Israel: Turn Right for the Abyss

[Stavros]

Nietszche said it: spend too much time peering into the abyss, and it will suck you in.

The results of the Legislative Elections in Israel show a turn to the Right that began under Netanyahu has not shifted, even if the man himself is not as 'Right-wing' as previous holders of the Office of Prime Minister.

Not commented on in the press, in the UK at any rate, is the staggering decline of the Labour Party, reduced from the party that declared Israel's Independence in 1948, formed its Government without interruption to 1977, and is now little more than a secondary or even a fringe party of what Trump would call 'Radical Leftists', except that in this case he might be right. Labour was in 1948, and today is still a member of the Socialist International, as is the smaller party, Meretz, but that is as far as it goes. There is an analysis of how far Labour has fallen here-
Israel’s Labor Party Is Responsible for Its Own Failure - Opinion - Haaretz.com (https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2022-10-31/ty-article/.premium/israels-labor-party-is-responsible-for-its-own-failure/00000184-2a48-dfc8-a1ec-bed89aec0000)

Why, then, has the Fascist politics of Israel triumphed over its alternatives?

Part of the reason, and I think one of its main ones, is that Ariel Sharon, then Netanyahu, created narratives that were designed to rubbish the historical adherence Israel has- or had- to the Collectivist aspects of Zionism. One of the original ambitions of the 'Labour Zionists' in 1948 was to create a collective form of Agriculture as the foundation of the Israeli economy, whether the Moshav or the Kibbutz.

Since Menachem Begin's victory in 1977, collective agriculture has declined as Israel has in economic terms, replaced agriculture with technology as its greatest success, both domestically and internationally. On the one hand, this has reduced Israel's dependence on the US, though the billions of dollars of subsidy it gets from the American tax-payer dwarfs that paid out to other Governments.

On the other hand, the price paid for the Globalization of Israel's economic relations and the influx of foreign capital, has meant the levelling of prices, so that housing is now beyond the reach of most young families, given that most Israeli families do not want to live on the cheaper, but illegally occupied areas of the West Bank, where they have nothing in common with the fanatical Settler Movement that is in any case, a law unto itself, also known as 'Gun Law'.

Netanyahu has created a Narrative of Crisis, a Narrative of Tension in which the by now faded and jaded claim that Israel is surrounded by enemies that seek to destroy it is the daily bread. How this fits in with the 'Abraham Accords' which has normalized relations with those 'Enemies' I don't know. Moreover, the only truly hostile states, failed State Lebanon, and failed State Syria, are more likely to be the targets of Israel's war machine than vice versa, just as these days, given the implosion in Lebanon, Iran is the victim of Israel's military violence, rather than the other way round.

This leaves the usual suspects, the Palestinians, and Saudi Arabia.

Although there has been some speculation that Mohammed bin Salman would consider normalizing relations with Israel, he may not need to. Both are in a tacit alliance with their common enemy, Iran, and though MbS might do a deal with Israel, what would be the trade off for him? There is no sign he cares about the Palestinians, so I don't see a deal involving peace there. And anyway, in the long term, the aim has always been to unify the former Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire under Wahabi command, a long term ambition I believe MbS is committed to, rather in the way Xi wants China to 're-unify' Taiwan with the 'Mainland'.

What of the Palestinians, one of the most ineffective political 'Nations' in the world? Here lies the problem, for while Netanyahu can maintain the narrative of Existential Despair -either them or us, a narrative that is fundamental to the Religious maniacs he may have to bring into his new Coalition government- and while sporadic violence against Israelis by Palestinians has increased, it is part of the political cultural of despair that Netanyahu himself created when he rejected the 1993 Peace Treaty between the PLO and Israel, so that instead of improving relations, Israel and the Palestinians have been repeating the same old tit-for-tat violence the Peace Treaty was supposed to end.

And now throw in this example of Fascist brutality -the law which decrees foreigners must not only inform the Govt of Israel if they fall in love on the West Bank but leave " after 27 months for a cooling-off period of at least half a year.".
Controlling the territory is not enough, controlling human emotions is an extension of Fascist doctrine from 'nothing inside the State against the State' to reach into the hearts of the people. Sort of 'No feelings against the State inside the State' to paraphrase Gentile. The ghost of Avraham Stern, trained in Civitavecchia by Mussolini, at Stern's request, is laughing all the way to the Gulag.
Warning to all who fall in love on the West Bank-
Israeli rules say West Bank visitors must declare love interest - BBC News (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-62730164)

The alternative, my peace plan, has yet to be considered. This would create an Israel-Palestine Confederation, in which every citizen would have equal rights -equal rights to the land, to housing, to health, education and work and political representation. The boundaries of Jerusalem would be re-drawn so that the City is taken out of poltiics to become an autonomous, global inter-faith hub in honour of its three dominant religions. The State buildings of Israel would thus no longer be in Jerusalem, but neither would the Palestinians be allowed to claim Jerusalem as anything but its 'spiritual capital'.

I don't see how the settlers on the West Bank can be expelled. They are armed and dangerous and shoot to kill. But if the Confederation works, the impetus for the Settler Movement, based as it is on bogus religious claims and violence and intimidation, might subside, though I think the weak point is the poor non-relations they have with West Bank Arabs.

So, a plan for peace, or Netanyahu's 'forever war'?

What is clear is that the current Narratives of Tension and Crisis cannot be allowed to shape policy, but I doubt Netanyahu has any intention of changing, just as I doubt he will join us in supporting Ukraine's war for freedom against Russia. The illegal siege of the Gaza District will continue, the illegal occupation of the West Bank continue to hold, and deteriorate with Netanyahu's blessing as he needs the tension there to justify his Fascist policies.

As was said by a Palestinian viewing the current situation-
"“This is no longer a slippery slope. This is the abyss itself.”"
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu comeback brings despair for leftwing parties | Benjamin Netanyahu | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/04/israels-benjamin-netanyahu-comeback-brings-despair-for-left-wing-parties)

Results of the Election here-
2022 Israeli legislative election - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election#Political_partie s)

Members of the Socialist International here-
Members - Socialist International (https://www.socialistinternational.org/about-us/members/)

[Stavros]

Another legislative election has turned Israel even further to the Fascist right than it was before, with dire claims from the new members of Netanyahu's coalition of 'annexation' of Palestinian territories, illegal settlement building, and already a probably illegal raid on the finances of the Palestinian Authority that was set up as part of the Peace Treaty of 1993.

That new members of the Govt represent parties that acquired just over 10% of the vote (see Wikipedia link below) is now sadly typical of the mess Proportional Representation makes of Democratic politics, while the views of Smotrich and his allies on the Judiciary and LGBTQ+ issues are loathed by the majority of Israelis. All of which suggests, as it also now typical of Israeli politics, that Netanyahu's new Coalition might not survive internal disputes, but the man himself is most keen to find the means to end the legal problems he has, and to deepen his relationship with Vladimir Putin and the Brutal Dictatorships in the Middle East that are every bit as Brutal as the Military Dictatorship Israel has imposed on the Palestinian territories.

Even a sloppy Liberal coward like Simon Tisdall now wonders if Israel as far as Western Democracies are concerned, is 'on our side', though neither he, nor the British or American Governments will dare to criticize Israel and certainly not sanction the country for its ever rapid descent into the Fascist paradise dreamed of years ago by Avraham Stern and Menachem Begin.
Netanyahu is Israel’s own worst enemy. Why won’t western allies confront him? | Simon Tisdall | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/15/netanyahu-israel-western-allies-religious-coalition)

Here is the elephantine problem -if Israel were to Annex the West Bank, Russian style, what rights will the 2 million+ Palestinians have in what will be, de facto, a Single State? What rights will the 2 million+ Palestinians in the Gaza District have? Either they must all have absolutely equal rights with Israelis, or Israel must admit that Palestinians will be 'second class' citizens or 'non-citizens'.

The implications for this are clear: if it happens, Israel will no longer be a Democracy, but a Violent Dictatorship to match its partners in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. I am sure Israel will continue its bombing raid in Syria with impunity, its assassinations in Iran, its illegal occupations and illegal settlement building all with impunity, because nobody dares to critizise or challenge Israel's power.

But as Tisdall concedes, what if this leads to am implosion inside Israel? Will secular citizens continue to accept the Religious nut jobs entering their Government because of a desperate Egomaniac, that dismantles the institutions and political culture they have nurtured since 1948?

Netanyahu has always believed in confrontation, not diplomacy. War, not peace. Violence, not negotiation. What if his reckless policies now lead him into a civil war, is it a war he thinks he can win?

2022 Israeli legislative election - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election#Results)

[Stavros]

A trenchant article on the crisis in Israel, but Freedland doesn't take the view that I do. He may be right about the role Palestinians can play, but only in a political settlement where they are equal to Israelis, which is something Netanyahu cannot even imagine, and the Fascists in Israel can't accept.

The solution is a Confederation of Israel and Palestine, similar to Switzerland, in which every citizen has equal rights. Jerusalem being what it is for religion, it's boundaries to be re-drawn to exclude Israel's Govt buildings, and become an Inter-Faith Centre of the World.

Otherwise Israel will rule over a country in which 4 million Palestinians are nothing, and reject the authority of the State. It is as absurd as Russia annexing a Ukraine where 90% of the population don't want them. And if it doesn't make sense politically, it may make sense in terms of the violence that is sure to follow. A lose-lose situation for all concerned.

Freedland's article is here-
Netanyahu is an existential threat to Israel. He can be resisted – but only with Palestinian support | Jonathan Freedland | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/03/benjamin-netanyahu-palestinian-israel-prime-minister)

[Stavros]

Earlier this year the journal Foreign Affairs published a critique of the ‘Two State Solution’ in Israel claiming in reality there is already a ‘One State’ reality. The article received a collective reply from Michael Oren, and from various pro-Israeli Americans, including Martin Indyk and Robert Satloff. The links below also include an ignorant reply by Elliot Abrams.

What puzzles me is why American Zionists, if that is what they are, accept in Israel politicians they would not vote for in the US, and policies that are in some cases incompatible with the US Constitution. They are opposed to a One State solution that grants equal rights to all, which after all is implied in the Declaration of independence in 1948, but then you would never know Israel began life as a Socialist state because these days nobody wants to acknowledge this, just as David Ben-Gurion is no longer a hero just a forgotten man whose politics doesn’t fit with the contemporary narrative.

Obviously if a One State came into existence Israel in its present form would cease to exist, but its Jewish citizens and other Israeli citizens would continue to live where they are, but in equal standing to everyone else. And, as Israel is no longer threatened by any neighbouring State, indeed, is recognised by most Middle East states (for domestic reasons neither Syria nor Lebanon pose much of a threat), all Israel and the Palestinians need do is find the means to live together.

It doesn’t look promising right now, but the with a Fascist in power supported by Americans who either would never support Fascism in America, or who like Trump want an Autocracy to replace their democracy, it will take time before these people can heal themselves, to everyone’s benefit.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/israel-palestine-one-state-solution

https://www.cfr.org/blog/israel-turns-75-foreign-affairs-publishes-call-eliminate-it

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/israel-survive-another-75-years-170000900.html

[Stavros]

Tweedledum and Tweedledee are at it again, for how long who knows? Netanyahu, addicted to violence and confrontation is in his element -what HAMAS wants out of this nobody so far knows.

But this interests me- the response of Rishi Sunak:

"Israel has an absolute right to defend itself".

Fair point.

What rights do Palestinians have?

Israel ‘at war’, says Netanyahu, as fighter jets target Gaza after surprise attack by Hamas – live (theguardian.com) (https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/oct/07/hamas-launches-attack-on-israel-with-5000-rockets-live)

[rodinuk]

…

What rights do Palestinians have?


They don’t have the right to launch thousands of rockets against civilians or gun down civilians in the streets or take hostages.

[Stavros]

They don’t have the right to launch thousands of rockets against civilians or gun down civilians in the streets or take hostages.

I agree with you.

16 Years of siege without end, an aggressive neighbour on one side, an indifferent one on the other, a lack of clear direction from its own so-called 'Authority' in Ramallah- one wonders when this, or how this relentless confrontation and violence will ever end.

Had Israel honoured the commitments it made in the Peace Treaty of 1993, had Netanyahu not joined Ariel Sharon's campaign to smash it to pieces over the corpse of Yitzhak Rabin, HAMAS might not have retained the internal loyalty it has (albeit with rivals, some of them even more vicious), as well as external supporters in Iran.

Had Tony Blair, when representing the 'Quartet' actually done something instead of renting property in Sheikh Jarrah and never visiting to ask the people of Gaza what they wanted -who knows if there might have been a working peace of some sort.

As I indicated above, I don't know what HAMAS's intentions are, other than a grim gesture on the 50th anniversary of the October War of 1973 -one which was also a humiliation for Syria, lest we forget that dismal, dysfunctional narco-state.

When the guns fall silent, and the dead have been buried, will there have been a single advance in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians? I doubt it.

[Stavros]

Although much comment in the media has compared this surprise attack exposing weak Israeli intelligence, to the start of the October War of 1973, I think the most apt comparison is with the aftermath of Israel's defeat of the Arabs in 1967.

It was followed by the emergence of Fateh and the PFLP as militant groups prepared to take their conflict with Israel outside the region as well as expand its range inside it, but the wave of aeroplane hi-jackings and assassinations that marred the 1970s dealt a catastrophic blow to any sympathy the Palestinians might have been given for the way they have been treated over the last 100 years or so. Rashid Khalidi has documented this history in his book The 100 Years War Against Palestine, one of the finest books on Palestinian history ever written.

As the world lines up behind the very same state, Israel, that has done so much to reject peace instead of war, that has allowed Settlers on the West Bank to murder Palestinians at will, plough up and steal their land, that in reality does nothing to stop the harassment of Christians in Jerusalem, one wonders if another catastrophe is going to engulf this part of the world, but with more serious consequences.

This is because not only is Netanyahu a criminal on every level, in effect at war with the citizens of his own country with his Fascist agenda, he treats peace and negotiations for peace with absolute contempt. HAMAS, after their election victory in 2006 offered talks without pre-conditions, which Israel dismissed, in itself no surprise as by 2006 the 1993 Treaty was considered by people like Netanyahu a betrayal, while refusing to tell anyone how Israel proposed to accommodate 4 million Palestinians.

Thus, the stage is set for mass expulsions, if the hard-liners in the Israeli Cabinet have their way, and though that sounds extreme, Syria in effect expelled 4 million or more during the civil war there; Saudi Arabia's futile war in the Yemen has displaced either another 4, or 14 million depending on the sources, so the expulsions if it happened, or if people are driven out of Gaza by relentless bombing is what they call 'on trend'.

But where can the Palestinians go? Most Palestinians in the Emirate were expelled from Kuwait after the 1991 war, many went to Jordan -but Jordan cannot take 4 million or even 1, having taken in as many from Syria.

If HAMAS is acting on its own and Iran's agenda -HAMAS has been supported by Iran in much the same way the PLO was supported by the USSR-and the aim is to prevent Saudi Arabia from 'normalizing' relations with Israel, it has gone about it the wrong way. It does present a dilemma for the Saudis who used to believe the whole of the Middle East should be part of their Kingdom of violence and hate, and who have always for that reason been ultra-sensitive to the issue of Jerusalem, so it remains to be seen how diplomacy is affected by this action.

Again -1993 could have, should have led to a just settlement of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians: it addressed the obvious: how do millions of people sharing the same space get on with each other? Sharon and Netanyahu smashed it to pieces for the price of their personal commitment to a Zionist project that was either doomed from the start, or could only be realized through permanent war: when Herzl was asked by Khalidi's great grandfather what would happen to the Palestinians in his 'Jewish State' Herzl had no answer -either he couldn't be bothered, or he knew the answer was a negative of gigantic proportions.

Nationalism, in this context, remains today what it was in the 19th century: a curse on humanity.

That said, in its Declaration of Independence in 1948 Israel said it would respect the rights of non-Jewish people living in Palestine/Israel, a declaration now treated as toilet paper by Netanyahu and the Fascist idiots he has recruited into his shambolic Government.

The US, as usual, has failed to deal with the conflict -it is easy enough to bring other Arab states into a normal relationship with Israel, though the sight of Jared Kushner presiding over the 'Abraham Accords' when he and his family stood to benefit financially from it was one of the lowest moments in American Middle East diplomacy, if that is what it was. It appeared at the time as merely a business arrangement for Kushner, consolidated after he left office with his billion dollar deal with the Kingdom of 9/11.

So it looks like the Palestinians are on their own again, or have friends that most people would avoid -Iran, and in that shadow, Putin, though I don't know what he thinks he can, or can do.

The scale of casualties and the circumstances are deplorable, distressing, and destructive. Nobody gets out of this with pride, there is no victory here, but that was always the case with this permanently bleeding wound.

[broncofan]

This is not directed towards anyone here but I often see these same issues that come up with respect to civilians and you can either trust me or not that I am not responding to a strawman among either Palestinian or Israeli partisans. Civilians should be viewed as innocent whether you think their government is on the right or wrong side of a conflict. There are people who take themselves seriously who defend either Israeli atrocities or atrocities of Hamas and it ends up making the easiest part of the conversation complicated.

The people at the music festival were no more responsible for Israel's occupation than I am for the U.S.' invasion of Iraq (which I was obviously against) but there are Americans and Brits who feel perfectly comfortable saying they deserved to die or try to imply some culpability. It's always a stretch when people do this and it always looks like some predetermined attempt to exact vengeance of some kind. Speaking of which...

There are supporters of Israel who think Israel is justified doing anything it wants in Gaza. That is a sadistic and genocidal mentality (to people who want Israel to "flatten Gaza".....that is a disgraceful, pig view). I've already seen video of Israel committing war crimes. Dropping bombs on apartment buildings because you think there might be one or two militants inside along with three families? It's no less cruel a form of murder. And I am aware that Israel has killed more Palestinian civilians than Hamas has killed Israeli civilians.

Finally, there are people who think that opposing the sadistic murder of people at a music festival, multiple documented acts of rape, kidnapping, and parading around an elderly lady with dementia somehow makes someone a hypocrite for wanting Ukraine to expel Russia from Ukraine. I not only would not defend Ukrainian soldiers going to Moscow and killing civilians and raping women, I wouldn't defend crimes against Russian soldiers who have surrendered.

The final point is that people want to know what Palestinians can do militarily against a country that is better armed. Before anyone could even attempt to justify the killing of civilians to achieve a political or military objective there has to be a probability greater than zero that it achieves that objective. Otherwise, it's not Machiavellian. It's pure sadism if it can't succeed.

I just thought I'd say that. Sadly, it looks to me like there will be much more cruelty and death before Palestinians have a state.

[Stavros]

Broncofan, I agree with what you say. I tend to ignore the grotesque responses which on both sides feed, and are fed by the dreadful violence. On Channel 4 News this evening an Israeli man whose family members have been taken hostage had an understandable rage, but it made me wonder why they interviewed him in such circumstances.

The obvious response to the hostage situation is for Israel to suspend military operations in Gaza and open negotiations to free their citizens, not to bomb Gaza with the risk that hostages might be that sick phrase, 'Collateral Damage'. Netanyahu can't think beyond a bayonet to grasp the essentials in this conflict, but as one of its architects, perhaps he feels obliged to wage war, war, and yet more war -for what? The leadership of HAMAS can leave just as the PLO left the West Bank to Jordan in 1967, and on being expelled from Jordan in 1971 went to Lebanon, and then when Israel bombed Beirut, left for Tunis. In the end, they were on the White House lawn signing the treaty. Can that happen again? In theory, but Israel is different now, and I don't think the mood is there to talk.

Netanyahu doesn't negotiate. Right now, neither does HAMAS. Days of Doom ahead.

[filghy2]

The final point is that people want to know what Palestinians can do militarily against a country that is better armed. Before anyone could even attempt to justify the killing of civilians to achieve a political or military objective there has to be a probability greater than zero that it achieves that objective. Otherwise, it's not Machiavellian. It's pure sadism if it can't succeed.

Most likely the primary objective was to derail the normalisation of relations between Israel and Arab countries (which has ignored the Palestinian issue). In this they may well succeed. If an indiscrimate Israeli response causes widespread death and suffering to innocent Palestinians it will be very hard for the Saudis to continue the process.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/09/war-netanyahu-liability-must-go-israel-palestine-hamas

The idea that ends justify any means is morally repugnant, but it's important to understand motives rather than dismissing it as senseless violence. This was Hamas's way of shattering complacent assumptions in Israel and elsewhere that Palestinians could continue to be mistreated or ignored without much risk of blowback.

Of course, the Israeli response will only increase suffering for Palestinians in the immediate future. Hamas is cynically calculating that this will gain it more support. Disrupting Arab-Israeli normalisation won't necessarily help the Palestinians either. But I can understand the concern about Arab governments giving Israel what it wants without extracting any meaningful concessions on Palestinian rights.

The basic problem here is that there are too many players on both sides who think that there interests are best served by conflict. Perhaps there is a limit to what outside governments can do, but they could certainly do more to change the benefit-cost calculation. One of the reasons Israel has been so intransigent is that the US never makes it pay any price for it's behaviour.

[broncofan]

I agree. I definitely agree that Israeli intransigence is caused by the U.S. providing vetoes for obvious violations of international law. If I were Israeli I would want the international response to my government's behavior to be very sensitive to incentives. Build settlements in West Bank and immiserate Gazans, get sanctioned. Extend an olive branch, let there be diplomatic support and people not reading the most cynical imaginable motive into it.

