also likes that Hegseth is a military veteran and the account of his service in his book, the sources said.
Trump’s choice of Hegseth is a notable departure from his picks for defense secretary in his first term, when he selected a four-star general, James Mattis, and an Army secretary, Mark Esper, to lead the Pentagon. One defense official told CNN, “Everyone is simply shocked.” One former Trump official said they were “shocked” by the selection and expect there’s going to be an effort to “take him down.”
In a statement announcing Hegseth, Trump praised his combat record as well as his tenure as a Fox News host and his bestselling book 'Battle for the American mind'.
Hegseth Quotes:
-- Hegseth spoke at the 2018 Arutz Sheva conference in Jerusalem, where he stated "there's no reason why the miracle of the re-establishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount is not possible."
-- Speaking at the National Council of Young Israel gala in New York City the same year, he said “Zionism and Americanism are the front lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today.”
-- In August 2019, he lamented that "young kids voting" are worried about the adverse effects of climate change. Hegseth also criticized universities for teaching students about "environmentalism and radical environmentalism" rather than a "real threat" such as Islamic extremism.
-- In January 2020, Hegseth expressed strong support for president Trump's decision to kill Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. He also called on Trump to bomb the Iranian homeland, including cultural sites if they were storing weapons. (Wikipedia info)
-- In 2022, to protest the teaching of critical theory at Harvard, he wrote “RETURN TO SENDER” across his degree, on live TV.
Motivation: "The whole premise of critical theory is to deconstruct the patriarchy and the hierarchy of Western civilization."
Critical Theory - Webinfo:
The guiding principles of critical theory are that knowledge is power and that by critically examining our society and its institutions, we can work to change them for the better. We can use our understanding of power dynamics to challenge oppressive systems and promote social justice. Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them".
The answer: Battle for the American mind,
by Pete Hegseth and David Goodwin, 2022
Bringing God back in college (New York Times Bestseller) Zie de Video clip
Hegseth on Veritas Press: This initiative is about what the classical Christian movement is. I mean, that's when we started working together, David and I; that was the goal from the beginning. I mean, first, to glorify God through this work. And that is truly what we want to do.
But second of all, to elevate what classical Christian education is. To expose more people to it and break down misconceptions. Hopefully, to help put one more shoulder to the plow in the movement so that more people are exposed to the absolute wisdom and beauty that is classical Christian education.
I was introduced to classical Christian through a school in Minnesota and then through meeting David, it just became clear it this was the way to go.
It was kind of like a light bulb went off that not only are we doing this wrong, but there is a solution out there, and it's growing, and it's something not only can my kids can access, but hundreds of thousands and hopefully millions of kids can access eventually, and it’s is the key to saving our country. (Source: Veritas Press)
Iran and Qatar are pushing forward plans for the ambitious undersea tunnel projectaimed at improving connectivity between Iran’s southern coast and Qatar. Qatar’s Ambassador Saad Abdullah Saad Al Mahmoud Al-Sharif met with Iran’s Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi in Tehran on Wednesday to discuss advancing economic cooperation initiatives between Iran and Qatar.
The discussions focused on advancing current agreements and exploring new opportunities for bilateral business cooperation. Key discussion points included preparations for the 10th Iran-Qatar Joint Economic Cooperation Commission, set to take place in Doha in December.
Iran and Qatar are pushing forward plans for the ambitious undersea tunnel project aimed at improving connectivity between Iran’s southern coast and Qatar. This infrastructure initiative, set to revolutionise transport and trade, will facilitate the swift movement of goods and travelers, while boosting regional tourism and economic integration.
Khamenei's Envoy Meets Syrian President
FARS News [Iran] 14-11-2024
In the meeting between Ali Larijani, the senior advisor to spiritual leader Ali Khamenei, and Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria, the latest developments in the region were discussed, including the genocide by the Zionists in Gaza and the regime's aggressions against Lebanon.
This meeting took place on Thursday evening in Damascus, the capital of Syria, during which both sides emphasized the need to stop the attacks and crimes of the Zionists.
Bashar al-Assad emphasized the commitment to the historical rights of Palestine, support for the resistance of the Palestinian and Lebanese people, the cessation of massacres, and an end to the genocidal crimes of the Zionists in the region.
For his part, Larijani reiterated Iran's continued support for Syria in confronting the Zionist regime and stated that Iran will stand by Syria.
