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Category: iran

  • The BBC is now UP TO ITS NECK in Israel’s genocide – as one tweet shows

    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.

    Blowback into Israel, Iran style

    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?

    But as usual, the BBC has lapped it up.

    Government sponsored propaganda

    The BBC was shameless in its attempts to report on the escalation by Israel – if we can even call them attempts:

    Cognitive dissonance

    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:

    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:

    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

    Turning tables on Israel

    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:

    Oh wait, maybe not – why name names when you can give the abhorrent genocidal perpetrators a voice instead?

    Maybe, the same way the whole of the West suddenly remembers what international law is?

    Racist corporate media

    One person on X was baffled at the linguistic gymnastics the BBC had used to avoid pointing the finger at Israel:

    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:

    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.

  • A CNN journalist just LET SLIP that Israel uses human shields ITSELF

    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.

    Israel’s human shields

    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:

    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.

    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.

    The war machine of the West is responsible

    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:

    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:

    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

  • Israel Vows To Retaliate As Iran Launches Missile Attack


    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.

  • Iranian Missiles Trigger Israeli Air Defenses | Iran Attacks Israel


    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.

  • Vance Dossier Shows Not All Hacks Are Created Equal

     

    Election Focus 2024Ken 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.”

    Where’s the beef?

    Substack: Read the JD Vance Dossier

    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.

    ‘Took a deep breath’

    WaPo: Why newsrooms haven’t published leaked Trump campaign documents

    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.”

    Double standards for leaks

    Politico: The most revealing Clinton campaign emails in WikiLeaks release

    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.

    Meet the new boss

    Indpendent: Free speech ‘absolutist’ Elon Musk personally ordered the Twitter suspension of left-wing activist, report claims

    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.”

    ‘Chilling effect on speech’

    Suspension notice from X for Ken Klippenstein

    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.

  • Arrogant US, Israel careening to war with Iran


    This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israel just assassinated three non-Hezbollah political figures. Western moral collapse let it.

    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.

    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.

    The West backs Netanyahu, but is using up its excuses

    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.

    “A profound moral collapse” as Democrats shun diplomacy

    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.

    Israel may just get the war with Iran that it’s looking for

    “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.

  • Why is Trump blaming Iran for attempts on his life?


    This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Witnesses Backed by Defense Companies Urge Confrontation With Iran in Hearing

    At a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on Thursday, witnesses proposed confronting Iran directly by deploying more military capabilities to the Middle East and the authorization of the use of force. Yet, they conveniently neglected to mention that their employers — which included one Pentagon contractor and several think tanks funded by weapons manufacturers — stand to rake in…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bypassing Sanctions: Russia, Trade Routes and Outfoxing the West

    Invention is the mother of necessity, and Russia’s response to largely Western-imposed economic and trade sanctions has shown the extent of that inventiveness.  While enduring attritive punishment in its Ukraine campaign, the war remains sustainable for the Kremlin.  The domestic economy has not collapsed, despite apocalyptic predictions to the contrary.  In terms of exports, Russia is carving out new trade routes, a move that has been welcomed by notable powers in the Global South.

    One of the chief prosecutors of sanctions against Moscow was initially confident about the damage that would be caused by economic bludgeoning.  US President Joe Biden, in February 2022, insisted on the imposition of measures that would “impair [Russia’s] ability to compete in a high-tech 21st century economy.”  The Council of the European Union also explained that the move was intended to weaken Moscow’s “ability to finance the war and specifically target the political, military and economic elite responsible for the invasion [of Ukraine].”

    In all this, the European Union, the United States and other governments have ignored a salient historical lesson when resorting to supposedly punitive formulae intended to either deter Russia from pursuing a course of action or depriving it of necessary resources.  States subject to supposedly crushing economic measures can adapt, showing streaks of impressive resilience.  The response from Japan, Germany and Italy during the 1930s in the face of sanctions imposed by the League of Nations provide irrefutable proof of that proposition.  All, to a certain extent, pursued what came to be known as Blockadefestigkeit, or blockade resilience.  With bitter irony, the targeted powers also felt emboldened to pursue even more aggressive measures to subvert the restraints placed upon them.

    By the end of 2022, Russia had become China’s second biggest supplier of Russian crude oil.  India has also been particularly hungry for Russian oil.  Producing only 10% of domestic supply, Russia contributed 34% of the rest of Indian oil consumption in 2023.

    Trade routes are also being pursued with greater vigour than ever.  This year, progress was made between Russia and China on a North Sea Route, which straddles the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, running from Murmansk on the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait and the Far East.  The agreement between Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom and China’s Hainan Yangpu Newnew Shipping Co Ltd envisages the joint design and creation of Arctic-class container vessels to cope with the punishing conditions throughout the year.  Rosatom’s special representative for Arctic development, Vladimir Panov, confidently declared that up to 3 million tonnes of transit cargo would flow along the NSR in 2024.

    While that agreement will operate to Russia’s frozen north, another transport route has also received a boosting tonic.  Of late, Moscow and New Delhi have been making progress on the 7,200-kilometre International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which will run from St. Petersburg in northwestern Russia to ports in southern Iran for onward movement to Mumbai.  While the agreement between Russia, Iran and India for such a multimodal corridor dates back to September 2000, the advent of sanctions imposed in the aftermath of the Ukraine War propelled Moscow to seek succour in the export markets of the Middle East and Asia.

    As staff writers at Nikkei point out, the shipping route will not only bypass Europe but be “less than half as long as the current standard path through the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal.”  One calculation suggests that the time needed to transport cargo to Moscow from Mumbai prior to the initiation of the corridor was between 40 and 60 days.  As things stand, the transit time has been shaved to 25-30 days, with transportation costs falling by 30%.

    Much progress has been made on the western route, which involves the use of Azerbaijan’s rail and road facilities.  In March, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Digital Development and Transport revealed that rail freight grew by approximately 30% in 2023.  Road freight rose to 1.3 million tonnes, an increase of 35%.  The ministry anticipates the amount of tonnage in terms of freight traffic to rise to 30 million per year.  In June this year, the Rasht-Caspian Sea link connecting the Persian Gulf with the Caspian Sea via rail was opened in the presence of Russian, Iranian and Azerbaijani dignitaries.

    A further factor that adds worth to the corridor is the increasingly fraught nature of freight traffic from Europe to Asia via the Suez Canal.  Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have been harrying vessels in the Red Sea, a response to Israel’s ferocious campaign in Gaza.  Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk suggested back in January that the “North-South [corridor] will gain global significance” given the crisis in the Red Sea.

    Despite the frightful losses being endured in the Russia-Ukraine war, it is clear, at least when it comes to using economic and financial weapons, that Moscow has prevailed.  It has outfoxed its opponents, and, along the way, sought to redraw global trade routes that will furnish it with even greater armour from future economic shocks.  Other countries less keen to seek a moral stake in the Ukraine conflict than pursue their own trade interests, have been most enthusiastic.

    The post Bypassing Sanctions: Russia, Trade Routes and Outfoxing the West first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iran Decries Israel’s Deadly “Criminal Attack” in Syria

    The Israeli military carried out a series of airstrikes on central Syria late Sunday, reportedly killing more than a dozen people and prompting a furious response from Syrian ally Iran. “We strongly condemn this criminal attack,” Nasser Kanaani, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said during a press conference in Tehran. Kanaani went on to urge Israel’s weapons suppliers…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘She has won our hearts and minds’: can one woman unite the Baloch people in peaceful resistance?

    With more than 70 people reportedly killed by rebels this week, Dr Mahrang Baloch’s effective and non-violent protests against Pakistan’s government are rapidly gaining support

    On the morning of 26 August, about three dozen armed men intercepted traffic at Musakhel in Pakistan, a district on the border between Balochistan and Punjab. Identifying and off-loading 23 men from the Punjab province from different vehicles, they shot them dead. They also set 35 vehicles ablaze.

    The Balochistan Liberation Army, the most active militant group in the province, claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the second of its kind this year. In April, nine passengers were forced out of a bus near Noshki, a city in Balochistan, and shot dead after the assailants checked their ID cards.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Israel Launches Massive Attack on Lebanon, Pushing Region Towards All-Out War

    Israel’s military deployed around 100 fighter jets to launch a massive bombing campaign in southern Lebanon on Sunday, endangering tens of thousands of civilians and heightening the chances of an all-out regional war. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) characterized the wave of airstrikes as an effort to preemptively “remove the threat” posed by a purportedly imminent Hezbollah attack…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The DNC Fiddles While the World Burns

    DNC delegates unfurl banner during Biden’s speech at the DNC. Photo credit: Esam Boraey

    An Orwellian disconnect haunts the 2024 Democratic National Convention. In the isolation of the convention hall, shielded from the outside world behind thousands of armed police, few of the delegates seem to realize that their country is on the brink of direct involvement in major wars with Russia and Iran, either of which could escalate into World War III.

    Inside the hall, the mass slaughter in the Middle East and Ukraine are treated only as troublesome “issues,” which “the greatest military in the history of the world” can surely deal with. Delegates who unfurled a banner that read “Stop Arming Israel” during Biden’s speech on Monday night were quickly accosted by DNC officials, who instructed other delegates to use “We ❤ Joe” signs to hide the banner from view.

    In the real world, the most explosive flashpoint right now is the Middle East, where U.S. weapons and Israeli troops are slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians, mostly children and families, at the bidding of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. And yet, in July, Democrats and Republicans leapt to their feet in 23 standing ovations to applaud Netanyahu’s warmongering speech to a joint session of Congress.

    In the week before the DNC started, the Biden administration announced its approval for the sale of $20 billion in weapons to Israel, which would lock the US into a relationship with the Israeli military for years to come.

