The Biden administration has launched a probe after highly classified U.S. intelligence documents were posted online showing that Israel is taking steps to launch a retaliatory attack against Iran. Meanwhile, a drone hit Benjamin Netanyahu’s seaside home Saturday in what the Israeli prime minister has called an assassination attempt by “Iran’s proxy Hezbollah.” As tensions between Iran and Israel…
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A U.S. weapons system has landed and is “in place” in Israel, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin said on Monday, as the Biden administration beefs up U.S. support of Israel and Israeli forces prepare to attack Iran and continue their bombardments of Lebanon and Gaza. The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, worth between roughly $1 billion to $1.8 billion and made by…
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The recent string of exaggerated military successes – or at least as they are understood to be – places Israel in a situation it has been previously used to: prowess in war. Such prowess promises much: redrawing boundaries; overthrowing governments; destroying the capabilities of adversaries and enemies. Nothing, in this equation, contemplates peace, let alone diplomatic resolution. It’s playground pugilism that rarely gets out of the sandpit.
In Washington, a fever has struck regarding Israel’s advances. The outbreak has stirred much enthusiasm in a doctrine that has been shown, time and again, to be wretchedly uncertain and grossly dangerous. With no concrete evidence of imminent harm to US interests, it featured in the highest policy planning circles that oiled an invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the stated objective was the disarming of Saddam Hussein’s regime for having Weapons of Mass Destruction it turned out not to have, the logic was one of pre-emptive strike: we attack the madman in Baghdad before he goes nuclear and loses it.
The establishment wonk on empire and espionage at the Washington Post, David Ignatius, offers a fairly meaningless assessment in terms of claimed Israeli dominance over Iran and its proxies. After a year of conflict, Israel had “gained what military strategists call ‘escalation dominance’”. The implication: a decisive attack on Iran is imminent.
The point here (at this juncture, the mind lost seeks sanctuary in a mental asylum of lunatic reassurances), is that attacking Iran in toto will not result in much by way of retaliatory detriment. Some bruising, surely, but hardly lingering flesh wounds. Israel has, it would seem, been working some magic, spreading its own view that Iran has a gruesome plan in its military vault: eliminating Israel by 2040.
In Foreign Policy, Matthew Kroenig, generously self-described as a national security strategist, blusters for war. “Indeed, now is an ideal opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program,” he asserts with childish longing. The reason for such an attack lies in a presumption. Yet again, the doctrine of pre-emption, one hostile to international law and the UN Charter, plays out its feeble rationale. Evidence, in such cases, is almost always scanty. Kroenig, however, is certain. Iran will secure one bomb’s worth of weapon-grade material within a matter of weeks. The rest is obvious. No evidence is offered, nor does it even matter, given Kroenig’s longstanding zeal in wishing to rid Iran of its nuclear facilities.
The Atlantic Council has also suggested a policy that what is good for the goose of Christian-Jewish freedom is not good for the gander of Persian Shia ambition. It is exactly this full-fledged hypocrisy that the despots of the secular tyranny in North Korea realised in dealing with Washington. Beware the nostrums against nuclear armament.
In a report authored by both Democrats and Republicans for the Council, a warning of chilling absurdity is offered: “The United States needs to maintain a declaratory policy, explicitly enunciated by the president, that it will not tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon and will use military force to prevent this development if all other measures fail.”
Instead of resisting belligerent chatter, the authors suggest that the US threaten Iran through announcing “yearly joint exercises with Israel, such as Juniper Oak and seek additional funding in the next budget cycle to speed research and development of next-generation military hardware capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear program.”
Kroenig shows his usual stuffing. Iran can never have nuclear weapons, because the United States and Israel say so. (The Sunni powers, for their own reasons, agree.) This form of perennial idiocy could apply to all the powers that have nuclear weapons, including Israel itself. At one point, no state should have had that relic of sadism’s folly. Then they came in succession after the United States: the Soviet bomb, the Britannic bomb, the Gallic bomb. Throw in China, India, Pakistan, Israel. Plucky, deranged North Korea, was wise to note the trend, showing lunacy to be eternally divisible.
It is precisely that sort of logic that has drawn such comments as this from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a May interview: “Iran’s level of deterrence will be different if the existence of Iran is threatened. We have no decision to produce a nuclear bomb, but we will have to change our nuclear doctrine if such threats occur.” This month, almost 40 legislators penned a letter to the Supreme National Security Council calling for a reconsideration of current nuclear doctrine. The greater the fanatic’s desire to remove a perceived threat, the more likely an opponent will give basis to that threat.
For all the faux restraint being officially aired in Washington regarding Israel’s next round of military assaults, there is enormous sympathy, even affection, for the view that wrongs shall be righted, and the mullahs punished. Bedding for a more hostile response to Iran also features in the inane airings of the presidential election. Vice President Kamala Harris, in an interview with 60 Minutes, remarked that, “Iran has American blood on its hands, okay?” In making that claim, she suggested that Tehran was somehow Washington’s greatest adversary.
In response to this fatuous remark, Justin Logan of the Cato Institute offers an ice-cold bath of reason: “This is not the Wehrmacht in 1940.” The path to dominating the Middle East hardly involves such tools as propaganda, proxy operations and psychological warfare “much less becoming the greatest threat to the United States.”
The nuclear option is now available to governments that should never have had them. But acquiring the dangerously untenable followed. To assume that brutal, amputation loving theocrats in Tehran should not have them defies the trajectory of a certain moronic consistency. The Persian bomb is probably imminent, and it is incumbent on the murderous fantasists in Israel and the United States to chew over that fact. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the fetish against acquisition risks expanding a conventional conflict through testing the will and means of a power that, while wounded, hardly counts as defeated.
The post Nuclear Fever: War Mongering on Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The Biden administration is sending an advanced anti-missile defense system and 100 U.S. troops to Israel in advance of expected retaliatory strikes against Iran. This marks the first significant deployment of American troops to Israel since the beginning of its assault on Gaza, though the U.S. has spent an estimated tens of billions of dollars on the Israeli military and related operations.
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The Pentagon confirmed Sunday that it has authorized the deployment of an advanced antimissile system and around 100 U.S. troops to Israel as the Netanyahu government prepares to attack Iran — a move that’s expected to provoke an Iranian response. Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, press secretary for the U.S. Defense Department, said in a statement that at President Joe Biden’s direction…
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Hopes of pardon dashed for Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, who were cleared of collaboration with US
Two young female journalists who were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for reporting on the death of Mahsa Amini have been cleared of charges of collaborating with the United States government but will still spend up to five more years behind bars, the Iranian authorities have announced.
Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi were arrested in 2022 after reporting on the death and funeral of Amini, the young Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, sparking the nationwide Women, Life, Freedom protests.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
“I said it loud and clear — and meant it — that I support Zionism without qualification,” Keir Starmer told Jewish News.
So our brand-new prime minister has refused to rule out UK military involvement in any Israeli response to Iran’s recent missile attack, condemning what he calls Iran’s “malign role” in the Middle East.
And he refused to say whether MPs would get a vote beforehand on any military action. “We support Israel’s right to defend herself against Iran’s aggression, in line with international law, because let’s be very clear, this was not a defensive action by Iran, it was an act of aggression and a major escalation in response to the death of a terrorist leader.
“It exposes, once again, Iran’s malign role in the region: they helped equip Hamas for the seventh of October attacks, they armed Hezbollah, who launched a year-long barrage of rockets on northern Israel, forcing 60,000 Israelis to flee their homes, and they support the Houthis, who mount direct attacks on Israel and continue to attack international shipping.”
Of course, Starmer didn’t mention the many attacks Israel had made on Lebanon and Iran over the years or explain why Hamas and Hezbollah came into being.
Be honest: who exactly are the “malign” influences in the Middle East?
Just as Britain and America would like everyone to believe that the Israel-Palestine conflict began on October 7 last year, when it had been going on since 1948 (and before), they’d like us to believe that hostilities with Iran began with the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But you have to go back over 70 years to find the root cause in America’s case, while Iranians have endured a whole century of British exploitation and bullying. The US-UK-Israel Axis don’t want this important slice of history to become part of public discourse. Here’s why.
In 1901 William Knox D’Arcy, a Devon man, obtained from the Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar a 60-year oil concession to three-quarters of Persia. The Persian government would receive 16% of the oil company’s annual profits, a rotten deal as they would soon realize.
D’Arcy, with financial support from Glasgow-based Burmah Oil, eventually found oil in commercial quantities in 1908. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed and in 1911 completed a pipeline from the oilfield to its new refinery at Abadan.
Just before the outbreak of World War 1 Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, wanted to convert the British fleet from coal. To secure a reliable oil source the British Government took a major shareholding in Anglo-Persian.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the company profited hugely from paying the Persians a miserly 16% and refusing to renegotiate terms. An angry Persia eventually canceled the D’Arcy agreement and the matter went to the Court of International Justice in The Hague. A new agreement in 1933 provided Anglo-Persian with a fresh 60-year concession but on a smaller area. The terms were an improvement but still didn’t amount to a square deal.
In 1935 Persia became known internationally by its other name, Iran, and the company changed to Anglo-Iranian Oil. By 1950 Abadan was the biggest oil refinery in the world and the British government, with its 51% holding, had affectively colonized part of southern Iran.
Iran’s tiny share of the profits had long soured relations and so did the company’s treatment of its oil workers. 6,000 went on strike in 1946 and the dispute was brutally put down with 200 dead or injured. In 1951, while Aramco was sharing profits with the Saudis on a 50/50 basis, Anglo-Iranian handed Iran a miserable 17.5%.
Hardly surprising, then, that Iran wanted economic and political independence. Calls for nationalizing its oil could no longer be ignored. In March 1951 the Majlis and Senate voted to nationalize Anglo-Iranian, which had controlled Iran’s oil industry since 1913 under terms frankly unfavorable to the host country.
Social reformer Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq was named prime minister by a 79 to 12 majority and promptly carried out his government’s wishes, canceling Anglo-Iranian’s oil concession and expropriating its assets. His explanation was perfectly reasonable: “Our long years of negotiations with foreign countries… have yielded no results thus far. With the oil revenues, we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people.
“Another important consideration is that by the elimination of the power of the British company, we would also eliminate corruption and intrigue, by means of which the internal affairs of our country have been influenced…. Iran will have achieved its economic and political independence.” (M. Fateh, Panjah Sal-e Naft-e Iran, p. 525)
For his impudence he would be removed in a coup by MI5 and the CIA, imprisoned for 3 years then put under house arrest until his death. Britain, determined to bring about regime change, orchestrated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil, froze Iran’s sterling assets and threatened legal action against anyone purchasing oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refineries. The Iranian economy was soon in ruins… All sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
America was reluctant at first to join Britain’s destructive game but Churchill (prime minister at the time) let it be known that Mossadeq was turning communist and pushing Iran into the arms of Russia just when Cold War anxiety was high. That was enough to bring America’s new president, Eisenhower, onboard and plotting with Britain to bring Mossadeq down.