He added that Syria plays a pivotal role in the region and efforts should be made to strengthen this role in a way that serves the countries and people of the region.
Joran King sends cable to Abbas on
anniversary of declaration of Palestinian state’s independence By Jordan Times - Nov 14, 2024
AMMAN — King Abdullah has affirmed that Jordan will continue to work with Arab countries and the international community to end the injustice, the killing, and destruction inflicted on the Palestinian people.
In a cable to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the occasion of the 36th anniversary of the declaration of the independence of the State of Palestine, the king reiterated Jordan's support for Palestinians in gaining their legitimate rights, according to a Royal Court statement.
The King stressed the need to step up efforts to stop the Israeli aggression on Gaza and extremist attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, as well as violations of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, noting the importance of bolstering the humanitarian response in Gaza, the statement said.
The Palestinian Declaration of Independence formally established the State of Palestine, and was written by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and proclaimed by Yasser Arafat on 15 November 1988 in Algiers, Algeria.
It had previously been adopted by the Palestinian National Council (PNC), the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), by a vote of 253 in favour, 46 against, and 10 abstaining. It was read at the closing session of the 19th PNC to a standing ovation.
Upon completing the reading of the declaration, Arafat, as Chairman of the PLO, assumed the title of President of Palestine. In April 1989, the PLO Central Council elected Arafat as the first President of the State of Palestine.
Soon-to-be US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee spoke to Arutz Sheva-Israel National News and described the responses he has received since he was nominated to the position.
“I’ve been overwhelmed with positive responses, both here in the US as well as in Israel. I’ve had very positive responses from American Jews, from American Evangelical Christians, and from people in Israel,” said Huckabee.
Among those who called him, he added, was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom Huckabee noted he has known for 30 years. “He called me within an hour after the announcement was made.."
“Everything that I embrace as a Christian is rooted in the promises that God gave to the Jewish people.” (YouTube, feb 2024)
Huckabee stated that the position of ambassador to Israel was “the only thing that President Trump could have asked me to do that I probably would’ve said yes to.
I wasn’t looking for a federal job. I wasn’t even looking for this one. I didn’t campaign or lobby for it. I was as surprised as anybody when I got the call last Tuesday, and the President asked me to do it and it was the one thing I could say to, like Isaiah, ‘Here am I.’”
To the question of whether he intends to be more careful on the issue of Judea and Samaria, which is viewed as controversial in the world, Huckabee replied, “I can’t be what I’m not. I can’t say something I don’t believe. As you well know, I’ve never been willing to use the term ‘West Bank’.
There is no such thing. I speak of Judea and Samaria. I tell people there is no ‘occupation’. It is a land that is ‘occupied’ by the people who have had a rightful deed to the place for 3,500 years, since the time of Abraham.”
“A lot of the terms that maybe the media would use, even the people who are against Israel would use, are not terms that I employ, because I want to use terms that are time immemorial, and those are the terms like ‘Promised Land’ and ‘Judea and Samaria’.
These are Biblical terms, and those are important to me, and so I will continue to follow that nomenclature unless I’m instructed otherwise, but I don’t think that’ll happen.”
Israeli authorities have caused the massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since October 2023 and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The report is being published at the time of an ongoing Israeli military campaign in northern Gaza that has most likely created a new wave of forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The 154-page report, “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” examines how Israeli authorities’ conduct has led to the displacement of over 90 percent of the population of Gaza—1.9 million Palestinians—and the widespread destruction of much of Gaza over the last 13 months. Israeli forces have carried out deliberate, controlled demolitions of homes and civilian infrastructure, including in areas where they have apparent aims of creating “buffer zones” and security “corridors,” from which Palestinians are likely to be permanently displaced. Contrary to claims by Israeli officials, their actions do not comply with the laws of war...
The laws of armed conflict applicable in occupied territory permit displacement of civilians only exceptionally, for imperative military reasons or for the population’s security, and require safeguards and proper accommodation to receive displaced civilians.
Israeli officials claim that, because Palestinian armed groups are fighting from among the civilian population, the military has lawfully evacuated civilians to attack the groups while limiting civilian harm. Human Rights Watch research shows this claim to be largely false. There is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, Human Rights Watch found.
Israel’s evacuation system has severely harmed the population and often served only to spread fear and anxiety. Rather than ensure security for displaced civilians, Israeli forces have repeatedly struck designated evacuation routes and safe zones.