I think my analysis of Hamas' motives was just simplistic. I haven't thought strategically about it. But by the time Israel gets done bombing Gaza everyone is going to be gunshy for a while. I'm going just based on gut feel but I think this will end up being harmful to Palestinians. Yes maybe Arab States are gonna be scared off by Israel's response bc I think it's gonna be brutal. But I also think Israel's support went up in the West, particularly among people who don't pay a lot of attention to the conflict. Of course, Israel is not finished by a long shot and historically they haven't been long on restraint.

Yes, change the cost-benefit situation is important if there's going to be an end to the conflict.

[Stavros]

Since 1967, but with more urgency after 1973, Israel's position has been to engage in bi-lateral negotiations with individual states, to reject any attempt at a regional settlement, on the basis it would be outnumbered by hostile actors and be forced to make concessions it thinks undermines the whole purpose of a Jewish State. Sadat's overtures to Israel after the October War of 1973 led to the 1979 treaty and became the template of the way Israel intended to go, negotiating with everyone it could find except the most obvious, the PLO. That Yitzhak Rabin did agree to the peace talks and eventually shake Arafat's hand, thus became the one bi-lateral agreement that involved the concessions which Nationalists like Sharon and Netanyahu believed were a betrayal of the fundamental cause. We are living with the consequences of their rejection.

But what the Treaty did on the Palestinian side was also concede, in this case, territorial control of the West Bank, divided into zones which prevented the free movement of Palestinians, followed by the re-location of the Berlin Wall on land stolen from Palestinians which the Palestinian authority was powerless to prevent, and an aggressive expansion of Settlements, and in more recent years, the right of Settlers to arm themselves and kill any Arab they see as a threat, again with no effective response from the PA. One retired Arab former Minister, in the days when I met such people in the 1990s, told me bluntly: 'Arafat has betrayed every Arab'. The Peace Treaty, it was argued, gave the Palestinians nothing but humiliation and weakness.
There are 'rejection fronts' of both sides, and it appears they are in control, or at least in Gaza.

As for the international dimension, it has always been riven with contradictions: the Coalition of the Willing that formed to eject Iraq from Kuwait in 1990-91, but not Willing when it was Turkey in Northern Cyprus, or Israel in either the Jabal al-Jawlan or the West Bank, the US when Trump was President endorsing the annexation of Syrian territory, even as today it refuses to accept Russia's attempt to annex Ukraine. Azerbaijan annexes Nagorno-Karabagh, India annexes Kashmir, and nobody can, or wants to do anything about it; and one assumes there are Serbian Nationalists who can't understand the existence of Kosovo and want the territory returned to them- if necessary, by force. In other words, there is no consistency. And I assume the same Republicans who want the US to stop funding the Ukraine on the basis it is a foreign war of no interest to the US will use increased funding and military support for Israel as some kind of litmus test of its 'Values'. Nikki Haley appears to think an attack on Israel is an attack on the US, a dangerous way to go.

Nothing new here, just the same refusal by responsible people to make the hardest choices, when the hardest choice is peace and negotiation, rather than war and destruction. With so many hysterical reactions on all sides, the immediate hope for talks is remote if not impossible, but precisely what Netanyahu ought to be doing, at least until he is forced out of office as some now predict. But that also begs the question of HAMAS, given that they have no strategic purpose other than 'shock and awe' and no political plan for the future. But when 'Shock and Awe' is the daily bread, there is no appetite for progress. Or will this conflict produce another round of secret talks, maybe even in Oslo? Should one always hope for the best, lest it be replaced by the worst?

[Stavros]

The worst thing about the grotesque, gruesome violence that has been taking place, is that if you go back in history there is a dismal record of such atrocities taking place, and there is not even any point in identifying who did what to whom, for the only consequence is despair. The Peace Treaty that was supposed to end this, was ended by the same people now screaming for their lives, as if the demolition of the Treaty meant something else, something better.

Now consider Haley, the Comet blazing a trail to the White House -what she has said echoes what Menachem Begin said in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon vowing to destroy the PLO. He didn't live to see Israel shake hands with the PLO, and I don't doubt he would have condemned it, but what does Haley know, this ignorant, pathetic Republican more determined to use this grim episode in Israeli-Palestinian relations as part of her own campaign to be America's Chief Executive?

Has she ever been to Gaza? And as for the question, What Rights to Palestinians Have? There seems to be no answer, or maybe it is that people are terrified of telling us what it is.

https://akm-img-a-in.tosshub.com/indiatoday/styles/medium_crop_simple/public/2023-10/nikkih.png?VersionId=dlU0AfpmMltZto4HWP7AjgnAd16ha eUR

[filghy2]

This is the same mindset that followed 9-11. If it was an attack on America does that mean that the US should get involved in another Middle Eastern war?

I know Nikki Haley is a Ukraine supporter, but it's interesting that none of the Republicans opposing assistance to Ukraine seem to have any qualms about giving Israel whatever it wants. Wouldn't the same arguments apply? Isn't this another territorial dispute in a far away country? Isn't it also an intractible conflict with no end in sight? And why are Hamas's war crimes more abhorrent than Russia's?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/11/josh-hawley-israel-ukraine-aid-00120982

[filghy2]

It's not only in America that this is happening.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/11/peter-dutton-labor-albanese-israel-hamas-war-response

As I said, this is very reminiscent of the post-9/11 mentality that led to the Iraq invasion. The same strident demands that people be as gung-ho as possible in backing Israel. The same equating of those concerned about Palestinian civilians as being soft on terrorism.

[Stavros]

To which one makes the dismal point that the response to 9/11 was the war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban Govt of Afghanistan that nurtured them and allowed them to use their country to organize the attacks.

After the fall of the Taliban in 2002 Tony Blair crowed in the House of Commons about the success of the campaign which some people had opposed at the time -where are the Taliban now?

[Stavros]

In his probably now little read book, Power and the Pursuit of Peace, Harry Hinsley, discussing the First World War, makes a distinction between the causes of war, and the occasion which sparks off the fighting. The assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria may have occasioned the war, but the cause of the war is now accepted to be Imperial Germany's ambition to dominate Europe.

I make this point to suggest that while the atrocity carried out by HAMAS last Saturday, and it's continuing violations of international law, decency and pretty much everything else, has occasioned the present war, it is not its cause.

The cause, I suggest is the rejection of the Oslo Peace process that appeared to culminate in the 1993 Treaty between Israel and the PLO. However unsatisfactory it was for the Palestinians, who agreed to the demarcation of the West Bank into Zones which by definition diluted its actual authority, for those Israelis who have been in Govt since, Yitzhak Rabin betrayed Israel merely by negotiating with them.

It was no surpise that Ariel Sharon rejected peace in favour of war, given that he dedicated his entire life to killing Arabs on the basis that they could never, and never should be trusted, and that in ideological terms, his agenda of 'Jewish Nationalism' by definition meant that a Jewish State could not, and should not admit non-Jews, something that Netanyahu has tried to enshrine in law. Whether or not this makes Israel a Fascist state one can debate. Without doubt, some of the militant terrorists in the Mandate period, such as Avraham Sterm, trained in the camp at Civitavecchia set up by Mussolini, whom Stern regarded as the kid of leader he wanted to be.

It has been a contentious issue within Israel, because when Ben-Gurion issued the Declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, and in the absence of a written Constitution, it stood for many years as a definition of what Israel wanted to be, it guaranteed minority rights, whereas the rejectionist militants of Likud and its fanatical partners in Govt take the view that all forms of negotiation are appeasement, all forms of compromise betrayal. Netanyahu lives in an either/or world in which Palestinians either accept what Israel offers, or they are dismissed as irrelevant.

It means that with no hope of peace being a priority -and I can't recall a single external power outside the region putting any pressure on Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians, the Palestinians have actually found that the 'land for peace' they thought was in the 1993 Treaty, has meant land for Settlers, not them. The weakness of the PA has undermined Palestinians, but now consider this:

Grooming. I propose that with his rejection of peace, Netanyahu has Groomed HAMAS and Islamic Jihad to take precisely the military actions that we have seen. He has in effect dared them to take on Israel at what Israel believes it is invincible: war, and I don't doubt that Israel will wage war without mercy, and without caring one way or another who lives or who dies, even though it will fail to destroy HAMAS or any other Palestinian group, or the tunnels which will be re-built in 5 or ten years time, because this occasion does not deal with the cause, and the cause is the refusal by Israel to embrace diversity, and to accept that Israelis and Arabs share the same land and must share it equally.

Other than the causes, is there any material difference between Netanyahu, Bashar al-Assad, or Vladimir Putin? Absolute contempt for international law, absolute determination to get what they want with maximum violence, absolute contempt for human life. That anyone supports such people is the measure of how far we are from 1945 and that now empty phrase 'Never Again'. After all, would the world be cursed by HAMAS if they were not given a cause to fight for, and groomed by their enemy to do it?

Still worth reading if you have the time
Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations Between States: Amazon.co.uk: Hinsley: 9780521094481: Books (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-Pursuit-Peace-Hinsley/dp/0521094488)

[broncofan]

The same equating of those concerned about Palestinian civilians as being soft on terrorism.
Someone who does this should lose credibility for all time. I could not have been more sensitive to the atrocity carried out by Hamas and yet was worried in advance about the Israeli response. Netanyahu has proved many of my worst fears correct and he risks an enormous catastrophe by fucking with Gaza's electrical supply and water supply to try to get leverage for hostage release. He is basically holding the entire Gaza strip hostage, turning it into an inferno for civilians, and killing at least as many civilians as militants. Biden should have immediately condemned the denial of basic services to Gaza as a war crime and I think every other country should too.

There are people who are talking about defense and rights to defense. There are ways to fight militants embedded within civilian populations without bombing large buildings or cutting off utilities to the entire population and they are more costly to your forces but they would not be obvious collective punishment.

After the massacre by Hamas, Netanyahu could have tried to secure the country against any further attacks (the dead are dead and can't be revived by killing), and then tried to galvanize international support. There are a lot of things he could have done that would not have been capitulation at all but would not have been vengeance based.

[Stavros]

After the massacre by Hamas, Netanyahu could have tried to secure the country against any further attacks (the dead are dead and can't be revived by killing), and then tried to galvanize international support. There are a lot of things he could have done that would not have been capitulation at all but would not have been vengeance based.


It is not in Netanyahu's character to show any sign of compassion or compromise or even think of negotiating with Palestinians unless they know in advance they will be required to give something up for nothing in return. Israel is dealing with decades, not so much of the 'iron wall' -the one with holes in it- but an 'iron will' which refuses to accept that Palestinians must have an equal stake in the future of the land between the river and the sea. It is the argument you can find in hundreds of pamphlets, articles and books that says quite simply -'Jordan is Palestine', or 'there are lots of Arab countries the Palestinians can live in, they should go'. For what it's worth I used to know a Jordanian nationalist who argued it was time for Palestinians to leave Jordan and go back across the river.

The whole point of the Oslo Peace Talks and the Treaty of 1993, was that the two sides did negotiate, they did treat each other as equals, they did commit to a new paradigm, but it scared the shit out Sharon and his Myrmidons who made the fateful decision to first oppose, and then destroy that process and that promise of a better future.

We are all living with the mistakes made since the assassination of Rabin, and while I think a lot of Israelis can now see how Netanyahu and people like him have led the country into its most serious military conflict since, if not 2006 then 1973, and want him gone, I don't see or so far have heard few voices arguing for another paradigm shift, also known as a practical solution.

If it gets really bad, and it will be bad, what will the Saudis do? For some time the Arabs have abandoned the Palestinians to their fate, but if some fanatic attacks either the al-Aqsa Mosque or the Mosque of Omar, all bets are off. It could in theory, if MbS insists his long term aim to normalize relations with Israel is still on, force a change in the Kingdom -after all, he is not the King yet. Will the Arabs who signed that Trump-Kushner Business Deal called the 'Abraham Accords' stay mute on the sidelines, excepting Qatar which gives office space to HAMAS?

[filghy2]

Netanyahu has proved many of my worst fears correct and he risks an enormous catastrophe by fucking with Gaza's electrical supply and water supply to try to get leverage for hostage release. He is basically holding the entire Gaza strip hostage, turning it into an inferno for civilians, and killing at least as many civilians as militants.

Many more civilians, most likely. It's not likely Israel has accurate intelligence in Gaza to target their attacks, given they missed the preparations for the Hamas attack.

Those who want to level Gaza to destroy Hamas clearly don't see Palestinians as people whose lives matter. It's disingenuous to say they chose this and must accept the consequences. The majority did vote for Hamas in 2006, but there's been no election since. No doubt there are many who instinctively support whoever is fighting the government that oppresses them, but many would also be tired of Hamas bringing retaliation on them. But what can they do against a heavily-armed movement? They can't escape either because it's a small area and both borders are closed.

[Stavros]

It is as if we are going backwards in history. I never thought that I would hear the kind of anti-Semitic garbage on the streets of the UK that is more reminiscent of the 1930s. Fla waving morons are not in short supply. My generation learned from our parents what actually happened in the two World Wars of the 20th century, a new generation either does not know, or does not care, and when you add to that the ignorance and lies that gave us Brexit, Trump and Putin, it is hard not be scared for the future.

One historian argues that the ' HAMAS apocalypse' is creating a New World Order -also an article riddled with ignorance, as if the Prof had never heard of that phrase New World Order before, even though when George HW Bush used it he could at least argue that with the fall of the Berlin Wall and with it the USSR, the old bi-Polar, Cold War structure to 'super-power relations' had gone.

At that time, American Hegemony was the favoured term; then we were told we are in a 'Multi-Polar world' which soon became characterized as an age of 'Globalization' which has had its most vicious critics in Trump, Le Pen and Farage as if their favoured offering was different from the economic Nationalism that formed part of the wave of Falangist, Fascist and National Socialist failures of the 1930s and 1940s.

There is no New World Order -what we have is the same Nationalist Violence that claims legitimacy as 'the armed struggle', whether it was the failure of the IRA to use it to create a 'United Ireland', or the modus vivendi which was used in the Mandate period by Jewish Terrorists who murdered British soldiers and statesmen, and in Count Folke Bernadotte, the first senior official of the United Nations to be a victim of anti-UN hate. What was the victory for this armed struggle? More violence, not less, from Qibya to today, as if the identity of the assassins makes any difference.

And this Armed Struggle is the same mode of political violence being used by HAMAS that was called off by the PLO for the simple reason it wasn't working, and in its lifetime failed to achieve anything other than killing people and in some cases at some times, killing hope too, as people all over the world reeled in shock and not much awe at the scope of such violence.

Thus today, the Armed Struggle remains the primary mode of politics where it has consistently failed. Every year Netanyahu goes to a celebration -yes, a Celebration- of the terrorist attack on the King David Hotel, because he thinks it is something to be proud of, and it underlines his personal commitment to war over peace.

And consider this argument, in riposte to the UK sending the Royal Navy to the Eastern Mediterranean- Israel has been for most of its existence an enemy of the UK; it is not our friend, and never has been. From the Mandate period when future Israelis murdered British soldiers wherever they could find then, to 1982 when Israel's Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, who had personally taken part in attacks on the British, and hated the UK, supported Argentina's war for the 'Malvinas'/Falkland Islands with rhetoric and military ordnance.

We await a paradigm shift -another one, similar to that of 1993- without bated breath. It is as if we - or they- do not learn the lessons of history, or read their history and insist -'we can do it differently this time', and this applies to HAMAS, Israel, Hizballah, as well in retrospect to that nauseating pair of hypocrites and war criminals, George W. Bush and Tony Blair. It was Blair who said this in a documentary about the war in Iraq for which he remains responsible:

"I took the view we needed to remake the Middle East". (There must be more than 1,000 books and articles that document this concept of power, and its application to a region that is fed up with being 'remade' by people who don't live there, but don't ask Jared Kushner for a list as he has only read 20, he said so himself).

Hence Auden

"History opposes its grief to our buoyant song. To our hope its warning'.

The Hamas Apocalypse has crafted a New World Order (yahoo.com) (https://uk.style.yahoo.com/hamas-apocalypse-crafted-world-order-060000901.html)

Why Rishi Sunak is deploying British armed forces to Israel (yahoo.com) (https://uk.yahoo.com/news/why-rishi-sunak-deploying-british-180214261.html)

[Stavros]

The article in The Daily Beast linked below is a moving account of what happened to the network of Kibbutz in the Gaza area. It resonates with that dream many Zionists had in the 19th and early 20th century based on the fiction that Palestine was empty and under-developed, that Zionism would 'make the desert bloom'. Nevertheless, agricultural and communal living, often but not exclusively Socialist in belief, was a major part of the Labour Government's strategy for developing Israel after 1948, and though it was relatively successful, it did not survive the Nationalist decline that set in when Begin became Prime Minister in 1977. It means today the Kibbutz movement represents less than 5% of the country, perhaps a measure of how Israel has changed since 1948, or 1967.

It is also the case that many, perhaps most of Israel's agricultural workers are from South-East Asia, Thailand in particular as the other link explains. I used to know a Trans woman from the Philippines who worked in care homes in Israel, indeed i think most care workers in Israel are from the Philippines, and believe domestic servants are also from the PI or from Sri Lanka -not sure about this. As far as i know none of the immigrant workers have legal equality with citizens of Israel, but are not top of the list when it comes to expulsion from the country -we know who they are.

I think it is important to recognize the changes that have taken place since Israel was created in 1948, yet the final irony might be that the original proposal in Theodor Herzl's book The Jewish State suggested from the start that if Israel was not exclusively Jewish, it would not make sense- Herzl was not a Socialist, though many Zionists were; he was not a Democrat either, and when asked by a prominent Palestinian intellectual what would happen to non-Jews in this 'Jewish State' Herzl, who I think visited Palestine once or twice, had no answer. In that either/or mentality which forms the basis of most of the cursed nonsense called Nationalism, who belongs in the land between the river and the sea?

Worst Failure in Israeli History: Netanyahu Abandoned the Very Heart of Israel (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/worst-failure-israeli-history-netanyahu-024850622.html)

Thai death toll spotlights poor agricultural workers from Asia who toil in Israel's fields | CNN (https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/13/asia/thailand-migrant-workers-israel-gaza-conflict-intl-hnk/index.html)

[Stavros]

From one of my music heroes, compassion, and an appeal for hope to triumph over despair.

In our orchestra, Israelis and Palestinians found common ground. Our hearts are broken by this conflict | Daniel Barenboim | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/15/orchestra-palestinians-israelis-humanity-daniel-barenboim-west-eastern-divan-orchestra)

[Stavros]

I guess it is just a matter of time before he goes, but what damage can be done before he resigns or is sacked?

How Benjamin Netanyahu empowered Hamas ... and broke Israel (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/benjamin-netanyahu-empowered-hamas-broke-190426685.html)

[Stavros]

This article is one of the more interesting on the background to the current crisis. But as usual, it does not address the most obvious question, which asks what a just and equal peace would look like for Israel and the Palestinians. And until some flesh is put on this writhing skeleton, death is all we have.

The danger of leaving things be: how the world ‘failed miserably’ in the Middle East (yahoo.com) (https://uk.yahoo.com/news/danger-leaving-things-world-failed-145659513.html)

[Stavros]

A few points-

1) Biden's mission was not a failure, even though the Arabs ducked out, for domestic reasons. The pre-meeting negotiations conducted by Blinken did result in what the US-Arab meetings would have confirmed: a key agreement by Egypt to open the Rafah Border crossing for 20 trucks of food, clothing, medicine, something that Israel would have agreed to. That said, it is a small step for a major problem, but a step in the right direction -and far from the US position being weakened, it at least maintains a significant presence for Israel and the Arabs, at a cost of $100m which, should the GOP in the House focus on something other than their own incompetence, they might oppose.

2) Other than Biden, there is no leadership in the region. Sisi is a military dictator unchallenged in Egypt, but with little clout in the region -consider how Egypt's prominence has fallen since 1967, The Jordanians with their links to the West Bank and the administration of the Al-Aqsa/Dome of the Rock compound, have channels that link the US to Israel and the Palestine Authority, such as it is, and as usual, Jordan remains a key player few people acknowledge.

The leadership of Hamas is in Qatar, while it's military commanders are either dead, or in hiding -as such, and though Hamas is a social movement as well as a military-political force, it is not clear how shaken the organization is by the incursion into Israel which, grim though it is, was more successful than they expected -normally a rapid response would have meant a few days of firefighting, a roster of martyrs and the wounded going home to lick their wounds. Thus has a chicken run turned into a crisis I doubt Hamas intended it to be.

3) The informers in Gaza that Israel uses, and Jordan too, may have tipped off Israel as to where the hostages are, though I assume those still alive are not concentrated in one place. The delay in the ground invasion Biden has secured, is also part of the IDF plan to locate and free the hostages, given that as far as we know, no negotiations are taking place. Could the leadership in Qatar be involved? It could be, but it could be that militants on the ground who expect to be killed, ignore their political masters and take the hostages with them, and grim as this sounds, grim is order of the day.

4) the future. The link to the Telegraph article suggests the US and others, presumably Israel, and contacts in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, envisage the 'end' to this phase, as the creation of a buffer zones along the border with Israel to distance the Arab population from Israel, but with the long term intention of pouring money -presumably Arab -American?- money into what sounds to me like a fantasy, as described here- "Gaza on the Med".

I kid you not, you can read it here-

Western leaders have a vision for a future Palestinian state (yahoo.com) (https://uk.style.yahoo.com/western-leaders-vision-future-palestinian-214607182.html)

Who is going to represent the Palestinians in all this? The PA is in crisis, HAMAS is in crisis, Islamic Jihad has even less support in Gaza than HAMAS, and what is going to happen to the leadership in Israel, if, as many think, Netanyahu's days are numbered, but as yet, we don't know how the fanatics and the settlers will act, given that right now they appear to be 'holding fire'.