    Netanyahu’s determination to keep killing without restraint in Gaza, and Biden and Congress’s willingness to keep supplying him with weapons to do so, always risked exploding into a wider war, but the crisis has reached a new climax. Since Israel has failed to kill or expel the Palestinians from Gaza, it is now trying to draw the United States into a war with Iran, a war to degrade Israel’s enemies and restore the illusion of military superiority that it has squandered in Gaza.

    To achieve its goal of triggering a wider war, Israel assassinated Fuad Shukr, a Hezbollah commander, in Beirut, and Hamas’s political leader and chief ceasefire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Iran has vowed to respond militarily to the assassinations, but Iran’s leaders are in a difficult position. They do not want a war with Israel and the United States, and they have acted with restraint throughout the massacre in Gaza. But failing to respond strongly to these assassinations would encourage Israel to conduct further attacks on Iran and its allies.
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    The assassinations in Beirut and Tehran were clearly designed to elicit a response from Iran and Hezbollah that would draw the U.S. into the war. Could Iran find a way to strike Israel that would not provoke a U.S. response? Or, if Iran’s leaders believe that is impossible, will they decide that this is the moment to actually fight a seemingly unavoidable war with the U.S. and Israel?

    This is an incredibly dangerous moment, but a ceasefire in Gaza would resolve the crisis. The U.S. has dispatched CIA Director William Burns, the only professional diplomat in Biden’s cabinet, to the Middle East for renewed ceasefire talks, and Iran is waiting to see the result of the talks before responding to the assassinations.

    Burns is working with Qatari and Egyptian officials to come up with a revised ceasefire proposal that Israel and Hamas can both agree to. But Israel has always rejected any proposal for more than a temporary pause in its assault on Gaza, while Hamas will only agree to a real, permanent ceasefire. Could Biden have sent Burns just to stall, so that a new war wouldn’t spoil the Dems’ party in Chicago?

    The United States has always had the option of halting weapons shipments to Israel to force it to agree to a permanent ceasefire. But it has refused to use that leverage, except for the suspension of a single shipment of 2,000 lb bombs in May, after it had already sent Israel 14,000 of those horrific weapons, which it uses to systematically smash living children and families into unidentifiable pieces of flesh and bone.

    Meanwhile the war with Russia has also taken a new and dangerous turn, with Ukraine invading Russia’s Kursk region. Some analysts believe this is only a diversion before an even riskier Ukrainian assault on the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Ukraine’s leaders see the writing on the wall, and are increasingly ready to take any risk to improve their negotiating position before they are forced to sue for peace.

    But Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia, while applauded by much of the west, has actually made negotiations less likely. In fact, talks between Russia and Ukraine on energy issues were supposed to start in the coming weeks. The idea was that each side would agree not to target the other’s energy infrastructure, with the hope that this could lead to more comprehensive talks. But after Ukraine’s invasion toward Kursk, the Russians pulled out of what would have been the first direct talks since the early weeks of the Russian invasion.

    President Zelenskyy remains in power three months after his term of office expired, and he is a great admirer of Israel. Will he take a page from Netanyahu’s playbook and do something so provocative that it will draw U.S. and NATO forces into the potentially nuclear war with Russia that Biden has promised to avoid?

    A 2023 U.S. Army War College study found that even a non-nuclear war with Russia could result in as many U.S. casualties every two weeks as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did in two decades, and it concluded that such a war would require a return to conscription in the United States.

    While Gaza and Eastern Ukraine burn in firestorms of American and Russian bombs and missiles, and the war in Sudan rages on unchecked, the whole planet is rocketing toward catastrophic temperature increases, ecosystem breakdown and mass extinctions. But the delegates in Chicago are in la-la land about U.S. responsibility for that crisis too.

    Under the slick climate plan Obama sold to the world in Copenhagen and Paris, Americans’ per capita CO2 emissions are still double those of our Chinese, British and European neighbors, while U.S. oil and gas production have soared to all-time record highs.

    The combined dangers of nuclear war and climate catastrophe have pushed the hands of the Doomsday Clock all the way to 90 seconds to midnight. But the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties are in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and the military-industrial complex. Behind the election-year focus on what the two parties disagree about, the corrupt policies they both agree on are the most dangerous of all.

    President Biden recently claimed that he is “running the world.” No oligarchic American politician will confess to “running the world” to the brink of nuclear war and mass extinction, but tens of thousands of Americans marching in the streets of Chicago and millions more Americans who support them understand that that is what Biden, Trump and their cronies are doing.

    The people inside the convention hall should shake themselves out of their complacency and start listening to the people in the streets. Therein lies the real hope, maybe the only hope, for America’s future.

    The post The DNC Fiddles While the World Burns first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Iran: Key to World Peace

    From what is read and what is said, Iran is the major sponsor of international terrorism — creating turmoil, preventing peace, and wanting to dominate the Middle East. One problem with the accepted scenario is that the facts do not coincide with the assumptions.

    Except for revenging terrorist attacks by Iranian dissidents and Israeli intelligence and military services, the Islamic Republic has not harmed anybody in the Western nations. In the last 200 years, Iran has fought only one war ─ a defensive battle against aggressor Iraq. It has assisted friendly nations in their conflicts with other nations, similar to United States actions, but on a smaller scale. The demise of Ayatollah Khomeini established a refreshed Islamic Republic that promoted cordial relations with nations who were willing to return the cordiality. Iran has not sought hegemony, economic advantage, or extension of its influence to others than those who desire the influence.

    Do a somersault and find the real Iran. The real Iran has tried to cooperate with the United States and other nations and bring peace and stability to the Middle East.

    This does not excuse Iran’s semi-autocratic regime and human rights violations, no more than they can be excused in nations with whom the United States has friendly relations — Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Mexico, Tajikistan, and others. For American diplomats, the concept of “cannot excuse” is an excuse for not engaging in diplomacy and resolving problems with Iran. The results have been disasters — harm to American society, harm to the American people, and an unending voyage to calamities.

    Designating Iran as the greatest menace to peace assumes there is peace in the Middle East. Is there peace and has there been peace since the words Middle East entered the lexicon? The conflagrations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria would have existed without the presence of the Islamic Republic; the former two wars occurred due to United States’ invasions in those nations. Is the Islamic Republic responsible for Israel’s continuous wars with its neighbors and for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the Emirates battles with their own citizens and quarrels they had with Yemen and Gaddafi’s Libya. The Islamic Republic and its well-educated and alert citizens have not initiated a war against another nation and their restraint holds the key to Middle East peace. The United States refusal to allow the key to unlock the cages that maintain the doves of peace is one of the great tragedies of the century. This was shown in the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Unlike America, Iran had special connections and interests in Afghanistan. After the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. officials responsible for preparing the war in Afghanistan, solicited help to unseat the Taliban and establish a stable government in Kabul. Iran had organized the resistance by the Northern Alliance and provided the Alliance arms and funding, which helped topple the Taliban regime.  In an interview with Iranian Press Service (IPS), Flynt Leverett, senior director for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council (NSC), said, “The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States.”

    Because the Northern Alliance played a significant role in driving the Taliban out of Kabul in November 2001, they demanded 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government and blocked agreement with other opposition groups. According to the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Dobbins, Iran played a “decisive role” in persuading the Northern Alliance delegation to compromise its demands.

    Dobbins, J. (2009). “Negotiating with Iran: Reflections from Personal Experience,” The Washington Quarterly, 33(1), 149–162.

    The Northern Alliance delegate, Younis Qanooni, on instructions from Kabul, was insisting that his faction not only retain the three most important ministries—defense, foreign affairs, and interior—but also hold three-fourths of the total. These demands were unacceptable to the other three Afghan factions represented in Bonn. Unless the Northern Alliance demand could be significantly reduced, there was no way the resultant government could be portrayed as broadly based and representative.

    Finally Iranian representative, Javad Zarif, stood up, and signaled Qanooni to join him in the corner of the room. They spoke in whispers for no more than a minute. Qanooni then returned to the table and offered to give up two ministries. He also agreed to create three new ones that could be awarded to other factions. We had a deal. For the following six months, Afghanistan would be governed by an interim administration composed of 29 department heads plus a chairman. Sixteen of these posts would go to the Northern Alliance, just slightly more than half.

    Dobbins worked with Iranian negotiators in Bonn and related that at a donors conference in Tokyo, in January, 2002, Iran pledged $540 million in assistance to Afghanistan.

    Dobbins writes:

    Emerging from a larger gathering in Tokyo, one of the Iranian representatives took me aside to reaffirm his government’s desire to continue to cooperate on Afghanistan. I agreed that this would be desirable, but warned that Iranian behavior in other areas represented an obstacle to cooperation. Furthermore, I cautioned him by saying that my brief only extends to Afghanistan. He replied by saying, “We know that. We would like to work on these other issues with the appropriate people in your government.”

    On returning to Washington, O’Neill and I reported these conversations, to then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and cabinet level colleagues, and to the Middle Eastern Bureau at the Department of State (DOS). No one evinced any interest. The Iranians received no private reply. Instead, they received a very public answer. One week later, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush named Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, an “axis of evil.” How arch-enemies Iran and Iraq could form any axis, evil or otherwise, was never explained.

    How would the Afghanistan fiasco have played out if the American governments cooperated with the Iranian governments? No analysis can supply a definite and credible answer; clues are available.

    The result of 20 years of U.S. occupation and battle in Afghanistan resulted in nearly 111,000 civilians killed or injured, more than 64,100 national military and police killed, about 2500 American soldiers killed and 20,660 injured in action, and $1 trillion spent by the U.S. in all phases of a conflict that ended with the Taliban return to power. The only accomplishment of the twenty years of strife had Osama bin Laden leave the isolated, uncomfortable, and rugged mountain caves in Tora Bora for a comfortable and well-equipped walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a gift from Pakistan intelligence. Note that the al-Qaeda leader did not flee to U.S. adversary, Iran; he joined his family in U.S. friendly, Pakistan. The 20-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan was a catastrophe and anything is better than a catastrophe.