Evacuation orders have been inconsistent, inaccurate, and frequently not communicated to civilians with enough time to allow evacuations, or at all...
Human Rights Watch found that forced displacement has been widespread, and the evidence shows it has been systematic and part of a state policy.
The US on Wednesday used the power of veto it holds as one of the five permanent member of the UN Security Council to block a resolution demanding “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza and “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”
The resolution was put forward by the 10 elected, non-permanent members of the council. The US was the only one of the 15 members not to vote in favor of it.
The text of the resolution also called for the “safe and unhindered entry of humanitarian assistance at scale” to Gaza, including besieged areas in the north of the territory, and denounced any attempt to deliberately starve the population there.
More than 44,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began in October last year, and the UN says that in excess of 70 percent of the verified deaths were among women and children. More than 130,000 people have been injured.
The UN believes these figures to be an underestimate, given that scores of bodies are thought to be buried under the rubble of destroyed or damaged buildings.
The war has also displaced almost the entire population of the enclave, resulting in a humanitarian catastrophe.
After the Security Council failed to adopt the resolution on Wednesday, Majed Bamya, the Palestinian deputy ambassador to the UN, told its members that they were witnessing an attempt “to annihilate a nation” and yet the “very tools designed to respond (to this are) not being used.”
He added: “Maybe for some we have the wrong nationality, the wrong faith, the wrong skin color, but we are humans and we should be treated as such.
“Is there a UN Charter for Israel that is different from the charter you all have?
Is there an international law for them? An international law for us? Do they have the right to kill and the only right we have is to die?
Genesis 17:7: I'm establishing my covenant between me and you, and with your descendants who come after you, generation after generation, as an eternal covenant, to be your God and your descendants' God after you. (Danon's Bible speech, UN 2019
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told council members: “Today, a shameful attempt to abandon our kidnapped men and women by the UN was prevented. Thanks to the US, we stood firm with our position that there will be no ceasefire without the release of the hostages. Robert Wood, the deputy US ambassador, said that an unconditional ceasefire would mean acceptance by the Security Council of Hamas remaining in power in Gaza. “The United States will never accept this,” he added.
THE HAGUE: The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and Hamas officials, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the war in Gaza and the October 2023 attacks that triggered Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian territory.
The decision turns Netanyahu and the others into internationally wanted suspects and is likely to further isolate them and complicate efforts to negotiate a ceasefire to end the 13-month conflict. But its practical implications could be limited since Israel and its major ally, the United States, are not members of the court and several of the Hamas officials have been subsequently killed in the conflict. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have condemned ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for warrants as disgraceful and antisemitic.
US President Joe Biden also blasted the prosecutor and expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas. Hamas also slammed the request.
“The Chamber considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity,” the three-judge panel wrote in its unanimous decision to issue warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
The ICC is a court of last resort that only prosecutes cases when domestic law enforcement authorities cannot or will not investigate. Israel is not a member state of the court. Despite the warrants, none of the suspects is likely to face judges in The Hague any time soon. The court itself has no police to enforce warrants, instead relying on cooperation from its member states.
Israel and its close allies were furious, human rights groups rejoiced, and many countries responded cautiously after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant on Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The court also issued warrants for Israel's former defence minister as well as Hamas's military chief Mohammed Deif.
Hamas: 'Justice'
"(It's) an important step towards justice and can lead to redress for the victims in general, but it remains limited and symbolic if it is not supported by all means by all countries around the world," Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim said.
Israel: New 'Dreyfus trial'. Netanyau: Anti-Semtici
"The anti-Semitic decision of the International Criminal Court is comparable to the modern-day Dreyfus trial -- and it will end in the same way," Netanyahu said in a statement, referring to the 19th-century Alfred Dreyfus affair in which a Jewish army captain was wrongly convicted of treason in France before being exonerated. US: 'Fundamentally rejects'
The United States "fundamentally rejects" the ICC's decision and "we remain deeply concerned by the prosecutor's rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision. The United States has been clear that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over this matter," a National Security Council spokesperson said. European Union: 'Binding'
EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell said the warrants were "binding" and should be implemented. "It is not a political decision. It is a decision of a court, of a court of justice, of an international court of justice. And the decision of the court has to be respected and implemented," he said during a visit to Jordan. Human Rights Watch: 'Secure justice'
"The ICC arrest warrants against senior Israeli leaders and a Hamas official break through the perception that certain individuals are beyond the reach of the law. These warrants should finally push the international community to address atrocities and secure justice for all victims in Palestine and Israel." Amnesty International: 'Wanted man'
"Prime Minister Netanyahu is now officially a wanted man," said Amnesty's Secretary General Agnes Callamard. "ICC member states and the whole international community must stop at nothing until these individuals are brought to trial before the ICC's independent and impartial judges." Turkey: Positive decision
The ICC's decision "is a belated but positive decision to stop the bloodshed and put an end to the genocide in Palestine," Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said on X. "The barbaric Israeli authorities, who target our innocent Palestinian brothers and sisters... must be brought to justice as soon as possible for their war crimes and crimes against humanity."
ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant for war crimes
PressTV [Iran], Thursday, 21 November 2024
In its statement, the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber I, a panel of three judges, said it has rejected appeals by Israel challenging its jurisdiction.
The chamber said it has decided to release the arrest warrants because "conduct similar to that addressed in the warrant of arrest appears to be ongoing", referring to Israel's ongoing onslaught on Gaza.
Netanyahu and Gallant, it said, “each bear criminal responsibility” for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts,” as well as “intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”
Israel faces an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
It’s official now. America’s closest ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the one accorded more than 50 standing ovations in Congress just months ago, is under indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes.
America must take note: the U.S. Government is complicit in Netanyahu’s war crimes and has fully partnered in Netanyahu’s violent rampage across the Middle East.
For 30 years the Israel Lobby has induced the U.S. to fight wars on Israel’s behalf designed to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian State.
Netanyahu, who first came to power in 1996, and has been prime minister for 17 years since then, has been the main cheerleader for U.S.-backed wars in the Middle East.
The result has been a disaster for the U.S. and a bloody catastrophe not only for the Palestinian people but for the entire Middle East. These have not been wars to defend Israel, but rather wars to topple governments that oppose Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
Israel viciously opposes the two-state solution called for by international law, the Arab Peace Initiative, the G20, the BRICS, the OIC, and the UN General Assembly.
Israel’s intransigence, and its brutal suppression of the Palestinian people, has given rise to several militant resistance movements since the beginning of the occupation. These movements are backed by several countries in the region.
The obvious solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis is to implement the two-state solution and to demilitarize the militant groups as part of the implementation process.
Israel’s approach, especially under Netanyahu, is to overthrow foreign governments that oppose Israel’s domination, and recreate the map of a “New Middle East” without a Palestinian State. Rather than making peace, Netanyahu makes endless war.
What is shocking is that Washington has turned the U.S. military and federal budget over to Netanyahu for his disastrous wars. The history of the Israel lobby’s complete takeover of Washington can be found in the remarkable new book by Ilan Pappé, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic (2024).
Netanyahu repeatedly told the American people that they would be the beneficiaries of his policies. In fact, Netanyahu has been an unmitigated disaster for the American people, bleeding the U.S. Treasury of trillions of dollars, squandering America’s standing in the world, making the U.S. complicit in his genocidal policies, and bringing the world closer to World War III. If Trump wants to make America great again, the first thing he should do is to make America sovereign again, by ending Washington’s subservience to the Israel Lobby.
anti bush cartoons
The Israel Lobby not only controls the votes in Congress but places hardline backers of Israel into key national security posts. These have included Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State for Clinton), Lewis Libby (Chief of Staff of Vice President Cheney), Victoria Nuland (Deputy National Security Advisor of Cheney, NATO Ambassador of Bush Jr., Assistant Secretary of State for Obama, Under-Secretary of State for Biden), Paul Wolfowitz (Under-Secretary of Defense for Bush Sr., Deputy Secretary of Defense for Bush Jr.), Douglas Feith (Under-Secretary of Defense for Bush Jr.), Abram Shulsky (Director of the Office of Special Plans, Department of Defense for Bush Jr.), Elliott Abrams (Deputy National Security Advisor for Bush Jr.), Richard Perle (Chairman of the Defense National Policy Board for Bush Jr.), Amos Hochstein (Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State for Biden), and Antony Blinken (Secretary of State for Biden).