In 1993, Yitzhak Rabin had the authority no other current Israeli politician has, and though he paid for it with his life, his endorsement of the Oslo Accords was what made the Treaty possible. Right now, and in the absence of Biden, I see little traction for either Putin or Xi in the region, and little confidence in Israel, where I suspect the mood is still stoked for vengeance.

But at least Biden has made an effort, and achieved something, though I doubt he will get much credit for it back home.

I just hope somewhere in those shadows, there is some serious negotiations going on for the hostages, and for more humanitarian aid, for water and electricity to be turned back on. Is it too much to ask?

[Stavros]

Re Hamas, I think I should have argued that, from what I have read, their strategic aims were a) to puncture the Israeli 'iron wall' and expose their security failings; and b) to send a warning message to Saudi Arabia with regard to any moves to diplomatic recognition. Their event was related to the problems of order in the Haram as-Sharif in Jerusalem, which resonated with the Saudis who, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, took the view that the Middle East should be integrated into a single Saudi kingdom.

On both counts though ends in themselves, they do not advance the cause of Palestinian statehood at any level, and in terms of the actual impact, have damaged themselves and the Palestinians in global terms, a setback which is why I am sceptical of the 'Gaza on the Med' concept.

I said Putin and Xi are not effective in the region, though Xi has been trying to broker a peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but then that has been going on for a couple of years now, and right now I don't know if it will happen, or, even if it does, it will deal with the unresolved war in the Yemen and that country's future political structure. One problem just leads to another in this region.

[Stavros]

Two more hostages have been released by HAMAS, and though welcome, it is or appears to be a mirror to the pathetic 20 trucks a day now passing through the border with Egypt.

I read somewhere HAMAS thought the hostages would give it some leverage with the Israeli Govt, in which case it just proves what has been known about war since ancient times -how once begun, the aims are diverted by facts and faults on the ground, how assumptions made are quickly demolished. HAMAS of all the organizations in the region, knows that without a doubt any action against Israel will be met with ten times the volume, so I return to an idea I had that HAMAS never expected their action to take them so far into Israel without being challenged, and that they have in effect, over-reached themselves.

The irony is that even with the might of Israel, so far a relentless aerial bombardment which, being Israel, has absolutely no respect for human life or the international law that Israel has ridiculed since the formation of the UN, there is some nervousness in both Israel and the US about ground forces entering Gaza. Smart thinking argues that it will be focused on the intelligence Israel has about the location of the hostages, and whatever cells HAMAS has, though one assumes they have dispersed across Gaza along with the hostages, increasing the risks.

Again and again, one comes back to the staggering fact that in order to smash the Peace Treaty to pieces and deny the Palestinians the smallest of territorial and political gains the Treaty seemed to promise, first Sharon, then Netanyahu made love to HAMAS to breed the monster we now have, because for years now

"Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.
According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."
For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it's blown up in our faces | The Times of Israel (https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/)

To see world leaders beating a path to Netanyahu's door is sickening, if predictable when there is no-one else to talk to, when a filthy anti-semitism is poisoning any debate in Europe and North America, where there has rarely been any sensible debate about the Middle East anyway.

This grim episode is going to continue for some time, and I doubt Netanyahu or Gallant care one way or the other what the US wants or thinks, though I do think Blinken, though biased, is doing what he can through various channels in the region to warn Israel of the risks it is taking. But then, what was HAMAS thinking when it launched this mad operation, and what is it thinking now? I suspect the political leaders in Qatar have lost control of the militants on the ground, and unless one of the two parties gives up this misery will continue.

[Stavros]

One hopes the claim that hostage negotiations have stalled is not true, but right now it is looking grim for all in Gaza.

In the last few days, it has been reported that Qatar, after talks with Blinken, has agreed to review the status of Hamas in Qatar. The suggestion is that if and when Qatar successfully mediates with Hamas to release the hostages -the former leader of Hamas has said if Israel stops its bombing this will make the release more likely- Hamas will re-locate. The link below suggests Algeria, or Syria, but I doubt Hamas would go to Iran. They might enjoy the money and probably ordnance they get from Iran, but Hamas has its roots in the militant Sunni groups that emerged in Egypt around the Muslim Brotherhood, so I don't see much affinity there once the convenient relationship is done with. I would have thought the aim is to move to a country Israel is reluctant to bomb, which suggests Turkey, though Algeria is a possibility.

But history records that after being expelled from Jordan in 1971, the PLO moved to Beirut, and after being expelled from Beirut in 1982 they went to Tunis, and then ended up in Ramallah having signed a Peace Treaty with Israel. Arafat for some was if not an obvious scion of the Muslim Brotherhood, a sympathiser with that strain of militant Islam, so the parallels remain in place, just as the decades long refusal to talk and choose war instead led both Israel and the Palestinians nowhere.

Qatar agrees to review Hamas ties after Gaza hostage situation resolved - report - The Times of Israel (https://www.timesofisrael.com/qatar-agrees-to-review-hamas-ties-after-gaza-hostage-situation-resolved-report/)

[Stavros]

As if singing from the same song sheet of Hamas, here comes Netanyahu, an architect of the very hate, violence and war that we see today, confirming he is a war criminal, unfit for any public office, bereft of human decency. This is what he said

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the idea that Israel would agree to a ceasefire with Hamas, saying Monday evening that those calling for one are in effect calling for Israel to surrender to terrorism.“I want to make clear Israel’s position regarding a ceasefire. Just as the United States would not agree to a ceasefire after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or after the terrorist attack of 9/11, Israel will not agree to a cessation of hostilities with Hamas,” he said in English during a press conference for foreign media.
“After the horrific attacks of October 7, calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism. That will not happen,” he said."
Netanyahu dismisses calls for ceasefire, says that would be surrender to Hamas | The Times of Israel (https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-shoots-down-calls-for-ceasefire-says-that-would-be-surrender-to-hamas/)

Israel can bomb Gaza into dust any time it wants to, and he knows it. Hamas was supported by Israel when it was formed, and he knows it. Israel encouraged Hamas throughout its existence, and he knows it.

Who regarded the Treaty Rabin signed as a surrender? Netanyahu. Who took land away from the Palestinians and gave it to the Settlers? Netanyahu. Who joined Hamas to create the Strategy of Tension that has led to this slaughter of the innocents? Netanyahu.

Aided by a United States that has never, and probably never will understand the realities of the history that denied the Statehood to the successors to the Ottoman Empire, as if King-Crane never happened, the same Statehood that was conferred on those small European successors to the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires after the First World War- two of which no longer exist.

A man so dedicated to violence and war that he dismisses a ceasefire as surrender? Sure. When the absolutely critical issue for Israel is the release of the hostages, and for Palestinians in Gaza access to food, water and shelter, the most basic of human rights. When the distressing footage on tv indicates an absence of care for all.

As if there were no other way of living with the realities that have been churned over in a machinery of death for more than 100 years, other than to repeat the same mistakes over, and over again. As if a Jew called Netanyahu can only sneer at what Rabbi Hillel said

'Where there are no men, be thou a man'.

Monsters came to Israel on the 7th of October, 2023. Then came Netanyahu. Just another monster.

[Stavros]

Hamas and Israel, eyeless in Gaza.

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him
[I]Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves

(John Milton, Samson Agonistes)

For a different view from 2008-

Zionism's 60th Celebration of a Paradise Lost - Palestine Chronicle (https://www.palestinechronicle.com/zionisms-60th-celebration-of-a-paradise-lost/#)

[Stavros]

Netanyahu, a war criminal who deserves to stand trial in The Hague. One hopes he shares the court room with any surviving leaders of HAMAS, given they supported each other from the start.

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (https://www.newarab.com/news/netanyahu-no-occupation-gaza-saudi-deal-still-table) has reportedly rejected a negotiated deal over Israeli hostages that would have seen a five-day ceasefire in Gaza (https://www.newarab.com/news/gaza-hrw-gravely-concerned-shifa-hospital-civilians), according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to The Guardian.The deal would have seen the release of children, women, and elderly and sick hostages, the sources said.
Netanyahu's reported refusal of the proposed deal came soon after Hamas (https://www.newarab.com/news/hamas-chief-haniyeh-arrives-egypt-talks-gaza)' initial 7 October attack on southern Israel that killed 1,400 Israelis.
Other sources had said that further negotiations had taken place for the release of a larger number of hostages prior to the ground offensive."
Netanyahu 'rejected hostages for ceasefire deal' in Gaza (newarab.com) (https://www.newarab.com/news/netanyahu-rejected-hostages-ceasefire-deal-gaza)

Netanyahu's roots on the Nationalist, occasionally Fascist right of Palestinian/Israeli politics.

Netanyahu, the godfather of modern Israeli fascism | Benjamin Netanyahu | Al Jazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/21/netanyahu-is-the-godfather-of-modern-israeli-fascism)

Einstein’s nightmare: the fascist politicians wielding power in Israel - Red Pepper (https://www.redpepper.org.uk/global-politics/palestine-middle-east/einsteins-nightmare-the-fascist-politicians-wielding-power-in-israel/)

From Latin Quarter to the Knesset. The History and Evolution of the Israeli Far-Right (oasiscenter.eu) (https://www.oasiscenter.eu/en/from-latin-quarter-to-the-knesset-the-history-and-evolution-of-the-israeli-far-right)

[Stavros]

An interesting perspective on what comes after Israel's demolition of Gaza, but without any smart minds in Israel to do the right thing and concede Palestinians have rights, and must also have them in practical terms.

Israel is looking to World War II in its Gaza fight, and it risks taking lessons from the wrong war (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/israel-looking-world-war-ii-120001405.html)

[Stavros]

The Middle East Forum and is journal is published by Daniel Pipes and like-minded American supporters of Israel who share the existential view on which Netanyahu has based his violent policy of permanent war, and no peace. It means, quite simply, that everything in the 100 year conflict is a matter of either-or. Either Israel takes the action necessary to survive Palestinian attacks, or it dies.

From this perspective, to fulfil the Likud's aim of creating an Erez Israel on both sides of the River Jordan (note that, as it is not often proclaimed, and is another reason why 'From the River to the Sea' is just an empty slogan), the 1993 Peace Treaty was a betrayal of the Zionist dream, though I think Zionism is a redundant term and what we are really talking about is Nationalism, and at that a form of Jewish Nationalism that is a form of Fascism.

Thus, in the Fall 2023 edition of their journal, Pipes and two others responded to an article on the future of Gaza, and the point of interest is in the article by Martin Sherman, because even before the 7th October massacres and what we witness today, he reached the conclusion, as bleak as any I have read, but probably the logical position of the existentialist view, ie: the only solution to the Palestinian problem, is to remove the Palestinians! And if not by 'kinetic' means....well, read it for yourself-

"...the only way for Jerusalem to determine how Gaza is ruled—and by whom—is to rule it itself. The only way for the Israelis to rule Gaza without the blight of having to rule over "another people" is to remove that "other people" from the territory over which it is obligated to rule. The only "non-kinetic" way to remove large-scale portions of the "other people" from that territory is by financially incentivized emigration.So, as unpalatable as it might be, Jerusalem will disregard this logic at its grave peril."
Is Disarming Hamas Israel's Best Policy? :: Middle East Quarterly (meforum.org) (https://www.meforum.org/64756/is-disarming-hamas-israel-best-policy)

Imagine, if it was Northern Ireland, the UK Govt proposing to move the entire Roman Catholic population of the province south into the Republic, having first bombed half of LondonDerry and Belfast into rubble.

Hmmm...so there are alternatives? Like talking? Power sharing? What hasn't been tried so far, in 100 years? And what did they have before that?

[Stavros]

Joshua Leiffer has a long read on Netanyahu in today's Guardian, and is one of the best I have read. For obvious reasons he doesn't address the other side of the question -what happens to the Palestinian Authority when this crisis is over? That said, the article is worth reading as it documents how Netanyahu effectively groomed Hamas believing it could be contained. His arrogance is breathtaking, as has been the failure of his 'security state' -it is going to be some time before Israel can find a way back to whatever being normal is, if it happens at all.

The Netanyahu doctrine: how Israel’s longest-serving leader reshaped the country in his image | Benjamin Netanyahu | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/21/the-netanyahu-doctrine-how-israels-longest-serving-leader-reshaped-the-country-in-his-image)

[Stavros]

Dahlia Scheindlin has written one of the most sane pieces on the conflict, which can be compared with the hysterical rubbish otherwise on offer, such as Stephen Pollard's offensive drivel in today's Telegraph.

She charts the impasse into which Hamas and Israel fell, repeating a cycle of violence without end, but argues for sane alternatives, including the concept of a Confederation which I support, even though, as she also argues, these decades of indecision and violence often seem to close off real roads to peace and co-operation, though they remain the only positive end game.

Israelis and Palestinians can no longer avoid a fateful choice about their future | Dahlia Scheindlin | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/26/israelis-and-palestinians-can-no-longer-avoid-fateful-choice-about-future-gaza)

[Stavros]

Putin on Ukraine:

"As the Russian assault on Ukraine has intensified, the Russian president and his government has escalated rhetoric falsely labeling the Ukrainian government and its leaders as “Nazis."
Why is Putin Calling the Ukrainian Government a Bunch of Nazis? | ADL (https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/why-putin-calling-ukrainian-government-bunch-nazis)

Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich:

"“There are 2 million Nazis in Judea and Samaria, who hate us exactly as do the Nazis of Hamas-ISIS in Gaza,”".
Smotrich defends boost in funds for settlers, saying they're used for security against 'Nazi' Palestinians | The Times of Israel (https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/smotrich-defends-boost-in-funds-for-settlers-saying-theyre-used-for-security-against-nazi-palestinians/)

I would like to think that when the Gruesome Twosome have finished trying to destroy each other, reason make an entrance into the debate about 'what next?'. Smotrich, if there is any reason left in Israel, will lose his post as well as Neyanyahu when that day of reckoning comes to pass.

Right now, the release of hostages is welcome, but as the women and children are released, or some of the women, those adults who were in the military may be harder to release, so a lot depends on the pressure the US is putting on Israel, while one assumes Qatar is also putting pressure on HAMAS -eg, it could say 'either you release hostages or we throw you out of Qatar' -??

The sleep of Reason produces Monsters. Is anyone there awake right now?

[Stavros]

Israel ‘obtained Hamas plans for Oct 7 attack more than a year before’ (yahoo.com) (https://uk.yahoo.com/news/israel-obtained-hamas-plans-oct-083622923.html)

Heads will roll...sooner or later

[Stavros]

I followed the Guardian link below to this article on Israel, and it is interesting, if alarming. What the author fails to address is that in 1982 and in this latest episode, Israel's Prime Ministers were, and are Fascists. Menachem Begin's personal history is embedded in the Nationalist projects of Jabotinsky and Stern (he latter received his military training in a camp run by Mussolini's Fascists at Civitavecchia) , the Likud legacy that Netanyahu is heir to, and supports. The author thus has no time for the possibility that Israel has ever had an alternative to Nationalist violence which by definition denies the Palestinians rights or any kind, be the right to exist, or the right to political and equal representation of the kind we enjoy in Europe and North America.

He thus also tells us what Israel should do to give Palestinians the space in which to distance themselves from Hamas and the PA, to find a better alternative for themselves, but this is, yet again, an outsider telling Palestinians what decisions to make, never asking them to make the decisions on their own, which has been the fundamental insult to them since the British denied them the Statehood most other successors to Empire had after the First World War.

Israel is repeating the mistakes of the past because its present day leadership is like the one's that preceded it, but the most extreme even by Israel's low standards -until a paradigm shift creates an entirely new agenda that benefits Israelis and Palestinians, this mass murder, this addiction to violence will continue, ensuring there are no winners in this war, only losers.

The article is here-
Israel Could Lose (csis.org) (https://www.csis.org/analysis/israel-could-lose)

It was linked in this-
As the ceasefire ends, a question from history lingers: will Israel win the battle but lose the war against Hamas? | Israel-Hamas war | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/02/as-the-ceasefire-ends-a-question-from-history-lingers-will-israel-win-the-battle-but-lose-the-war-against-hamas)

[Stavros]

Two partisan views that fail to address how Israel reached this point in its history where mass murder is its only policy, or how and why Palestinians who succeed at so many things fail at politics. Not quite a dialogue of the deaf, but with enough contentious nonsense to suggest a rational comprehension of what is happening now, and what might happen over the next year is buried under a ton of verbal rubble out of which not even a corpse of truth can be found that is worth resurrecting.

FH Hinsley, in Power and the Pursuit of Peace, asks you, re the origins of the First World War, to contrast an occasion with a cause- the assassination in Sarajevo was the occasion, but the cause lay deeper, in the ambitions of the European Empires: a framework that can help explain the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. An intelligent perspective you won’t find here, but here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beOiJcG0UMk

[Stavros]

I am not surprised that Netanyahu has rejected any claim to a Palestinian State, he has opposed it his entire life.

The problems:

a) if Israel's Govt in its present form rejects any version of a Palestinian state, what does it want for the Palestinians? Set aside the blood-curdling elimination proposals of some of the Cabinet, and you have to ask: if Palestinians are to live, where are they to live?

b) if Palestinians and their supporters do want a Palestinian state, where will it be and who will live there? Will the eastern border be the River Jordan? Where will the Southern border be, in fact, where will any borders be, if, for example, Israel's security needs mean it will not stop policing the borders with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon?

In a Palestinian state will there be any Jewish Settlers, eg, those who have created the illegal settlements since 1967? If they were to go, where would they go?

c) are we looking at a proposal that means, in effect, two states which do or do not allow its citizens to travel freely one from the other, including Jerusalem of course, which offers job and education opportunities to all?

d) My proposal remains on the table: no two state or one state solution, but a Confederation of Israel and Palestine, modelled on Switzerland. Equality for all.

Right now it seems nobody wants to talk about it, and no doubt Hamas with its insane violence and hatred is shaping the debate as much as Netanyahu's Fascist fantasies. But without a sane alternative, there is no sanity, no peace, only war, and the misery of war.

[Stavros]

No surprises that Netanyahu has declared 'the war goes on', even as he struggles to keep his wartime coalition government together. The problem is that Fascists don't know the meaning of compromise, and regard negotiations as appeasement, though Netanyahu is as usual, treating the US President with contempt on the basis he can rely on a lobbied Congress to meet his demands. For Netanyahu the White House is an irrelevance.

Given that Netanyahu attends the annual 'celebration' of the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 which killed 91 people including Arabs, the British who worked there (it was the HQ of the Mandate authority) -and Jews, 17 of them, does it mean Netanyahu sees the Hostages as a priority? No. Would it benefit him if they were murdered? For sure, it would justify even more punishment than the Palestinians have suffered so far.

All going to plan -trash Gaza, make life there impossible, paving the way for the expulsion of the population, for I don't see any other conclusion on his agenda.

Netanyahu rules out ceasefire deal that would mean Gaza withdrawal | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/30/hamas-leader-ismail-haniyeh-discuss-gaza-ceasefire-proposal-cairo-israel-palestine)

[Stavros]

I think it was a mistake for South Africa to launch a court action arguing that Israel was committing Genocide in Gaza, just as I do not agree with the argument that Israel is practising a form of Apartheid in Gaza and the West Bank.

In the latter case, Apartheid intended to re-locate Africans in the Cape and the Transvaal to their own 'Homelands' or Bantustans, in effect autonomous states, something that Israel has never contemplated in either Gaza or the West Bank.

What Israel has is a form of segregation that began with the first Aliyah in the 1880s when the first 'Colonist Farmers' arrived to discover that the land was not empty and undeveloped, but populated and farmed. The first Colonist Farmers avoided interacting with the Arabs as much as they could, and as the Jewish population grew over time, so they were able to create an economy separate from the Arab, and I daresay the Arabs were not that interested in interacting with the Jews, so that for the best part of a century the two communities have led parallel lives.

What has changed since 1967 in particular, is the extent to which successive Israeli governments have backed away from the logic of offering the Arabs equal citizenship and equal rights, just as the Palestinians have tended to reject anything that looks like they are willing to give up some cherished hope of independence from Israel. The Peace Treaty of 1993 might have worked if the Israeli Govt had been willing to trade land for peace in actuality, but Rabin was murdered soon after and with that the next generation of leaders rejected peace in favour of war.

Not a genocidal war, but a war of attrition which is intended to make life for the average Palestinian either difficult or impossible, through a raft of measures from cutting off the water supply on the West Bank for two weeks every summer, from the personal insults and threatening behaviour Greeks and Armenians in the Old City experience almost daily, mostly from the Settlers; to the demolition of homes, the imprisonment without trial of adults and children, the withholding of tax revenues impoverishing the Palestinian Authority, and at a more extreme level the attacks on Palestinian homes in the rural West Bank, often of Bedouin forced to abandon their way of life, only to be hounded or even murdered out of their homes by armed settlers, of the kind sanctioned by the US today (Feb 2nd).

Just as in Gaza Israel is demolishing apartment blocks, with the aim to prevent anyone returning to live there, the tactic today is the same as it has been for more than 50 years, while some in the Israeli Govt openly declare the Palestinians must be forced out of the country altogether.

This is not genocide, and it is a pity that critics of Israel do not base their judgments on the actual history of Israel and the Palestinians, just as the weakness of the PA has been a tragic let down for the Palestinians on the West Bank, giving the 'virile' Hamas the aura of strength, even as this extremist group attempts to change the agenda using the violence that has achieved nothing in over 100 years. Ignorance and emotion don't make a good case in Court. It is even worse on the streets.

[Stavros]

Two articles which I think are worth reading.