So began a nasty game of provocation, mayhem and deception. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in exile, signed two decrees, one dismissing Mossadeq and the other nominating the CIA’s choice, General Fazlollah Zahedi, as prime minister. These decrees were written as dictated by the CIA. In August 1953, when it was judged safe for him to do so, the Shah returned to take over.
Mossadeq was arrested, tried, and convicted of treason by the Shah’s military court. He remarked: “My greatest sin is that I nationalized Iran’s oil industry and discarded the system of political and economic exploitation by the world’s greatest empire… I am well aware that my fate must serve as an example in the future throughout the Middle East in breaking the chains of slavery and servitude to colonial interests.”
His supporters were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured or executed. Zahedi’s new government reached an agreement with foreign oil companies to form a consortium to restore the flow of Iranian oil, awarding the US and Great Britain the lion’s share, with 40% going to Anglo-Iranian.
The consortium agreed to split profits on a 50-50 basis with Iran but refused to open its books to Iranian auditors or allow Iranians to sit on the board.
The US massively funded the Shah’s government, including his army and his hated secret police force, SAVAK. Anglo-Iranian changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954. Mossadeq died in 1967.
The CIA-engineered coup that toppled Mossadeq, reinstated the Shah and let the American oil companies in, was the final straw for the Iranians. The British-American conspiracy inevitably backfired 25 years later with the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9, the humiliating 444-day hostage crisis in the American embassy and a tragically botched rescue mission.
If Britain and America had played fair and allowed the Iranians to determine their own future instead of using economic terrorism to bring the country to its knees Iran might today be “the only democracy in the Middle East”, a title falsely claimed by Israel which is actually a repulsive ethnocracy. So never mention the M-word: MOSSADEQ.
But Britain seems incapable of playing fair. In 2022, when Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian, was freed after five years in a Tehran prison it transpired that the UK had owed around £400m to the Iranian government arising from the non-delivery of Chieftain battle tanks ordered by the Shah of Iran before his overthrow in 1979. Iran had been pursuing the debt for over four decades. In 2009 an international court in the Netherlands ordered Britain to repay the money. Iranian authorities said Nazanin would be released when the UK did so, but she suffered those years of incarceration, missing her children and husband back in the UK, while the British government took its own sweet time before finally paying up.
Smoldering resentment for more than 70 years
During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) the US, and eventually Britain, leaned strongly towards Saddam and the alliance enabled Saddam to more easily acquire or develop forbidden chemical and biological weapons. At least 100,000 Iranians fell victim to them.
This is how John King, writing in 2003, summed it up. “The United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam’s army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The US supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The US supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was known that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens.
“The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked the UN censure of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France, and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.”
As it happens the company I worked for at that time supplied the Iranian government with electronic components for military equipment. We were just mulling an invitation to set up a factory in Tehran when the UK Government announced it was revoking all export licences to Iran. Britain had decided to back Saddam. Hundreds of British companies were forced to abandon the Iranians at a critical moment.
Betraying Iran and throwing our weight behind Saddam went well, didn’t it? Saddam was overthrown in April 2003 following the US/UK-led invasion of Iraq, and hanged in messy circumstances after a dodgy trial in 2006. The dirty work was left to the Provisional Iraqi Government. At the end of the day, we couldn’t even ensure that Saddam was dealt with fairly. “The trial and execution of Saddam Hussein were tragically missed opportunities to demonstrate that justice can be done, even in the case of one of the greatest crooks of our time”, said the UN Human Rights Council’s expert on extrajudicial executions.
Philip Alston, a law professor at New York University, pointed to three major flaws leading to Saddam’s execution. “The first was that his trial was marred by serious irregularities denying him a fair hearing and these have been documented very clearly. Second, the Iraqi Government engaged in an unseemly and evidently politically motivated effort to expedite the execution by denying time for a meaningful appeal and by closing off every avenue to review the punishment. Finally, the humiliating manner in which the execution was carried out clearly violated human rights law.”
Alston acknowledged that “there is an understandable inclination to exact revenge in such cases” but warned that “to permit such instincts to prevail only sends the message that the rule of law continues to be mocked in Iraq, as it was in Saddam’s own time”.
So now we’re playing dirty again, supporting an undemocratic state, Israel, which is run by genocidal maniacs and has for 76 years defied international law and waged a war of massacre, terror and dispossession against the native Palestinians. And we’re even protecting it in its lethal quarrel with Iran.
It took President Truman only 11 minutes to accept and extend full diplomatic relations to Israel when Zionist entity declared statehood in 1948 despite the fact that it was still committing massacres and other terrorist atrocities. Israel’s evil ambitions and horrendous tactics were well known and documented right from the start but eagerly backed and facilitated by the US and UK. In the UK’s case betrayal of the Palestinians began in 1915 thanks to Zionist influence. Even Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the British Cabinet at that time, described Zionism as “a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom”. A century later it is quite evident that Zionism has been the ultimate “malign influence” in the Middle East.
Sadly, the Zionist regime’s unspeakable cruelty and inhumanity against unarmed women and children in Gaza and the West Bank — bad enough in the decades before October 2023 but now showing the Israelis as the repulsive criminals they’ve always been — still isn’t enough to end US-UK adoration for it.
The post Who are We to Accuse Iran of “Malign Influence”? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Activist’s treatment at Evin prison has become even more severe since she was awarded prize last year
The jailed Nobel peace prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has marked the first anniversary of her award with a call for peace in the Middle East from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
The Iranian human rights activist said in comments to Italy’s Corriere della Sera: “Today, the dark shadow of war once again hangs over our beloved country. I hate war.
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Activists hope a change in international law could help to address the intensifying erosion of women and girls’ rights in Afghanistan
Read more: Afghan exiles on the Taliban’s gender apartheid
Over the past three years, the world has watched in horror as women and girls in Afghanistan have had their rights and freedoms systematically stripped away.
In the face of inaction by the international community, a campaign for the conditions being imposed on Afghan and Iranian women to be made a crime under international law as gender apartheid was launched last year. What does the term mean and will it make a difference?
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Biden officials have reportedly admitted that ceasefire negotiations amid Israel’s war on Lebanon and genocide in Gaza have been suspended, despite public insistence by high-powered figures within the administration that they are working around the clock for a ceasefire. The Biden administration has given up on ceasefire talks after first proposing a deal for a 21-day ceasefire between…
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Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the British outlet Channel 4 on Monday that he believes current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to drag the U.S. into a war with Iran, an effort that the ex-Israeli leader called “reckless.” Asked whether he thinks Netanyahu “wants to draw the United States into a confrontation with Iran,” Olmert replied, “I suspect that he does.
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In a report from Beirut, Rima Majed examines Israel’s escalating attacks on Lebanon and how Israel’s actions in the region have fueled resistance movements. “Since October last year, we’ve realized … our lives do not have a meaning in this broader international order. We are numbers. Our bodies are disposable,” says Majed. “All we keep hearing is that Israel has the right to self-defense.
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Israeli forces continued attacks on the outskirts of Beirut and in southern Lebanon on Saturday. There were 13 Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut overnight and another five on Saturday, one of which may have been targeted at paramedics, according to Al Jazeera. The number of casualties is not yet clear. “There is increasing destruction and it’s clear that complete blocks…
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Read Part 1.
The events described in previous articles ─ pro-Israel influence that enabled rapid recognition by the U.S. government of the Israel regime in 1948 and an American murder of 29 Palestinians at the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994 are not isolated relics of the past. They link to events that occur in contemporary times and remain alive as if happening today ─ salient features in the historical narrative that a world ignored and served to claim more victims.
Pro-Israel influence that enabled rapid recognition by the U.S. government of the Israel regime initiated the trend that guaranteed almost continuous support by the U.S. government for Israel’s mounting crimes. Made in America Baruch Goldstein, in his murderous rampage, set the stage for continuous murders of Palestinians and for the made in America bombs that extinguished the life of Hezbollah Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah.
The constant drumming of arranged epithets and twists of reality, where an Israel committed atrocity becomes an Israel sacrifice, continues to manipulate minds. Hezbollah and its deceased leader, Hassan Nasrallah, are not portrayed as fighting to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people by the terrorist Israeli government; they are labelled as terrorist Hezbollah and terrorist Nasrallah urging genocide of nuclear-armed Israel and as individuals who deserve the ultimate fate.
In his speech to the United Nations (UN), Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, displayed the deranged and manipulative mind that governs Israel’s actions. He said “more resolutions have been passed by the General Assembly against Israel in the last decade than against the rest of the world’s countries,” and accused the UN of being a “house of darkness” and a “swamp of antisemitic bile.” The avalanche of UN resolutions condemning Israel’s genocidal actions prove that Israel is a “house of darkness,” a nation that has no regard for international law, and has leaders who feed upon hating other peoples. In his purposeful upside-down world, Netanyahu attempted to use valid condemnation of Israel’s actions by those who have been trusted to safeguard the world against criminal actions to prove Israel is a “shining light on the hill.”
From Netanyahu,
Hezbollah is the quintessential terror organization in the world today. It has tentacles that span all continents. It has murdered more Americans and more Frenchmen than any group except Bin Laden. It’s murdered the citizens of many countries represented in this room.
Netanyahu alludes to one incident, the 40 year-old 1983 bombings of French and American barracks in Beirut. On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck filled with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and killed 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, another suicide attack killed 58 French soldiers in their barracks. The barracks were components of contingents of U.S. Marines and French forces that arrived in Lebanon as part of a peacekeeping mission. After the Sabra and Shatila massacres, which killed between “1,300 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias,” and French and U.S. naval bombardments of the Shouf hills, Lebanese militants perceived the French and U.S. presences in their land as intruding forces that protected Israel’s invasion. The militants wanted these forces to leave, and, not too long after the bombings, they left. No confirmed information is available of who authorized and carried out the bombings. A formal Hezbollah did not exist at that time.
There is definite information that Israeli air force jet fighter aircraft and navy motor torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War, killed 34 and wounded 171 crew members. Many Americans have been arbitrarily murdered by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, about ½ dozen this year.
Heart breaking to learn that Turkish-American woman, Aysenur Eygi, who radiates beauty, was shot and killed while protesting near Nablus. Disturbing to know the U.S. government does not hold Israeli officials responsible. Pulverizing to understand that Israel uses slaughter to send a message ─ come to Israel to help the Palestinians and you will be killed — young, old, man, woman, or child. Her life should not be forgotten, and her image should appear on every protest mechanism.