After 9/11, the Bush Jr. neocons (led by Cheney and Rumsfeld) and the Bush Jr. insiders of the Israel Lobby (led by Wolfowitz and Feith), teamed up to remake the Middle East through a series of U.S.-led wars in the Middle East (Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria) and Islamic East Africa (Libya, Somalia, and Sudan). The role of the Israel Lobby in stoking these wars of choice is described in detail in Pappe’s new book.... The neocon-Israel Lobby teamwork has marked one of the greatest global calamities of the 21st century. All of the countries attacked by the U.S. or its proxies—Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria—now lie in ruins.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza continues apace, and yet again the U.S. has opposed the unanimous will of the world (other than Israel) this week by vetoing a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution that was backed by the other 14 members of the U.N. Security Council.
The real issue facing the Trump Administration is not defending Israel from its neighbors, who call repeatedly, almost daily, for peace based on the two-state solution. The real issue is defending the U.S. from the Israel Lobby.
Iran has condemned an "unjustifiable" resolution passed by the UN nuclear agency against the country's peaceful atomic program, ordering the activation of advanced centrifuges in a reciprocal response.
In a joint statement released early on Friday, Iranian Foreign Ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said directives had been issued to "initiate the operation of a substantial number of advanced centrifuges of various models."
The measure, which is taken to safeguard Iran’s national interests and address its growing need for civilian nuclear program , lies within the framework of the country’s rights and obligations under the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement, they said.
The joint statement came after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s Board of Governors voted 19 to 3, with 12 abstentions, for a resolution that alleged Tehran had a poor cooperation with the agency and requested a "comprehensive" report on its nuclear activities "at the latest" by spring 2025. The statement said that the "non-consensus" motion was approved under the "pressure and insistence" of Britain, France, Germany and the United States, despite lacking the support of approximately half of the 35-member Board of Governors.
It noted that the aforesaid states had proposed a "politically motivated" resolution against the Islamic Republic, rather than fostering the constructive atmosphere established during the IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi's recent visit to Tehran...
"This politicized and destructive measure undermines the positive momentum achieved between Iran and the Agency and blatantly contradicts the professed commitment of the three European nations and the United States to preserving the integrity and impartiality of the IAEA."
Iran had already warned that any resolution against its peaceful nuclear program would be met with a quick response. In 2015, Iran proved the peaceful nature of its nuclear program to the world by signing the JCPOA with six world powers.
However, Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018 and its subsequent re-imposition of sanctions against Tehran left the future of the deal in limbo.
In 2019, Iran started to roll back the limits it had accepted under the JCPOA after the other parties failed to live up to their commitments.
Syrian Arab News Agency, 21 November 2024:
Security Council failure to fulfill its responsibilities encourages Israeli to continue its attacks on regional states
Syria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Qusay Al-Dahhak, said that the Security Council failure to fulfill its responsibilities has encouraged Israel to continue its attacks on countries and peoples of the region, targeting border crossings, roads and bridges between Syria and Lebanon which are used by thousands of people coming from Lebanon to escape the Israeli killing machine.
“The Israeli aggression on Syrian territory coincide with the intensification of terrorist organizations’ attacks, which affirms the close coordination and organic connection with the entity in committing criminal acts and attacks on civilians in the surrounding areas,” al-Dahhak said Thursday at a security council session on the situation in Syria.
He also said that Syria has received nearly 6 thousand of Lebanese brothers and Syrian returnees following the Israeli aggression on Lebanon, and it offered all necessary services to them despite difficult conditions the country is passing through.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday met with Israel's new chief rabbis, Rabbi David Yosef and Rabbi Kalman Ber, at the Jerusalem Chief Rabbinate offices.
During the meeting, the sides discussed steps to strengthen the position of the Chief Rabbinate, improve the kashrut (kosher food supervision) system, and lower the cost of living, as well as strengthen the rabbinical court system and the State's Jewish identity.
Smotrich blessed the new chief rabbis, adding, "I wish you great success in your important task of creating a rabbinate which is welcoming and which connects all of the layers of the nation and serves as the national expression of the State of Israel's Judaism."
"As the Finance Minister and as the head of the Religious Zionist party, I am obligated to work closely with you to strengthen the rabbinate and improve religious services."
The meeting is considered a first step in cooperation between the Finance Ministry and the Chief Rabbinate for the purpose of advancing a significant reform in the religious services and the rabbinical court system for the benefit of the public.
"There is no law and order"
Israeli total War Continues,
with “No end in sight” for Palestinians in Gaza Juan Cole, 26 november 2024
Muhannad Hadi, the special UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, addressed the ambassadors of the UN Security Council states on Monday, Nov. 25, on the “ongoing devastation in Gaza,” which, he said, “persists relentlessly, with no resolution in sight” as winter approaches with its drenching rains and chilly temperatures, endangering lives.