The first is an intense look at the history and structure of Hamas, and goes some way to explaining how the decision to launch the attack on October 7th came out of the rift in the movement between its military wing in Gaza and the political leadership based in Qatar that developed after 2007. It goes some way to arguing that in 2006 and for a time after when Hamas won the elections in Gaza, it spoke with a more moderate tone, was prepared to negotiate with Israel, in effect behave as its 'parent' body the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had done over the years when it abandoned the 'armed struggle' to integrate itself into Parliamentary politics there.

That said, the kind of Govt Israel had in those years was never going to negotiate -not openly- with Hamas, and maybe they knew that. Either way, the military and militant Islamist faction began to dominate Hamas and use money from Iran and Qatar as part of a long term strategy to develop a significant military capability with greater facility than the more or less useless missiles lobbed into Israel over the years, but clearly it miscalculated the impact of its attack on October 7th, both in terms of Israel's response, and the lack of response from its supposed allied in Lebanon, though I don't know they counted an intervention in Red Sea shipping by the 'Houthi' movement in the Yemen which has complicated the conflict and given it a dimension Hamas may not have wanted.

Ultimately, Hamas is another version of the Revolutionary Islamism which has its roots in the failures of the liberal trend evident in the late 19thc through to the 1950s, that Albert Hourani examined in his classic book -a book few people read these days- but in this case has doomed its future in Gaza as a Governing authority, be it by the ballot box or the bomb. Satloff, writing in October 2023 is right to present the current war as the most serious since 1948, but evidently did not expect Israel to lay waste the most of the Gaza District, so far from thinking Hamas might be a spent force there and some other form of political authority run the District, it is now not clear if the District can sustain any significant population, the question 'Where are these people to live?' being as yet unanswered by Israel. Similarly I doubt even Satloff imagined that at this stage Israel would be losing friends rather than making them, while he might also not have considered the possibility that Israel may go bankrupt as the costs of the war escalate, with another unanswered question being that of compensation though there will be no re-building in Gaza if it remains a waste land.

Lastly, both articles fail to locate the current conflict in the wide context that was provided by the end of Ottoman Rule in 1918 and the creation of Palestine by the British who at the time made it clear they did not believe the Arabs capable of ruling themselves 'under the strenuous conditions of the modern world' as the Mandate so famously and insultingly put it. The Statehood that was given to multiple successors to the Empires in Europe was never offered to the Arabs, and they have never forgotten it, while for some a Palestinian State is thus the logical correction of an historical wrong, though as yet nobody knows where this State will be, let alone how it intends to function.

For those reading this thread, I do hope you will take time to read these two articles.

The Road to October 7: Hamas’ Long Game, Clarified – Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-road-to-october-7-hamas-long-game-clarified/)

Regime Change, Israeli-Style | The Washington Institute (https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/regime-change-israeli-style)

[Stavros]

The Basic Law that was passed by the Knesset in 2018 attempted to establish what the phrase a 'Jewish State' means in law and in the context of Jewish history, and was seen as an attempt to upgrade the Declaration of Independence of 1948, the basis on which Israel claims to be a democratic state that recognises the rights of all. The problems have been dealt with at length, not least because of a statement made in the Knesset after the original text of the law was amended-

"Upon presenting the reformed bill, Chairman Ohana stated: "This is the law of all laws. It is the most important law in the history of the State of Israel, which says that everyone has human rights, but national rights in Israel belong only to the Jewish people".
Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Nation-State_of_the_Jewish_People)

How one distinguishes between National Rights and Human Rights is rather obviously not clear, while this detailed examination suggests enough sophistry to satisfy all but those who see in the Basic Law a difference between meaning, in legal terms, and Intent in political terms.
Understanding Israel’s Nation State Law (jewishvirtuallibrary.org) (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/understanding-israel-s-nation-state-law)

The point of interest for me today, is that for all of Likud's declarations, the 'Jewish State' can't actually function without non-Jews, yet it is also clear that the foreign workers on which Israel is now dependent -notably in domestic service/care homes (mostly Filipinos), Agriculture (South-East Asia, especially Thailand), and Construction (India, other Asian countries)- do not, indeed, cannot have equal rights with Israeli citizens.

Moreover, in the case of the workers from India, it may not surprise anyone that there are no Muslims working in construction, and that the better relations Israel and India have, may be due, in part, to the civil war against India's Muslims that has been waged for some years now by the BJP and Narendra Modi, one of the nastiest men in world politics. They see a common enemy with which to make a common cause, though in India's case it is also a huge population of unemployed youth.

That said, Israel is hardly alone in wanting its National cake to taste good for its National people, while offering yesterday's crumbs to the 'guests' working their asses off, even when relative to their home economy, they are actually doing well financially. But follow the money, and those precious National Rights and all that waffle disappear down a rabbit hole of political hypocrisy.

As for the Palestinians, was there ever a clearer view that Israel just wants the lot of them gone, using whatever means possible?

‘We do not have many options’: unease over Israel’s recruitment of Indian labourers (msn.com) (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/we-do-not-have-many-options-unease-over-israel-s-recruitment-of-indian-labourers/ar-BB1j7Vst?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=ACTS&cvid=8bc5ef84ff6c4241a0ba2913517c0c28&ei=61)

[Stavros]

Chuck Schumer thinks Netanyahu has 'lost the plot' and no longer serves Israel's best interests...hmmm....when did Netanyahu ever do that? Schumer must surely know Netanyahu rejected the 1993 Peace Treaty -as did HAMAS- thereby signalling, along with Ariel Sharon at the time, that war was their preferred option -on the basis of course, they would always win.

But Schumer also advocates a 'two state solution' that has a 'de-militarised Palestinian State' --in other words, or maybe I got this wrong, Palestinians can have their own State but not their own army, so how do they defend themselves against anyone who attacks them? How can Israel be relied on to secure a Palestinian State? And where is this State going to be, who will demarcate its borders? Will there be free trade with Israel, free movement of people, free movement of capital and goods?

This is just lip service to a dead idea, from someone who should know better. I would write to him with my solutions, but I doubt he would read or respond to them. As for Netanyahu, I don't think he cares one way or the other what Schumer thinks.

The war goes on. The killing goes on. The roads destroyed; homes and schools (no child has gone to school since October last year) destroyed; shops and businesses destroyed; mosques churches cultural centres -destroyed. All according to plan.

Who has the courage to stand outside that wall that was build to create the Zoo called Gaza, and say 'Netanyahu, Tear Down this Wall, and Set the People Free!'--?

Not you, Chuck.

His comments are in this link

Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer calls for new leadership and elections in Israel because Netanyahu is an 'obstacle to peace' (msn.com) (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/democratic-senator-chuck-schumer-calls-for-new-leadership-and-elections-in-israel-because-netanyahu-is-an-obstacle-to-peace/ar-BB1jTmde?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=ACTS&cvid=a3d940e3e43141d5b23ed8579d0f1b83&ei=65#)

[Stavros]

Well would you Adam and Eve it, here is Jared Kushner, the co-author of that business deal packaged as a new era in Middle East Peace (!) dubbed the 'Abraham Accords' -Jared, Dad and Brother all have financial interests to protect in Israel and the Illegally Occupied West Bank...

...offering an audience at Harvard his wisdom on Gaza- because Telegraph articles are normally locked behind a paywall, I have copied all of it here.

A few comments:

1) "If you think about even the construct, Gaza was not really a historical precedent [sic]. It was the result of a war,” he added.“But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.” People have been living in Gaza for thousands of years, and in this 'construct' was St Porphyrius, one of the oldest Christian churches in the region -a church was built here in the 5th century, the latest in the 12th century - before Israel bombed it -
Church of Saint Porphyrius - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Saint_Porphyrius)
‘We were baptised here and we will die here’: Gaza’s oldest church bombed | Israel War on Gaza | Al Jazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/20/we-were-baptised-here-and-we-will-die-here-gazas-oldest-church-bombed)

2) "“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” --Repeat: "a little bit unfortunate" -makes you wonder what a lot would be.

3) "He suggested that establishing a Palestinian state “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.
A top priority for Israel, he said, should be moving civilians out of Rafah, and persuading Egypt to accept refugees “with diplomacy”.
In addition, he said the Jewish state should move displaced Gazans to the Negev desert in southern Israel."
--Does Kushner think Palestinians must accept being in a single state called Israel where they do not have equal rights, or any of the rights they would have in a State of their own?
--The Negev was populated by Bedouin Arabs, until Israel began forcing them to give up a way of life practised for thousands of years, so they could move in settlers -one wonders if Netanyahu thinks re-populating the Negev with the displaced from Gaza is a good idea, and needless to say, Kushner did not ask a single Palestinian living by the sea in Gaza if they would like to swap their Mediterranean home for a tent in the desert. And I doubt he asked a single Israeli who lives in the Negev if they will welcome two million new neighbours...

The man claimed he had read 20 books on the Middle East before his 'business deal' -some of us have read (and written some of the) more than 2,000 books, chapters in books, articles, and those atrocious pamphlets both sides used to and probably still do produce. What a disgrace to civilization.

You can judge, as here it is, without the photos or the graphics, or the reader's comments about which there should be the usual mental health warning as Telegraph comments are often shall we say 'out there' on the fringes of respectability.


Gaza’s waterfront property could be ‘very valuable’, says Donald Trump’s son-in-lawJared Kushner advises Israel to move territory’s civilians out to the desert, ‘then clean it up’
Rozina Sabur, (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/r/rk-ro/rozina-sabur/) DEPUTY US EDITOR19 March 2024 • 9:02pm


Gaza’s waterfront properties could be “very valuable”, Donald Trump’s son-in-law has said, as he suggested Israel rehouse displaced civilians (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/13/israel-orders-palestinians-evacuate-north-gaza-attack/) in the desert.
Jared Kushner (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/09/jared-kushner-maintained-private-contacts-saudi-crown-prince/), a former property dealer who served alongside his wife Ivanka Trump as senior White House advisers to her father, also told an audience at Harvard University that a Palestinian state (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/01/31/us-could-recognise-palestine-after-war-in-gaza/) would be “a super bad idea”.
“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Mr Kushner said in a discussion chaired by Prof Tarek Masoud, Harvard’s Middle East Initiative faculty chair.
His comments emerged after an international early warning system set up by governments and NGOs determined that half the population of Gaza was on the brink of famine (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/famine-gaza-strip-palestinians-ipc-report-israel-hamas-war/).

Israel’s planned ground offensive in the border city of Rafah (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/02/18/israel-cabinet-rejects-allies-two-state-solution-palestine/) could leave around 1.1 million people facing “catastrophic” hunger, the UN-backed food security assessment warned.

The West has struggled to respond to the looming humanitarian catastrophe, with US and European aid airdrop efforts criticised as inefficient by some international aid organisations.
Earlier this month, Joe Biden announced the US would deliver aid to Gaza from a floating pier, (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/03/08/how-joe-bidens-temporary-port-in-gaza-will-work-or-fail/)but that too is fraught with logistical and security challenges. A US military ship is en route carrying building equipment.

Speaking at Harvard, Mr Kushner said: “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
Asked about concerns that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, would not allow Palestinians to return, Mr Kushner said: “Maybe.”
“I am not sure there is much left of Gaza at this point. If you think about even the construct, Gaza was not really a historical precedent [sic]. It was the result of a war,” he added.
“But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”
Mr Kushner also criticised “all the money” that had gone into the Hamas-run territory’s weapons stockpile and underground tunnel network (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/02/13/hamas-leader-yahya-sinwar-hides-gaza-tunnel-with-family-idf/) instead of being used on education and innovation.
‘I would try to move people to the Negev’He suggested that establishing a Palestinian state “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.
A top priority for Israel, he said, should be moving civilians out of Rafah, and persuading Egypt to accept refugees “with diplomacy”.
In addition, he said the Jewish state should move displaced Gazans to the Negev desert in southern Israel.
“I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” he said. “I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”
Prof Masoud asked if the proposal was something he would “try to work on”. Mr Kushner said: “I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now. And I’m looking at the situation and I’m thinking: what would I do if I was there?”

The 43-year-old was an unpaid senior adviser in his father-in-law’s White House, and played a key role in brokering Mr Trump’s foreign policy approach in the Middle East.
While in the White House, he produced a 180-page Middle East peace plan that was three years in the making and included efforts to normalise relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

It was endorsed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, but led the Palestinian Authority to cut ties with the US and Israel.
Mr Kushner’s remarks at Harvard on March 8 may give some indication of how Mr Trump will approach the Israel-Hamas war should he win back the White House.
Kushners will not serve again in White HouseHowever, Mr Kushner and his wife have both kept a distance from Mr Trump’s 2024 campaign and have ruled out serving in a future Trump administration. (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/04/donald-trump-ivanka-melania-president-election-republican/)
Israel has been waging its war in Gaza for more than five months following Hamas’s Oct 7 attack which killed about 1,160 Israelis, most of them civilians.
Around 130 hostages seized by the terror group are estimated to still be held in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.
More than 31,800 Gazans, mostly women and children, have also been killed in the conflict according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Gaza's waterfront property could be 'very valuable', says Donald Trump's son-in-law (telegraph.co.uk) (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/03/19/gaza-waterfront-property-could-be-valuable-trump-soninlaw/)

[Stavros]

Kushner has complained his comments have been taken out of context. He has posted a video of his talk on X, and it is here, though I always feel a but compromised when accessing Musk's platform for the kind of Neo-Nazis who would one assumes, want Kushner thrown out of the country. Maybe Kushner should have posted this on Father-in-Law's Pravda Sozial? Whatever.

Jared Kushner on X: "Two weeks ago, I had an engaging discussion with students and faculty at Harvard @Kennedy_School on the conflict in the Middle East, and the need for open intellectual discourse on American college campuses. (https://twitter.com/jaredkushner/status/1767296929187144114?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5 Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1770228476521693362%7Ctwgr% 5E8b5a88b7f776ac41a35ddf242337e26e9d886f1c%7Ctwcon %5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews %2Fworld%2Fmiddle-east%2Fjared-kushner-gaza-palestine-israel-desert-b2515427.html)https://t.co/QjRdZS7jyR https://t.co/iYIgeo0vrc" / X (twitter.com)

[Stavros]

So many news items, so little advance.

-Biden complains to Israel, but the arms from the US keep going.
-Suella Braverman says there is no starvation in Gaza, Israel's bombing is precise and targeted. Doesn't explain why Israel has bombed schools, Christian churches, Mosques, cultural centres, and Roads, making the movement of people and goods more difficult than it was before.
-Allegations Israel uses an AI targeting system 'Lavender' -the one that killed the World Kitchen aid workers by mistake- are being denied, while others, of course, say it was indeed a targeted killing.
-600 legal experts have told the UK Govt supplying arms to Israel may be a violation of international law and should stop. The volume of arms is small, but it does include spare parts and other elements of the missile systems used by F-15 jets.
-One report claims Netanyahu wanted to instal a military govt in Gaza, but was overruled by the IDF.
-Another that the 'campaign against Rafah' hasn't happened and talk of it may just be threats.

What we don't know -where will the Palestinians of Gaza live? If they remain in Gaza, what form of policing will there be as law and order has been replaced by gang warfare in some if not all areas, HAMAS being now incapable of imposing order on the District.

Will Israel create a 'buffer zone' in the North to distance Palestinians from the Israeli border?

Given Gaza is in a state of collapse, what plans are there to revive it?

I take the view that from the start, the aim was to expel all Palestinians from the Gaza District, either to Egypt or to Jordan. The hard core Fascists in the Israeli Govt don't want anyone living in Gaza, or if they do, Settlers from other parts of Israel, with the long-cherished aim of the expulsion of non-Jews from the West Bank becoming less of a dream and more or a reality. Because Netanyahu has lost the plot. His containment strategy has failed, but with neither side interested or committed to meaningful negotiations, for the release of the Hostages, for an end to the war, for a post-war settlement, we are left with the bleak reality -

HAMAS and Likud rejected the 1993 Peace Treaty, opting for war. And that is what they have, even as we see them unable to use it to get what they want. And though Israel remains the stronger militarily, it is socially divided and facing, in the long term, the economic reality that it cannot finance this war indefinitely. As for the Palestinians, who knows what they want, when they remain ineffective, weak, lacking international friends and the resources to be anything other than second class citizens in the de facto One State (non-Solution that has existed since 1967.

The propaganda continues, the deaths roll on. And nobody is ashamed of what they are doing.

[Stavros]

Israel bombed the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Iran vows retaliation, some voices wonder with fear if the Middle East is about to be plunged into war.

The attack was possible because Syria has no control of the sky above its country, it is vulnerable to attack from external parties because the Asad regime is mostly at war with the citizens of that country.

But it was also possible because the IDF have repeatedly warned Netanyahu against a direct strike against Iran. One wonders if Netanyahu has in effect dared Iran to attack Israel, thereby bringing the US into a military alliance with a single or joint military attack on Iran or an Iranian target, precisely to force the USA into doing something it doesn't want to do. Netanyahu is that kind of 'strategist', a man who acts out of desperation to try to solve the problems he has caused.

For HAMAS, this, in theory would bring the other Middle Eastern states into the conflict, only I doubt it. Most of the Middle Eastern states loathe Iran, and do not see anything positive in its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Asad regime in Syria, the so-called 'Houthi' rebels in Yemen, or their support for HAMAS, which is merely tactical as the Shi'a Muslims of Iran and the Sunni fanatics of HAMAS are ideological enemies at the best of times.

If there is no regional expansion of the war between Israel and HAMAS, it will deal another blow to the long term aim of HAMAS to demolish the status quo in their favour, and with Iran being seen as close to Russia, it is unlikely to find any supporters in the Gulf or Saudi Arabia.

Thus in an election year, Netanyahu may be playing a deadly game with President Biden, to see if he takes the bait and lures the US into a tit-for-tat exchange with Iran, probably through proxy targets in Iraq as happened under Trump. The irony is that for all their vocal support for Israel, most of Trump's supporters want an 'America First' that declines to get involved in foreign wars.

Netanyahu has said this is a war for Civilization, that if Iran wins the region will turn back 'to the dark'. The man has been pumping these existential propositions for years now, and we see the result- chaos and mass murder in Gaza, revolting slaughter, sex crimes and the abduction of hostages in Israel -at what point has the world had enough of this addiction to war, and why should anyone come to the rescue of a reckless Fascist who doesn't care how many people die, and will, like Trump insist he is right from now to the end of his times?

[Stavros]

A long read from Rashid Khalidi. Here are two extracts

"Hamas’s philosophy of armed resistance is unlikely to disappear as long as there is no prospect of an end to military occupation, colonisation and oppression of the Palestinian people, or of a political horizon promising true Palestinian self-determination and equality. Thus, an upheaval that might have been a catalyst of change may in fact produce continuity of colonisation and occupation, of the Israeli establishment’s exclusive reliance on force, and of armed Palestinian resistance."

"One constant in the 100 years of this war is that Palestinians have not been allowed to choose who represents them. As in the past, their preferences may be unacceptable to the powers that be, whether Israel, the western states or their Arab clients. These powers are once again likely to attempt to impose their choice of who represents the Palestinians and who is not allowed to do so, with the Palestinians themselves having no voice in this decision. In the absence of Palestinian agreement on a unified and credible political voice representing a national consensus, this would mean that crucial decisions about the future of their people will be made by outside powers, as has happened so many times in the past."
‘A new abyss’: Gaza and the hundred years’ war on Palestine | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/a-new-abyss-gaza-and-the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine)

I wonder if the Americans who are using the slogan 'Genocide Joe' have a clue who would be their alternative, given that the US is not about to abandon Israel? It is gesture politics and not much else.

I also no longer support the use of the word 'Zionism' which I have concluded after many decades, is fiction. Israel always was a Nationalist project, nothing more and nothing less, which is why the Jewish aspect is so confusing as the Project has appealed to Jews who are secular as well as religious.

As for Iran, which does not get a mention here, I think the war-talk may just be designed to scare people, as I see little for Iran to gain in attacking Israel -Iran is loathed by most Arab countries in the region, and if it were to step over the mark, it would be an opportunity to severely downgrade its military capacity, as well as inflicting more damage on its economy -though this would be cast as 'defence of Israel', it would be seen as a diminution of Iran's ability to support its proxies in the region, and also weaken the Russians if Iran cannot continue to supply weapons, though the political support can continue.

In line with Netanyahu's 'war everywhere and always', all we can expect is a proxy war, in either Iraq or Syria and the casualties might be higher, though after more than 20 years of war I don't suppose people care very much who lives and who dies in those countries.

[Stavros]

If Israel's bombing of Iranian sovereign territory in Damascus was a Tit, Iran's attack on Israel might be seen as a Tat. Although this is the first time Iran has launched an attack from its territory on Israel, it is not the first time Israel has conducted operations on Iran, in Iran in the case of the various assassinations of nuclear scientists.

Will Israel now go for another Tit on Iran, or a Tat-Tit? Probably, but as the Iranian knew most of, maybe all of their drones and missiles would not get past the Iron Dome, maybe Israel will attack a 'soft' target, one that confirms the gesture it needs to make, destroying some weapons plant or something that does not cause many human casualties. Iran hasn't killed anyone in Israel, as far as I know, unlike the attack in Damascus which killed Zahedi, much loved in Iran.

One could believe Biden will say Enough Already! to Netanyahu, on the basis that both Israel and Iran have made their point, but Netanyahu is desperate. Israel has killed a lot of HAMAS fighters, but the movement is still intact, and incredibly given the gruesome atrocities of October 7th, Israel's retaliation in Gaza has lost it a great deal of the sympathy it has had, to the extent that it is more isolated than it has been since the woeful attack on Lebanon in 1982, designed to destroy the PLO, and another failure, or the Intifada of 1988.