Apply Netanyahu’s statement to situations that caused U.S. casualties, and we have, “Israel is the quintessential terror organization in the world today. It has tentacles that span all continents. It has murdered more Americans than any group except Bin Laden. It’s murdered the citizens of many countries represented at the UN.”
Reality, truth, and facts are rarely considered by Israel’s puppets. Reading a paper placed before him, US President Joe Biden says the same as his leader.
Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror. His death from an Israeli airstrike is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.”
“Hundreds of Americans,” and “thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians?” Some Israeli civilians have been killed in the tit-for-tat hostilities, a minute number compared to Lebanese civilians and UN workers killed by Israel. Ex-president Joseph Biden, please name one American proven to be killed by Hezbollah since it became an official organization in 1985.
The Israeli Prime Minister, who believes that the function of the peoples of the world is to make certain Israeli Jews live and survive well, regardless of the murders of others, recites,
After generations in which our people were slaughtered, remorselessly butchered, and no one raised a finger in our defense, we now have a state. We now have a brave army, an army of incomparable courage, and we are defending ourselves.
An insolent and degrading insult to all those who fought and died in World War II. The United States, Soviet Union, and their allies fought bravely to defeat the Nazi state in World War II. They raised more than their fingers; they sacrificed themselves in defense of all the European peoples. If there was a strategy to liberate anyone from the camps and secure their lives — Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, political opponents of the Nazi regime, and Jews — they would have implemented the strategy.
In war and immediate post-war years, communication and access to news, including firsthand knowledge was limited — no Internet, no 100 channels of television, no electronic mail, no You Tube, no digital cameras, no smart phones, no Facetime, no WhatsApp, and no social media. The ubiquitous, daily, and on site images of the violence we see today were not available to stir the mind to action. Unbelievable, that despite the enormous information that describes the genocide in Gaza, the world remains relatively passive and little effort is being applied to prevent the genocide. Just the opposite is occurring; societies are helping and encouraging it. Mr. Netanyahu, nobody encouraged the Holocaust; Mr. Netanyahu stand up and tell us why you are encouraging the genocide, requesting the Western world to contribute to your gruesome cause, and are ready to extend it to Lebanon?
The unwary world, still unable to confront its malaise, has allowed the Israeli Jews to judge who lives and who dies, slaughtering others with impunity and without redress. Netanyahu has said it with bravado, vowing to destroy anyone in the world who harms an Israeli citizen. Recent events indicate nobody is safe from the Zionist Jews who murder with ease, without remorse, and without facing justice. Give it perspective by citing a few examples.
The goat and sheepherders in the South Hebron Hills live a simple and basic life on semi-desert land, which is barely sufficient to feed their small herds. They don’t ask anything from anybody, don’t harm anybody, and just want to do their daily chores. Settlers from Brooklyn, New York, who never saw a goat or sheep in their life, have suddenly become herders who need room and land for their pet goats. Simple way to get it ─ forcibly evict these simple people and ruin their lives by telling them the land is now a closed “firing zone.” If they protest, well, just shoot them. A video (scroll down) shows a settler arguing with a Palestinian herder on the herder’s land in the village of al-Tawani and arbitrarily shooting him. Israeli soldiers nonchalantly regard the incident and nobody detains the assailant.
Gaza has its daily atrocities. Israeli snipers and soldiers wantonly murder men, women, and especially children. In one episode, Israeli soldiers search a building, going from apartment to apartment. They enter an apartment and order several men to strip and then execute them. No reason and no concern for the killings. Go to “The Night Won’t End,” a film that investigates civilian killings in Gaza. View from 1:00.01 to 1:04.50 and be prepared to witness a horror.
In the West Bank town of Qabatiya, soldiers murder several Palestinians and then commit a gruesome act — treat the lifeless bodies as rubbish and throw them off the roof into the street below.
The New York Times reports,
According to Wafa (Palestine News Agency), seven Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military during a 10-hour raid into Qabatiya, south of the city of Jenin, on Thursday. Among them, Wafa said, were the three people — believed to be men — captured in the video.
Wafa reported that, after being thrown from the building, the bodies were mutilated on the ground by the claw of an Israeli excavator before being taken away by the military.
In describing the exploding pagers that killed about 10 people and injured several thousand in Lebanon, media, as usual, inserts a description of Hezbollah as the “terror group.” Here we have one of the most horrific terror attacks in recorded history, with innocent civilians suddenly blinded while doing their daily activities and the victims are called the terrorists.
Biggest atrocity
The greatest atrocity has been done to Jewish people. Since its inception, Israel Jews have been used as pawns to oppress and subjugate others and been subjected to constant attacks. Thanks to Netanyahu and his compatriots, the Jews have become the most hated people in the world. Not just animosity or mild disapproval; venomous hatred of not wanting to associate and wishing disappearance. World Jewry may not realize it but this animosity comes from democratic, freedom loving, and liberal persons, people fighting for human rights who now express belief that Zionist Jews are inhuman. Many decent and well-meaning people are following the suggestion by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi.
Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Why should these genocide loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat out racist.
Can the world confront its malaise? Activists should keep doing what they are doing and try to overcome the Zionists and their worldwide conspirators who find antidotes by converting protests against their malevolent actions into malevolent protests by the protestors. The latest trickery has the New York Times, Sept. 4, 2024, publish, “Across the United States this spring, Iran also used social media to stoke student-organized protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, with operatives providing financial assistance and posing as students, according to American intelligence assessments.” What nonsense.
Well known that Israeli operatives flood social media with derogatory information on campus protestors and flattering information on their counter protestors, and hundreds of millions of dollars of donations are used to shape college presidents’ and government officials’ decisions. The Iranian agents, if they existed, probably could not buy a government or college official a cup of coffee.
Mentioning the atrocities committed by Israel leads to the question, “What can be done to stop Israel?” Arguments to the eventual demise of the Zionist nightmare are more wish fulfillment than reality.
The Times of Israel (TOI) features an article, “Derelict economy could sink ‘Titanic’ Israel, experts warn,” which relates, “New research paints worrying picture of decades of neglected national priorities leaving the country without the resources to face existential threats.” TOI is perspicacious, Intel has halted expansion of its facilities in Israel, delaying construction of a $25 billion factory for chip production. This pessimism gives optimism to those who believe that a disastrous economy will not be able to support a strong military. After Israel’s military decimates Hezbollah as a fighting force, Israel will no longer need a world class military to protect it from fulfilling its self-guided mission. This mission does not have a high-flying economy as its prominent feature; the Israel economy will always receive assistance from its benefactors — United States, Germany, and Jewish billionaires around the world. The salient feature of the Zionist mission is Irredentism ─ uniting of Jews around the world, physically or morally, in a supposedly united Biblical kingdom of Judah and Israel. That mission is almost completed and only enforcers composed of a small military and a large settler population will be needed to contain the Palestinians on the plantation. The shrinking labor force, due to emigrating Israelis, will be filled by the slave labor of compliant Palestinians.
Another argument for defeating Israel treats collapse of its principal supporter, the United States of America. Accomplishing that internally does not seem plausible. A possible solution to Israel’s maddening of the civilized world lays with leaders of several nations. A world realignment of blocs, those contending American hegemony and those blindly supporting it, is occurring. The U.S. faces economic decline from Chinese competition. If a substantial number of nations are convinced that moving away from the United States and aligning with China is less dangerous than allowing the modern Israelites and their Joshua leader to continue the revival of the Biblical Conquest, slay the inhabitants of the “promised Land,” and lead the world to continuous conflagrations, they could take action and give the U.S. an offer it cannot refuse ─ stop aiding Israel or we start aiding China. Successful rearrangement of the contending blocs requires a three-way endeavor.
We have a complex subject that needs discussion beyond this article. Wait, there may be a solution on the way. I don’t recommend it but ex-President and future felon, Donald Trump, proposes weakening the dollar, increasing tariffs, and providing less security to other nations.
Will a Trump victory bring about the international realignment that forces the United States to compromise its protection of Israel to guarantee protection of its economy? What a dilemma!
The post Part II: The World Confront its Malaise first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Salah El Din – Salah El Din El Ayoubi – Saladin and Richard the Lionheart
Jerusalem’s hard-fought liberation, now in process, is a recapitulation of the Christian Crusades of the 11th-13th centuries, this time, not by the knight on a white horse of legend, but through the long march of guerilla warfare by the much maligned Shia. This follows on the liberation of Iran from its Judeo-Christian yoke in 1979 and Iraq 25 years later, ironically by the US, forming the second Shia majority state. But it is the Shia minority of Lebanon that holds the keys to Jerusalem. Their 40% of the Lebanese population punches well above their weight in a fractious country split among Christians, and Sunni and Shia Muslims.
Hezbollah was forged in the heat of Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s. The then-rag-tag militia killed over 600 Israeli soldiers, forcing Israel to retreat in humiliation, its first such defeat ever, and by a nonstate actor, a very bad omen, which Israel’s almost daily murder of Palestinians every since cannot erase, and which culminated in 10/7, Israel’s own private 9/11, bringing us to Israel’s carpeting bombing of Lebanon.
It is the Shia of Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen we have to thank for preventing Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians from proceeding smoothly. Sunnis will have to wake up if they don’t want to be left behind by their Shia brothers, their self-satisfied Sunni hegemony cracked open, exposed as the ‘sick man’ of the Middle East, i.e., undermined by imperialism, the same compromised role that destroyed the Ottomans, created post-Ottoman puppet Sunni states, and planted in Palestine a cursed tree, the Quran’s poisonous zaqqum, rooted in the center of Hell, aka the Jewish state.
The Saudis long ago were compromised through a voluntary pact with first British then US imperialism but, until the rise of Muhammed Bin Salman (MBS), were at least keeping up the trappings of Islamic ritual, jealously guarding the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The quietist Saudis effectively blackmailed the Palestinians into accepting an interminable Israeli murderous occupation and creeping (now galloping) theft of their lands, financing Palestinian refugees, but with no promise of liberation, effectively working with not against the enemy.
Now MBS has let the westernizers loose in his kingdom, discarding the hijab, promoting concerts of trashy western rock music, buying British football teams (Newcastle United in 2021). Trump’s Abraham Accords were supposed to lead to a new Middle East with Israel and Saudi Arabia as the kingpins. With October 7 (10/7), the bottom fell out of MBS’s fantasy of a Saudi-Isreali hegemony over the Middle East, leaving the Palestinians in permanent limbo or exile. It didn’t seem to matter to the Saudis and Gulf sheikhs, who long ago lost interest in Palestine. In thie face of this complete betrayal of the Palestinians, of Islam itself, the Shia are the only Muslims to resist the sacrilege of permanent Jewish rule over Palestine and the destruction Islam’s holy sites to build a Third Temple.