Even as he was speaking, what is left of the Gaza government announced the grim news that this weekend storm surges along the coast destroyed 10,000 tents people had set up near the sea.
Rain storms and wind have damaged 81% of refugee tents in Gaza, with 110,000 out of 135,000 tents needing to be immediately replaced.
Hadi warned that “the delivery of critical aid across Gaza is grinding to a halt.” He cautioned that as a result, the survival of two million people hangs in the balance.” He called on Israel to fulfill its responsibilities and to arrange for the swift and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid throughout the Gaza Strip.
Hadi explained that in recent weeks, the Israeli military has catastrophically escalated its attacks on North Gaza, with what he called “mass casualty incidents” taking place “with alarming frequency.”
Since October 6, he said, the Israeli military has issued numerous expulsion orders, forcing more than 100,000 Palestinians to flee, mostly with nothing but the clothes on their backs, from North Gaza to the south.
These refugees have mainly flooded into Gaza City, which now has some 375,000 residents even though much of its infrastructure and most of its domiciles have been destroyed.
Since the Israelis have destroyed civilian governance in Gaza. Jan Engeland, the head of the Norwegian Humanitarian Council, affirms “The police was bombed to pieces by Israel, and Israel is giving us aid routes that are unsafe.” There is no law and order and no mechanism to enforce it, since the Israelis, despite being the occupying power, are disregarding their consequent obligations to provide security to civilians.
As a result, Hadi says, “Looting of humanitarian supplies by Palestinians is intensifying and becoming more organized and more violent. “
Israel's far-right finance minister on Wednesday said Gaza could be emptied of half its population through "voluntary" migration within two years.
Addressing a meeting of the Yesha Council, a committee overseeing a number of settlements in the occupied West Bank, Smotrich said Israel “can and must occupy the Gaza Strip”. “We don’t need to be scared of this word [occupation],” he said. “It’s possible to create a situation in which Gaza will have less than half its current population within two years."
"Occupying Gaza is not a dirty word, If the cost of security control is 5 billion shekels ($1.37 billion), I will accept it with open arms. If that is what it takes to ensure the security of Israel, then so be it.”
Since the Hamas attack in October 2023 that killed nearly 1,200 people, Smotrich has been among those calling for the enclave to return to full Israeli control and for settlements to be constructed.
As well as finance minister, Smotrich has a role in the defence ministry overseeing illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Critics of the “voluntary emigration” policy, also touted by Smotrich’s fellow far-right minister Itamar Ben Gvir, have argued that it is a euphemism for forced displacement — a war crime.
In a statement published on 27 November, the French foreign affairs ministry claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “and the other ministers concerned” (ie Yoav Gallant, his former defence minister), targeted by an international arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), benefit from immunities granted to states not party to the Rome Statute, which created the court.
France would take these immunities “into account should the ICC request of us their arrest and surrender”, the statement said.
In other words, if given the opportunity, France would not arrest or hand over to international justice Israeli leaders accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Although EU outgoing foreign policy chief Josep Borrell emphasised that compliance with ICC rulings was mandatory for EU member states and G7 foreign ministers announced they would "comply with their respective obligations", most western states seem rather embarrassed - if not downright hostile, like the United States or Hungary - at the idea of having to surrender an Israeli leader to the ICC.
France has attempted to resolve this tension between adherence in principle to the ICC and support for Israel through perilous legal acrobatics, consisting of asserting that since Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute, its leaders benefit from immunity.
However, officials of all ranks, including a head of state or government, under an ICC arrest warrant are not entitled to immunity, even if they belong to a non-state party to the Rome Statute, such as Israel. France had no such qualms when the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2023. There was no mention of any immunity.
"Anyone responsible for a war crime or crime against humanity will be held accountable, regardless of their status or rank," then Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna firmly stated. Russia had, however, withdrawn from the Rome Statute in 2016.
In the second part of its statement, which triggered less comments but revealed the political vision underlying the French position, the ministry reiterated France’s identification with Israel, "two democracies committed to the rule of law and to respect for a professional and independent justice system".
For France, the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the systematic non-compliance with UN resolutions, the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967, the colonisation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the construction of the illegal separation wall, the apartheid system and, of course, the accusations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide… none of this calls into question Israel’s commitment to the rule of law or its democratic character. Wednesday’s press release further said that "France intends to continue working in close cooperation with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the other Israeli authorities to achieve peace and security for all in the Middle East".