    More than any other nation Iran had justifiable reasons for wanting a stable, friendly, and economically secure government in Afghanistan.

    • Iran had previous problems with the Taliban and did not want to repeat them.
    • Terrorists enter Iran from Afghanistan and cause havoc to the Islamic Republic.
    • Iran and the Afghan government created a free trading zone on their border and Iran wanted to continue to continue to exploit the arrangement.
    • In 2017, Iran surpassed Pakistan as Afghanistan’s top trade partner and, in 2019, Iranian exports reached $1.24 billion.
    • Iran had funded construction of the 90-mile (140 kilometer) line from Khaf in northeastern Iran to Ghoryan in western Afghanistan.
    • Iran and Afghanistan had several mutual problems that needed, and still need, close contact to resolve. Among them are water distribution, poppy production in Afghanistan, export of opium to Iran, and refugee flow to Iran. “Between 1979 and 2014, Iran claims to have lost some 4,000 security forces fighting heavily armed drug traffickers along its eastern border. In 2019, Iran seized more heroin and illicit morphine than any other country, according to U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.”
    • Iran shared ethnic, linguistic and religious links with millions of Afghan Shi’a and was interested in their protection.

    More than any other nation, Iran had assets to assist in achieving a stable, friendly, peaceful, and economically secure government in Afghanistan.

    • Iran was a large source of foreign direct investment, and provided millions of dollars for Afghanistan’s western provinces to build roads, electrical grids, schools, and health clinics.
    • Afghanistan found Iran could assist Afghanistan in trade. “On April 2016, Iran, Afghanistan and India signed an agreement to develop the Chabahar port in southeastern Iran as a trading hub for all three nations.  Afghan goods would be transported to the Iranian port by rail, and then be shipped to India by sea. The first phase of the port was inaugurated in 2017.”
    • Iran had knowledge of Taliban personnel, arrangements, and activities. It had contacts and informants who could provide intelligence.
    • Not sure if they would acquiesce, but the Iranians could accommodate bases from which to attack the Taliban and to which fighters could retreat.

    The U.S. State Department learned nothing from its disjointed and catastrophic actions in Afghanistan. It repeated the same worthless and aggressive policy in its invasion of Iraq.

    After supporting Iraq against Iran in the 1980s Iraq-Iran war, the U.S. declared war in 1991 against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and performed a first in the history of foreign policy ─ helping a nation that wars against a nation that is not doing any harm to you, and then attacking the nation that it helped do the harm to the nation that was not harming you. The U.S. continued with sanctions against the nation it previously supported, Iraq, and then, in 2003, engaged it in another war, finally ending up with the nation it initially wanted to contain, Iran, essentially winning the war without firing another shot, and gaining influence in Iraq; another example of a U.S. policy toward Iran that backfired. Foreign policy at its finest.

    While stumbling and fumbling its way into destroying Iraq, the U.S. managed to have al-Qaeda (remember them, the guys that America invaded Afghanistan to defeat) reconstitute itself in Iraq. This renewed al-Qaeda, “organized a wave of attacks, often suicide bombings, that targeted security forces, government institutions, and Iraqi civilians.” The American military was forced to use Iraq’s notorious militias, known as “Awakening Councils,” to expel the al-Qaeda organization; a short-lived victory that led to the formation of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS).

    A statement by the ever-unaware President Trump, in a January 8, 2020 speech, argued the US had been responsible for defeating ISIS and the Islamic Republic should realize that it is in their benefit to work with the United States in making sure ISIS remained defeated. The US spent years and billions of dollars in training an Iraqi army that fled Mosul and left it to a small contingent of ISIS forces. Showing no will and expertise to fight, Iraq’s debilitated military permitted ISIS to rapidly expand and conquer Tikrit and other cities. Events energized Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, which, with cooperation from Iran and personal assistance from Major General Qasem Soleimani, was able to retake Tikrit and Ramadi, push ISIS out of Fallujah, and eventually play a leading role in ISIS’ defeat in Mosul. The U.S. honored Soleimani’s efforts by assassinating him ─ one of the most vicious crimes in history ─ and commended Iran by continually sanctioning it. No good deed goes unpunished.

    As in Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic assisted in the re-building of Iraq. As far back as 2012, The Guardian reported that “Iran is one of Iraq’s most important regional economic partners, with an annual trade volume between the two sides standing at $8bn to $10b.” The U.S. confused competitive advantage with diabolical meddling and regarded Iran as a troubling factor in the Fertile Crescent, even though the inhabitants of Mesopotamia considered the United States as the troublemaker in the region. Iran had leverage in Iraq that could not be ignored nor easily combated.

    Why is the Islamic Republic, sanctioned, vilified, and isolated? One clue is that almost all references to Iran in the U.S. media succeed with the phrase, “leading state sponsor of terrorism.” The phrase is stuck onto the word Iran as if by Velcro and all the words are one word. How does this coincidental commonality occur?

    It occurs because the Zionist press distributes most reports on Iran to the American media. Israel has used U.S. support to subdue Israel’s adversaries — Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and Iraq —and  has turned its national army to coerce Iran, the last man standing, into battle. It has turned its worldwide army of thought controllers to vilify Iran and entice Western powers to remove the Islamic member of the “axis of evil” from the map. Blind the world to reality.

    Substitute the nation Israel for the nation Iran in each of the salient accusations made against Iran and the accusations become correct. Nowhere do the facts and historical narrative demonstrate that Iran has disrupted peace and stability by any of the combining factors. Israel is present in all the factors. During the 2016 presidential campaign, contender Donald Trump said, “Many nations, including allies, ripped off the US.” Doesn’t Donald Trump, in his support for apartheid Israel, know that he verified his statement? Bet on the wrong horse and you are sure to lose.

    The following table summarizes the factors and clarifies the issues.

    Iran ─ Key to World Peace

    Analysis shows that Iran has not displayed characteristics of a “major sponsor of international terrorism — creating turmoil, preventing peace, and wanting to dominate the Middle East.” The only directives against Iran are sanctions and some human rights violations. The former are engineered by the U.S., Israel and their allies, have proved ineffective, not accomplished their intentions and greatly harmed the Iranian people. The latter need attention and can be addressed to almost any country on the planet, including the U.S. in its treatment of its African American citizens.

    Israel displays all the characteristics falsely attributed to Iran plus being recipient of tens of Resolutions and decisions by International agencies that accuse Israel and its leaders of aspects of genocide, war crimes, apartheid, illegal occupation, and crimes against humanity. In the 21st century, in Resolutions by the UN that condemn nations, Israel is mentioned more times than all others combined, an enviable record.

    Incorrect U.S. policies have led to continuous warfare in the Middle East, the unnecessary sacrifice of U.S. lives, economic disturbances, and waste of taxpayer money. When something is wrong, the normal practice is to make it right. Why does the United States maintain an aggressive attitude toward Iran and a permissive attitude to Israel? The answer is that the U.S. is controlled by traitors to American principles and to the American people. This cannot continue until its final denouement ─ settled by Armageddon.

    Only Iran has been willing to challenge Israel and halt its destructive path. Iran cannot do it alone. By supporting Israel, the Western powers have turned their backs on their own people. It is radical and will be greeted with gasps, but it is time to turn the other way and support Iran in its endeavors. Stopping war is mandatory and preliminary to achieving peace. If fortifying Iran stymies Israel’s aggression and stops the wars, then peace can be achieved. Iran is the key to world peace.

    In the cauldron of corruption and autocracies, which pits Sunni against Shi’a, Gulf states and Saudi Arabia against Iran, religious extremists against moderates and Israel against all, the United States makes its choice of allies. Whom does Washington support – those who are the most repressive, most corrupt, most militaristic, most prone to cause Middle East instability, and to add to the obvious State Department confusion, Israel, the principal instigator of Al Qaeda terrorism, and Saudi Arabia, the principal supplier of al-Qaeda terrorists. A new perspective of Iran yields a revised perspective of a violent, unstable, and disturbed Middle East. Israel would finally receive attention as the major participant in bringing chaos to the region.

    Discouraging to note that policies that determine war or peace proceed from agendas and not from facts and obligations. Maybe, when the makers and shakers realize their warlike polices will one day result in the eventual nuclear catastrophe, they will have an awakening and comprehend that the quotation, attributed to Plato, “Only the dead know the end of war,” is given more meaning by adding, “after you’re dead, it’s too late to stop the war.”

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  • Something’s Coming, We Don’t Know What It Is But It Is Going To Be Bad

    With a click, with a shock
    Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch
    Something’s coming, don’t know when but it’s soon . . .

    — “Something’s Coming,” West Side Story, lyrics by S. Sondheim, music by L. Bernstein.

    Shock should not be the word, but when World War III breaks fully loose many who are now sleeping will be shocked.  The war has already started, but its full fury and devastation are just around the corner.  When it does, Tony’s singular fate in West Side Story will be the fate of untold millions.

    It is a Greek tragedy brought on by the terrible hubris of the United States, its NATO accomplices, and the genocidal state of Israel and the Zionist terrorists who run it.

    Tony felt a miracle was due, but it didn’t come true for him except to briefly love Maria and then get killed as result of a false report, and only a miracle will now save the world from the cataclysm that is on the way, whether it is initiated by intent, a false report, an accident, or the game of nuclear chicken played once too often.

    Let us hope but not be naïve.  The signs all point in one direction.  The gun on the wall in the first act of this tragic play is primed to go off in the final one.  Every effort to avoid this terrible fate by seeking peace and not war has been rejected by the U.S. and its equally insane allies.  Every so-called red line laid down by Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians, and their allies has been violated with impunity and blatant arrogance.  But impunity has its limits and the dark Furies of vengeance will have their day.

    “It is the dead, not the living,” said Antigone, “who make the longest demands.”  Their ghostly voices cry out to be avenged.