Orthodox Sunni Muslims have always feared the moral purity which Shiism was founded on, in opposition to the more worldly, pragmatic Sunni majority. This very productive, though at times deadly, stand-off between the two strands of Islam began with Muhammad’s young cousin Ali being the first convert to Islam after the Prophet’s wife Hadija, Ali’s heroic military career defending the religion during the early, perilous battles immortalized in the Quran, through to the murder of him and his family by power-hungry rivals. The draw of idealism and justice has kept Shiism alive, and from what we see today, it is the saving grace of Islam, pushing back today against deadly secularism. Ultimately, the Sunni will have to admit that the Shia are not just an inconvenient footnote (like MBS et al would have liked to make of the Palestinians).
20th century ummah challenges
All Muslims will agree that the unity of the ummah is the first, most urgent, priority. The Shia, though outliers, strive for this even more, as they face hardline Sunnis who consider them apostates and would be happy to cut them loose or wipe them out. The official Sunni position has wavered over the centuries, but generally grudgingly accepts them. The imperialists of course were happy to use ‘divide and rule’, and they quickly turned a peaceful ummah into quarreling sectarians in India, Pakistan, Iraq, wherever they had the chance.1 This only really worked for post-Ottoman Iraq and Lebanon, both with large Shia communities mixed (peacefully) with Sunni. But the 20th century was one of increasing division, chaos, everywhere in the ummah. It is still on life support, held together now by the Shia thread, the ‘Shia crescent’, the only link the ummah has to Jerusalem and the Palestinians as they face annihilation, their Sunni brothers helpless or unwilling to save them.
The British official who fashioned the new Iraq in the 1920s, Gertrude Bell, had no time for Shia, who were the majority then as now, but Gertrude had no time for democracy for the dark-skinned. I don’t for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority; otherwise you will have a mujtahid-run, theocratic state, which is the very devil. She knew how the ulama in Iran had defeated the Shah on his westernizing mission, the famous tobacco fatwa of 1890 that forced the shah to cancel the British concession, and supported the constitution movement for democracy in 1905. The British had no interest in creating a radical Shia majority state and put in place a Sunni puppet king.
Iraq’s long and violent history since then finally undid Gertrude’s machiavellian scheming in 2003, bringing to an end a truly disgusting Sunni dictatorship, and the advent of the first Shia-majority state, the positive effects of which are still being discovered. We can thank the US imperialists (even a broken clock is right twice a day) for stumbling on a winning formula for Islam (and for themselves, for the world). By genuinely promoting electoral democracy (along with opening Iraq to foreign exploitation of Iraq’s oil), it started the ball rolling on Sunni-Shia relations everywhere, including US client number one, the Saudi dictator-king, with his truly downtrodden Shia, who sit on Saudi oil and get only repression, disenfranchisement and lots of beheadings as thanks.
The 20th century path that brought us to our present apocalyptic scenario was long and tragic. The Ottoman ‘sick man of Europe’ collapse at the end of WWI, invaded by the British and French (their Russian allies had already collapsed leaving more spoils for the victors). The end of the caliphate? For atheist Turkish dictator Mustafa Kemal that would have been fine. The Muslim ummah, both Sunni and Shia, anticipated this and had already rallied in its defense with the Khilafa Movement in 1919-1920, supported by other anti-imperialists, including Gandhi and India’s Hindus, who saw the British divide-and-rule as the poison that kept Indians subjugated.
Kemal got his way in 1924, accusing Indian Muslim leaders, who came all the way to Ankara to beg the Turkish strongman to maintain the caliphate, of foreign election interference. As if the caliphate was a Turkish plaything The shock wave reverberated around the world culminating in the World Islamic Congress in Jerusalem in 1931 at the behest of Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, bringing together Muslim leaders from around the world. A truly historic moment in the history of the ummah. But the caliphate was already a pipe dream, with growing Jewish immigration to British Palestine, the intent being to create a Jewish state, an imperial outpost to control the Middle East.
Everywhere, the Muslim world was occupied now by nominally Christian world empires, British, American, French, Dutch, the House of War (vs the ummah, the House of Peace), the the financial strings predominantly in Jewish hands, accounting for the plum Palestine being selected as a future Jewish state, purchased by the elite Jews who financed the British empire. Except for Shia Iran, which was never fully occupied and given an imperial make-over. But Iran also had its atheist modernizer, Reza Shah, who, having tricked the ulama into giving him their blessing initially, left them alone though marginalized. Though he weakened the religious establishment, outlawed the veil, and built industry and infrastructure, he was not so fanatically anti-Muslim He was anti-imperialist, and when WWII broke out, he was deposed by the British to prevent the shah from sending oil to the Germans. That occupation wrankled, and all the foreign devils, British, Russia, American were given the boot when the war ended.
It was the Shia ulama of Iran who were the only ulama to resist imperialism,2 supporting the first genuinely independent prime minister, Mossadeq, in 1951 in his effort to kick the British out and take control of the economy. The normally quietist, conservative religious elite had been radicalized despite themselves. When the US moved in to foment a coup in 1953, the invaders were able to get a few religious leaders to bless their scheming, but this blatant imperialist act galvanized all Iranians, and eventually led to the overthrow of the second and last Pahlavi shah in 1979. Newly religious Iran was joined by newly religious Turkey with the coming to power of Recep Erdogan in 2000, who refers to his followers as ‘grandchildren of the Ottomans’. Traditional Sunni-Shia rivals, Turkey and Iran are far from bosom buddies, but the current crisis of the ummah means that differences are put aside.
The second stumbling block for Muslims was the secular reaction to imperialism, Arab nationalism, now competing with Turkish and Persian nationalisms, fashioned as secular identities, undermining a united Islamic identity, central to the ummah. Egypt’s Nasser and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein are the two most notorious nationalist leaders, who led their countries in a death spiral of violent repression of Islam, corruption and failed military ventures.
Nationalism was foreign to Muslims, never the defining ideology, and these nationalist movements failed, with chauvinistic Sunni radicals morphing into violent pseudo-Islamic movements – al-Qaeda, ISIS and Islamic State–Khorasan Province.
With the current US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians, the ummah is coming together again, realizing this is the make-or-break moment for Islam, and that these nationalisms are evaporating in the heat of crisis. Even the perfidious MBS casually announced that there would be no Israeli-Saudi new order until the Palestinians have a real state. The ice is cracking, moving, as Palestine’s spring takes shape out of the Israelis’ ashes and rubble.
Turkey and Iran had secular capitalism imposed from the top to keep the imperialists at bay. Egypt had a brutal British occupation until the 1950s, creating the same secular capitalism as Turkey and Iran, but then came socialistic dictator Nasser in 1951, injecting a new political element. Sadly, he too refused to acknowledge Islam as the bedrock of society, a more genuinely socialistic way of life, his secular vision collapsing with Israeli invasion, leaving Egypt, the largest Middle East country, far weaker now than either of its two Middle East rivals. The Arab states have all remained puppets of imperialism and remain cool to, even resentful of the new Shia vitality and presence. But the Arab masses support the Shia defiance of US-Israel, despising their Quisling leaders.
Puppets and fledging actors
Iran’s revolution in 1979 was bad news for the Saudis, leading to even greater repression of its Shia. Saudi suspicions and fear of Shia have been a terrible ordeal for the 10% of Saudis who are Shia, and a powerful Shia state would naturally push for justice. So instead of making peace with their Shia (and thus, with the new Iran), in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia (and Kuwait) spent $25b (i.e., gave US weapons producers $25b) in support of the brutal, mad thug, Saddam Hussein in the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). When Saddam invaded Kuwait, cashing his US-Saudi IOU for sacrificing half million Iraqi Sunnis-Shia to kill a half million Shia Iranians, Saudi Arabia was unhappy. Not only had Saddam failed to crush Shia Iran, his defeat would mean an angry Shia state next door, which could easily invade and overthrow him.
So King Fahd invited the US forces into the kingdom to invade Iraq and keep the Saudi kingdom as head honcho of the Muslim world. I repeat: King Fahd allowed American and coalition troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabian forces were involved both in bombing raids on Iraq and in the land invasion that helped to ‘liberate’ Kuwait, the so-called Gulf War (1990-1991). The ummah, the House of Peace, invaded and occupied by the House of War. MBS’s current free and easy secularism makes sense after all, but not for the ummah.
Why would the US have gone to all the trouble to invade Iraq as part of ‘liberating’ Kuwait, and then leave the (truly odious) dictator Saddam in power? Ask weakling King Fahd, whose fear of a Shia-majority Iraq next door was even greater than his fear of a cowed, murderous Saddam. Pan-Arab nationalism – RIP.
This enduring Sunni-Shia stand-off is the imperialists’ trump card. All the Arab countries are in varying degrees still US puppets, and persecute their Shia because they, the so-called rulers, are weak and fear the implicit critique of their weakness that the morally uncompromised Shia represent. Nigeria, Bahrain, Indonesia, Malaysia have all driven wedges between Sunnis and Shias when it was politically useful. The Sunni masses, looking for a way out of the imperialist straitjacket but educated to despise Shia, looked not to solidarity with all Muslims to fight the looming imperial enemy, but inward to past Sunni experience, the early four Rightly Guided Caliphs, for their inspiration. They downplay the fact that the finally one was Ali, the inspiration of the Shia as sole legitimate caliph of the whole lot. In the 1980s-1990s, frustrated Sunnis coalesced around radical Saudi Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda, various ISIS caliphate dreamers in central Asia, the Caucasus, Africa, internationally, with an unIslamic jihad condoning mass civilian deaths as a key tactic.
This element continues to plague the Sunni world, the whole world. It has undermined the efforts to rebuild Iraq after the 2003 invasion. The Ba’thists were outlawed, leaving the minority Sunni with nothing, so they preferred chaos and road bombs, but Shia long-suffering patience grudgingly brought together ‘good’ Sunni and all the Shia to fight the latest (Sunni) terrorists, ISIS et al.
10/7 was an earthquake, not just for Israel but for Islam, the Sunni-Shia tremors finally syncing on that explosive day, pushing the Sunni establishment into Shia arms. All people of goodwill now rout for the Shia Hezbollah in their battle with Israel to protect the heart and soul of Islam. Paradoxically, this challenge was anticipated by the renewal of relations between the Saudis and Iran in March 2023, anticipating 10/7, an admission that Shia power could not be ignored in the new world order taking shape under China and Russia, quite apart from the central role Iran was now playing in protecting the Palestinians from total annihilation, with the Saudis watching with alarm from the sidelines as their position at the head of the Muslim world was being usurped by events on the ground, including from its own despised 10% Shia, now demanding the same rights as citizens that the Sunnis have.
