Category Archives: THE ISRAELI- PALESTINIAN PROBLEM.

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE ALL KNOW THAT WAR IS ORGANIZED BARBARISM ON AN ENORMOUS SCALE.

12 Tuesday Apr 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., THE ISRAELI- PALESTINIAN PROBLEM., The Ukraine., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Truth, War Crimes., Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Seven-minute read) 

No matter how much you know — or think you know — about any War, there are always more horrible things lurking in the shadows.Nazi military parade

Cast your eyes over any recent conflict, and you’ll see a litany of generals, politicians, and nations that have gotten away with stuff so horrific it defies comprehension.

This post is not an attempt to justify crimes of warfare. It is a feeble attempt to highlight the double standards went it comes to defining them.

                                      —————–

Our best hope of curbing humankind’s peculiar talent for superfluous
violence and extravagant self-destruction lies in the ideal of humanitarianism.

What is a war crime? 

War crimes are often associated with atrocities committed on a scale that defies credulity. I.E the number of victims did not pass some arbitrary threshold. At the most basic level, war crimes are [objectionable] acts committed by combatants, either against other combatants or against noncombatants—that is, civilians—during wartime.

Mass murder and genocide—crimes against humanity and atrocities committed on a large scale—have become the hallmarks of war crimes.

The question is who or what decides which acts are war crimes.

In an eerie echo of our own time, defining war crimes is not so much the issue anymore.

It’s prosecuting them actually, administering justice that is the primary obstacle.

The ICC is the product of a strand of idealistic thinking about justice between waring states stretching back at least to the first world war.

                                  —————-

In world war two was it a crime to kill 60,000 to 80,000 people in Hiroshima and another 75,000 in Nagasaki or 100,000 people in one night during the firebombing of Tokyo, an event barely talked about today.

In the American war in Vietnam, was it a crime to shower 45 million liters of the herbicide Agent Orange? In the process, it doomed up to 4.8 million Vietnamese residents.

Ask someone today to list war crimes of recent history and he or she may think of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or genocide in Rwanda, the Afghan war, the Syrian War, the Yemeni War, the Iraq war, the list is endless.

The overall theme is hard to miss but there is a vast gulf separating our indifference to war crimes. 

A few months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (hereinafter referred to as “9/11”), the Bush Administration decided that the Geneva Conventions did not protect members of Al Qaeda.

The president (George W. Bush) thinks the ICC is fundamentally flawed because it puts American servicemen and women at fundamental risk of being tried by an entity that is beyond America’s reach, beyond America’s laws, and can subject American civilians and military to arbitrary standards of justice.

Another example is that there are clear parallels between Russian and Israeli violations of international law, including the committing of war crimes by Israeli military actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

There are no sanctions against Israel that have so far desisted from joining nations including the US, Europe, the UK, Australia, and Japan in the imposition of an “unprecedented” number of sanctions on Russia, Belarus, and the two breakaway Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the wake of the invasion. 

According to Israel’s controversial Law of Return, “Jews, their children, grandchildren and spouses” are all eligible to visit Israel and claim Israeli citizenship. 

However, millions of Palestinian refugees are unable to return to the homes they and their forebears were expelled from in Israel and the occupied West Bank in 1948 and 1967.

Israel has granted citizenship to Russian mining oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, a figure linked to President Vladimir Putin and known to be one of the world’s richest men.

Last year, the two countries said the ICC should drop an investigation of Israel in part on the grounds that Palestine is not a sovereign country, although it is recognized as a state by the UN.

Netanyahu has accused the ICC of “pure anti-Semitism” for investigating attacks and has said Israel does not accept the ICC’s jurisdiction, however, it does not have to. 

Whatever the answer, it seems unlikely that President Bush or Benjamin Netanyahu, will ever be tried for war crimes but the question of whether they actually committed war crimes remains.

                                         ——————

Neither the US nor Russia nor China nor Ukraine are members of the ICC. 

If justice in general moves slowly, international justice barely moves at all.

Investigations at the ICC take many years. Only a handful of convictions have ever been won and by the time the Barbarian is locked up there is nationwide amnesia.

Court proceedings can be brought in one of two ways:
 
Either a national government or the UN Security Council can refer cases for investigation. Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has veto power over council actions.
 

In all likelihood, there will never be a trial for either President Bush or Putin not to mention Benjamin Netanyahu,. 