    I wish I were not compelled by conscience to write this, but it seems clearly evident to me that we stand on the edge of an abyss.  The fate of the world rests in the hands of leaders who are clearly psychotic and who harbor death wishes.  It’s not terribly complex.  Netanyahu and Biden are two of them.  Yes, like other mass killers, I think they love their children and give their dog biscuits to eat.  But yes, they also are so corrupted in their souls that they relish war and the sense of false power and prestige it brings them.  They gladly kill other people’s children.  They can defend themselves many times over, offer all kinds of excuses, but the facts speak otherwise.  This is hard for regular people to accept.

    The great American writer who lived in exile in France for so many years and who was born 100 years ago this month, James Baldwin, wrote an essay – “The Creative Process” – in which he addressed the issue of how becoming a normal member of society dulls one to the shadow side of personal and social truths.  He wrote:

    And, in the same way that to become a social human being one modifies and suppresses and, ultimately, without great courage, lies to oneself about all one’s interior, uncharted chaos, so have we, as a nation, modified or suppressed and lied about all the darker forces in our history.

    And lie and suppress we still do today.

    Imagine, if you will, that Mexico has invaded Texas with the full support of the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments.  Their weapons are supplied by these countries and their drone and missile attacks on the U.S. are coordinated by Russian technology.  The Seven Mile Bridge in Florida has been attacked.  The U.S. Mexican border is dotted with Russian troops on bases with nuclear missiles aimed at U.S. cities.

    It’s not hard to do.  That is a small analogy to what the U.S./NATO is doing to Russia.

    Do you think the United States would not respond with great force?

    Do you think it would not feel threatened with nuclear annihilation?

    How do you think it would respond?

    The U.S/NATO war against Russia via Ukraine is accelerating by the day.  The current Ukrainian invasion of Russia’s Kursk region has upped the ante dramatically.  After denying it knew in advance of this Ukrainian invasion of Russia, the demented U.S. President Joseph Biden said the other day when asked about the fighting in Kursk, “I’ve spoken with my staff on a regular basis probably every four or five hours for the last six or eight days. And it’s — it’s creating a real dilemma for Putin.  And we’ve been in direct contact — constant contact with — with the Ukrainians.”  Do you think Kamala Harris was kept in the dark?

    Now how do you think the Russians are going to respond?  How many red lines will they allow the U.S. to cross without massive retaliation?  And what kind of retaliation?

    Switch then to the Middle East where the Iranians and their allies are preparing to retaliate to Israel’s attacks on their soil. No one knows when but it seems soon.  Something is coming and it won’t be pretty.  Will it then ignite a massive war in the region with the U.S. and Israel pitted against the region?  Will nuclear weapons be used?  Will the wars in Ukraine/Russia and the Middle East join into what will be called WW III?

    While the U.S. continues to massively arm Israel, Russian is arming its ally Iran and likely training them in the use of those weapons as the U.S. is doing in Ukraine. The stage is set.  We enter the final act.

    Natanyahu wants and needs war to survive.  So he thinks.  Psychotic killers always do.

    The signs all point in one direction.  No one should be shocked if the worst comes to pass.

    “Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch.”

    If you have time.

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  • Keir Starmer is appeasing Israel when it, not Iran, should reign its action in

    The following article is a comment piece from the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC)

    IHRC has written to the PM Keir Starmer to express our concerns about the government’s response to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians and its increasingly belligerent actions taking the region to the brink of a major war, after his call with Iran’s president.

    Starmer: stop appeasing Israel

    In a joint statement with the leaders of France and Germany and in a call with Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian, PM Starmer urged Iran to refrain from retaliating for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh.

    According to the letter, the response highlights all that has been wrong in Britain’s stand on the genocide in Gaza and its fallout.

    Instead of reacting to Israel’s violation of Iran’s sovereignty in carrying out the extra-judicial and extra-territorial assassination of Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran on 31 July, with international outrage and sanctions against Israel, the PM has joined a wave of demands calling on Iran to de-escalate.

    “Such calls are an abnegation of responsibility and international law. They are a diabolical example of “blaming the victims” and western exceptionalism. You do not stop a bully by asking its victims to submit to him. You demand the bully stop his aggression,” says the letter.

    By appeasing Israel, the PM is simply showing the Zionist state a green light to attack sovereign states with impunity. And while PM Starmer talks about giving peace a chance, his government continues to provide diplomatic cover and military support to Israel to continue its pogrom against the Palestinians in Gaza.

    Labour must step up

    It is clear that having failed to achieve its military objectives in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine, Israel is now trying to pull western powers into a wider regional war. Netanyahu craves a wider, zero-sum, war pitting the Muslim world against the West. It is Britain’s duty to stop him, not assist him in his megalomaniacal crusade.

    Since the genocide started last October, millions of Britons have marched on our streets to try and apply pressure on Britain and other governments to put a stop to it. However, that central demand, which is shared by the majority of the country and echoed by the International Court of Justice, has fallen on deaf ears.

    It is high time that our government stepped up to fulfil its international and moral responsibility and provide protection for the Palestinians instead of legitimising Israeli war crimes and asking the targets of Israel’s belligerence to be passive victims.

    Featured image via 10 Downing Street

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Fears Grow of Wider Regional War in the Absence of Ceasefire in Gaza

    Iran has rejected a call by France, Germany and the United Kingdom demanding it refrain from any retaliatory attacks over the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31. Tensions also remain high on Israel’s northern border as Lebanon-based Hezbollah vows to respond to the Israeli assassination of its senior military commander Fuad Shukr. On Friday…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Middle East Braces as Iran & Hezbollah Vow Retaliation for Israeli Assassinations


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Middle East Braces as Iran & Hezbollah Vow Retaliation for Israeli Assassinations

    Seg1 middle east

    Iran has rejected a call by France, Germany and the United Kingdom demanding it refrain from any retaliatory attacks over the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31. Tensions also remain high on Israel’s northern border as Lebanon-based Hezbollah vows to respond to the Israeli assassination of its senior military commander Fuad Shukr. On Friday, Israel continued its assassination campaign by killing a Hamas commander in the Lebanese city of Sidon. “It’s a very, very tense time here in Beirut, and in Lebanon more generally,” says Karim Makdisi, a professor of international politics at the American University of Beirut. He says the cycle of escalation across the region has a clear cause, which is Israel’s war on Gaza backed by the United States, and that ending the violence there will bring calm elsewhere. “Get a ceasefire, everything stops.”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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  • More than a Killing of Hamas Political Leader Ismail Haniyeh

    69% of Israelis support assassinations even if cease-fire in Gaza delayed: Poll, Anadolu Agency

    In post-World War II, except for assassins from Israel, have military and intelligence agencies assassinated political leaders of another nation? Have any of these assassinations occurred in a nation that is not the native nation of the assassinated? Two come to mind.

    On March 1, 2020, the Trump government assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, and, on November 28, 1971, four Black September gunmen killed Wasfi Tal, Prime Minister of Jordan, in the lobby of the Sheraton Cairo Hotel in Egypt? U.S. special forces dispatched Osama bin-Laden in Pakistan, but bin-Laden was not a leader of a country. Established nations have a silent agreement of not assassinating another nation’s leaders and consider it an ugly behavior.

    There have been assassinations during military coups, in which the United States participated in the takeovers, several attempts to kill Fidel Castro by U.S. agencies, assassinations of dissidents on foreign soil by Russian, Turkish, and Iranian intelligence, and unproven charges of American complicity in assassinations of foreign leaders. Israel’s widespread physical and character assassinations of foreign leaders and civilians are unique; the numbers are staggering, and the world’s inattention to the numbers is chilling.

    Foreign civilians murdered by Israel in foreign nations

    Israel’s murders of innocents, who are doing daily tasks to earn bread and assist their countries, are mafia style “hits,” criminal activities to protect criminal activities. They are performed as routine matters, with no regard to the lives of others, as if those who are not Israelis are insignificant human beings.

    September 11, 1962, Heinz Krug, a West German rocket scientist working for Egypt’s missile program, was abducted and his body never found. From Operation Damocles:

    The Mossad set up a sting involving a former SS officer and war hero named Otto Skorzeny who Krug was led to believe would help keep him and the other scientists safe. Instead, Skorzeny killed Krug and a team of Israeli agents poured acid on his body and buried his remains in the forest outside Munich. The leader of the Mossad team was Yitzhak Shamir, the head of the special operations unit and later prime minister.

    In November, 1962, two parcel bombs arrived at the office of the missile project’s director, Wolfgang Pilz, maiming his secretary and killing five Egyptian workers.

    In February 1963, another scientist, Hans Kleinwachter, escaped an ambush in Switzerland. That April, two Mossad agents in Basel threatened to kill the project manager Paul Goerke and his daughter. A pistol was fired at a West German professor who was researching electronics for Egypt in the town of Lörrach.

    Note the use of a famous Nazi, Otto Skorzeny, in one of the escapades.

    June 13, 1980, Yehia El-Mashad, Egyptian nuclear scientist was murdered in his room at the Méridien Hotel in Paris.

    September 1981, José Alberto Albano do Amarante, a Brazilian Air Force lieutenant colonel, was  assassinated by the Israeli intelligence service to prevent Brazil from becoming a nuclear nation.

    July 14, 1989,  Said S. Bedair, Egyptian scientist in microwave engineering and a colonel in the Egyptian army fell to his death from the balcony of his brother’s apartment in Alexandria, Egypt. His veins were found cut and a gas leak was detected in the apartment. Egyptians claim that the Mossad assassinated him in a way that appeared a suicide.

    March 20, 1990,  Gerald Bull, Canadian engineer and designer of the Project Babylon “supergun” for Saddam Hussein’s government, was shot at the door to his apartment in Brussels, Belgium. Attributed to Mossad by several sources.