Democracy really is the answer
It’s finally clear: Arab nationalism has been a flop, as has been Pakistan nationalism, where the 20% Shia must constantly fight Sunni chauvinists. Indian nationalism is worse, following the path of Israel, a racist Zionized Hindutva ideology that exclused all Muslims, Sunni or Shia. Sunni chauvinism under imperialism, taking refuge in nationalism, always undermines the ummah, unless the Shia are a sizable minority or majority, and the government is sufficiently representative. I.e., democratic.
In hindsight, I would argue the road to the liberation of Jerusalem began with Iran’s revoluton in 1979, which put Palestine liberation at the top of its international agenda. The war launched by Iraq was supposed to steamroll through a weakened Iran, as ordered by Saddam’s backers Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, the US and Europe. (What a cynical, bizarre coalition!) Ayatollah Khomeini was brilliant and charismatic, but a poor politician, refusing to end the war when Saddam offered, hoping to liberate Iraq, leading to 100,000s more deaths and seriously weakening and tarnishing the revolution. His hubris was immortalized in telling anecdotes. My favorite: Pakistani dictator Zia had urged the shah in 1977 to crack down even harder on the rebels. When Zia met Khomeini as the shah’s successor a few years later, Khomeini merely asked politely for Zulfikar Bhutto’s life (Zia was Bhutto’s successor) to be spared. No dice. On the contrary, Zia advised Khomeini not to tangle with a superpower. Khomeini retorted he would never do such a thing and in fact always relied in the superpower. Ouch! That only made Zia persecute his Shia even more.
Arab secular states can’t unite when they are headed by dictators like Assad, Nasser, the Jordanian and Saudi king-dictators. Corrupt dictatorships don’t make good allies. The need for democracy is obvious. Iraq hopefully can be the model for Sunni and Shia learning to work together again under a robust electoral democracy. Sunni and Shia lived more or less till Saddam and sons really began their madness.3
The end of Saddam moved the Shia-Sunni ‘battle lines’ 200 miles west, now running through Baghdad, which was precisely what Gertrude Bell, Saddam and the imperialists had all tried to prevent. History takes its revenge. The chauvinistic Sunni hegemony of the Muslim world is finished. The Sunni hegemons tried to overthrow Khomeini and failed. The same battle took place 12 years later in Iraq and failed again due to Shia patience in the face of Sunni-inspired terror. Thousands of Saudi and Jordanian youth went to Iraq after 2003 to fight the occupation (and looming Shia hegemony) and die, just like they did in their misguided jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Their violent self-sacrifice only digging the Sunni world deeper into a state of humiliation. 85% of ISIS in Syria working alongside the US imperialists are Saudi. They are there solely to fight the ‘sons of al-Alqami’, referring to the Shia vizier when the Mongols razed Baghdad in 1258.
Now the Sunni are exposed as helpless in the face of Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, are actually helping ‘protect’ US-Israel from Iranian bombs intended for Israel. The Sunni world is humiliated, betraying Islam, kowtowing to not just the US but US-Israel. To defeat (Sunni-inspired) ISIS, the ‘good’ Iraqi Sunnis even had to welcome help from not just Iraq Shias (the army) but also Iran. It is high time to bury the hatchet of envy and suspicion, and join the Shia, if only because they hold the fate of the ummah in their hands.
The ‘bad’ Sunnis (regime elites) are still supporting the US-led war on terror. Their goal is still to wreck the new, Shia-led Iraqi state and keeping the lid on their own pressure-cookers, looking over their shoulders at the (failed) Arab Spring of 2011. The Sunni elites do US-Israel’s work for it. At the same time, they are angry with the US for complicity in Shia revival, undermining House of Saud, contributing to the decline in its religious legitimacy. MBS’s secular turn is more a parody of soft power, which only undermines (Sunni) Islam. The Saudi treatment of its own Shia mirrors Israeli treatment of Palestinians.4 Sadly, it is only because Palestinians have some shred of legal independence as part of the post-WWII internationally agreed policy of decolonization that this instance of apartheid is being fought openly. Anti-Muslim apartheid is actually alive and well but hidden behind national borders (China, Myanmar).
What remains of the insurgency in Iraq today is an alliance of Jordanians, Saudis and Iraqi Ba’thists. Syria and Saudi are both ripe for change, with Iraq and Iran as their models, but especially Iraq, with its more open, competitive elections and its large Shia population. The main legacy of the Iraq invasion was to make the Shia case, which means fighting Sunni extremism and terrorism, exposing the US Global War on Terror (GWOT) as a fraud (produced more (Sunni) terror), cementing Shiism as the adult in the room, holding the Islamic faith secure by a string, open to democracy.
21st century the Shia century?
This is already happening. Islamic Iran from the start allied with all anti-imperialist countries. Its revolution echoes the idealism of the Russia revolution of 1917, both of which were met by invasions by western powers and/or proxies, and both succeeding against all odds, based very much on ideological zeal for the good of mankind. Both also became authoritarian states, with elections but with limited choice. Iran’s elections are much more credible, and the election of reformers like Khatami and now Pezeshkian show there is room for real public debate. As with all countries victim to US ire, survival trumps all finer nuances, which are put on hold. Show me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are. Iran’s allies are the anti-imperialist good guys.
In contrast to the Arab states, with their muddled Islamo-nationalisms, which have failed to fashion a Sunni identity independent of imperialism, and which still exclude Shia. A shame that Shia find better allies on the secular left, with largely common political, economic and cultural goals, above all peace. Like the Jews at the heart of Bolshevism, Iraq’s Communist Party was full of Shia intellectuals (e.g., poet Muzaffar al-Nawwab). The Iraqi town Shatra in the Shia south was nicknamed Little Moscow. The Shia have a natural affinity for the secular left, supporting the underdog. The Iraqi Communist Party was reorganized after the Iraq war and its leader Hamid Majid Musa was part of the governing body the US set up. The communists wanted peace as do all communists, Islamic Iran and Iraq want peace (salam) more than anything. Neither the communists nor the ummah were/are aggressive, expansionist. Both offer(ed) a way of life that doesn’t have war built in as its engine. The communist alternative was social/state ownership and planning. The Islamic alternative is a mix of state direction/ownership and limited capitalism. There are no billionaires who aren’t emigres already. That kind of money lust is alien to a devout society or a communist one.
Iran and Hezbollah are suffering Israel’s truly Satanic war crimes alongside their Palestinian brothers. Meanwhile the Gulf and Saudi sheikh-dictators, the Egyptian no-pretense-dictator, the Jordanian British-installed-king sit on the sidelines cursing the Palestinians for disturbing their sleep. They actually come to Israel’s aid – Egypt and Jordan are official allies of Israel – when Iran tries to hurt poor little Israel, as they already did in April 2024. The US is well aware that the Jordanian and Egyptian masses are very unhappy, but it relies on its local puppet dictators to keep the lid on the pressure-cooker, and is very cautious about exporting one-man-one-vote after its painful and expensive experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, the former once again Taliban, the latter in league with Iran against the Great Satan, which just happens to include itself, US-Israel. So don’t hold your breath for US pressure to make its dictators relinquish power. 2011 was a close call, not to be repeated.
As for the Palestinians, they were completely left out of the negotiations about their future following the 1973 Egypt-Israel war. Sold out by (atheist, Sunni) Sadat with an empty promise. The past half century has been unremitting hell for the Palestinians, who were kicked out of Jordan in the 1970s, many ending up in southern Lebanon, living with the Shia there. This is the origins of Musa al-Sadr’s Amal and after his assassination, Hezbollah. This happened during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, forging of a new force to confront Israel, which was given a huge boost with the Islamic revolution in Iran. Suddenly there was a ‘Shia crescent’, a genuine quasi-state opposition to Israel that functioned outside the imperial constraints.
Musa al-Sadr represented the best of the Shia tradition, an activist cleric engaged in the life of his community, unafraid to speak truth to power. He earned a law degree from (shah-era) Tehran university. His Amal militia ran social services and acted as a political organization, a challenge to the fiction of pan-Arab unity and the unyielding reality of Sunni hegemony. Iran’s IRGC was organized by veterans of Amal training camps. Amal represented a political threat to the Arab and Palestinian establishment, and his assassination by Gaddafi was clearly a Sunni move to quash a Shia upstart.5 But he (and Israel’s brutal occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s) inspired the formation Hezbollah, which killed 654 Israeli soldiers in a few years and pushed a humiliated Israel out of Lebanon in 1985.
‘Good’ Sunnism is reviving but more in the emigre communities, largely in the US/Canada, Europe, Australia/ New Zealand, where there are now communities of mainstream Sunni and Shia as well as sects (Ismaili, Yazidi, Ahmadiya, Bahai’s). This young, well educated, assertive diaspora radically challenges the Sunnia world, as a new generation of Muslims takes electoral democracy for granted, and were able to gain equal rights as citizens in the ‘House of War’, which meant fight for Palestine against Israel. Effectively the need for young, educated workers to fuel its capitalist machine ended up importing the ‘enemy’ to the heart of imperialism. As these mostly Sunni Muslims spread their message of ‘goodwill to all men’, colonized, persecuted Palestine has gradually gained the edge over colonizer, persecutor Israel. They are joined by a growing community of converts, as people find out about Islam from friendly, law-abiding neighbors. Islam is the fastest growing religion everywhere.
The Shia are Islam’s ‘wandering Jews’ but without the usury, so they have a presence on all continents, mostly persecuted (or just ignored) by Sunni majorities (but not everywhere). The Sunni too are like the Jews with their world network, a persecuted minority (but not everywhere). In fact, Sunni emigres are free to criticize Israel and their own native Muslim-majority countries in the West, where, say, in Egypt or Pakistan that could land them in jail or worse. As with the Jews, the spread of both Sunni and Shia presence virtually everywhere creates a powerful network for mutual support, to ensure both Shia and Sunni, emigre and domestic, are vital parts of the ummah, all devoted to defending Palestine and liberating Jerusalem. A kind of benign Judaism.6 Democracy brings power to Shia majorities and give voice to minorities, resisting Sunni terrorists. The goal remains the liberation of Jerusalem, but the center of gravity has shifted from Saudi Arabia, Egypt to Iran and Iraq, now stretching from Lebanon and Syria along the Shia axis of resistance.