The Arab states not only could not care what happens to Iran, at least three, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, have been giving covert assistance to Israel, in the form of intelligence and aerial mapping, bases in Qatar and Jordan enabling the US Air Force to intercept the drones and missiles Israel hasn't reached, and so on.

Iran, on the other hand, has lived up to its promise to punish Israel for the Damascus attack, falling for Netanyahu's gambit. But if the Arabs are on Israel and the US's side, Iran can probably count on support from Russia and China, which is the real cause of anxiety should this current Tit for Tat madness get out of control.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi in Yemen may step up a gear, but after the incident in the Straits of Hormuz, return to the 'Tanker War' that lasted from 1984 to 1988, potentially bringing the US into direct confrontation with Iran, is also one of Netanyahu's intentions but something people will want to avoid, as it will not only involve military confrontation but also affect the price of oil.

The other aim is to weaken Biden, given that Netanyahu has had a relationship with the Trump family going back decades, and because Trump is literally plain stupid, and can be easily manipulated. Netanyahu needs him in the White House, as he is more pliable and reliable than Biden.

One would have hoped that history reveal the pattern of mistakes that undermine the Tit and the Tat going on now, but neither Netanyahu nor Iran care much about history, or human lives for that matter.

It will be a tense week, but can anyone calm the fears people have? Biden called Netanyahu - why didn't he call the Ayatollah Khamene'i, or some other dude in the Supreme Council? After all, it was Zhou Enlai who called Kissinger when there was a danger the Russian and China Battle of Zhenbou in 1969 would escalate, and it transformed China's relations with the US, but I doubt Iran is in the mood for a new agenda, but then neither is Netanyahu.

So many better uses for Tits, so many reasons to avoid Tats.

[Stavros]

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari-

"“I want you to show me another country facing over 110 ballistic missiles, and the drones,” he said. “I think Iran meant to get results and didn’t get results. The ballistic missiles are an escalatory factor. And when they used these numbers they wanted more significant results than what happened.”."
Israel ‘ready to do what is necessary’ after massive drone and missile strikes from Iran – Middle East crisis live (theguardian.com) (https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/apr/13/iran-launches-drone-attack-against-israel)

Ukraine? And in how many countries are men, women and children imprisoned without trial, or corralled into areas encased in walls and policed by the army? Or where there the segregation of a city is official, as in Hebron?
H1 and H2 Two Sides of the Same City: Hebron, Palestine (wesaidgotravel.com) (https://www.wesaidgotravel.com/h1-h2-two-sides-city-hebron-palestine/)

None of the hate and violence is unique, but not all conflicts soaked in hate and violence gone on without end -"enough of blood and tears"? Anyone remember that?

By Oslo they lay down and wept, peace hopes 20 years on unfulfilled (youtube.com) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8wMEOUdGOE)

[Stavros]

*An Israeli has claimed that Israel did not strike an Iranian Embassy building in Damascus. Online sources say it was an annex of the Embassy, but I assume in the international law of diplomacy, this remains 'sovereign' Iranian territory.
Israeli bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_bombing_of_the_Iranian_embassy_in_Damascus )

*For those interested on the 'backstory' to the Tits and the Tats-
The strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria could be the spark that ignites the Middle East | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank (https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/04/strike-irans-consulate-syria-could-be-spark-ignites-middle-east)

*As for this guy, what is he talking about? Does he even know? (no comment needed on the headline related to a convicted fraud running for President)-

"Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — a staunch ally to Mr Trump — has also attempted to pin Iran’s attacks on Mr Biden.“The Biden Administration’s undermining of Israel and appeasement of Iran have contributed to these terrible developments,” Mr Johnson said in a statement on Saturday evening." (My emphasis in Bold).
Trump says Iran attack on Israel ‘would never have happened if I were president’ (yahoo.com) (https://uk.yahoo.com/news/trump-weighs-iranian-airstrike-against-230010955.html)

[Stavros]

The Idiot has spoken-

"Donald Trump responded to Iran’s Saturday attack on Israel (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/14/iran-warns-strike-again-greater-force-us-israel-retaliate) by reposting a 2018 all-caps tweet in which he threatened the president of Iran and said the US would not stand for “DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH.”“To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” read the 2018 tweet."
Trump reposts 2018 all-caps anti-Iran threat in response to Israel strike | Donald Trump | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/14/trump-iran-response-israel)

What did this Firebrand President do in the aftermath of the USA's assassination of Qasem Suleimani, and Iran's retaliation on a US base in Iraq? Launch an attack the like of which had never been seen before in history?...or...

"n his first public comments on the attack, at 8:45 pm EST on 7 January, President Donald Trump tweeted "All is well!", said that damage assessments were ongoing, and added that he would make a statement on the attack the following morning...In his televised White House (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House) statement on 8 January, while being flanked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Chiefs_of_Staff), Trump sought to reduce tensions by downplaying the impact of the missile attacks, observing that Iran appeared to be "standing down", and ruling out a direct military response. Furthermore, Trump said he was willing to "embrace peace" and urged greater international cooperation in the region,"
Operation Martyr Soleimani - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Martyr_Soleimani#:~:text=Sometime%20betw een%201%3A20%20a.m.,few%20hours%20before%20his%20b urial.)

[KnightHawk 2.0]

The Idiot has spoken-

"Donald Trump responded to Iran’s Saturday attack on Israel (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/14/iran-warns-strike-again-greater-force-us-israel-retaliate) by reposting a 2018 all-caps tweet in which he threatened the president of Iran and said the US would not stand for “DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH.”“To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” read the 2018 tweet."
Trump reposts 2018 all-caps anti-Iran threat in response to Israel strike | Donald Trump | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/14/trump-iran-response-israel)

What did this Firebrand President do in the aftermath of the USA's assassination of Qasem Suleimani, and Iran's retaliation on a US base in Iraq? Launch an attack the like of which had never been seen before in history?...or...

"n his first public comments on the attack, at 8:45 pm EST on 7 January, President Donald Trump tweeted "All is well!", said that damage assessments were ongoing, and added that he would make a statement on the attack the following morning...In his televised White House (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House) statement on 8 January, while being flanked by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Chiefs_of_Staff), Trump sought to reduce tensions by downplaying the impact of the missile attacks, observing that Iran appeared to be "standing down", and ruling out a direct military response. Furthermore, Trump said he was willing to "embrace peace" and urged greater international cooperation in the region,"
Operation Martyr Soleimani - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Martyr_Soleimani#:~:text=Sometime%20betw een%201%3A20%20a.m.,few%20hours%20before%20his%20b urial.)Completely agree 1000% the Idiotic Fraudulent Assclown Donald Trump has spoken,with another one of his incoherent tweets on his failed social media platform. The more he talks the more unhinged he sounds.

[Stavros]

Foreign Policy presents the 3 strategic options Israel may consider when 'retaliating' against Iran's attack on Israel, as if that event was not retaliation for Israel's attack on Iran's Consular building in Damascus. I don't believe any of this is called the 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee Syndrome', but it could be.

Regimes such as the one in Iran, or the current one in Israel seem to need a drama every six months or a year, perhaps to remind everyone that they are in the midst of an existential crisis, and if they don't act, they will lose everything.

'You got the win, take the win', was Biden's humble response. But Netanyahu doesn't do humble, neither does Tehran, or HAMAS.

After 100 years, no advance. And not much hope.

Iran Attack: 3 Ways Israel Could Respond (foreignpolicy.com) (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/15/israel-iran-attack-response-retaliation-options-middle-east/#:~:text=Option%201%3A%20Attack%20Iran's%20Nuclear %20Program&text=%E2%80%9CIf%20Israel%20does%20respond%20to,a% 20former%20U.S.%20defense%20official.)

[Del06]

I thought y'all would be interested in this one:

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/why-irans-retaliatory-attack-against-israel-was-not-a-failure/

[Stavros]

I thought y'all would be interested in this one:

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/why-irans-retaliatory-attack-against-israel-was-not-a-failure/

Problem is that Iran did not need to use the attack to force Israel to reveal where its defences are -they attacked the Nevatim (not Netivim as stated in the article) base in Southern Israel because it was used to launch the attack on Damascus, ie they already knew about it. Both Israel and Iran have spies in each other's countries to give them the info they need -how else has Israel been able to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists inside Iran? You think nobody in Israel pockets some money in exchange for information of vale to Iran, or that Palestinians in Gaza are not feeding intelligence to Israel?

Eg

"According to Iranian Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, the primary targets (https://www.tasnimnews.com/fa/news/1403/01/26/3067921/%D9%86%D8%A7%DA%A9%D8%A7%D9%85%DB%8C-%D9%BE%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%81%D9%86%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%DB%8C%D9%84-%D9%85%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%84-%D8%B9%D9%85%D9%84%DB%8C%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%AA%D8%B1%DA%A9%DB%8C%D8%A8%DB%8C-%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86) of the strikes were the Nevatim Airbase, from which Israel launched the Damascus attack, and the intelligence center in Mount Hermon, which had allegedly provided the intelligence for the consulate attack. Tehran emphasized that it had no intention of further escalating the conflict, with Bagheri declaring (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-military-officials-warn-israel-us-against-retaliation-2024-04-14/), “Our operations are over.”". [Only it's not over until it's over].
Iran and Israel’s Dangerous Gambit - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (https://carnegieendowment.org/2024/04/18/iran-and-israel-s-dangerous-gambit-pub-92254#:~:text=According%20to%20Iranian%20Chief%20o f,intelligence%20for%20the%20consulate%20attack.)

The Russian air force regularly flies to the edge of UK air space to trigger a response and monitor it -this has been standard practice in the military since the Cold War.

The core issue in the latest exchange is not the Iranian response to the Damascus attack, but that Israel violated international law by targeting a building with diplomatic protection, being:

" "a significant violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which ensures the inviolability of diplomatic agents and premises" ".
Israel strike on Iranian Embassy: A grave threat to global diplomatic laws – Middle East Monitor (https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240409-israel-strike-on-iranian-embassy-a-grave-threat-to-global-diplomatic-laws/)

-Israeli officials claim the building did not have Diplomatic status,- whatever. Iran and Israel have been at war with each other for years, the only question now is how far are both sides willing to go to get what they want?

[Stavros]

Anthony Blinken is trying to put a positive spin on his current visit to the Middle East, but it is gloom and doom in Gaza. For

""Hamas wants clear terms for the unconditional return of displaced people to the north of Gaza and to ensure that the second stage of the deal will include discussing the gradual and complete withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the entire Gaza Strip.""
Middle East crisis live: Hamas ‘seeking more clarity on terms of ceasefire deal’ (theguardian.com) (https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/may/01/middle-east-crisis-israel-hamas-gaza-war-rafah-iran-lebanon)

What does this mean? Where will people live if they move from the South -where Israel is about to launch a massive attack on Rafah (so we are led to believe)- to a northern area much of which has been laid waste from the bombing; and is there not a plan to create a buffer zone inside the northern limits of Gaza policed by the IDF? How will HAMAS respond to that?

Clearly they don't think the IDF can defeat them completely on the battlefield, and want to regain as much territory to control as they can. But even if Netanyahu decides he has a military victory -disabling the ability of HAMAS to fire rockets into Israel and make incursions into the land; and concedes he cannot destroy HAMAS as a social movement, I don't see him creating a space in Gaza where HAMAS can re-group without a deal similar to the Good Friday Agreement when the Provisional IRA agreed to de-commission their arsenal of weapons. Netanyahu is not Blair, he is not the kind of man to compromise. And if he won't, why should HAMAS?

[Stavros]

Below is a link to a speech Melanie Phillips gave to the National Conservative Conference in Brussels last month.

I remember when MP was a feminist and vaguely on the left of British politics, and have followed her journey to this 'National Conservative' concept/movement that allows her to give vent to all the things she believes has gone wrong with 'Western Civilization' which is of course mostly the fault of 'the left' but aided for the past 13 years by the Conservative Party. As she points out, she lives in Jerusalem, and presents an array of claims some of which are false-far from seeking to protect civilian life in Gaza, Israel turned off the water and the power, bombed those plants it had no control of, has bombed mosques, Christian churches, cultural centres, in fact just about anything you can think of, because military might is an essential ingredient of success, she says, and Israel is not just fighting for its own survival, but for the survival of Western Civilisation, something the Russians also believe they are doing in Ukraine.

Notice the way she condemns the UN and International Humanitarian Law, as if it was an anti-Israel conspiracy from the start, or if not has -probably since 1967- been used to condemn Israel in a way she thinks is not done to lunatic Muslims, Iran, HAMAS, etc, as if she was unaware of the catastrophic damage done to the Palestinian cause after 1967 with the sequence of hi-jackings and assassinations that took place across Europe and the Middle East.

But she also seems reluctant to note that the evolution of international law through the Charter of the UN and Human Rights law, not only originated in the US and the UK, but most of the people responsible were both Conservative and Jewish, such as Hersch Lauterpacht, and that much of the origin of this law was derived from a determination that post-Nazi, post-Holocaust slogan 'Never Again' be made real, and in law, not just attitudes.

As for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, what rights to they have in her 'Nation State' if they are not Jewish? She does not say. That she has nothing to say about 4 million people thus repeats the historic refusal of those Jews who see Israel as an exclusive homeland, to tell those who we must assume do not belong there, what to do, where to live -Palestinians become a black hole in that 'Particular' Nation State, or like HAMAS they are an existential threat that must be destroyed. As for all the other stuff, it is a repetition of the rage heard elsewhere, but I offer her speech so that those who do read these posts but may not be aware of it, have an insight into what the more extreme supporters of Israel believe.

Hersch Lauterpacht
Hersch Lauterpacht - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hersch_Lauterpacht)

Melanie Phillips | How Conservatism’s Chickens Came Home to Roost in Gaza | NatCon Brussels 2 (youtube.com) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmCVoGc2IeY)

[Stavros]

In to the Abyss steps Nigel Biggar, writing in the Telegraph. An Oxford Professor who has written a controversial book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (2024) which I have not read, Biggar titles his article Oxford Protestors Can't Hide Their Ignorance, and proceeds wit an article that is itself ignorant of facts and context, though big on interpretation -his own. He also accuses the Oxford Professors who signed a letter supporting student occupiers of ignorance, as if it was an important letter, which it is not.

Biggar's selective approach to the history enables him to argue that the Jewish settlers who arrived in Ottoman 'Palestine' (in reality, the Vilayet of Jerusalem) in the late 19th century were not Colonialists who stole the land, because they purchased it from its Arab landlords, the latter being true. Whether or not the first Aliyah of 1880 was fleeing a progrom in what is now Ukraine (they came from Kremenchug) is debatable. That so-called Zionism has always been a Nationalist project is not in doubt, but Biggar doesn't want to either acknowledge this, or consider the implications of a Jewish State in a land occupied for the most part by non-Jews, the dilemma that has never been resolved, though for some in Netanyahu's governing coalition, the expulsion of all non-Jews from, dare I day it, 'the river to the sea', is exactly what they want, though it presumably will not include the Filipinos who wipe the arses of elderly Israelis in care homes, the construction workers from India, or the agricultural labourers from South-East Asia, mostly Thailand (some of whom were and may still be hostages taken by HAMAS on the 7th of October 2023).

He says that the League of Nations awarded the Mandate "in order to build a new independent Arab state and a Jewish homeland out of the ruins of the irredeemable Ottoman Empire. In 1930, faced with violent Arab unrest, the British considered restricting Jewish immigration but decided against it out of sympathy for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.".
This is nonsense. The British along with other European states, made secret agreements long before the end of the First World War which, presuming an allied victory, then divvied up the Ottoman Empire's lands amongst themselves, with absolutely no regard for the Arabs or anyone else living in the region. One of the lesser known of the secret agreements is the 1915 Treaty of London that was on victory, to give Britain, France, Russia and Italy a share of the spoils, though the Treaty and its aftermath had obvious complications, not least the Bolshevik Revolution and the emergence of Fascism in Italy. The link below looks in some detail at it for those interested.

As for the latter part of the quote, Nazi Germany had no role to play in the end of the Passfield White Paper's proposals to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Proposal failed because the British had to juggle the interests of the Jewish community in Palestine and their supporters in London, and the Arabs, and as happened throughout the Mandate, the British screwed both sides -and themselves. In other words, the British were incapable of governing in the interests of the population of Palestine, and thus undermined their own authority, which is why some historians have argued that in all of British Imperial History, Palestine remains the most consistent failure from start to finish.

When there is so much verifiable history re-interpreted to suit today's latest prejudice, one wonders why people like Biggar even bother to draw a fig leaf on their preference.

Biggar's article can be read here-
Oxbridge protestors can’t hide their ignorance (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/oxbridge-protestors-t-hide-ignorance-150510493.html)

The Treaty of London can be read about here-
London, Treaty of (1915) | International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1) (1914-1918-online.net) (https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/london_treaty_of_1915#:~:text=The%20Treaty%20of%20 London%20was,crucial%20impact%20on%20the%20conflic t.)

[Stavros]

Hillary Clinton has said the campus protestors she has spoken to are clearly ignorant of the history of the Middle East about which they are protesting, citing this example-

"She went on to claim that her husband, former President Bill Clinton made an offer to the former leader of the Palestinian Authority Yassir Arafat, which would have given Palestinians their own state."If Arafat had accepted [this offer] there would have been a Palestinian state now for about 24 years. It’s one of the great tragedies of history that he was unable to say yes," she added."
Clinton: Gaza student protestors are 'ignorant of history' (newarab.com) (https://www.newarab.com/news/clinton-gaza-student-protestors-are-ignorant-history)

Try this, from (notorious?) Norman Finkelstein:
Israel, not Arafat, scuppered Clinton-led peace deal – Middle East Monitor (https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230703-israel-not-arafat-scuppered-clinton-led-peace-deal/)

Or this
30 years after Arafat-Rabin handshake, clear flaws in Oslo Accords doomed peace talks to failure (theconversation.com) (https://theconversation.com/30-years-after-arafat-rabin-handshake-clear-flaws-in-oslo-accords-doomed-peace-talks-to-failure-211362)

Peace is the hardest thing to achieve, war the easiest. But then Jesus wanted us all to love each other, yet love on that scale seems to be impossible.

[Stavros]

I don't know what to make of Senator Lindsey Graham, as I only encounter him in news bites saying one thing on a Monday and the opposite on Friday. His latest nonsensical argument is-

"GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham (https://www.businessinsider.com/lindsey-graham-says-no-limit-to-civilians-its-justifiable-for-israel-to-kill-2023-11?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=yahoo.com) of South Carolina on Sunday urged the US to keep supplying munitions to Israel, comparing the war in Gaza with World War II and saying dropping atomic bombs on Japan was the "right decision" to ending the conflict."
Lindsey Graham wants more bombs for Israel, saying the US was right to nuke Nagasaki and Hiroshima (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/lindsey-graham-wants-more-bombs-040030290.html)

Perhaps this is the moment to ask why the British Govt did not use the tactics in Northern Ireland that Israel uses in Gaza -the RAF did not bomb either West Belfast or the Bogside, turning both into mountains of uninhabitable rubble. The Catholic population was not forced out of their homes, to live in tents in the local park, or walk with their remaining belongings south into the Republic of Ireland. Protetstants in 'Ulster' may claim that a United Ireland is an 'existential' threat to their way of life, ignoring the fact that many Protestants not only lived in the Republic but helped build it, indeed the first President of Ireland was a Protestant.

The IRA attempted to murder Margaret Thatcher, and in one audacious act lobbed a missile onto 10 Downing St when Prime Minister John Major was holding a Cabinet meeting, yet neither the military leadership or the IRA or the political wing, Sinn Fein were assassinated in the way Israel has travelled across the world to murder what it calls 'Terrorists' -in fact Martin McGuinness, the Quartermaster of the Provos ended up in the Power Sharing Govt of Northern Ireland, and welcomed Her late Majesty the Queen to the Province.

Netanyahu says the remaining battalions of HAMAS in Rafah must be wiped out, while behind him, as it were, in Northern Gaza, HAMAS has re-grouped, showing that the military action against it is like stepping onto mercury -one blob gets taken out here, only for another to emerge there. With both HAMAS and Israel committed to violence with no regard for the welfare of the citizens of Gaza, any hopes of an end to this are slim. And yet, just as Margaret Thatcher initiated the secret talks with the IRA that were continued by John Major, and just as secret talks between Palestinians and Israelis in Oslo looked for a paradigm shift to end the conflict between them, both Israel and the Palestinians have been dragged back to the bad old days when if you wanted the land, you fought for it, winner takes all.

With so many losers over the last 100 years, you might wonder why they do it. In the end, Mo Mowlam on behalf of the Labour Govt brought the warring factions to the negotiating table, and after much heartache and threats, a peace deal was made that transformed Northern Ireland.

Once upon a time, some people said of Northern Ireland as Graham has said: just drop a nuke on the place and end it. What happened there can happen in Israel and Gaza, just as once it did, albeit in flawed fashion, with Rabin and Arafat. Can someone in Israel take up the challenge, can HAMAS find the means to back down?

Nobody will be asking Senator Graham to use his political skills to help.

[Stavros]

So, Netanyahu has condemned the UN recognition of a Palestinian state -no surprise there; and the Arab states have said they support the creation of one through a 'two state solution' -no surprise there either. Because they have no imagination, and crucially, no coherent plan that will end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, just more of the same ideas that don't work and never have -or to put it politely, via Einstein, they are mad.