    Murdered Iranian Scientists and family members

    Mossad has been accused of assassinating Masoud Alimohammadi, Ardeshir Hosseinpour, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad, and Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan; scientists involved in the Iranian nuclear and missile programs. In some of the attacks other innocent civilians were killed. Israel is also suspected of being behind the attempted assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Fereydoon Abbasi. Meir Dagan, who served as Director of Mossad from 2002 until 2009, while not taking credit for the assassinations, praised them in an interview with a journalist, saying “the removal of important brains” from the Iranian nuclear project had achieved so-called “white defections”, frightening other Iranian nuclear scientists into requesting that they be transferred to civilian projects.

    November 12, 2011,  General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the main architect of the Iranian missile system and the founder of Iran’s deterrent power ballistic missile, was assassinated in Tehran.

    April 21, 2018, Fadi Mohammad al-Batsh, a Palestinian engineer, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

    August 5, 2018, Aziz Asbar, Syrian scientist responsible for long-range rockets and chemical weapons programs, was killed by a car bomb in Masyaf, Syria.

    November 27, 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, senior official in the nuclear program of Iran, was killed by a remotely operated gun in a truck smuggled into Iran.

    March 19, 2023,  Ali Ramzi Al-Aswad, Palestinian Islamic Jihad engineer, was killed in the Damascus outskirts. Islamic Jihad accused Israel of the murder.

    Killing innocent civilians because they perform activities that assist Israel’s adversaries is not confined to weapons manufacture. Anyone in Gaza who helps Gazans to survive the Israeli onslaught is also in the crosshairs.

    Data from the U.N.’s Crisis Coordination Centre In Gaza, released by Dropsite News, shows that, by the end of June, 2024 , Israel’s assault on Gaza killed 195 United Nations staff members and at least 172 dependents of the staff.

    The killing of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen alarmed the world. It was not an “isolated mistake.” NBC News reports,

    But while the Israel Defense Forces investigation suggests this was an isolated “grave mistake,” the mounting toll faced by aid agencies throughout the war points instead to what they say are systemic failings in the IDF’s approach to protecting humanitarian workers in the Gaza Strip. According to the United Nations, a total of 224 humanitarian aid workers have been killed since the start of the war.

    Murder of Palestinian and Hezbollah leaders

    Israel seems to delight in killing leaders and family members of those opposing Israel, while knowing the deceased leader will be replaced by another leader. Violating the sovereignty of other nations by blooding their soils does not bother the Israelis. They always excuse the killings by claiming the leader had given orders for a violent action against Israelis, without noting that the violent action succeeded several Israeli violent actions against the Palestinians and Israel could terminate the extrajudicial killings by granting the Palestinians their deserved freedom. The Israelis are special people; they are allowed to murder whomever, wherever, and whenever.

    April 16, 1988, Abu Jihad, second-in-command to Yassir Arafat, was shot dead in front of his family by Israeli commandos in Tunis.

    February 16, 1992, Abbas al-Musawi , Secretary-General of Hezbollah, was killed by Israeli Apache helicopters that fired missiles at the 3 vehicle motorcade of al-Musawi in southern Lebanon, killing him, his wife, his five-year-old son, and four others.

    March 22, 2004,  Ahmed Yassin, the frail and nearly blind paraplegic co-founder of Hamas, two bodyguards, and seven bystanders were killed by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache-fired Hellfire missiles. Seventeen bystanders were wounded.

    April 17, 2004, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, successor to Ahmed Yassin. was killed by helicopter-fired missiles, along with his son and bodyguard. Several bystanders were injured.

    July 31, 2024, Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas, was killed by a bomb in Tehran. Eighty innocent members of Haniyeh’s close and extended family had already been systematically killed by Israel.

    Haniyeh’s murder reminded me of the failed attempt to kill Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’ previous political leader. I met Khaled Mashaal in Damascus, Syria, where he went after his recovery. My notes on that meeting.

    Not kosher was a clandestine trip to meet a “minor” Hamas official, who turned out to be Khalid Meshaal, official political leader of Hamas, exiled in Damascus. The world became more aware of Meshaal when Israel’s Mossad tried to assassinate him in Amman. Jordan’s King Abdullah forced Israel to immediately supply an antidote to the poison given to Meshaal by threatening to publicly hang the Mossad agents who tried to kill the Hamas leader.

    Meshaal does not fill the western media description of a wild eyed fanatic. On the contrary, he is a friendly, deliberate, and well-spoken person who makes sense to the many who subscribe to similar positions. He said that Israel does not want peace and both negotiating parties aren’t strong enough to market their results to their peoples. Meshaal doesn’t delineate Hamas’ positions, but defers to a Palestinian position that accepts 1967 borders and an Arab position that has accepted the two-state solution. Since 2002, Bush has repeatedly spoken of support for a two-state solution, but where is it? The Hamas leader expects the region to be more explosive. Nevertheless, if the PA feels the Palestinian rights have been fulfilled, Hamas will welcome that. He has proposed a Hudna (truce), and if Israel responds positively, Hamas will not be an obstacle to peace. If the Right of Return is the only remaining problem, Hamas will compromise, and accept the will of the people. He claims Hamas does not encourage militancy, does not desire a theocratic state, is a national liberation movement, and will let the Palestinian people decide its own government.

    The February 1986 assassination of Sven Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986, has never been solved. Swedish prosecutor Krister Petersson claimed “there was ‘reasonable evidence’ that the assailant was Stig Engstrom, a graphic designer at an insurance company, who killed himself in 2000, at the age of 66, and could not rule out the possibility that Mr. Engstrom had acted as part of a larger conspiracy.” Olof Palme, who had credibility and many admirers, was a severe critic of Israel, at a time when no Western leader voiced arguments against Israel. Could Mossad have been involved in his killing?

    Systematic Murder of Journalists

    Journalists are well identified and, in battles that have no battleground and are person to person, there is little possibility of a journalist becoming a casualty unless deliberately targeted. The only reason to deliberately target a journalist is to prevent the presentation of the truth.

    As of August 6, 2024, the Committee to protect Journalists (CPJ) “preliminary investigations showed at least 113 journalists and media workers were among the more than 40,000 killed since the war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.” A previous report, in May 2024, “found that Israeli soldiers had killed at least 20 journalists in the last 22 years and none had ever been charged or held accountable.”

    The most well-known murder of a journalist was the May 11, 2022 deliberate targeting of Shireen Abu Akleh, “a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for 25 years for Al Jazeera while wearing a blue press vest and covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.” The Biden administration insisted “on ‘full and transparent accounting’ of death of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.” Despite not receiving any accounting, Biden has done nothing to punish Israel.

    Write “bad” stories about the Mafia and the Mafia retaliates, and apparently without concern ─ proof that Mafia Israel controls the American government.

    Revenge attacks on Adversaries

    Anyone who harmed an Israeli can expect to be hunted down and receive retribution. Hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese Hezbollah have been found guilty without trial, and they and innocent others of mistaken identity have been blasted from the Earth. Three things wrong with the bold strikes.

    (1)    They do not prevent the deaths of Israel’s citizens and soldiers; they only retaliate for the deaths. Why were the Israelis killed; their murders revenged the killings and extreme harm done to individual Palestinians and the Palestinian community.

    (2)    Since day one of the Zionist invasion, the Israel population has been guilty of theft of Palestinian lands, wanton killings of Palestinians, destruction of their communities, oppression, ethnic cleansing, and interferences in their daily life. The Palestinians have a valid reason for their attacks. No Israeli is innocent. Israel’s retaliations are not revenge; they are a way of telling the Palestinians, “If you counter our thefts and oppression of your community we will strike you harder.

    (3)    Hamas and Hezbollah have warned Israel to halt all attacks on the Palestinian community. Israel ignores the threats and willingly provokes Hamas and Hezbollah into counterattacks.

    Character Assassinations

    No officials in the world’s governments speak in the vicious and demeaning manner of other officials as do Israeli officials; dehumanizing Palestinians and defaming antagonists.

    Every decision by United Nations (UN) agencies and Human Rights organizations that contradicts Israel’s polices is met with derision by Israeli officials. As an example, when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly called for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan said the UN no longer held “even one ounce of legitimacy or relevance.”

    Speaking at a conference in Israel, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”

    Israel’s former justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, posted on Facebook:

    Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

    Stereotypes and prejudice in conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish society, Bar-Tal, D., & Teichman, Y. (2005), Cambridge University Press, P.359 reports that “10% of the drawings in a sample of children asked to sketch a typical Arab depicted them as animals. Extensive evidence that Israeli children, when asked about Arabs, spoke of them in terms of pigs and other animals (as well as “barbarians,” “Nazis,” and murderers).”

    A worldwide contingent of Israel supporters defame Israel’s critics with false charges of anti-Semitism and media attacks that ruin reputations, cause employment difficulties, and isolate individuals.

    The Canary Mission, documents people and groups that it falsely accuses of promoting hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews on North American college campuses. This bigoted organization also posts its Jewish Friends of Anti-Semites
    ADL, an organization concerned with false stereotypes, publishes its Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America.
    AMCHA, joins the forces of Israel supporters that make a mockery of the word anti-Semite, with its list of more than 200 anti-Israel Middle East Studies professors, many of whom are Jews.

    Israel is a Criminal Enterprise

    Middle East commentators ponder the reasons for Israel’s policy of targeted assassinations. Do they halt aggressive activities that counter Israel? Are they meant to intimidate people so they become fearful of engaging in actions that upset Israel or led to the belief that death is an act of mercy? Do they serve “as a mechanism to galvanize its own society rather than genuinely altering the political or military stance of its adversaries,” mentioned by Abdaljawad Omar in an article, “The real reason Israel is assassinating Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, and why it won’t stop the resistance?” It’s all part of a pattern, the pattern of a criminal enterprise and not the pattern of an established nation.