The US allies with the pragmatic Sunni dictators, hates, targets Shia, but they are the best defense against real terrorists (Saudi/ Jordanian ‘jihadists’, ISIS, US-Israel). Standing up to tyranny is never popular with tyrants. By overthrowing Saddam, the US unwittingly paved the way for the Shia revival. Ayatollah Sistani brilliantly used the opening to guarantee democratic Shia hegemony in Iraq as a model for a renewed Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, in short, the Muslim ummah. The Iraqi Shia proved that it is possible to work with the US and not compromise. Sistani refused to meet with US officials: Mr Bremer, you are American I am Iranian. Leave it up to the Iraqis to devise their constitution. He challenged US plans to hand power to Allawi, Chalabi. Insisted on one-person, one-vote. When the US refused, he called for large demos over five consecutive days until the US relented.7
Iraqi Shia abandoned the Iraqi nationalism of Saddam. The renewed nationalism is firmly nonsectarian, uniting the ummah. This is a powerful message to the other Arab states. It is fitting that Palestine has brought the Sunni to the Shia-led defense of Jerusalem. Israel can be defeated only by a united ummah which acts wisely, with restraint, indefatigable. It is also a message to Israel and the Palestinians about inventing a new nationalism based on peace and reconciliation.
ENDNOTES:
The post Inconvenient Truths: The Shia Salah al-Din and 10/7 first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Photo credit: CODEPINK
On October 1, Iran fired about 180 missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of its Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), Hezbollah, and Hamas. There are conflicting reports about how many of the missiles struck their targets and if there were any deaths. But Israel is now considering a counterattack that could propel it into an all-out war with Iran, with the U.S. in tow.
For years, Iran has been trying to avoid such a war. That is why it signed the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with the United States, the U.K., France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union. Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA in 2018, and despite Joe Biden’s much-touted differences with Trump, he failed to restore U.S. compliance. Instead, he tried to use Trump’s violation of the treaty as leverage to demand further concessions from Iran. This only served to further aggravate the schism between the United States and Iran, which have had no diplomatic relations since 1980.
Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees his long-awaited chance to draw the United States into war with Iran. By killing Iranian military leaders and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil, as well as attacking Iran’s allies in Lebanon and Yemen, Netanyahu provoked a military response from Iran that has given him an excuse to widen the conflict even further. Tragically, there are warmongering U.S. officials who would welcome a war on Iran, and many more who would blindly go along with it.
Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, campaigned on a platform of reconciling with the West. When he came to New York to speak at the UN General Assembly on September 25, he was accompanied by three members of Iran’s JCPOA negotiating team: former foreign minister Javad Zarif; current foreign minister Abbas Araghchi; and deputy foreign minister Majid Ravanchi.
President Pezeshkian’s message in New York was conciliatory. With Zarif and Araghchi at his side at a press conference on September 23, he talked of peace, and of reviving the dormant nuclear agreement. “Vis-a-vis the JCPOA, we said 100 times we are willing to live up to our agreements,” he said. “We do hope we can sit at the table and hold discussions.”
On the crisis in the Middle East, Pezeshkian said that Iran wanted peace and had exercised restraint in the face of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its assassinations of resistance leaders and Iranian officials, and its war on its neighbors.
“Let’s create a situation where we can co-exist,” said Pezeshkian. “Let’s try to resolve tensions through dialogue…We are willing to put all of our weapons aside so long as Israel will do the same.” He added that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel is not, and that Israel’s nuclear arsenal is a serious threat to Iran.
Pezeshkian reiterated Iran’s desire for peace in his speech at the UN General Assembly.
“I am the president of a country that has endured threats, war, occupation, and sanctions throughout its modern history,” he said. “Others have neither come to our assistance nor respected our declared neutrality. Global powers have even sided with aggressors. We have learned that we can only rely on our own people and our own indigenous capabilities. The Islamic Republic of Iran seeks to safeguard its own security, not to create insecurity for others. We want peace for all and seek no war or quarrel with anyone.”
The U.S. response to Iran’s restraint throughout this crisis has been to keep sending destructive weapons to Israel, with which it has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of women and children, bombed neighboring capitals, and beefed up the forces it would need to attack Iran.
That includes a new order for 50 F-15EX long-range bombers, with 750 gallon fuel tanks for the long journey to Iran. That arms deal still has to pass the Senate, where Senator Bernie Sanders is leading the opposition.
On the diplomatic front, the U.S. vetoed successive cease-fire resolutions in the UN Security Council and hijacked Qatar and Egypt’s cease-fire negotiations to provide diplomatic cover for unrestricted genocide.
Military leaders in the United States and Israel appear to be arguing against war on Iran, as they have in the past. Even George W. Bush and Dick Cheney balked at launching another catastrophic war based on lies against Iran, after the CIA publicly admitted in its 2006 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran was not developing nuclear weapons.
When Trump threatened to attack Iran, Tulsi Gabbard warned him that a U.S. war on Iran would be so catastrophic that it would finally, retroactively, make the war on Iraq look like the “cakewalk” the neocons had promised it would be.
But neither U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin nor Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant can control their countries’ war policies, which are in the hands of political leaders with political agendas. Netanyahu has spent many years trying to draw the United States into a war with Iran, and has kept escalating the Gaza crisis for a year, at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent lives, with that goal clearly in mind.
Biden has been out of his depth throughout this crisis, relying on political instincts from an era when acting tough and blindly supporting Israel were politically safe positions for American politicians. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rose to power through the National Security Council and as a Senate staffer, not as a diplomat, riding Biden’s coat-tails into a senior position where he is as out of his depth as his boss.
Meanwhile, pro-Iran militia groups in Iraq warn that, if the U.S. joins in strikes on Iran, they will target U.S. bases in Iraq and the region.
So we are careening toward a catastrophic war with Iran, with no U.S. diplomatic leadership and only Trump and Harris waiting in the wings. As Trita Parsi wrote in Responsible Statecraft, “If U.S. service members find themselves in the line of fire in an expanding Iran-Israel conflict, it will be a direct result of this administration’s failure to use U.S. leverage to pursue America’s most core security interest here — avoiding war.”
The post Biden’s Israel Policy Has Led Us to the Brink of War on Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
As Israeli officials were vowing to retaliate against Iran and plotting an invasion of Lebanon, the Israeli military was carrying out attacks across Gaza, killing dozens in 24 hours, Gaza officials said on Wednesday. Overnight on Wednesday, Israeli forces dropped bombs across the strip and undertook a ground incursion in Khan Yunis, killing at least 90 Palestinians and injuring dozens of…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israel has announced it is sending more troops into southern Lebanon as the Middle East moves closer to a full-scale regional war. On Tuesday, Iran fired at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel that Iran says targeted Israeli military and security sites, a response that comes after a series of escalating Israeli attacks in recent months against Hezbollah, Hamas and Iranian leaders.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
One year into Israel’s genocide on Gaza, Netanyahu decided to launch a full on ground invasion in Lebanon. Iran finally retaliated against the mindless colonial power. Unsurprisingly, as usual, the BBC failed miserably in reporting on the realities of the situation.
As the Canary previously reported, Israel’s colonial government has consistently rejected or undermined peace efforts (as it has historically), and has only escalated the conflict further afield. It has assassinated people in the Iranian consulate in Syria, in Iran, and in Lebanon.
Iran has shown a lot of restraint, according to experts. But it has finally responded to Israel’s attempts to escalate hostilities in the region. Targeting military and intelligence facilities, it has reportedly killed one civilian – a Palestinian. And this is in spite of Israel placing some of those facilities in densely-populated civilian areas.
Israel’s own X account tweeted a video of Iran’s rockets with the caption
every single one of these is meant to kill
What the fuck do they think their carpet bombing in Gaza has been achieving? Wiping the memory of everyone who watches a child get blown to pieces?
I’ll tell you what really isn’t normal. The level of supremacist narcissism and hypocrisy it takes to post this with a straight face. INSANE.
Like what are the THOUSANDS of IOF bombs meant to do, heal children? https://t.co/QQWByADjH3— Alexi Murdoch
(@aleximurdoch) October 1, 2024
You’ve dropped more bombs on Gaza than London, Dresden and Hamburg combined during WW2. Killed tens of thousands of innocent people. Starved and displaced a majority of the population. Ending your genocide would have prevented this. https://t.co/jMvEsyrTzA
— Mac (@GoodPoliticGuy) October 1, 2024
But as usual, the BBC has lapped it up.
The BBC was shameless in its attempts to report on the escalation by Israel – if we can even call them attempts:
You can’t even tell in the first headline that Israel is the one bombing Lebanon. The contrast in headlines is unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/9b1UFeQluI
— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 1, 2024
media setting the narrative on the orders of those who actually run the world
— Samarth K (@SamarthKagdiyal) October 2, 2024
This isn’t journalism. It’s narrative engineering. From Gaza to Lebanon, it’s a crime scene cover-up. When the media chooses silence over truth, they’re no longer journalists—they’re accomplices.
— Ghida Fakhry (@ghida_fakhry) October 1, 2024
The @BBCWorld is such a bastion of journalistic integrity
https://t.co/qXX3fLV8Dh
— Anti-Fascist
Free Palestine (@antifascist61) October 2, 2024
The racist double standards are clear for everyone to see. Blow up a majority Muslim country and you’re defending yourself. Blow up a military base that has been use as a command centre to commit genocide for a year, and it’s terrorism:
Embarrassing to see our nation’s pathetic media and politicians completely captured by the Israelis. What do ‘patriots’ have to say about this? https://t.co/ZZyn70Yfy5
— Burford Brown Munde (@BasitAsif) October 2, 2024
The Western media’s complicity in covering up Israel’s carnage in the Middle East will be studied for generations https://t.co/qCXbD2UM9A
— Youssef Kobo (@Youssef_Kobo) October 2, 2024
What happened to the hostages? We’re presuming they have been secretly transferred to Lebanon via secret underground tunnels.
As the Canary has previously reported, western media outlets have continuously published coverage dripping in bias – and by extension, complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
When Israeli soldiers killed six-year-old Hind Rajab and her family, the appalling Western establishment media spin was plain for all to see:
Oh my goodness. This is terrible & irresponsible reporting from BBC News World. Innocent & defenceless 6 year old girl Hind Rajab was not ‘found dead’ in Gaza. She was brutally killed by the Israeli military. https://t.co/X0x3sCpBnv
— Professor Ahmed Hankir (@ahmedhankir) February 11, 2024
Similarly, when the IDF brutally murdered an autistic man with Down’s syndrome – with a combat dog – the BBC, using all of their editorial wisdom, whitewashed it with the headline:
The lonely death of Gaza man with Down’s syndrome
Now that Iran have retaliated against a genocidal regime, the BBC appears to have rolled out training on how to use the active voice. Seeing as though it suddenly fits their corporate capitalist (and clearly Zionist) narrative:
curious how they understand how to write headlines all of a sudden
— Angelica Reed (@Angelica_Reed1) October 2, 2024
Oh wait, maybe not – why name names when you can give the abhorrent genocidal perpetrators a voice instead?