[Thierry Brésillon is an independent journalist based in Tunis since April 2011.]
Josep Borrell, the EU's High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy for the past five years, stepped down last night (Saturday). Borrell was a vocal critic of Israel, especially during the war over the last 14 months, and was refused a visit by Israel. Borrell also called on EU countries to impose sanctions on Israel.
According to a report in Politico last April, Borrell's criticism of Israel led German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer to confront Borrell, with the two leaders telling him, "You do not speak for Germany and Austria on Gaza." Former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who is considered one of the most vocal pro-Ukrainian voices in EU, was appointed to replace Borell and even arrived today, hours after taking office, to visit the Ukrainian capital.
Kallas' appointment is being called the beginning a "new era" for EU-Israel relations after Borrell and his predecessor Federica Mogherini were staunch critics of the Jewish State.
During the current war, Kallas supported Israel's right to defend itself and condemned the Hamas terrorist organization that launched the war with its October 7 massacre. In addition, she has expressed support for the two-state solution over the years.
The EU supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as set out by the Oslo Accords. In January, EU foreign ministers unanimously reiterated this position.
In her introductory statement, Ms Kallas pledged to work on strengthening the EU’s position in the world and safeguarding its geopolitical and economic security. She also called for more investment in defence and stressed the importance of cooperating with international partners. Ms Kallas warned that Russia, Iran, North Korea, and - more covertly - China, want to change the rules-based world order.
She called on the EU to respond to this threat alongside its closest allies and partners “without losing an inch of who we are”. On Russia’s war against Ukraine, she said that Ukraine’s victory is a priority for the EU, which has to provide as much military, financial and humanitarian aid as is needed. Ms Kallas argued in favour of Ukraine’s accession to the EU and stressed that enlargement to neighbouring countries is a geostrategic investment that is in the EU´s own interest: “In the next five years we need clear results here.”
On China, she said that the country is increasingly a competitor and a systemic rival, highlighting that “our dependency towards China in key sectors is a real vulnerability. We need to de-risk.”
Regarding defence policy, Ms Kallas warned that Russia, North Korea and Iran produce more equipment and ammunition than the Euro-Atlantic community. Europe needs to invest more in defence and shoulder more responsibility, she said,
Syria News:
Deadly strikes hit Aleppo as rebels seize airport, push towards Hama
Aleppo outside government control for first time since 1946 By Middle East Eye staff, 30 November 2024
Russian and Syrian government air strikes pounded central Aleppo on Saturday as rebels claimed control of the city’s international airport and advanced towards Hama.
At least 16 civilians and 20 rebels have been killed in several air strikes since the early morning, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group. It was the first time air strikes had targeted Aleppo since 2016, when the Syrian opposition was driven out of the city.
flashback 2014-2015
However, rebels led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied groups, including some backed by Turkey, claimed stunning gains on Saturday.
They claimed to have seized Aleppo International Airport and the strategic city of Khan Sheikhoun in southern Idlib. The administrative borders of Idlib Governorate were fully under their control, they added.
They also claimed to have begun marching towards Hama, successfully capturing six towns and villages in the countryside, including Morek, which lies along an important highway connecting central Syria to the north.
The offensive began on Wednesday when rebels broke out from opposition-held territory in northwest Syria towards Aleppo.
Within two days, they had seized dozens of towns and villages, as well as a section of the strategic M5 highway, cutting off supply routes to Damascus.They have taken several military bases and fortified positions since, often meeting little resistance.
According to SOHR, government forces have collapsed in Idlib and Aleppo. This has left Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, outside government control for the first time since the country’s independence in 1946, the monitoring group said.
Amid fast-moving developments, the foreign ministers of Turkey and Russia - both major stakeholders in Syria - spoke by phone on Saturday and agreed to coordinate efforts to stabilise Syria, according to Moscow.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also spoke by phone to his Iranian counterpart, according to Iranian state media.
The frontlines of Syria’s civil war have barely shifted since 2020. A “de-escalation” agreement in 2019 between rebel-backer Turkey and Syria's President Bashar al-Assad’s sponsors, Russia and Iran, had created some stability and a long-term ceasefire.
Most of Idlib province has since been held by HTS, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, which has established a civilian administration.
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