    Nations are formed from a community of people who share a common land, language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and history for centuries. If it were otherwise, why has Israel’s thrust been to give its Jews the scaffolding of a new nation by giving them a common language, culture, descent, and history, which reject how they previously lived? No established state has governments, leaders, and people who express themselves in the despicable manner and commit extrajudicial crimes in the violent manner as does Israel. The gathering of violent people, their engagement in continuous battle to gain territory and resources, and strong arm those who interfere with their thievery and dictatorial control are the efforts of a criminal enterprise.

    Misinterpretation of the governing nature and violent behavior of Israel has led to a faulty approach to resolving the Middle East crisis. There are no two-state, no one-state, no confederation, and no federal solutions to the crisis. There is only a “no state,” a criminal enterprise that pleads for an international police force to defeat the criminals and prevent additional murderous catastrophes.

    This is not a sarcastic and fanciful gaze at world politics. Engage Israelis in negotiations and find you are negotiating how much you are willing to be robbed. Those who honestly sought and still seek a reasonable compromise and solution of the crisis by negotiations have not factored into their arguments the true nature of the Zionist criminal mission and its criminal constituents;  a criminality that is international, extending to money laundering, ecstasy trade, prostitution, arms trade, and harboring criminals, including sex criminals fleeing the law. Israel does what it wants, when it wants, and where it wants, not functioning as a normal state but as a criminal enterprise.

    All of Israel’s worldwide supporters are criminals by association. The rewards of these aiders and abettors are neither beneficial nor tangible; they are willing to receive nothing, while knowing they share in the horrors done to others, earn contempt from the world community, and, hopefully, will, one day, receive eventual justice of years in prisons.

    The post More than a Killing of Hamas Political Leader Ismail Haniyeh first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Look away from Israel’s crimes, they say, blame Iran

    They say Iran “masterminded” a Canadian student encampment and is “destabilizing” West Asia. But these crude ‘blame Iran’ claims are nothing more than pathetic attempts to legitimate genocidal Zionism.

    Recently, various commentators, politicians and Zionist groups promoted a deranged report Iran “masterminded” the student divestment encampment at McGill. Seeking to frame student opposition to their university’s complicity with Israel’s holocaust as Iranian interference, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada Proud, MP Kevin Vuong, senator Leo Housakos, conservative candidate Neil Oberman, influencer Yasmine Mohammed, journalist Sam Cooper, Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi and others shared an Iran International report headlined “Iran masterminded anti-Israel protest in Canadian university”. Drawing from an analysis by an unnamed official at US cyber company XPOZ, the article claims large numbers of social media posts about the McGill encampment were in Farsi and may have come from Iranian government aligned accounts. A National Post article “Disinformation experts warn Iran, Russia and others encouraging anti-Israel protests in Canada” used the same data though it was slightly more circumspect in concluding Iran “masterminded” the encampment. It was shared by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

    As someone who went to the encampment regularly and has followed activism at McGill for a quarter century it’s hard to not laugh at the absurdity. In the lead up to the encampment several students went on a two-month hunger strike to pressure the university to divest and there were a number of large anti-genocide protests on campus during the last academic year. For a decade there have been referendums on Palestine and in November 78.7% of undergraduates called on the administration to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.” It was the largest referendum turnout in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) history.

    The broader context in which the encampment grew out of also demonstrates the silliness of the ‘blame Iran’ claim. The students who set up the McGill encampment were quite obviously mimicking the tactics of their US counterparts. And the tactic had little to do with social media. I doubt the reliability of the data quoted by Iran International and the National Post but even if lots of Farsi language Iranian government bots promoted the encampment what impact did this have on a physical occupation of a campus in Montreal?

    At a higher level of ‘blame Iran’ idiocy, foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly is claiming Iran is “destabilizing” the region. A statement she released on Sunday regarding rising tensions in the region concluded, “I reiterated our call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for the immediate release of all hostages, and demand that Iran and its proxies refrain from destabilizing actions in the region.” On July 26 Canada, Australia and New Zealand released a joint statement with a similar formulation. It noted, “We condemn Iran’s attack against Israel of April 13-14, call on Iran to refrain from further destabilizing actions in the Middle East, and demand that Iran and its affiliated groups, including Hizballah, cease their attacks.”

    Canadian officials never refer to Israel as “destabilizing” the region even though that country has killed hundreds of thousands in Gaza and stolen ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank all the while repeatedly attacking Lebanon and Syria and assassinating the Palestinians’ main ceasefire negotiator in Iran.

    As part of its blame Iran nonsense, Ottawa has ignored Israel’s recent assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran and top Hezbolah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. But they will no doubt denounce Iran or Hezbollah when they respond.

    Four months ago, Ottawa remained silent when Israel damaged Canada’s embassy in Damascus while murdering eight Iranian officials at the country’s diplomatic compound. Then the Canadian government condemned Iran when it responded to Israel’s flagrant war crime.

    As part of this blame Iran mantra Ottawa recently joined the US in designating the 100,000-member Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. Listing the IRGC bolsters Israeli violence in the region.

    Canada continues to strengthen Israel as it commits horrific crime after horrific crime across the region. As death from illness and malnutrition grows due to 10 months of IOF barbarism in Gaza, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said it may be “justified and moral” to starve 2 million Palestinians but the world won’t let Israel do it. At the same time, Knesset members are openly debating the legitimacy of raping the 10,000 Palestinian hostages Israel holds in what a recent B’tselem report refers to as “torture camps”.

    But instead of focusing on Israel’s crimes we’re told to look away. At first, we were told Israel’s genocide was all Hamas’ fault. Now it’s Iran that is to blame.

    Israel and its supporters are like 4-year-olds caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It’s always someone else’s fault. Except this is not about a stolen sweet. This is about the world watching a genocide in real time and doing nothing about it.

    The post Look away from Israel’s crimes, they say, blame Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Pundits Push for Regional Escalation in the Wake of Israeli Assassinations

     

    Following Israel’s assassinations of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut—along with a woman and two children (Al Jazeera, 7/30/24)—and of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, corporate media pundits have called for the US and Israel to escalate the region-wide war.

    Wall Street Journal: Weakness Won’t Deter Hezbollah After Its Soccer-Field Attack

    According to the Wall Street Journal (7/28/24), the “way to make war less likely is to announce that American munitions transfers to Israel will be expedited immediately.”

    A Wall Street Journal editorial (7/28/24), using galaxy-brain logic, said the

    way to make war less likely is to announce that American munitions transfers to Israel will be expedited immediately, as they were earlier in the war and as Congress has approved, and that all oil sanctions on [Hezbollah ally] Iran will be enforced again.

    US-supplied weapons have already been a major part of Israel’s post–October 7 attacks on Lebanon, inflicting a terrible cost. The Washington Post (12/13/23) reported that, in October, Israel fired US-made white phosphorus—incendiary material that can cause ghastly injuries and death—into the Lebanese village Dheira; the attack incinerated at least four homes, according to residents, and injured nine. In March, Israel used a US-provided weapon in an airstrike on the Lebanese town of al-Habariyeh, killing seven volunteer paramedics, aged 18–25, in violation of international law (Guardian, 5/6/24).

    Prior to last week’s Israeli attack on Lebanon, Israel had killed at least 543 people in Lebanon since October 7 (Al Jazeera, 6/27/24), including roughly 100 civilians (BBC, 7/22/24); US fighter jets have played a key role in Israel’s Lebanon campaign (Deutsche Welle, 7/19/24). Far from “mak[ing] war less likely,” US armaments enable Israel to kill and maim Lebanese people. (According to Israeli officials, Hezbollah attacks have killed 33 Israelis, mostly soldiers, since October 7—BBC, 7/17/24.)

    The editorial invoked a tissue-thin casus belli on Israel’s behalf, saying that Hezbollah carried out a “rocket attack on Saturday [that] killed 12 children and wounded more on a soccer field in Israel’s Golan Heights.” One problem: There is no such thing as “Israel’s Golan Heights”; there is only Syria’s Golan Heights, which Israel has illegally occupied, illegally annexed and illegally settled (Foreign Policy, 2/5/19). Casting the deaths in Majdal Shams, the predominately Druze village in the Golan where the killings occurred, as an attack on Israel makes it sound as if Israeli violence against Lebanon (such as its Beirut bombing) is what the editorial calls Israel “defend[ing] itself.”

    ‘Israel returns fire’

    WSJ: Israel Returns Fire on Iran and Its Proxies

    The Wall Street Journal (8/1/24) maintains that the assassination of a Hamas negotiator could help peace negotiations, as “Hamas politicians remaining in Qatar now know their lives are also on the line if they continue to resist Israel’s reasonable terms.”

    A second Wall Street Journal editorial (8/1/24) pushed a similar line, deploying the headline, “Israel Returns Fire on Iran and Its Proxies.” Strangely, Iranian actions are not described as “return[ing] fire” for Israel’s years of attacks on Iranian territory, which have taken the form of sabotaging the Iranian electrical grid, cyberattacks (New York Times, 4/11/21) and murdering Iranian scientists (Politico, 3/5/18). Doubling down on its demands for belligerence, the editorial’s authors argued:

    The US can help Israel prevent a larger war by putting pressure on Hezbollah and Iran. Expediting weapons to Israel, including deep-penetrating bombs that would put Iran’s nuclear facilities at risk, would send a message, as would enforcing oil sanctions again. Sending US warships to the eastern Mediterranean, as after October 7, would also make Iran think twice about Hezbollah’s next move.

    The Journal seems to think that doing the same thing over and over again—namely, sending more weapons to Israel, choking Iranian civilians through sanctions (Canadian Dimension, 4/3/23) and upping the US military presence in the region—will produce different results. Maybe this time, the authors seem to suggest, Iran and Hezbollah will decide to just let the US and Israel dictate what happens across West Asia.