#BBC uses quote to avoid saying Israel is bombing excessively https://t.co/aDgCI5H5ex
— Wild Violet
(@Wild_Violet23) October 2, 2024
Maybe, the same way the whole of the West suddenly remembers what international law is?
so you agree? it isn’t normal to bomb civilian areas? https://t.co/MldCLaLato pic.twitter.com/YFd5yl3Fin
— Zosia
(@zosiajacobs) October 1, 2024
One person on X was baffled at the linguistic gymnastics the BBC had used to avoid pointing the finger at Israel:
These headlines are so striking. Throughout Israel’s invasion of Gaza and now its invasion of Lebanon, headline writers have been going to extraordinary language contorting lengths to avoid assigning it any responsibility.
It’s a bizarre and global thing. https://t.co/QOZC3RXAh3— Janette Stratton
(@JanetteStratto2) October 1, 2024
It’s not bizarre – it’s intentional in order to paint Black and brown people as the aggressors. Something which we have seen across the mainstream media for decades. It’s hard to see this as anything other than the BBC acting as a mouthpiece for Israel’s propaganda – because at this point, it quite literally is:
So not surprising.
A bunch of arrogant, nihilistic, immoral people are they. https://t.co/wX6COfpJKm
— Ms. Dorudi زن زندگی آزادی
(@DorudiNL) October 1, 2024
This is so intentional so those ignorant people can continue to believe that is**rl are the victims. Like i literally work with people who know nothing but believe the propaganda that they are victims and that the Arabs are aggressors. To live in a work like this is beyond me. https://t.co/Si4S5SXxzs
— Naj
This is how media propaganda works. https://t.co/VB1WyrvNkO
— Adebayo Salami #Dado
(@WASalam_01) October 2, 2024
Astonishing bias from @BBCBreaking @BBCNews Once one of the most reliable news sources, which used to at least aim for a measure of objectivity, it has deteriorated into a sad, sorry mouthpiece for right-wing bias and propaganda. https://t.co/WeKyCc6cYd
— snowfinch (@_snowfinch) October 2, 2024
For a year we have watched the west support, fund, and arm Israel. Finally, Iran took one for the team. It’s like watching the school bully finally gets what’s coming to him – without all the mass casualties.
Or, if you want to speak in legalese, as the UN says of the Genocide Convention – signatories to it (of which Iran is) have an:
Obligation to prevent genocide (Article I) which, according to the ICJ, has an extraterritorial scope
Iran targeting Israeli military infrastructure being used to commit genocide was doing exactly this.
Do BBC journalists have no shame? Do they realise that in years to come students will be studying these headlines in horror, wondering how it was allowed to happen? How obvious they are in their racism and how stupid they think the country must be is insulting.
Feature image via
By HG
This post was originally published on Canary.
Israel often seeks to justify its murder of civilians by claiming Hamas was using them as ‘human shields’. But apparently, Israel also uses human shields. And even so, Iran has managed not to kill any civilians in its retaliation against the colonial power’s escalation of hostilities in Lebanon.
The hypocrisy of Western reactions to Israel’s massive genocidal crimes and meek Iranian attacks, however, is off the scale. Their racist double standards are on full display more than ever.
Civilians matter to Western leaders. But apparently, that’s only if they’re Israeli.
The apartheid state has committed genocide in Gaza. As Oxfam reported this week:
More women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades.
In fact, Israeli occupation forces reportedly killed 4,104 children in Gaza in just the first month of its genocidal assault. A year on, the colonial government has consistently rejected or undermined peace efforts (as it has historically), and has only escalated the conflict further afield. It has assassinated people in the Iranian consulate in Syria, in Iran, and in Lebanon.
Iran has shown a lot of restraint, according to experts. But it has finally responded to Israel’s attempts to escalate hostilities in the region. Targeting military and intelligence facilities, it has reportedly killed no civilians. And this is in spite of Israel placing some of those facilities in densely-populated civilian areas:
I keep seeing people laughing that Iran “failed to kill any Israeli civilians.”
These are people are so enamoured by war crime they seem to think the entire purpose of retaliatory action is to kill civilians rather than target military infrastructure.
— Philip Proudfoot
As CNN reported:
Among the targets were Israeli airfields but also, and this is crucial, the headquarters of Mossad – the international intelligence service of Israel, which is inside Tel Aviv. It’s in the northern part of Tel Aviv. But it’s in the city. It’s in a densely-populated area. And of course, the concern is… it is in a densely-populated city with civilians around it.
Breaking: CNN’s @jimsciutto confirms Israel is using human shields, strategically positioning its command and control center in densely populated civilian areas pic.twitter.com/ApaA1KArau
— Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) October 1, 2024
Iran’s foreign minister clarified that its attack had finished, and that the ball is now in the court of Israel and its “enablers”:
we exercised self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, targeting solely military & security sites in charge of genocide in Gaza and Lebanon. We did so after exercising tremendous restraint for almost two months, to give room for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Our action is concluded unless the Israeli regime decides to invite further retaliation. In that scenario, our response will be stronger and more powerful. Israel’s enablers now have a heightened responsibility to rein in the warmongers in Tel Aviv instead of partaking in their folly.
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon was likely the final straw pushing Iran to act. And from recent months’ statistics, it’s as clear as it is in Gaza who the main aggressor is:
Incredible Bloomberg data visualization that clearly shows what’s actually going on between Israel and Lebanon.
First, despite all the talk of the threat of Hezbollah rockets hitting Israel, it’s actually Israel that’s consistently firing far more rockets over the border. pic.twitter.com/uSvPvMC61i
— Paris Marx (@parismarx) September 30, 2024
The "measure of justice" (Biden) in Israel’s war on Hezbollah in Lebanon as visualized by Bloomberg. Chartbook Top Links. https://t.co/xgvQvAimjK pic.twitter.com/2Hv4CLZvqG
— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) September 30, 2024
For most people not in the pockets of arms dealers and genocidal despots, it was obvious that Iran would have to act if Israel kept provoking it, and it was obvious that Western leaders were responsible for bringing us to the brink of a regional or global conflict. As Jeremy Corbyn insisted:
Governments have fuelled the machinery of war. Their indifference to human life has destroyed prospects for peace and endangered us all.
In fact, even the BBC had to platform someone who emphasised Iran’s restraint in the context of Israeli provocation and the West’s responsibility for the path Israel is taking:
Finally balance from the BBC:
•Israel
have constantly crossed ‘red lines’
•Hezbollah & Iranhave tried to ‘play it fairly rationally’
•The UShas a ‘responsibility’ to control how Israel
Biden & Starmer should listen to this.pic.twitter.com/o2HVRa4U5p
— Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) October 2, 2024
This is despite the BBC‘s overall bias towards Israel.
Both wings of the corporate party in the US and the UK, meanwhile, almost seem to be salivating at the prospect of their ally advancing its power in the region. Britain, for example, was flying to Tel Aviv just as Israel invaded Lebanon – continuing its complicity in Israeli terror. The US, on the other hand, was allegedly egging Israel on to invade.
Nonetheless, it was Iran that Britain and the US treated as the ‘dangerous, destabilising force’ in the Middle East. And the Western corporate media seemed to care more about damage to inanimate objects in Israel than the civilians killed in Lebanon in recent days.
Ordinary people are increasingly seeing through the propaganda, though. So if Biden or Starmer try to pull us directly into Israel’s endless maniacal conflict, they may well get more resistance than they bargained for.
Featured image via X – screengrab
By Ed Sykes
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Ken Klippenstein, an independent reporter operating on Substack and an investigative alum of the Intercept, announced (Substack, 9/26/24) that he had been kicked off Twitter (now rebranded as X). His crime, he explained, stemmed from posting the 271-page official dossier of Republican vice presidential candidate’s J.D. Vance’s campaign vulnerabilities; the US government alleges that the information was leaked through Iranian hacking. In other words, the dossier is a part of the “foreign meddling campaign” of “enemy states.”
Klippenstein is not the first reporter to gain access to these papers (Popular Information, 9/9/24), but most of the reporting about this dossier has been on the intrigue revolving around Iranian hacking rather than the content itself (Daily Beast, 8/10/24; Politico, 8/10/24; Forbes, 8/11/24). Klippenstein decided it was time for the whole enchilada to see the light of day:
As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been altered, but even if it was, its contents are publicly verifiable. I’ll let it speak for itself.
“The terror regime in Iran loves the weakness and stupidity of Kamala Harris, and is terrified of the strength and resolve of President Donald J. Trump,” Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, responded when I asked him about the hack.
If the document had been hacked by some “anonymous”-like hacker group, the news media would be all over it. I’m just not a believer of the news media as an arm of the government, doing its work combating foreign influence. Nor should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know.
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement that alleged Iranian hacking (9/18/24) was “malicious cyber activity” and “the latest example of Iran’s multi-pronged approach…to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process.”
Ken Klippenstein (Substack, 9/26/24) argued that the Vance dossier ” is clearly newsworthy, providing Republican Party and conservative doctrine insight into what the Trump campaign perceives to be Vance’s liabilities and weaknesses.”
The Vance report isn’t as salacious as Vance’s false and bizarre comments about Haitians eating pets (NPR, 9/15/24), but it does show that he has taken positions that have fractured the right, such as aid for Ukraine; the report calls him one of the “chief obstructionists” to providing assistance to the country against Russia. It dedicates several pages to Vance’s history of criticizing Trump and the MAGA movement, suggesting that his place on the ticket could divide Trump’s voting base.
On the other hand, it outlines many of his extreme right-wing stances that could alienate him with putative moderates. It says Vance “appears to have once called for slashing Social Security and Medicare,” and “is opposed to providing childcare assistance to low-income Americans.” He “supports placing restrictions on abortion access,” and states that “he does not support abortion exceptions in the case of rape.”
And for any voter who values 7-day-a-week service, Vance “appears to support laws requiring businesses to close on Sundays.” It quotes him saying: “Close the Damn Businesses on Sunday. Commercial Freedom Will Suffer. Moral Behavior Will Not, and Our Society Will Be Much the Better for It.” That might not go over well with small business owners, and any worker who depends on their Sunday shifts.
The Washington Post (8/13/24) suggested that Vance dossier was different from Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails in 2016 because of “foreign state actors increasingly getting involved” in US elections.
Are the findings in the Vance dossier the story of the century? Probably not, but it’s not nothing that the Trump campaign is aware its vice presidential candidate is loaded with liabilities. There are at least a few people who find that useful information.
And the Washington Post (9/27/24) happily reported on private messages Vance sent to an anonymous individual who shared them with the newspaper that explained Vance’s flip-flopping from a Trump critic to a Trump lover. Are the private messages really more newsworthy than the dossier—or is the issue that the messages aren’t tainted by allegedly foreign fingerprints? Had that intercept of material involved an Iranian, would it have seen the light of day?