I am not opposed to Palestinian statehood, but what is this state they keep going on about? Look at the political geography: where will the borders of a Palestinian state be? Will Palestine have an army, a police force, its own currency, its own judicial, education and health systems? Will it indeed be an Independent state capable of defending itself, attracting foreign investment and diplomacy, and all the other things one associates with an Independent State?

I just don't see Israel agreeing to remove its armed forces from the borders with Syria and Jordan. I don't think Israel will tolerate a Palestinian Army, let alone a Palestinian Air Force and Navy literally minutes away in some cases.

And, just as there has never been a just answer to the question: what rights to non-Jews have in a Jewish State? So the questions of Palestine are: what status will settlements and settlers on the 'West Bank' have, given that this must be the core of the Palestinian state- can they stay, must they go? And what if they decide to take up arms against Palestine, much as they are doing right now anyway?

Likud's dream of 'Erez Israel suggests that the current geography -from the River to the Sea, is not enough. The Biblical provinces of Gilead, Moab and Ammon on the Eastern side of the River Jordan are surely in their sights at some point in the future. So why would Israel agree to something called a Palestinian state? And without an agreement between the two, it can never happen.

Change the Paradigm: imagine a Confederation of Palestine and Israel, like Switzerland. And why not? No need to change the geography re borders. Security co-operation rather than conflict. Currency union, equal rights for all. Sounds good to me.

As Brecht once put it: so viele Berichte, so viele Fragen.

Palestinian statehood key to Arab plans for post-war Gaza (yahoo.com) (https://uk.yahoo.com/news/palestinian-statehood-key-arab-plans-071137278.html)

[Stavros]

This is a deeply depressing, at times disgusting, but vital report on sexual violence in Gaza, in Israel and the West Bank -it attempts to unravel fact from fantasy -not so much of the former, too much of the latter- and spares no-one when it comes to the bleak reality facing women, be they Arab or Jewish. That people can take sides in this debate (step forward Hillary Clinton) only deepens the disbelief at the partisan approach to what, in reality, is a global problem.

It is from the latest edition of The London Review of Books, and can be read here-

Azadeh Moaveni · What They Did to Our Women: Women in Wartime (lrb.co.uk) (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n09/azadeh-moaveni/what-they-did-to-our-women)

[Stavros]

What if? HAMAS, weakened to the point of, but not exactly killed off in Gaza, finds a new home on the West Bank, where Palestinians who are not protected against settler violence turn to the group that has no boundaries when it comes to killing (and that includes other Palestinians). And what if this plays into the hands of people like Netanyahu, so that they can shift their campaign from Gaza to the West Bank. After all, is it not the case that, it is not Genocide that is taking place -this should be obvious- but the longest campaign that has been going on for 100 years: to make life so difficult or impossible for the Arabs, that they leave and go and live somewhere else? And if you count the millions forced out of their homelands in Syria, Yemen, Ukraine -what's another 4 million?

But what if they refuse to go? So here we are again: same old same old, no new ideas, no advance.

‘Only Hamas can defend us’: Israeli raids and Fatah failures boost support in West Bank | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/20/only-hamas-can-defend-us-israeli-raids-and-fatah-failures-boost-support-in-west-bank)

[Stavros]

We do not yet know if the recommendation of the International Criminal Court will lead to warrants for the arrest of the people named so far, the irony is that as the US and other major states are not signatories to it, they can only exert external power, or threats in the case of the US, in an attempt to protect its ally Israel, even though some in the Biden Administration know that Netanyahu is without doubt a cause of the war, and an obstacle to its end. Thus

"US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he will work with lawmakers on potential sanctions against the International Criminal Court as its prosecutor seeks arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials."
US hints at support for sanctions over ICC warrants on Israel - BBC News (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp66e6ppzd0o)

For a more biased view, the Telegraph states a common view

"makes a mockery of both the institution and the laws it claims to uphold.By applying for the arrest of the Israeli leadership alongside that of Hamas, the court has bolstered a supposed moral equivalence where none exists."
The ICC has disgraced itself (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/icc-disgraced-itself-050000535.html)

Did the ICC make a mistake in prosecuting Slobodan Milošević? Was it wrong to seek the arrest of Vladimir Putin? As so often in international law, it appears to be useful for some and not for others, as if the application of the law was a matter of pick and choose rather than to look in an objective manner at what is actually happening on the ground in an attempt to make people legally accountable. For some, it is war, and bad things happen in war -as Trump might say 'get over it'.

If there is no moral equivalence between Israel and HAMAS, it is because morals have been abandoned by both sides; the article from the London Review of Books I linked in an earlier post demolishes any insult to facts that claim the IDF is moral and minimises casualties. As we have seen over 100 years, so clearly one wonders why people like Anthony Blinken make such pathetic excuses, the game is simple: 'if you want this land, fight me for it'.

None of this brings the war to an end. None of it tells anyone where the people of Gaza are going to live, or how, or if their children are ever going to go to school again, if ever. Crucially, for Israel, it fails to establish that the security of its people is a fact, it aggravates an age old problem of inter-communal trust, made even worse if HAMAS does indeed establish a network on the West Bank to rival the Palestinian Authority, the ultimate irony for an Israel that supported and encouraged HAMAS from the start in 1987 precisely to weaken the PLO as it then was which has since morphed, or declined into the PA.

Name of the game: not swings and roundabouts, more Snakes and Ladders.

This is a useful background to the ICC
The International Criminal Court: History and Role (parl.ca) (https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/200211E)

[Stavros]

Israel's Foreign Minister, Israel Katz:

"I have instructed the immediate recall of Israel’s ambassadors to Ireland and Norway for consultations in light of these countries’ decisions to recognise a Palestinian state.I’m sending a clear and unequivocal message to Ireland and Norway: Israel will not remain silent in the face of those undermining its sovereignty and endangering its security.
Today’s decision sends a message to the Palestinians and the world: Terrorism pays. "
Israel-Gaza war live: Israel recalls ambassadors as Norway, Ireland and Spain say they will recognise Palestinian state (theguardian.com) (https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/may/22/israel-gaza-war-hamas-palestinian-state-middle-east-benjamin-netanyahu)

How does he think the State of Israel was created: Terrorism, or was it National Liberation?

"British soldiers were frequently targets for attack and kidnap, often in retaliation for death sentences passed on members of Irgun and LHI. A typical insurgent operation was the bombing of the British Officers Club in Haifa, in which 30 people were killed and injured.
On 22 July 1946, Irgun fighters also blew up a wing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing over 90 people, including many civilians. This attack broke the fragile Haganah-Irgun partnership."

"The main terrorist groups were Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organisation) - ultimately led by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin - and an even more militant organisation, Lohamey Heruth Israel (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) or LHI.
The British called LHI the Stern Gang after its leader, Abraham Stern, who was killed in a clash with the Palestine Police in 1942. In November 1944, LHI assassinated the British Minister for the Middle East, Lord Moyne." (Link below to quote on the Haifa attack).

On Stern:
"The main argument of this monograph is that Stern's ideology, and the small yet devoted group which gathered around it, were the ultimate and most profound expression of a genuine fascist movement which had gradually evolved during the 1920's and 1930's in Hebrew society in Palestine in general, and within the Revisionist movement in particular."
20131746.pdf (uzh.ch) (https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/164227/1/20131746.pdf)

"On 31 March 1947, Irgun set light to the oil refinery at Haifa, starting a fire which blazed for three weeks. In May, it attacked the prison at Acre, freeing a large number of inmates.
On 29 July, in retaliation for the execution of three of their members, LHI kidnapped and hanged two British Army sergeants. They then booby-trapped the bodies so that the officer who cut them down was badly injured."
The British Army in Palestine | National Army Museum (nam.ac.uk) (https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/conflict-Palestine#:~:text=On%2015%20May%201948%2C%20Britai n,British%20military%20and%20police%20lives.)

"The British Mandate for Palestine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine) was an instrument of government instituted by the League of Nations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations) for the administration of territories formerly under the rule of the Ottoman Empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire). British rule lasted from 1917-1948.The British Mandatory authorities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine) during their rule executed hundreds of residents of Palestine, the overwhelming majority being Palestinian Arabs."
Olei Hagardom - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olei_Hagardom#:~:text=The%20Irgun%20announced%20th at%20hanging,in%20a%20forest%20near%20Netanya.)

[Stavros]

A new book from Raja Shehadeh. The fear, as ever, is the fear of freedom. If freedom has any meaning, everyone must have it.

What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? by Raja Shehadeh review – making sense of senseless violence | Politics books | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/24/what-does-israel-fear-from-palestine-by-raja-shehadeh-review-making-sense-of-senseless-violence)

[Stavros]

Roland Oliphant of The Telegraph offers an interesting range of opinions on the ICC, specifically with regard to the Palestinian and Israelis named in the Court's docket, and more generally on international humanitarian law, and the problems of prosecuting people accused of crimes in war.

The argument with regard to starvation and accountability is a problem for Yoav Gallant, because

"Following the devastating attacks by Hamas against Israel on 7 October, Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, announced a complete siege of the Gaza Strip: “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything will be closed.” "
There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel – everything will be closed” | The unlawful siege and starvation of civilians in Gaza | Global Rights Compliance (https://globalrightscompliance.com/2023/10/26/there-will-be-no-electricity-no-food-no-water-no-fuel-everything-will-be-closed-the-unlawful-siege-and-starvation-of-civilians-in-gaza/)

"Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says he has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, as Israel fights the Hamas terror group.“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds".
Defense minister announces 'complete siege' of Gaza: No power, food or fuel | The Times of Israel (https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/)

Gallant is thus the most vulnerable of the Israeli officials the Court wishes to prosecute.

Oliphant's video talk is here-
How the ICC bared its teeth - and caught the West off guard | Defence in Depth (msn.com) (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/how-the-icc-bared-its-teeth-and-caught-the-west-off-guard-defence-in-depth/vi-BB1mWcOR?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=80cc3c4dd78c4badbfd556f969503dc3&ei=12#details)

[Stavros]

What can be more stupid than to tell a state at war- 'don't cross this red line' -when they go ahead and do it -and there is no response to match the threat? And what happens when you declare a group to be 'terrorists' and therefore determine they must be destroyed, only to find, years and a zillion deaths later, that they still exist, that 'we' are negotiating with them, and they ultimately have their slice of the cake? It might have worked in Northern Ireland, it hasn't worked in Afghanistan, and I doubt a Palestinian state run by HAMAS would be a nice place to live.

But red lines? Nonsense, and dare one use the word, a hostage to fortune, like troubling deaf heaven with bootless cries.

[Stavros]

"Benjamin Netanyahu has responded cooly to Joe Biden’s proposal for peace between Israel and Hamas, insisting the Israeli army will continue fighting until it has “eliminated” the Palestinian militant group’s capacity to rule Gaza and pose a military threat.The Israeli prime minister’s comments came after Hamas said it had a positive view of the three-phase ceasefire proposal (https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/31/biden-hamas-israel-gaza-ceasefire-plan) announced by the US president for a permanent truce in Gaza."
Israel-Gaza war live: Hamas views ceasefire plan ‘positively’ but Netanyahu vows to continue war (theguardian.com) (https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/jun/01/israel-gaza-war-live-netanhayu-biden-hamas-ceasefire-plan-rafah-aid-middle-east)

Reasons to be cheerful -a plan. Reasons not to be cheerful: Netanyahu - he won't agree to anything that leaves HAMAS intact, he being detached from reality -the Blair Govt succeeded in getting the IRA to 'decommission' its weapons (or so we were told), but the political wing, Sinn Fein, became a partner in the Govt of Northern Ireland thereafter. And HAMAS is not going to agree to anything similar to what the IRA agreed to. It is not about to disappear, though I guess it could disband, and re-group under another name.

Note the point Netanyahu made about eliminating HAMAS's "capacity to rule Gaza". In other words, there will not be an election in Gaza, just in case the people decide to vote for HAMAS, or its equivalent, or indeed, any party or person who wants independence or worse, the same rights in Gaza that the citizens of Israel have.

Because ever since Lord Balfour declared the British Govt had no intention of consulting the Palestinians about the Governance of Palestine, the Palestinians have never been asked what they want, let alone given it. When the British left in 1947, the UN made the decisions, not the Palestinians, and since then decisions have been made through war, other than the 1993 Peace Treaty that was rejected by, yes you guessed it, Netanyahu and HAMAS. Even now, Biden and others outside Israel want other Arabs to 'get involved' in the Governance and re-construction of Gaza, in effect to take over and deny Palestinians that once-hallowed phrase made famous by Woodrow Wilson -'National Self Determination'.

But at least Palestinians will be able to go back to their homes, if this is what you call home-

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/80843e17d17398b9a012d0ae0094f97cdd08b7ee/0_52_3610_2166/master/3610.jpg?width=700&dpr=1&s=none

[Stavros]

"Labour leader Keir Starmer said last month that he wanted to recognise a Palestinian state if he won power, but that such a move would need to come at the right time in a peace process.Foreign Secretary David Cameron, a Conservative, said in January that Britain could formally recognise a Palestinian state if Palestinians had shown "irreversible progress" towards a two state solution, according to reports at the time."
UK's Labour to include pledge on recognizing Palestinian state in election manifesto- Guardian | Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-labour-include-pledge-recognizing-palestinian-state-election-manifesto-2024-06-06/)

Two statements, both of which are shaped by the British telling the Palestinians what the terms and conditions might be -just as in the period between 1916 and 1921, the British made it clear that the Palestinians were incapable of governing themselves, which is why the British would be doing it, so Lord Cameron imposes his set of rules on them today. As for Sir Keir Starmer, he also imposes Labour Party conditions on the Palestinians, because they can't come up with any of their own? And where is this Palestinian state? Where are its boundaries, and who polices them now, and in the future? What currency will a Palestinian state use? And so on.

Lip service for the general public, I assume, but no less pathetic for all that. As for Netanyahu being invited to speak to Congress toward the end of July -is it the case that he is more popular in the US Congress than he is at home? And why will those Senators and Representatives who disagree with him just not attend, rather than heckle this madman to his face?

Why are Democrats blindly embracing Netanyahu? | Jo-Ann Mort | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/06/democrats-blindly-embracing-netanyahu)

[Stavros]

Two stand out moments: the military raids that rescued four hostages, with stunning collateral damage; and Benny Gantz leaving the Coalition. The former would not have been possible without Palestinian informers who have been paid by Israel for years. The Telegraph behind a paywall has an article saying British intelligence helped out with electronic surveillance, as if Israel needed that, being pioneers in the technology, while Israel says it had undercover guys in Gaza pretending to be Arabs and that is plausible. HAMAS regularly -or used to- execute informers, but it is not a subject much talked about. The British had an informer inside the high command of the IRA, but we only knew that after the Troubles ended.

As for Gantz, his departure has consolidated the hard liners around tough guy Netanyahu -not good for Gaza or the remaining hostages. So the UN Security Council can pass as many resolutions as it likes, the war goes on.
Prospect of Israeli hostage deal recedes as far-right minister signals opposition | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/10/israel-hostage-deal-far-right-israeli-minister-signals-opposition)

[Stavros]

Another day, another step towards a reality that has existed since 1967. Belazel Smotrich, the kind of politician who would not normally make it to Government in a decent, open democracy, is pleased to find that changes in Israeli law give the 'Settler movement' on the West Bank of the River Jordan the powers to, in effect, annexe the territory-

"As the Guardian revealed last week, the Israeli military recently quietly handed over significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants working for Smotrich.
An order posted by the Israel Defense Forces on its website on 29 May transferred responsibility for dozens of bylaws at the Civil Administration from the military to officials led by Smotrich at the defence ministry."
Israeli far-right minister speaks of effort to annex West Bank | Israel | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/24/israeli-far-right-minister-bezalel-smotrich-annex-west-bank)

Smotrich sees this is being both the means whereby Israel can annexe the West Bank and prevent the creation of a Palestinian State.

But whatever the de jure situation, in international law, the de facto situation is that the West Bank, and Gaza have been part of Israel since 1967, not least because Israel has never accepted UN decisions as binding, though one simply gasps at this comment in the article linked above when referring to Smotrich's proposal -

"Annexation and the acquisition of territory by military conquest is forbidden as one of the founding principles of international law including the UN charter."

Because it means the creation of Israel in 1948 was a violation of International Law, simply because though the Jewish Agency accepted the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947, it then ignored it to acquire through military force considerably more territory than was in the Plan, this being one of the roots of Israel's hostility to the UN, along with the formation of UNRWA because Israel denied there were Palestinians to begin with and thus no Palestinian refugees. The rest, as they say, is history.

The core problem is this, as it has been forever: if Palestinians are to live in Israel, are they to be equal, to have exactly the same rights as every other citizen of Israel? One can imagine what Smotrich would say if asked the question, but that does not mean it is not the most reasonable to ask. But until people accept that there is one single state between the River and the Sea, most of the discourse will be distorted, passionate, soaked in loathing, and of no practical use to anyone who lives in this part of our world.

[Stavros]

An interesting interview with the former head of Shin Bet that exposes the divisions within Israel, but while he acknowledges the 'endless war' Netanyahu is committed to, on the one hand, and Palestinian aspirations on the other, he does not really address the 'day after' scenarios in either Gaza or the West Bank going beyond some concept of a 'two state solution' so that he himself for all his bitter condemnation of Netanyahu has no long term plan that is practicable. Also, given that Iran has few friends in the Region and thinks it is in their interests to disrupt the MSB agenda of 'normalization' with Israel, this aspect also suggests that unless and until Iran ceases to have the traction it has, then it remains a potent force -though this also begs the questions about the internal politics of change in Iran. Lastly, Lebanon is in deep crisis, the south is likely to become part of a 'buffer zone' strategy that Netanyahu and the IDF think will improve Israel's security -another buffer zone will be created in northern Gaza, but we always come back to the hard question -what happens to the Palestinians? Where will they live, how will they live?

The war has made it all worse, not better, the logical madness of HAMAS and Likud, locked in a deadly embrace.

Netanyahu’s ‘toxic leadership’ will lead to end of Zionism, says former Shin Bet chief (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/netanyahu-toxic-leadership-lead-end-175905466.html)

[Stavros]

A fairly long read, but one that looks favourably on the idea of a single state, or the Confederation argument that I have proposed as well as Dahlia Scheindlin -because until the paradigm changes and politicians inside and outside Israel stop whirling around the 'two state solution' and telling Palestinians who is to represent them, this misery will continue.

The Palestine-Israel nightmare won’t end until we accept these basic truths (yahoo.com) (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/palestine-israel-nightmare-won-t-120007634.html)

[Stavros]

Protestors who, according to him “stand with HAMAS” should be ashamed of themselves can answer to nobody but themselves. But as for you, Mr Netanyahu, when are you going to make yourself accountable for supporting HAMAS since it started? Have you no shame?

The US Congress should be ashamed to give a platform to such a squalid mass murderer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ku1g1CwrCU

[Del06]

"The war has made it all worse, not better, the logical madness of HAMAS and Likud, locked in a deadly embrace."


There used to be a cartoon, with two dinosaurs fighting each other as they approach a mile-high cliff. They approach and then descend the mile-high drop, continuing to fight each other all the way down.

In 20 years, the whole middle east will be uninhabitable due to climate change.

[Stavros]

"The war has made it all worse, not better, the logical madness of HAMAS and Likud, locked in a deadly embrace."


There used to be a cartoon, with two dinosaurs fighting each other as they approach a mile-high cliff. They approach and then descend the mile-high drop, continuing to fight each other all the way down.

In 20 years, the whole middle east will be uninhabitable due to climate change.

For years now there have been reports of water shortages and claims the region is headed for 'water wars', though outside of Gaza and the West Bank it hasn't happened.


Or maybe they will just live in the sky?

"“Neom Stadium will be the most unique stadium in the world,” Saudi’s committee wrote (https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/saudi-arabia-reveals-futuristic-world-cup-stadium-plans-01-08-2024/#:~:text=Saudi%20Arabia%20has%20revealed%20plans,L ine%2C%20in%20the%20Neom%20megadevelopment.) in an outline of its bid. “With a pitch situated more than 350 meters above ground, stunning vistas, and a roof created from the city itself, the stadium will be an experience like no other.”"
Saudi Arabia Unveils Bold World Cup Bid Despite No Competition (frontofficesports.com) (https://frontofficesports.com/saudi-arabia-submits-bold-world-cup-bid-that-includes-a-cliffside-arena/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CNeom%20Stadium%20will%20be%20the ,an%20experience%20like%20no%20other.%E2%80%9D)

[Stavros]

Israel has assassinated so many HAMAS officials over the years, has it made a difference? This article argues Netanyahu uses violence instead of diplomacy, and believes he has undermined President Biden, and made peace harder than ever, both in general Israeli-Palestinian relations, and with specific regard to Gaza. But also suggests Netanyahu does not want even a modest rapprochement between Iran and the 'West'. Well Netanyahu has been addicted to war most of his life, but the other question is, these days, are there any Israeli politicians who have a radically different view? Yitzhak Rabin was one such politician with a radical position, and he was murdered for it.

But a good read

Assassination again shows Netanyahu’s disregard for US-Israel relations (msn.com) (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/assassination-again-shows-netanyahu-s-disregard-for-us-israel-relations/ar-AA1o9I17?ocid=msedgntp&pc=ACTS&cvid=3943865eebd742d5b88c4e68c746ba35&ei=196)

[Stavros]

"We cling to this idea that the arc of history tends towards liberty and democracy. Have you been shaken out of that feeling?
I have been pessimistic about this place for a long time. If you look at the trajectory of what has happened here, it is a story of increasing Israeli expansion and Palestinian constriction into smaller spaces. If you just project forward, we are headed towards a fate like that of the Native Americans for the Palestinians."
Nathan Thrall: ‘The scale and brutality of the Israeli response in Gaza hasn’t surprised me, no’ | Books | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/aug/04/nathan-thrall-a-day-in-the-life-of-abed-salama-gaza-palestine)

[Stavros]

The latest bombing of a school being used to house displaced Palestinians begs a number of questions.