    Nor does the editorial explore the possibility that Iran might be less inclined to strike Israel if Israel were to cease carrying out assassinations on Iranian soil, bombing its embassies (Reuters, 4/4/24) or carrying out genocide against Iran’s Palestinian allies.

    ‘Response to Hezbollah’

    NYT: Israel’s Five Wars

    For the New York Times‘ Bret Stephens (7/30/24), Israel is at war not only with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, but with “Israel’s most strident critics” on campuses, with the “‘yes but’ thinking” that supports Israel while condemning civilian deaths, and with “Jews who provide moral cover and comfort to Israel’s enemies.”

    In the New York Times, columnist Bret Stephens (7/30/24) put forth a similar view, writing that

    the world will soon know the full shape and scale of Israel’s response to Hezbollah for [the] rocket attack on a Druze town in the Golan Heights, which killed 12 children.

    Another problem with this line of argument is that there is some doubt as to whether it was a Hezbollah projectile that hit the Golan, and a great deal of doubt as to whether, if it was Hezbollah’s rocket, it was deliberately fired at Majdal Shams (LA Times, 7/30/24).

    Despite Stephens’ suggestion that an Israeli assault on Lebanon would be a “response” to a Hezbollah “attack,” only 20% of Majdal Shams residents have accepted Israeli citizenship, while the bulk of the town’s inhabitants continue to be citizens of Syria (LA Times, 7/30/24).

    Not content with last week’s attack on Beirut, Stephens wrote that

    whatever Israel does next, it should be calculated to advance the national interests on all [fronts of its multifaceted wars]. If that means postponing a fuller response to explain its rationale, necessity and goal, so much the better.

    The “fuller response” he has in mind seems to be more Israeli violence, since what it would be “fuller” than is the bombing of Beirut, and the premise of the article is that the Israeli government is fighting a five-fronted war. Worry not, Stephens assures his readers, any further Israeli bombings and assassinations will by definition be a “response,” and thus defensible.

    ‘Iranian imperialism’

    NYT: America May Soon Face a Fateful Choice About Iran

    Thomas Friedman (New York Times, 8/1/24) recasts the Gaza crisis as “part of a broader Iranian campaign to drive America out of the Middle East.”

    Meanwhile, Stephens’ colleague Thomas Friedman (8/1/24) painted Iran as the primary aggressor in West Asia. He called Iran an “imperial power,” condemning “Iranian imperialism” and “Tehran’s regional imperialist adventure.” Iran’s goal, he asserted,  is “to control the whole Arab world.”

    Since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the state has carried out zero full-scale invasions of Arab majority countries (and zero such attacks on non-Arab nations). In the same period, the US, which is evidently not imperialist, and not trying to “control the whole Arab world,” has carried out full-fledged invasions of Libya and (more than once) of Iraq. In addition to annexing and colonizing part of Syria, Israel has repeatedly invaded Lebanon. Colonizing, occupying and annexing Palestinian land, and now committing genocide against Palestinians, presumably also constitute the US and Israel seeking to “control” an important slice of the “Arab world.”

    Yet in Friedman’s topsy-turvy universe, Iran is the main source of violence in the region. That misleading framing wrongly suggests that past and future acts of war against Iran are legitimate and necessary.

    Nobody knows what the political and military outcome of a broader conflagration in the Middle East would be, but the human and environmental toll on the region would be colossal. High-profile pundits in America are doing their part to help such an outcome materialize.

     

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Poll Finds Most in US Oppose Sending Troops to Back Israel as War Threat Looms

    As the threat of further escalation of tensions looms in the Middle East after months of Israel’s widespread aggression in the region, new polling finds that the majority of Americans prefer that the U.S. refrain from sending troops to fight on behalf of Israel. Polling released Tuesday by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 55 percent of Americans oppose the use of U.S.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • How Will Israel’s Assassinations Impact Future Actions of Iran and Hamas?

    Hamas has named Yahya Sinwar as successor to former senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran last week, shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warmly received visit to the United States. Sinwar helped to found the precursor to Hamas’s current militant wing and is believed to have orchestrated the organization’s October 7 attack on Israel.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Was Hamas Leader Killed in Iran to Inflame Sectarian Conflict?

    On July 31, Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau Ismail Haniyeh attended the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Hours later, he was reported killed in an “Israeli strike” along with his bodyguard in Tehran.

    Simultaneously, Israel claimed it had killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an airstrike in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, and that its intelligence had confirmed that another top Hamas leader Mohammed Deif was also killed in a July 13 Israeli strike in Khan Younis, Gaza.

    The reason the manipulative Zionist regime cunningly plotted to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh during his visit to Iran is two-fold. Firstly, the Islamic Republic over the years has established the reputation of being the torchbearer of the Palestine cause, particularly in the Islamic World.

    While the craven Arab autocracies, under the thumb of duplicitous American masters enabling the Zionist regime’s atrocious genocide of unarmed Palestinians, were pondering over when would be the opportune moment to recognize Israel and establish diplomatic and trade ties, the Iran-led resistance axis, comprising Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ansarallah in Yemen, has claimed stellar victories in battlefields against Israel.

    It’s worth pointing out, however, that Hamas’ main patrons are private donors in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Egypt, not Iran, as frequently alleged by the mainstream disinformation campaign. In fact, Hamas as a political movement is the Palestinian offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. And by mainstream media’s own accounts, the Shiite leadership of Iran and Hezbollah weren’t even aware of the Sunni Palestinian liberation movement Hamas’ October 7 assault.

    Secondly, the treacherous murder of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was clearly designed to inflame the sectarian conflict. Lately, it has become a customary propensity of Orientalist apologists of Western imperialism to offer reductive historical and theological explanations of Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region in order to cover up the blowback of ill-conceived Western military interventions and proxy wars that have ignited the flames of internecine conflict in the Islamic world.

    Some self-anointed “Arabists” of the mainstream media posit that the sectarian division goes all the way back to the founding of Islam, 1400 years ago, and contend that the conflict emerged during the reign of the fourth caliph, Ali bin Abi Talib, in the seventh century A.D. Even though both sects of Islam peacefully coexisted during the medieval era in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Mughal India, where several provinces, particularly the glorious State of Awadh, were governed by benevolent Shiite nawabs.

    One wonders what the Western-led war on terror’s explanation would be of such “erudite historians of Islam” – that the cause of purported “clash of civilizations” between Christians and Muslims is to be found in the Crusades when Richard the Lionheart and Saladin were skirmishing in the Levant and exchanging courtesies at the same time.

    Fact of the matter is that in modern times, the Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region is essentially a political conflict between the Gulf Arab autocrats and Iran for regional dominance which is being presented to lay Muslims in the veneer of religiosity.

    Saudi Arabia, which has been vying for supremacy as the leader of the Sunni bloc against the Shi’a-led Iran in the regional geopolitics, was staunchly against the invasion of Iraq by the Bush Administration in 2003.

    The Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein constituted a Sunni Arab bulwark against Iran’s meddling in the Arab world. But after Saddam was ousted from power in 2003 and subsequently when elections were held in Iraq which were swept by Shi’a-dominated politico-religious parties, Iraq has now been led by a Shi’a-majority government that has become a steadfast regional ally of Iran. Consequently, Iran’s sphere of influence now extends all the way from territorially-contiguous Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast.

    Moreover, during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush Administration took advantage of the ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq and used the Kurds and Shi’as against the Sunni-led Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. And during the occupation years from 2003 to 2011, the once dominant Sunni minority was politically marginalized which further exacerbated ethnic and sectarian divisions in Iraq.

    The Saudi royal family was resentful of Iran’s encroachment on the traditional Arab heartland. Therefore, when protests broke out against the Shia-led Syrian government in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the Gulf States along, with their regional Sunni allies, Turkey and Jordan, and the Western patrons gradually militarized the protests to dismantle the Iran-led resistance axis, comprising Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ansarallah in Yemen.

    Similarly, during the Libyan so-called “humanitarian intervention” in 2011, the Obama administration provided money and arms to myriads of tribal militias and Islamic jihadists to topple the Arab-nationalist Gaddafi government. But after the policy backfired and pushed Libya into lawlessness, anarchy and civil war, the mainstream media pointed the finger at Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Russia for backing the renegade general, Khalifa Haftar, in eastern Libya, even though he had lived for more than two decades in the US right next to the CIA’s headquarter in Langley, Virginia.

    Regarding the Western powers’ modus operandi of waging proxy wars in the Middle East, since the times of the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the eighties, it has been the fail-safe game plan of master strategists at NATO to raise money from the oil-rich emirates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait; then buy billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the arms markets in the Eastern Europe; and then provide those weapons and guerilla warfare training to the disaffected population of the targeted country by using security agencies of the latter’s regional adversaries. Whether it’s Afghanistan, Libya or Syria, the same playbook was executed to the letter.

    More to the point, raising funds for proxy wars from the Gulf Arab States allows Western executives the freedom to evade congressional scrutiny; the benefit of buying weapons from unregulated arms markets of Eastern Europe is that such weapons cannot be traced back to Western capitals; and using jihadist proxies to achieve strategic objectives has the advantage of taking the plea of “plausible deniability” if the strategy backfires, which it often does. Recall that al-Qaeda and Taliban were the by-products of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, and the Islamic State and its global network of terrorists were the blowback of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the proxy war in Syria.

    Apart from Syria and Iraq, two other flashpoints of Sunni-Shi’a conflict in the Middle East region are Bahrain and Yemen. When peaceful protests broke out against the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain by the Shi’a majority population in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, Saudi Arabia sent thousands of troops across the border to quell the uprising.

    Similarly, as the Arab Spring protests toppled longtime dictators of the Arab World, including Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Yemenis also gathered in the capital’s squares demanding removal of Ali Abdullah Saleh.