In fact, the paper (8/13/24) explained that news organizations, including the Post, were reflecting on the foreign nature of the leak when deciding how deep they should report on the content they received:
“This episode probably reflects that news organizations aren’t going to snap at any hack that comes in and is marked as ‘exclusive’ or ‘inside dope’ and publish it for the sake of publishing,” said Matt Murray, executive editor of the Post. Instead, “all of the news organizations in this case took a deep breath and paused, and thought about who was likely to be leaking the documents, what the motives of the hacker might have been, and whether this was truly newsworthy or not.”
Politico (10/7/16) quoted a Clinton spokesperson: “Striking how quickly concern about Russia’s masterminding of illegal hacks gave way to digging through fruits of hack.” This was immediately followed by: “Indeed, here are eight more e-mail exchanges that shed light on the methods and mindset of Clinton’s allies in Brooklyn and Washington.”
There seems to be a disconnect, however, between ill-gotten information that impacts a Republican ticket and information that tarnishes a Democrat.
Think back to 2016. When “WikiLeaks released a trove of emails apparently hacked from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman email account, unleashing thousands of messages,” as Politico (10/7/16) reported, the outlet didn’t just merely report on the hack, it reported on the embarrassing substance of the documents. In 2024, by contrast, when Politico was given the Vance dossier, it wrote nothing about its contents, declaring that “questions surrounding the origins of the documents and how they came to our attention were more newsworthy than the material that was in those documents” (CNN, 8/13/24).
The New York Times and Washington Post similarly found the Clinton leaks—which were believed at the time to have been given to WikiLeaks by Russia—far more newsworthy than the Vance dossier. The Times “published at least 199 articles about the stolen DNC and Clinton campaign emails between the first leak in June 2016 and Election Day,” Popular Information (9/9/24) noted.
FAIR editor Jim Naureckas (11/24/09) has written about double standards in media, noting that information that comes to light through unethical or illegal means is played up if that information helps powerful politicians and corporations. Meanwhile, if such information obtained questionably is damaging, the media focus tends to be less on the substance, and more on whether the public should be hearing about such matters.
For example, when a private citizen accidentally overheard a cell phone conversation between House Speaker John Boehner, former Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republican congressmembers, and made a tape that showed Gingrich violating the terms of a ethics sanction against him, news coverage focused on the illegality of taping the conversation, not on the ethics violation the tape revealed (Washington Post, 1/14/97; New York Times, 1/15/97).
But when climate change deniers hacked climate scientists’ email, that produced a front-page story in the New York Times (11/20/09) scrutinizing the correspondence for any inconsistencies that could be used to bolster the deniers’ arguments.
When Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Michael Gallagher wrote a series of stories about the Chiquita fruit corporation, based in part on listening without authorization to company voicemails, the rest of the media were far more interested in Gallagher’s ethical and legal dilemmas (he was eventually sentenced to five years’ probation) rather than the bribery, fraud and worker abuse his reporting exposed.
Musk personally ordered the suspension of the account of antifascist activist Curt Loder, the Independent (1/29/23) revealed, noting that “numerous other accounts of left-leaning activists and commentators have been suspended without warning.”
There’s a certain degree of comedy in the hypocrisy of Klippenstein’s suspension. Since right-wing billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, he has claimed that his administration would end corporate censorship, but instead he’s implemented his own censorship agenda (Guardian, 1/15/24; Al Jazeera, 8/14/24).
The Independent (1/29/23) reported that Musk “oversaw a campaign of suppression that targeted his critics upon his assumption of power at Twitter.” He
personally directed the suspension of a left-leaning activist, Chad Loder, who became known across the platform for his work helping to identify participants in the January 6 attack.
Al Jazeera (2/28/23) noted that “digital rights groups say social media giants,” including X, “have restricted [and] suspended the accounts of Palestinian journalists and activists.” Musk has likewise fulfilled censorship requests by the governments of Turkey (Ars Technica, 5/15/23) and India (Intercept, 1/24/23, 3/28/23) officials, and is generally more open to official requests to suppress speech than Twitter‘s previous owners (El Pais, 5/24/23; Washington Post, 9/25/24).
Meanwhile, Musk’s critics contend, he’s allowed the social network to be a force multiplier for the right. “Elon Musk has increasingly used the social media platform as a megaphone to amplify his political views and, lately, those of right-wing figures he’s aligned with,” AP (8/13/24) reported. (Musk is vocal about his support for former President Donald Trump’s candidacy—New York Times, 7/18/24.)
“Twitter Antisemitism ‘Skyrocketed’ Since Elon Musk Takeover—Jewish Groups,” blasted a Newsweek headline (4/25/23). Earlier this year, Mother Jones (3/13/24) reported that Musk “has been retweeting prominent race scientist adherents…spreading misinformation about racial minorities’ intelligence and physiology to his audience of 176.3 million followers.”
The message Ken Klippenstein got from X announcing he had been kicked off the platform.
Now Musk’s Twitter is keeping certain information out of the public view—information that just happens to damage the presidential ticket he supports. With Klippenstein having been silenced on the network, anyone claiming X is a bastion of free speech at this point is either mendacious or simply deluded.
Klippenstein (Substack, 9/26/24) explained that “X says that I’ve been suspended for ‘violating our rules against posting private information,’ citing a tweet linking to my story about the JD Vance dossier.” He added, though, that “I never published any private information on X.” Rather, “I linked to an article I wrote here, linking to a document of controversial provenance, one that I didn’t want to alter for that very reason.”
The journalist (Substack, 9/27/24) claims that his account suspension, which he reports to be permanent, is political because he did not violate the network’s code about disclosing personal information, and even if he did, he should have been given the opportunity to correct his post to become unsuspended. “So it’s not about a violation of X’s policies,” he said. “What else would you call this but politically motivated?”
Klippenstein is understandably concerned that he is now without a major social media promotional tool. “I no longer have access to the primary channel by which I disseminate primarily news (and shitposts of course) to the general public,” he said. “This chilling effect on speech is exactly why we published the Vance Dossier in its entirety.”
This post was originally published on CounterSpin.
This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
In the first attack on Lebanon’s capital Beirut since the recent increase in Israeli attacks on Lebanon, Israel killed three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). But as political analyst Omar Baddar insisted, the target wasn’t what mattered; it’s what the attack represented. And that is Israel crossing all the red lines it can to provoke a response from Lebanon, and possibly Iran, which could justify “an all-out war” in the region.
The point of Israel striking downtown Beirut isn’t really to assassinate PFLP leaders no one cares about, the point is actually to strike downtown Beirut.
The point is to cross all redlines, to terrorize all of a Lebanon & show them who’s in charge, & to force Hezbollah & Iran…
— Omar Baddar عمر بدّار (@OmarBaddar) September 30, 2024
As Baddar added, Israel can’t turn Lebanon into Gaza yet, because it knows that would increase internal pressure on its Western allies to withdraw their essentially unconditional support.
If they started turning Lebanon into Gaza now, there would be greater international opposition. But if they provoke a reaction they can milk as justification for a campaign of all-out ethnic cleansing & obliteration, they’ll do it with greater impunity.
— Omar Baddar عمر بدّار (@OmarBaddar) September 30, 2024
Unsurprisingly, given its genocidal behaviour in Gaza, the Israeli attacks on Lebanon have shown little interest in protecting civilians. And that is because the West’s support has emboldened war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hezbollah would have made concessions if Israel had accepted a ceasefire in Gaza. But because its leaders knew the US government wouldn’t react negatively to an escalation in hostilities, it preferred to make war instead of peace.
And of course, the US proved Israel right, continuing to gaslight people by saying Israel’s actions are about ‘defence’ and that it’s Iran that’s pushing for more conflict. Any brief look at the West’s history of meddling in Iran would highlight the absurdity of that position.
As Quincy Institute Iran expert Trita Parsi has insisted, “thanks to Biden’s blank check to Netanyahu, it seems irrelevant to Israel what Iran’s red lines are”. Iran, meanwhile, is losing patience regarding Western promises.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, for example, has slammed the US and European failure to provide a ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for Iran holding back after Israel’s July assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political bureau chief. He asserted that these claims “were all lies”.
Up to this point, Parsi told CNN, Iran has “shown a tremendous amount of restraint”. The Iranian government has good reasons to avoid conflict, including attempts to make peace with the West and improve the domestic economy. However:
Hezbollah, in many different ways, has been Iran’s first line of defence against Israel. If Hezbollah truly is degraded… then it would leave Iran tremendously vulnerable. And the question is, if they believe that that is the direction we are heading, they may calculate that they are better off reacting sooner rather than later. This is why so many of the other entities in the region – US allies – for so long have been pressuring the United States to put pressure on Israel to actually have a ceasefire in Gaza. Because that is the key to avoiding this escalation.
Parsi criticised the US approach to Israel, saying:
Diplomacy is not what has been pursued in the last 11 months. The Biden administration cannot say that they’re working tirelessly around the clock to secure a ceasefire if they are simultaneously providing the Israelis with the weapons, the intelligence, and other means in order to be able to continue the fight that the Biden administration says they don’t want to see.
He added:
One cannot say that this is a failure of diplomacy. Because diplomacy was never truly tried.
He also tweeted that:
The silence in Western media about the massive civilian casualties in Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon reflects a profound moral collapse. When Israel assassinated the head of Hamas in 2004 and killed seven civilians, the GW Bush admin (!) condemned it. Biden-Harris, however, did not say a word about the hundreds of civilians who were killed alongside Nasrallah.
“Trump whisperer“, dodgy business lowlife, and ethnic cleansing fanboy Jared Kushner, meanwhile, has given us a look at how a Donald Trump presidency could make things even worse. He tweeted gleefully that “Iran is now fully exposed”. He also praised Israel’s “brilliant, rapid-fire tactical successes of the pagers, radios, and targeting of leadership”.
And in a comment that conjured up an image of him rubbing his hands together like a Bond villain, he said:
The Middle East is too often a solid where little changes. Today, it is a liquid and the ability to reshape is unlimited. Do not squander this moment.
Just think of the resources the West could gain access to if Israel was able to spread death and destruction a little bit further afield.
The cringeworthy bootlicking doublespeak saw Kushner praise “the peace-seeking nation of Israel” and add:
There is no going back for Israel. They cannot afford now to not finish the job and completely dismantle the arsenal that has been aimed at them. …
The right move now for America would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It’s long overdue. And it’s not only Israel’s fight.
So whether it’s the Democrats or the Republicans, Israel is likely to get its war with Iran. And only an unprecedented mass mobilisation of anti-war voices could help to bring us back from the brink.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