1) Israel says it was a targeted attack and that "at least 20 fighters, including senior commanders, were among the dead". Every attack that results in the death and injury of men women and children is blamed on HAMAS using the facility targeted, while also claiming the elimination of however many HAMAS 'fighters' were there.
But never tells us their names, never proves that anyone from HAMAS was there. Indeed, this has been standard procedure for most of the 'forever war' with an organization Israel has supported since its foundation in the first Intifada in 1988.

2) After 10 months of the most savage and relentless bombing and military campaign in Gaza in its history, either HAMAS has an inexhaustible supply of 'fighters and commanders', or Israel is not doing a very good job of 'eliminating HAMAS' as Netanyahu says it is doing. This suggests that Israel can never eliminate HAMAS.

3) But this either means Israel accepting it cannot defeat HAMAS and therefore negotiate an end to this war, including the release of Hostages and a reconstruction programme, or just more of the same. More of the same is the preferred option of Smotrich and his extremist colleagues, because in reality the war in Gaza is merely an extreme version of what Israel has been doing since 1967 -making life for Palestinians so miserable and pointless that they pack up and leave. After all, if there was Genocide in Gaza, there would be little left by now of its 2 million inhabitants.

So expect more 'targeted attacks' (= targeting ordinary people, unless Israel really thinks every Palestinian in Gaza is HAMAS), more excuses from Israel, maybe more rockets from HAMAS into Israel (how after 10 months?), and of course, more scenes of carnage with most of the world indifferent to it all, and without doubt having no intention of taking any radical action to stop it, and move both parties into a different scenario in which something called Peace has a chance.

Israel strikes on Gaza school site kill at least 80, Palestinian officials say | Gaza | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/10/israel-strikes-on-gaza-school-site-kills-almost-100-palestinian-officials-say)

[Stavros]

Although the press reports that Blinken thinks this might be the last chance to secure a deal, and some think it is close, the reality is that Israel and HAMAS both have enough objections to each other's proposals to reject them, though I ought not to be so cynical, even though Netanyahu and HAMAS have world records in cynicism and cruelty. Whatever.

The main obstacles are as Gershon Baskin notes in the article linked below-

-Israel wants to retain a presence in Gaza, to maintain and 'police' the southern border area with Israel along the Philadelphi Corridor or buffer zone with Egypt, HAMAS wants the IDF out of Gaza. I also believe Israel has or intends to create a buffer zone in the north similar to the one it is creating on the border with Lebanon.

(Displacement and Buffer Zones are becoming common, eg Turkey in Northern Syria and Northern Cyprus, Ukraine in Kursk, Russia in Eastern Ukraine)

-Israel wants to monitor internal movements in order to prevent HAMAS 'operatives' (soldiers?) from relocating, but it is not clear who the soldiers are or if Israel knows, other than what Arab informers tell them some of which might just be revenge for some other complaint, who knows? HAMAS, which has not been, and will not be militarily defeated objects to any attempt by Israel to control the territory, but this particular aspect could be dropped by Israel as long as the IDF remain in Gaza in some form.

-Israel in the past has released Palestinian prisoners in exchange for hostage(s), but this time Israel is refusing to release named prisoners that HAMAS wants released. This could be the hardest element to crack for it could be that Netanyahu would agree to it but Smotrich and Ben-Gvir reject it, threatening to collapse the Coalition Govt which could fall anyway if the two lunatics think even Netanyahu has sold them out for the return of those hostages who are still alive. The jury is out on this one, for the cynical and cruel reasons noted previously.

As for Baskin's final comments, these reveal the fantasy land still under occupation-

This is what Baskin says-

"There must be a new path to a negotiated end of the larger conflict, but it begins by ending this war, Israel withdrawing from Gaza, Israeli hostages coming home and the establishment of a secure border between Gaza and Egypt. That would pave the way for the creation of a responsible and legitimate non-Hamas government in Gaza, an Arab-led international force in Gaza for a limited period of time, new elections in Palestine, new elections in Israel and then a regional peace process that will bring about the two-state solution, with an end to the Israeli occupation, a free democratic Palestine, and freedom, peace and security for all."
These ceasefire talks have been doomed to fail – Netanyahu and Hamas have tied negotiators’ hands | Gershon Baskin | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/19/israel-gaza-netanyahu-hamas-ceasefire-talks-us-egypt-qatar-influence)

As usual Palestinians have to accept someone else making their decisions, someone else telling them who can govern them (not HAMAS), some other military on their streets. Israel is never going to allow a separate Palestinian state to exist, so the mere idea of it is plain stupid, in addition to which no supporter of the idea ever tells us what the currency in this state will be, where its borders will be, what its trading relations will look like, though they do tell us who the govt will be, as if the same people were not aware that HAMAS has increased its presence in the West Bank and will grow stronger if Settler attacks on Palestinian villages carry on.

The irony is that if people accept there is a de facto single state, the so-called 'Democratic Israel' which in reality denied 4 million people living in the country basic or equal rights, the only solution is to re-structure this single state into a Confederation in order to force Israelis and Palestinians to do what they were doing before the Nationalists tried to change the place beginning in the 1880s. Zionism, or Jewish Nationalism as it is dressed up to be, has failed, much as all religious nationalism has failed, and will fail, because Nationalism is the cause of human division, human violence and human misery.

Two people, one land. Share it or fight for it? After 100 years of fighting the solution should be obvious. If only the US was not such a coward when it comes to dealing with Netanyahu, there might be one step forward. Though one has to believe there will then be two steps back. In my lifetimes? I doubt it.

[Stavros]

If it is the case that the latest dead hostages were executed by HAMAS (their claim is they were killed by an IDF operation in the tunnel), it might be another example of 'I can be more cruel than you' in this wicked conflict, as in a previous 'deal' between the parties, two of the three now dead were on a list to be released. This fact has been an additional spur to the protests in Tel-Aviv by people who believe Netanyahu is deliberately delaying a deal, or adding clauses that he knows HAMAS will reject.

It has been pointed out, for example, that Netanyahu's insistence on the IDF remaining in the Philadelphi Corridor was not part of any previous deal with the obvious question, why not? Moreover, if Netanyahu describes the whole of the Gaza District as, in effect, a 'terrorist camp' that Iran will (or even does) use to attack Israel, it speaks of the long-established view that Gaza is a problem whose solution is the expulsion of most or all of its population, a 'policy' that has been in and out of the in and out tray of Israel politicians since the 1950s (see the Depopulation link below).

I guess if the US were to agree to take 4 million Palestinians that might solve the problem, but where to -Wyoming?

And if Gaza is an existential threat to Israel, so are Lebanon, and Jordan, bearing in mind in the latter case the Likud lays claim to 'historical' 'biblical' lands of Northern Jordan in ancient times known as Moab, Ammon and Edom. At which point on the map of the Middle East does Israel think it will have a 'secure border'?

Israeli Attempts to Depopulate Gaza, A Brief History (beehiiv.com) (https://palestine.beehiiv.com/p/israeli-attempts-depopulate-gaza-brief-history)

'100-200,000, Not Two Million': Israel's Finance Minister Envisions Depopulated Gaza - Israel News - Haaretz.com (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-31/ty-article/100-200-000-not-two-million-israels-finance-minister-envisions-depopulated-gaza/0000018c-bfe8-d6c4-ab8d-fffc0b910000)

Israel’s ‘Plan B’ for the Gaza Strip | Opinions | Al Jazeera (https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/19/israels-plan-b-for-the-gaza-strip)

Israel’s Plans for Gaza Are Moving Forward in Plain Sight - DAWN (dawnmena.org) (https://dawnmena.org/israels-plans-for-gaza-are-moving-forward-in-plain-sight/)

[Stavros]

As if we did not know by now, Israel's world leadership in telecomms and its less popular adjuncts has been on display to lethal effect - exploding phones, spyware in the software you are probably using, if not to see this, to chat with your chums, and now exploding pagers.

The key point is not that Israel can do it, or that Israel and Hizbollah have been in an in and out dog fight -for so many years it would take me some time to construct a timetable- but that the attacks inside Lebanon have followed pleas from the US for Israel to do anything but escalate its tensions with Lebanon.

"A day before the coordinated sabotage, Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to Joe Biden, was in Israel urging Benjamin Netanyahu (https://www.theguardian.com/world/benjamin-netanyahu) and other senior Israeli officials against an escalation in Lebanon."
Exploding pager attack in Lebanon is another blow for US peace hopes | US foreign policy | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/17/exploding-pager-attack-in-lebanon-is-another-blow-for-us-peace-hopes)

In other words, Netanyahu has told the US to go fuck itself, he will make the decisions, and all the US must do is to continue supplying the arms and the funding, until his old family friend, Trump, is back in the White House, which is what Netanyahu wants.

How will the US react? In a tame way, of course. And if there is an escalation, no doubt Israel will declare it has a right to defend itself, as if nobody else in the region also had that right, least of all the 8 year old girl who lost her life yesterday.

Netanyahu simply does not believe in peace or negotiations. On the basis Israel will win every war it gets involved in, war is his only item on the agenda, and everyone else must accept it. I think this is what is called the politics of despair.

[Stavros]

Another day, another crime. It is beyond doubt that the exploding pagers and now the exploding walkie-talkies are a violation of international law, just on proportionate violence alone. That HAMAS doesn't care how many people die for its cause, so Israel views every Arab as an existential threat, or rather Netanyahu and his Likud and Coalition partners do, so who cares if the 'events' in Lebanon kill men, women and children regardless of any links to Hizbollah?

But this is really about the US. If the CIA did not know about this tactic, then it suggests that their intelligence gathering is not that good, and/or that Mossad and other intelligence agencies in Israel are not sharing information with the CIA, another failing.

If the CIA did know, my guess is that they strongly opposed using this kind of warfare, and this is where the action is: Netanyahu telling the Biden Administration to go fuck itself, Israel will act alone, but still expect the US to defend it, or maybe Netanyahu is trying to provoke Biden into a negative reaction so he can paint Harris as a danger to Israel, without openly advising the American people to vote for his guy, his old family friend Trump, though when it started it was actually Trump's daddy who made friends with a young Bibi when the latter was based in NYC.

Two selfish men addicted to their own survival, and if this means sacrificing the lives of innocent people, so be it.

All that time and money, all that intelligence and expertise, the manufacture of products, the infiltration of supply chains, to achieve what? Killing people, rather than saving them. Is this a tactical success that has exposed the weaknesses in Hizbollah, but a strategic mistake? Escalating the war with Lebanon is not a problem for Netanyahu because he believes Israel can and will win every war it takes part in, and is a reminder that in 1982 when his predecessor Begin launched the invasion of Lebanon, it was to destroy the PLO, a war that failed, that resulted in some of the most gruesome massacres even the Middle East has seen. That just over 10 years later the same PLO was signing a peace treaty with Israel is something that sticks in Netanyahu's throat and won't go away, he hates it.

He loves war, so does HAMAS. Can nobody intervene to stop these maniacs? You would think after 100 years the record shows it doesn't produce solutions.

[Stavros]

An editorial in today's Observer concludes with this-

"Gaza is Biden’s biggest failure, bigger even than Ukraine. Yet, rather than urgently repair the damage, officials in Washington are suggesting that a ceasefire is unlikely before his successor takes office in January. So what is US policy now? In a word, containment. Unable to stop the war, the White House appears merely intent on preventing it spreading further (https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2024-09-20/ty-article/.premium/report-u-s-officials-believe-gaza-cease-fire-not-realistic-before-november-election/00000192-0e9b-d2af-a5be-6efbf54c0000) before the November presidential election, for fear it could harm Kamala Harris’s and the Democrats’ chances. It’s not really a policy at all. It’s a cop-out, a green light for hardliners and extremists on all sides to do their reckless, abominable worst. Which is why, more so now than ever, the Middle East totters on the brink."
The Observer view on the Middle East crisis: Biden’s failure on Gaza is fuelling wider war | Observer editorial | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/22/the-observer-view-on-the-middle-east-crisis-bidens-failure-on-gaza-is-fuelling-wider-war)

I am not sure what Biden has done wrong in the sense that US policy toward Israel has not changed much since 1967 and I am sure if asked Biden officials would argue the commitment is to Israel, not Netanyahu. If the US were to say, reduce funding or weapons sales, would this pressure Netanyahu to change course and negotiate with HAMAS? I doubt it. He is a belligerent man and loves conflict, indeed, it is the only reason he is on politics, other than whatever personal gains he makes from the office.

Unless something is happening behind the scenes, neither HAMAS nor Netanyahu appear to be willing to conclude the latest phase of this conflict, indeed Netanyahu is banking on Trump becoming President and thus insults Biden at every opportunity. HAMAS is not going to agree to anything that does not preserve their organization, in Gaza and the West Bank (where it is more popular than ever), and will not agree to the IDF remaining in Gaza. If reports are true, that Netanyahu wants to transfer the Palestinians in the North of Gaza to the South, the prospects for a negotiated settlement are even more remote, the fate of the hostages from uncertain to very grim indeed.

Netanyahu sees Biden as a lame duck Democrat, he is holding on. Iran need only carry on doing what it has been doing even if there is discontent in Lebanon with it and Hizbollah, with no alternative in sight to re-structure Lebanese politics.

So it is not really Biden's fault, he is trying to bring two bullies to the negotiating table, and they are not willing yet to make a deal.

Another lose-lose situation in the Middle East.

[Stavros]

An article in The Hill exposes the problem: the mistakes of history being repeated -again, and again.

"For all of its rhetoric about protecting Lebanon from Israeli aggression, Hezbollah’s actions in recent years have done more to destabilize the country than to safeguard it. And now, with Israel’s recent infiltration and systematic dismantling of Hezbollah’s military apparatus, the cracks in its image are more visible than ever."
The myth of Hezbollah has been shattered (thehill.com) (https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4902313-the-myth-of-hezbollah-has-been-shattered/)

Here is another version

"In the mid-20th century, Lebanon (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/lebanon) was one of the wealthiest and most prosperous countries in the Middle East (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/middle-east). Its capital, Beirut, was once known as the Paris of the Middle East. It was the only state in the Middle East where Christianity was dominant, at one point making up over 60% (https://www.loc.gov/item/91684898) of the population.Decades later, “the country is in free fall,” according to one expert. A 15-year-long sectarian civil war, an influx of Palestinian and Syrian refugees, foreign interventions, large-scale emigration, and deep corruption turned Lebanon into one of the poorest and least stable countries in a poor and volatile region. The past four years have seen a series of crises that resulted in the collapse of the Lebanese economy and mismanagement contributing to the 2020 Beirut port blast (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/massive-explosion-rocks-beirut) that devastated the city. The once-thriving Christian community has plummeted to roughly one-third (https://philosproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Invisible-Jihad-Report.pdf) of the population."
Lebanon’s once-thriving Christian population dwindling as country approaches collapse - Washington Examiner (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2176034/lebanons-once-thriving-christian-population-dwindling-as-country-approaches-collapse/)

For reasons not explained, Janine di Giovanni, in her book The Vanishing: The Twilight of Christianity in the Middle East (2021) does not dedicate a chapter to Lebanon, and only mentions it in passing, though when she points out the influx of -mostly Muslim- refugees from Syria into Lebanon owing to the Asad war + ISIS, she could have remarked on how this series of events that has been one factor in the destabilization of Lebanon was similar to the influx of Palestinians into Lebanon following the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and the Jordanian Government's expulsion of the PLO from that country between 1970-71.

In 1969 the Lebanese Govt reached an agreement with the PLO which effectively protected them, expanding the refugee camps that has existed since 1948, giving the PLO considerable authority over the southern areas where many refugees settled, but creating tensions with the largely Shi'a communities there -weak at the time, they created a political movement, Amal, to counter Palestinian influence, while more broadly resentment with the PLO fomented until breaking out into Civil War in 1974-75, a war that was sent spiralling into chaos when Israel invaded in 1982 in order to destroy the PLO owing to cross-border incidents with Menachem Begin saying 'enough is enough', or words to that effect, or if you like, the same words used by Netanyahu in the UN yesterday when justifying yet another round of bombing and destruction in Beirut. And what was the legacy of 1982? Hizbollah.

And just as Begin vowed to destroy the PLO, and didn't, so Netanyahu vows to destroy HAMAS and Hizbollah and will fail as surely as the sun rises in the morning.

Yes, Lebanon was once the largest Christian majority country in the region, because that is how the French created it. Just as Britain via the League of Nations created Palestine, TransJordan and Iraq in 1921, so France took over most of the Arab territory of the defeated Ottoman Empire (not all, the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 was amended after the war to award the Mosul province of what was going to be in Syria to the British, thus becoming part of Iraq).

The French invented Lebanon as a Christian country, but it was never stable, as insurrections all over French territory made governance of a 'country' difficult, not least because the French rejected the wishes of the Arabs to rule themselves and imposed themselves through military force, much as the British were never welcome in Palestine. To the victor the spoils -as Churchill once protested when being told the Hashemite Sherif of Mecca was complaining about the British take over of Palestine 'he didn't win the war, we did!'.

So here we are again -an Israel that contains at least 4 million people who don't want it, were never asked if they wanted it, and have no rights inside it -this being Israeli 'democracy'. One social group not invading but seeking refuge in the country of another upsetting the balance of identities, creating tensions, corruption, and ultimately violence, while external actors pile in with their own agendas, fuelling low intensity warfare with dollars and bombs, and for what? Because people can't get along with each other.

Imagine if the British Govt in response to the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974, or the Brighton Hotel bombing in 1984 had led the RAF to bomb the Bogside into rubble, or laid waste to West Belfast, 90% of the 'Nationalist' or 'Catholic' population forced from their homes, flooding into the Republic, or living in tents on waste ground -it would have created a crisis in the UK and a whole heap of condemnation from around the world.

But at the time Thatcher said 'we don't deal with terrorists', until she did, and authorised secret talks with the IRA, talks that were continued under John Major, until Blair brought it all out into the open and a deal was struck that has transformed a province of chronic hate and violence into so tolerable a place they filmed much of Game of Thrones there. The Quarter-Master of the IRA, Martin McGuiness was as far as I know, never the target of assassination attempts by the SAS though he was an easy target throughout the Troubles, while Israel assassinated any number of leading PLO figures and could have murdered Arafat at any time, just as we believe they have or wish to assassinate Nasrallah today in Lebanon. When the late Queen visited Northern Ireland, she met McGuiness who by then was No 2 in the Power Sharing arrangement that ended the Troubles.

So there you have it: the forced movement of people from war in one country destabilizing another already weak state, leading to civil war and Israeli bombing -could be 1982, could be 2024. 'Terrorist' organizations that are going to be smashed, its leaders dead. Then come the negotiations, the peace treaties- as with Israel and the PLO in 1993- until someone else decides this ain't right, and they go back to what they did before, killing people.

So try this: Netanyahu, stop the bombing, and pick up the phone. You supported HAMAS from the day it was created in 1988 to the 7th of October 2023. Swallow your pride and admit everything you have done since the assassination of Rabin has been a failure. Try the one thing you have not done, peace instead of war.

But I guess it is not going to happen, HAMAS don't want it -not right now- and the Americans are not good for anything except dollars and bombs. Netanyahu spits in Biden's face every day, while the hand goes out- 'give us more'.

More of the same, as if the same old over the last 100 years had not proven the same old don't work.

SitRep Sept 2024: Situation Currently Hopeless.

[Stavros]

"US President Joe Biden has described Hassan Nasrallah's killing as a "measure of justice for his many victims".He says these include "thousands of Americans, Israelis and Lebanese civilians".".
Israel-Lebanon latest: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah killed in Beirut - BBC News (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c981g8mrl8lt)

So why didn't the US kill him? They had the means, the motive and so many opportunities.

[Stavros]

The world waits with mouths agape -are we about to see another turn of the spiral into forever war?

The new President of Iran is, relative to his predecessors, a reformist who wants to some degree better relations with the West, mostly for economic reasons, but with a revived nuclear deal on the table, or maybe the sidelines, judging by Patrick Wintour's article below.

What would happen if, instead of fire and brimstone, Iran offered a new deal that sought peace rather than war? It might be hard to predict, given Iran's close relations with Russia at the moment, but if the weakening -for the time being- of Hizbollah were to offer a 'reset' of the kind that, following Saddam's catastrophic invasion of Kuwait led to the Oslo Accords, it would wrong-foot Netanyahu, as the agenda would include a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of the hostages, a diplomatic recognition of Israel by Iran, and, wait for it, 'sovereignty' or even a state for the Palestinians.

Problem is Netanyahu doesn't like packages, and always preferred bi-lateral rather than multi-lateral deals, so however tempting it would be to have an Israel-Iran relationship, with the added promise of Saudi Arabia (who would not want to be left out of the advance), Netanyahu would have to weight the benefits with the dissent of the crazies in his Cabinet who, assuming they rejected it, would end Netanyahu's career, and Middle East peace with it, though in all cases, Palestinian rights would be the last item on the agenda.

Iran's President Khatami offered a new relationship with the US after 9/11. They had Bin Laden's family under house arrest in Tehran, they hated al-Qaeda, but Bush rejected the offer, not even Obama could move beyond the nuclear deal to end the US-Iran hostility.