    Instead of conceding to protesters’ fervent demand of holding free and fair elections to ascertain democratic aspirations of demonstrators, however, the Obama administration adopted the convenient course of replacing Yemen’s longtime autocrat with a Saudi stooge Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

    Having the reputation of a “wily Arabian fox” and being a Houthi himself, Ali Abdullah Saleh wasn’t the one to sit idly by and retire from politics in ignominy. He colluded with the Houthi rebels and incited them to take advantage of the chaos and political vacuum created after the revolution to come out of their northern Saada stronghold and occupy the capital Sanaa in September 2014. How ironic that Ali Abdullah Saleh was eventually killed by Houthis in December 2017 because of his treacherous nature.

    Meanwhile, a change of guard took place in Riyadh as Saudi Arabia’s longtime ruler King Abdullah died and was replaced by King Salman in January 2015, while de facto control of the kingdom fell into hands of inexperienced and belligerent Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

    Already furious at the Obama administration for not enforcing its so-called “red line” by imposing a no-fly zone over Syria after the false-flag Ghouta chemical weapons attacks in Damascus in August 2013 and apprehensive of security threat posed to the kingdom from its southern border along Yemen by Houthi rebels under the influence of Iran, the crown prince immediately began a military and air warfare campaign against Houthi rebels with military assistance from the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of UAE, Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan, in March 2015.

    Mindful of the botched policy it had pursued in Libya and Syria and aware of the catastrophe it had wrought in the Middle East region, the Obama administration had to yield to the dictates of Saudi Arabia and UAE by fully coordinating the Gulf-led military campaign in Yemen not only by providing intelligence, planning and logistical support but also by selling billions of dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition to the Gulf States during the conflict.

    Now, when the fire of inter-sectarian strife is burning on several different fronts in the Middle East and the Sunni and Shi’a communities are witnessing a merciless slaughter of their brethren in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain, then it would be preposterous to look for the causes of the conflict in theology and medieval history. If the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims were so thirsty for each other’s blood since the founding of Islam, then how come they managed to survive as distinct sectarian groups for 1400 years?

    Fact of the matter is that in modern times, the phenomena of Islamic radicalism, jihadism and consequent Sunni-Shi’a conflict are only as old as the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the 1980s when the Western powers with the help of their regional allies trained and armed Afghan jihadists to battle the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

    More significantly, however, the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988 between the Sunni and Baathist-led Iraq and the Shi’a-led Iran after the 1979 Khomeini revolution engendered hostility between the Sunni and Shi’a communities of the region for the first time in modern history.

    And finally, the conflict has been further exacerbated in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 when the Western powers and their regional client states once again took advantage of the opportunity and nurtured militants against the Arab nationalist Gaddafi government in Libya and the Baathist-led Assad administration in Syria.

    The post Was Hamas Leader Killed in Iran to Inflame Sectarian Conflict? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Biden Admin Stays Quiet as Israel Pushes Region Closer to All Out War

    In the space of mere hours, Israel killed the lead Hamas ceasefire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh; assassinated one of the most senior figures in Hezbollah, Fuad Shukr; saw its citizens, including Knesset members and at least one government minister riot for their “right” to rape Palestinian prisoners; and announced that it had killed the head of Hamas’ Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • NZ tells citizens to leave Iran and Lebanon now ‘while options remain’

    RNZ News

    The coalition government is telling New Zealanders in Iran and Lebanon to leave immediately as tensions rise in the Middle East.

    “The New Zealand government urges New Zealanders in Lebanon and Iran to leave now while options remain available,” Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said in a social media post today.

    “We also recommend New Zealanders in Israel consider whether they need to remain in the country.”


    It comes after the government updated its Safetravel advisory, warning people not to travel to Lebanon due to what it called the volatile security situation.

    The advisory elevated Lebanon to the highest level, meaning “extreme risk”.

    The United States has urged citizens to leave Lebanon on “any available ticket”, while the British Foreign Secretary warned British citizens in Lebanon to leave immediately or risk “becoming trapped in a warzone”.

    Iran vowed retaliation
    Iran has vowed to retaliate against Israel, which it blames for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Hamas political bureau, earlier this week.

    Just hours before his assassination, Israel killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an air strike.

    There are fears that Hezbollah — which is based in Lebanon and backed by Iran — could play a big part in any retaliation.

    That, in turn, could result in a huge Israeli response.

    Israel has been at war with Hamas since the resistance group’s attack on 7 October 2023 which saw nearly 1200 people killed.

    Israel’s ground and air campaigns have killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza in the months since, according to Palestinian health authorities.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Israel accused of being a ‘rogue state’ trying to destabilise Middle East

    Asia Pacific Report

    Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian political leader and a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Executive Committee, says Israel’s “gangster style assassination and extrajudicial executions” are designed to “inflame the whole region”, reports Al Jazeera.

    The killings of the Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon, were carried out to “sabotage any chances” of a ceasefire deal in Gaza and regional de-escalation, Ashrawi said.

    Haniyeh was a chief Hamas negotiator for a ceasefire in Israel’s genocidal war and had built up formidable diplomatic credentials across the region.

    While Israel and the United States regarded him as a “terrorist”, thousands mourned him across the Middle East yesterday, demonstrated huge and widespread support and respect.

    “These are attacks not just on the capitals of sovereign states but also on significant leaders to ensure total provocation [and] destabilisation,” Ashrawi wrote on social media.

    “Israel is a rogue state that represents a real [and] present danger globally,” she said.

    ‘Maddening and shameful’
    Marking the 300th day of Israel’s war on Gaza yesterday, Palestinian-American scholar Noura Erakat said it was “maddening and shameful” that the world had not been able to stop one of the “grossest, most blatant colonial genocides”.

    In a post on social media, Erakat said Israel’s genocide in Gaza had featured the use of advanced weapons as well as the spread of disease, “poisoning of the earth” as well as sexual assault and torture, reports Al Jazeera.

    Israel’s genocide must be remembered for what it is, Erakat said, adding “we cannot afford to lose the next battle over narrative”.

    “A blight on all humanity, to ascribe shame to all who let it happen [and] glory to those who fought so that the future indeed ensures: never again,” she said.

    According to an analysis of data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), Israel is responsible for 17,081 incidents of air/drone raids, shelling/missile attacks, remote explosives and property destruction in eight countries since October 7, including the occupied Palestinian territory, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Iran and Iraq.

    A majority of these attacks were on the Palestinian territory, specifically the Gaza Strip, with 10,389 incidents accounting for more than 60 percent of the total offensives.

    There were at least 6,544 incidents of Israeli attacks on Lebanon (38 percent), followed by Syria with 144 such incidents recorded.


    Haniyeh funeral final ceremonies in Qatar.           Video: Al Jazeera

    Released 15 Palestinian prisoners tortured
    Israeli forces have released 15 Palestinian prisoners into Gaza. They were dropped off at a military checkpoint near Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. Many spoke of abuse and torture while detained.

    Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians during the war in Gaza and stands accused of numerous cases of torture, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says in a new report.

    The 23-page report, released on Wednesday, noted allegations of widespread abuse of prisoners being held incommunicado in arbitrary, prolonged detention.

    It was published during a tense standoff in Israel as far-right politicians and demonstrators opposed an investigation into alleged sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees by Israeli soldiers.

    The death toll in the genocidal war at the 300 day mark has topped 40,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,000 children.

    Day 300 . . . and the death toll in Israel's genocidal war on Gaza has topped 40,000
    Day 300 . . . and the death toll in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has topped 40,000, including more than 16,000 children. Graphic: Al Jazeera/Creative Coommons

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Promoting peace and stability in the Middle East by unconditionally backing its worst aggressor

    COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

    President Biden — if you feel like pretending Biden is still serving as President and still making the decisions in the White House — has pledged to support Israel against any retaliations for its recent assassination spree in Iran and Lebanon which killed high-profile officials from Hamas and Hezbollah.

    A White House statement asserts that Biden spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday and “reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis,” and “discussed efforts to support Israel’s defence against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive US military deployments.”

    Hilariously, the statement also claims that “the President stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate broader tensions in the region.”

    Yep, nothing emphasises the importance of de-escalating broader tensions in the region like pledging unconditional military support for the region’s single most belligerent actor no matter how reckless and insane its aggressions become.

    This statement from the White House echoes comments from Secretary of “Defence” Lloyd Austin a day earlier, who said “We certainly will help defend Israel” should a wider war break out as a result of Israel’s assassination strikes.

    All this babbling about “defending” the state of Israel is intended to convey the false impression that Israel has just been sitting there minding its own business, and is about to suffer unprovoked attacks from hostile aggressors for some unfathomable reason.

    As though detonating military explosives in the capital cities of two nations to conduct political assassinations would not be seen as an extreme act of war in need of a violent response by literally all governments on this planet.

    Helping Israeli attacks
    In reality, the US isn’t vowing to defend the state of Israel, the US is vowing to help Israel attack other countries.

    If you’re pledging unconditional support to an extremely belligerent aggressor while it commits the most demented acts of aggression imaginable, all you’re doing is condoning those acts of aggression and making sure it will suffer no consequences when it conducts more of them.

    Washington’s position is made even more absurd after all the hysterical shrieking and garment-rending from the Washington establishment following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

    Israel murdered the leader of the Hamas political bureau, not a military commander, and he was the primary negotiator in the mediated ceasefire talks with Israel.

    This was a political assassination just like a successful attempt on Trump’s life would have been, but probably a lot more consequential. And yet the only response from Washington has been to announce that it will help Israel continue its incendiary brinkmanship throughout the Middle East.

    Washington swamp monsters talk all the time about their desire to promote “peace and stability in the Middle East”, while simultaneously pledging loyalty and support for a Middle Eastern nation whose actions pose a greater obstacle to peace and stability in the region than any other.

    These contradictions are becoming more and more glaring and apparent before the entire world.

    Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.