So it all looks bleak, because Netanyahu is not Rabin. But what has been achieved? Israel assassinated al-Musawi when he was leader of Hizbollah, now it has assassinated Nasrallah. This time next year if not next month, Hizbollah will have a new leader. Whether the organization remains powerful in Lebanon is not so sure, it has its constituencies in the South and the Bekaa Valley, but many Lebanese are fed up with them, but populate a weak, fragmented State, which now has to contend with Israel's destruction, and yet another crisis of human displacement -where are these people made homeless going to live? Who is going to pay for the reconstruction in Beirut and Gaza and the other zones of obliteration? Those suckers called Americans?

The killing of Hassan Nasrallah leaves Iran with a fateful choice and the US humiliated | Hezbollah | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/28/hassan-nasrallah-hezbollah-iran-lebanon-israel-us-analysis)

[Stavros]

Netanyahu must be having a military grade orgasm. He has what he has always wanted in his existential obsession: to prove that Israel is the dominant military power in the Middle East, and cannot be beaten. And I don't think he is wrong to think that, as the US armaments Israel has are superior to what Iran has, and there is the longer term view that Netanyahu has stated that is the same phrase Tony Blair used with regard to regime change in Iraq: 'We need to remake the Middle East'. The violence that is being used to achieve an aim that has no clear objective other than the end of the Islamic Republic in Iran and the elimination of HAMAS and Hizbollah, may in the short term deliver severe blows, and there is a slight possibility of change in Iran, though one underestimates the internal conflict between those who desire reform (and the new Iranian PM is at least in principle a reformer), and the diehard supporters of the Ayatollahs -Israel, in seeking to change Iran, may only de-stabilize it much as Bush and Blair trashed Iraq, with all the gruesome results that followed there.

But if this cripples Iran and leaves its civilians in a dire mess, that too is for Netanyahu an achievement, because what Netanyahu has committed himself to is the opposite of diplomacy, of the kind that led to Israel signing a peace agreement with Egypt in 1979 -with no cross border attacks since then- and Jordan in 1993 (ditto), and the PLO also in 1993, a treaty Sharon and Netanyahu (and HAMAS) trashed so they could go back to the 100 years war that has so far not produced a solution to the simple fact that Arabs and Jews live in the same space, and should learn how to share it.

So here we go again, war, war, and yet more war. As if there was no alternative. As for the price of oil per barrel, and the laws of war, well I guess they are all up in the air, and soaring....

"Israel will attack Iran within days and could strike oil facilities or even nuclear sites, according to reports. The Israeli response could include targeted assassinations as well as air strikes, Israeli officials told Axios news website.
...Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, has urged Israel to “destroy [Iran’s] nuclear project, destroy their major energy facilities and critically hit this terrorist regime.”".
Israel-Hezbollah war latest: Israel ‘will launch retaliation on Iran’s oil production within days’ (telegraph.co.uk) (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/10/02/israel-hezbollah-war-lebanon-invasion-gaza-latest-news/)

[Stavros]

A fair assessment

After a fortnight of military triumph, what is Israel’s endgame? | Israel | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/02/after-a-fortnight-of-military-triumph-what-is-israels-endgame)

[Stavros]

One year on, and there is no end of bloodshed, and no end of Bullshit, most of it from the Americans, though I do believe there are educated Americans who do not share the outrageous bias of their media, though it seems when Gallant described the Palestinians as 'animals' he was probably just echoing what others think.
The mainstream media has failed us after 7 October | Peter Beinart | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/07/mainstream-media-israel-denies-palestinian-freedom)

As someone with family ties to the region, who has been there, lived, written about it, and lamented too many times the myopic violence and hate, today is not as special as it is for those who mark October 7th with grief, because we have been here before. The wonder is that after 100 years it still goes on.

Over the weekend, when I was in Stockholm, surely one of the least interesting of Europe's capitals, I read two thought-provoking interesting articles.

Raja Shehadeh, whose writing about Palestinians life has always been eloquent and deeply human, writes about the widening gulf between Arab and Jew, and, as it gets wider, so too do the prospects of any kind of dialogue, let alone reconciliation. It is one of his most depressing pieces of journalism, but nevertheless important.
When will this horror end? When Israel realises that the cost of destroying us is too high | Raja Shehadeh | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/05/israel-destroying-palestinians-war-hope)

Particularly when read with this other article, which goes some way to exposing how divisions in Israel among its Jews now make it impossible for some to live there, and not just anyone, but the kind of secular intellectual and entrepreneurial elite who have been central to Israel's economic success over the last 40 years -only they can't cope with the Fascism of Netayahu, Smotrich, Gen-Gvir and even worse, the people on the ground who support them.
A year of war accelerates ‘silent departure’ of Israel’s elite | Israel | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/06/as-war-and-religion-rages-israels-secular-elite-contemplate-a-silent-departure)

The dream of Jabotinsky and Stern, of Begin and Sharon is being realized in Netanyahu, but crucially, among a wider spectrum of the Israeli public who in 1993 might have thought of Rabin -yes let's Give Peace a Chance.

Margaret Thatcher once denied the Provisional IRA the 'oxygen of publicity' -and not long after enabled back channel talks with the very same people we were not allowed to hear talk on TV. John Major maintained those talks and sought a different kind of relationship with the Republic of Ireland, so Blair, with the redoubtable Mo Mowlam at the helm, could build on existing forms of dialogue to end a war characterised by the same kind of ignorance and hate we see in the Middle East: It can Be Done.

But note, the UK never bombed Belfast or 'Derry' to nothing, the Catholics were not slaughtered on mass or driven south to 'their' Republic. And yet, had Netanyahu on the evening of October 7th called Sinwar and said :THIS ENDS HERE, who knows?

I lament the lack of decency and courage, as if such simple virtues have no place in this world.

Ни славом униат ни платком вытереть

[Stavros]

The latest Diktat from the Master of all he Sees

"Israel's prime minister has urged the Lebanese people to throw out Hezbollah and avoid "destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza".
During a video address directed at the people of Lebanon, Netanyahu said: "You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.
"I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end."".
Netanyahu warns Lebanon of 'destruction like Gaza' - BBC News (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly3x1w0595o)

One possible alternative
"I say to you, the people of Israel, free your country from the Likud and its allies, so that this war can end".

Likud in the Knesset: 32 seats
Hizbollah in the Lebanese Parliament: 13 (*part of a 61 seat Coalition in the Parliament)

Hezbollah and its allies lose majority in Lebanon's parliament : NPR (https://www.npr.org/2022/05/17/1099451406/hezbollah-loses-majority-in-lebanon-parliament)
Israel: parliament election results by party 2022 | Statista (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1278850/number-of-seats-in-the-24th-knesset-in-israel-by-political-party/)

[Stavros]

More drivel from the swivel eyed loon

a) has never been to Gaza
b) Gaza better than Monaco...makes you wonder if he has ever been there. Is there a more exquisite harbour than Monte Carlo, and is it not one of the reasons people go there to live?

Douglas Murray, a pioneer of preposterous potty politics, once argued that Gaza could have become Singapore on the Med, were it not for crazy HAMAS death-is-better-than-life types. As if Israel would tolerate an economic success story on its southern Border that could or would undermine its own economic strength (as was, given that Bibi's War is costing them -and the US taxpayer- the Earth).

Give it some thought: which is the most likely location for 'Singapore on the Med'? Gaza? No. Cyprus? No. Crete? No. Rhodes? No. Sicily? No. Gibraltar? Definitely No.

Malta. And it hasn't happened. End of story.

Trump appears to falsely claim he’s been to Gaza – and says it could be ‘better than Monaco’ | The Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-gaza-monaco-hugh-hewitt-b2625879.html)

[Stavros]

I don't know if Yahya Sinwar has been assassinated by Israel, it is really not that important. It may be a military victory for Israel, and it is undeniable that they have some stunning intelligence networks, not just in Israel but across the world, even if, when they fail they do so in spectacular fashion, eg 1973, and October 7 2024.

Israel spent years tracking down most of the men they held responsible for the Munich Olympic massacres, most of them from Black September. Though an offshoot of Fateh, their elimination did not affect Fateh that much -Black September was wound up in 1974, and just under 20 years later Arafat was shaking hands with Yitzhak Rabin and singing a peace treaty. Killing the leaders of HAMAS, or Hizbollah or any or all senior figures in the 'Palestinian movement' does nothing, absolutely nothing to deal with the one reality that Netanyahu cannot or will not try to resolve: the 4 million Palestinian men, women and children who live in Israel without any of the rights that Israeli citizens have.

The extremists -even more extreme than Netanyahu- might want to expel every Palestinian from the Gaza District, even the West Bank, but nobody knows how, or where 4 million are supposed to live, while further north, Lebanese refugees moving into Syria are in dire situations, perhaps another 1, 2 or 20 million will be made homeless by Israel, and who is going to stop them?

And to think all it needed, on October 7th was a phone call from Netanyahu to the leader of HAMAS that Israel and Netanyahu supported and nurtured from the day it was created, saying 'This Stops Here'.

One wonders if that nauseating coward in Israel will soon be joined by that spineless, ignorant coward Trump in their campaign of death, misery and homelessness. Dare we hope for better days ahead?

Middle East crisis live: Israeli army says it is ‘checking possibility’ it killed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar (theguardian.com) (https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/oct/17/middle-east-crisis-live-updates-israel-iran-lebanon-gaza-war)

[sidney111]

And to think all it needed, on October 7th was a phone call from Netanyahu to the leader of HAMAS that Israel and Netanyahu supported and nurtured from the day it was created, saying 'This Stops Here'.


) (https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/oct/17/middle-east-crisis-live-updates-israel-iran-lebanon-gaza-war)

I will take whatever you are smoking ��

[Stavros]

I will take whatever you are smoking ��

The same baccy Sadat was smoking when he went to Israel in November 1977.

The same baccy Margaret Thatcher was smoking when her Govt opened a back channel with the Provisional IRA during the Hunger Strikes of 1981.

The same baccy the Palestinians and the Israelis were smoking when they started their secret talks in Oslo in 1993.

The same baccy Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat were smoking on the White House lawn in 1993 'Enough bloodshed and tears' -remember that?

The same baccy Tony Blair's Govt was smoking when, the day after the election victory in 1997. Mo Mowlam went to Northern Ireland to begin the end game of the Troubles that produced the Good Friday Agreement of 10 April 1998.

It has been done, it can be done. All it needs is courage.

Don't need a smoke. Need a drink. A stiff one. Preferably single malt, many times.

[Stavros]

"Despite widespread international opposition, lawmakers voted overwhelming on Monday evening to approve two bills (https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-set-to-pass-laws-monday-that-will-heavily-restrict-unrwa-in-gaza-west-bank/) essentially barring the UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants from operating in Israel, and severely curtailing its activities in Gaza and the West Bank."
Knesset approves laws barring UNRWA from Israel, limiting it in Gaza and West Bank | The Times of Israel (https://www.timesofisrael.com/knesset-approves-laws-barring-unrwa-from-israel-limiting-it-in-gaza-and-west-bank/)

While the Knesset decision has been widely condemned, it should come as no surprise. When I was doing research in the Middle East in the 1990s I was in a library and found a small pamphlet published in Israel -it was published in the 1960s- that condemned UNRWA, the point being that Israel has been opposed to this UN Agency since the day it was created.

The argument from those Israelis who supported this measure, was that UNRWA could not serve Palestinian refugees because they do not exist. It is an extension of Golda Meir's claim that Palestinians don't exist, and is part of the broader argument about Palestinian identity not having any 'national' significance before 1967. Just as Palestinians 'left' their territory in 1948, so they were not refugees but migrants, though few people, states or institutions accepted this view. It also enabled pro-Israeli writers to claim that 'Jordan is Palestine' and thus encourage Palestinians on the West Bank to cross the river, a sentiment that is probably even stronger now than it was after the 1967 war.

There is an obvious problem with the simple fact that Arab and Jew have lived in this land for millennia, though right now the opportunity for two sides to share what they have does not look realistic, as the militants on both sides have done all they can to create bitterness, hatred and violence. One wonders who the Falustin of the Bible were, just as the 'Jordan is Palestine' argument becomes a sham when the Likud Party's definition of 'Erez Israel -the creation of which is its mission- includes the Biblical lands of Moab, Gilead, Ammon and Edom which are on the East Bank of the River Jordan.

Perhaps when Netanyahu declares he is creating a 'new Middle East' he means a Greater Israel which has two buffer zones -the Philadelphi Corridor on the Egyptian border, the Buffer zone in what is currently Southern Lebanon (emptied of over a million people to serve Israel's strategic but ultimately also its social and economic interests), while Israel will expand East of the River Jordan. However fanciful this sounds, bear in mind that for decades nobody thought Israel would actually ban UNWRA, that it would build walls to shut out people it doesn't like when everyone else was tearing them down, and repeat in the Gaza District what Israel did in the Palestine Mandate in the 1940s.

Gaza is now uninhabitable, which is what Netanyahu and the Crazies have wanted for a long long time. Where will the people go? They don't care, as long as it is not in Israel. In the end, it is the US which will have to pick up the tab for this expensive folly, though I doubt either Harris or Trump will agree to take in 4 million Palestinian refugees.

It's as if nobody really cares enough to do anything to help them, stateless, without rights, without homes, without hope.

[Stavros]

"More than 1,000 figures from the literary and entertainment industry – including several Nobel laureates, Pulitzer prize, and Booker prize winners – have signed an open letter against “illiberal and dangerous” cultural boycotts.The letter (https://www.creativecommunityforpeace.com/blog/2024/10/29/authors/) was released by the nonprofit body Creative Community For Peace [CCFP], which campaigns against cultural boycotts of Israel, after more than 1,000 book industry figures pledged to boycott Israeli cultural institutions (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/28/sally-rooney-percival-everett-arundhati-roy-boycott-israel-palestine-gaza) that “are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians”."
Nobel and Pulitzer winners denounce ‘dangerous’ Israel cultural boycott | Israel | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/30/nobel-and-pulitzer-winners-denounce-israel-cultural-boycott)

First off, I don't support these kinds of boycott, because they are offensive, and because they don't work. Netanyahu could not care a damn about culture, or rather, his only culture is violence, so a boycott is pointless with so vulgar a man.

Second, have we not reached a point where the 'right of self-defence' that Israel claims must be set against the international law of armed conflict as well as humanitarian law to ask what Israel's proportionate response should have been? The collective punishment that has effectively destroyed the Gaza District is illegal, but raises the question was Israel merely waiting for the moment to impose its 'end game' on Gaza -that is, to find a way to get the people out, something Netanyahu's more extreme partners in Govt have declared is their aim?

Third, horrific as Oct 7th was, three times as many Palestinians were slaughtered in the refugee camps in Beirut in 1982 by Christians while the IDF formed a cordon around the camps to maximize the casualties -or are we to say some lives are worth more than others?

Lastly, these writers of books, makers of theatres might be asked this: after HAMAS, which hated cinema, who destroyed Gaza's cinemas, its theatres, its Libraries (making it impossible for anyone to borrow a book by David Grosssman) and cultural treasures in the form of historic mosques and churches? Israel did.

Have any of the 1000 condemned this cultural annihilation?

Israeli Damage to Archives, Libraries, and Museums in Gaza, October 2023–January 2024 – Librarians and Archivists with Palestine (https://librarianswithpalestine.org/gaza-report-2024/)

Gaza’s Cinemas & Theatres — afikra | عفكرة (https://www.afikra.com/daftarjournal/gaza-cinemas-theaters)

Two Palestinian Artists Condemn Israel’s Destruction of Gaza's Iconic Theater - Palestine Chronicle (https://www.palestinechronicle.com/two-palestinian-artists-condemn-israels-destruction-of-gazas-iconic-theater/)

100 days of war in Gaza: More than 23,000 dead and a society in ruins | Middle East Eye (https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-war-100-days-more-than-23000-dead-society-ruins)

[Stavros]

Channel 3 News reported on this last week, and when the channel's Irish reporter asked one of the zealots what should happen to the Palestinians in Gaza, he said 'Maybe Ireland and the UK can taken them'.

How about Michigan?

"Since the war in Gaza began, there has been renewed international focus on Israeli settlements and settler violence (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/20/nowhere-is-safe-fear-and-mourning-inside-the-west-bank-villages-where-israeli-settlers-went-on-the-rampage) in the West Bank. Unprecedented pushback has come in the form of US, British, and EU sanctions.Weiss, under sanctions from Canada herself, says she is undeterred by criticism from abroad, pointing to what she claims is her personal success of establishing 300 settlements in the West Bank, where 500,000 Israeli settlers now live.
“I took all my experience from 50 years of dealing with settling the mountains, and I’m mobilising it to create a new reality in Gaza,” she said. “You think what I am saying is imaginary, some kind of fantasy. It is not.”".

‘The Arabs will disappear’: buoyant Israeli settlers eye return to Gaza | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/31/israeli-settlers-eye-return-to-gaza)

[Stavros]

Nominating Mike Huckabee to be the US's ambassador to Israel is purely transactional -the 'Evangelicals' gave him their vote, he gives them Huckabee. But Huckabee himself has had to admit he doesn't make policy, and it is clear that as far as that goes, Huckabee's appointment contradicts Trump's desire to be the 'peacemaker' in the Middle East, and of course get a Nobel Prize for doing so.

The problem is that when the UAE signed up to the 'Abraham Accords' it was explicit that this did not endorse the annexation by Israel of the West Bank, which is the opposite position of Mike Huckabee, and it is unlikely that Trump, seeing as he does the amount of money Kushner has got from the Saudis is going to put a principle before profit, so in this sense, Huckabee's appointment is a cosmetic blush, and not much more, though in terms of tone, it does send a bleak message to the Palestinians wherever they live: You are Nothing, Nobody Cares About You, You Have no Future.

Some links, and note that there are just as many critical remarks from Jewish outlets as others-

The Real Reason Trump Picked Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel - The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/11/west-bank-annexation-evangelical/680658/)

What Trump Israel Ambassador Mike Huckabee Has Said About the Middle East | TIME (https://time.com/7176436/mike-huckabee-trump-israel-ambassador-palestinians-middle-east/)

How Mike Huckabee could derail Trump's promised Israel policy – The Forward (https://forward.com/opinion/674818/mike-huckabee-israel-ambassador-west-bank/)

Trump ambassador pick Huckabee says administration could back West Bank annexation | The Times of Israel (https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-ambassador-pick-huckabee-says-administration-could-back-west-bank-annexation/)

[Stavros]

A predictable burst of outrage has followed the ICC warrant for the arrests of Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and Mohamed Deif. That said, while Netanyahu has condemned it, and while his supporters in the UK, Hungary and the US have also done so, I am not sure they have condemned the warrant for Deif, maybe they don't mention him because it would raise the question: why him and not them?

The core of the legal argument is that Israel has deliberately deprived the population of Gaza of the basic needs of life, an argument that is proven every day on the footage we are allowed to see, given that Israel restricts reporting from the Gaza district. Depriving people of their homes, as is also the case in southern Lebanon and parts of Beirut, is also a crime.

It is clear that in the past, Israel supported the creation of HAMAS as a means of undermining the PLO/Fateh in the West Bank. It is clear that for all the tit for tat rockets and border clashes, first Sharon and then Netanyahu believed their strategy of containment was working, just as Netanyahu turned the screws on settlements on the West Bank until HAMAS believed it could not longer just lob rockets into Israel with minimum damage.

It is also the case that the Kushner Accords with the Gulf and other Arab states was seen by HAMAS a blow, but just as they thought the average Arab in the street opposed them (and most did), HAMAS underestimated the reaction of the Gulf states in particular if, as happened on October 7th 2023 HAMAS decided to change the status quo and push for a radical break with the preceding 25 years of misery. Detached from the political bureau in Qatar, much as the PLO leadership was isolated in Tunis between 1982 and the 1990s, Sinwar and Deif in my opinion miscalculated the Arab reaction -there was no repeat of the reaction to the October War of 1973, it left HAMAS on its own, its closest supporters in despair at the actions it took on October 7th.

One key point is the vexed problem of self-defence and a proportionate response to an attack. We have seen over the years that Israel's retaliation for an HAMAS attack was always disproportionate, thus since 2023 Israel's response has not just been disproportionate, is suggests that Netanyahu and his Cabinet of Lunatics, October 7 2023 not only changed the parameters of the 100 year old conflict, it has presented Israel with an opportunity to repeat 1948 and expel the Arabs from the Gaza District, first by making it uninhabitable, and soon I fear, the mass 'transfer' of Arabs out, where to I don't know.

If this is worthy of a court case, some may argue why Israel and not others, though others have been indicted and in the case of the former Yugoslavia tried and imprisoned.

Throughout the war of liberation in Algeria, the French military did respond to various bombings and killings with a 'ratonnade', rounding up Arabs, treating them badly in prison, and so on. But as with the British following the pub bombings in Birmingham in 1974, and the bombing of the hotel in Brighton Margaret Thatcher was staying in for the party conference in 1984, neither party responded by carpet bombing cities, be it Algiers or Oran, Belfast or (London)Derry. We never saw the Bogside or West Belfast churned into rubble, the Catholic population in whom the IRA and INLA were embedded (perhaps with more local support than HAMAS had in Gaza), bereft of their homes, squatting in fields or parks, or marched south into the Republic of Ireland.

Israel's response is thus not just a violation of International Law as is also the case with HAMAS, but suggests more than self-defence is at work here. It is an agenda which the new US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee may support, though it remains to be seen if the old family friend of Netanyahu, Trump, gives Israel the freedom to do whatever it wants.

One thing is sure -there will not be any reduction in the violence soon, the tragedy rolls on, the world seemingly powerless to stop it.

(1) UK would comply with Netanyahu arrest warrant, says No 10 – UK politics live (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/nov/22/uk-politics-latest-news-labour-immigration-conservatives)