Why?

I think it has a lot to do just with the power, the authority, of well-heeled countries, powerful countries, to shield their political and military members from prosecution by bodies like the ICC. 

Even if we were able to bring War Criminals to trial we just don’t have a true international police force that would arrest the offenders. 

                                   —————————

War is a place where young people who don’t know each other and don’t hate each other, kill each other, by the decision of older rulers who know each other and hate each other, but don’t kill each other. 

It’s a world in which if you have the power you also have the power not to be held accountable for your power.

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Where are we with the Russian Ukraine war?
 
Could Russian leaders be brought to justice under international law?
 
Yes.  Because they fall under the overarching crime of aggression, all uses of armed force by Russia on Ukrainian territory can be viewed as illegal.
 
But that doesn’t mean the country pointing the finger has always been in the right itself.
 
Are countries supplying arms prolonging the war? Yes  
 
The national interest is for this war to end. If we wish to stop war crimes then we need to stop the war. Prolonging it will only see more of the same.
 
We should not be blackmailed and guilt-tripped into feeding more weapons into the meat grinder. How about, just for once, we put our own interests first?                                            
 
On the other hand, understanding the twin meanings of ‘humanity’ means something universal and immensely important”. Recognising its worth is “the least we owe the dead.
 
Meanwhile, NATO is just itching to get further involved in the war. 

We live in a world in which making the wrong comment on social media can lead to people losing their jobs but where politicians and public officials, whose actions affect the lives of millions and whose failure can lead to deaths in the most unimaginable circumstances, can simply walk away and into their next lucrative assignment.

While our own media doubles down on warmongering. They seem not to care if further escalation will plunge all of Europe into economic hardship or risk wider conflict. For some reason, it’s news to Western pundits that war isn’t very nice.

In the end, this war is shining a light on just how useless our United Nations is and dark skin automatically made you less than human.

There was a day that the UN could muster Blue helmets to intervene in conflicts. Now, all it can do is pass worthless resolutions.

                                    —————– 

When it comes to war crimes, Ukraine’s hands are also blooded.

What’s bizarre about this is that these countries that are supplying millions in arms are the same people courting Ukrainian membership of the EU, as though Ukraine was some kind of liberal democracy.

As with all wars, they end with denials of involvement in killing the innocent which are called collateral damage or a mistake of identification by a rogue drone, or ballistic rocket.     

The issue of reparations doubtless will be raised in negotiations to resolve the conflict and as an international condition for resuming any normal relationship with Russia. If the sanctions are eventually lifted in stages, it could prove effective to include conditions requiring the surrender of indicted fugitives.

Perhaps if the United Nations were to tell Mr. Putin that it is going to place a few thousand Blue Helmets between the present front lines Russia would think twice about any further advancement. 

( It is however due to the presence of Nato on the Russian borders too late. As they would be labeled Nato, not UN) 

All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHEN, WHERE, AND WHY ARE WE FUCKING UP THE WORLD WE ALL LIVE ON?

30 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., A Constitution for the Earth., Civilization., Climate Change., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Palestinian- Israel., Post - truth politics., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Religious Beliefs., Sustaniability, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE ISRAELI- PALESTINIAN PROBLEM., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, War, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Four-minute read) 



If one takes a look at the state of the world which has gone through two world wars, numerous pandemics, natural disasters, you could say that its present state all boils down to us, our sense of belonging, our values, our separate cultures, greed, and power.

There is little point at this present moment in us dragging up our past history to ANSWER these questions other than it shows that colonization and slavery contributed to the world’s woes and that we are unable to act as one.

Take climate change.

There is no hope of reducing co2 emissions until we understand what being a human being means. 

Until we begin to understand each other there is no hope of tackling any of the current world problems.

So in this post, I am concerned with what has happened in recent times to produce the current century of a world preoccupied with crisis management.   

9/11 is my starting point.

Without understanding that Muslims believe that Allaha is the ultimate arbiter of their existence 9/11 was rightly or wrongly declared an act of war against Iraq.

Since then we’ve all been living in the shadow of the World Trade Center that unbridled the economic, cultural, and military power of the US –  America First.

The result is continuing wars Iran, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan that are not clashes of civilizations but a clash of ideologies, values, and cultures.

Take Isreal- Palestinian.   

It has been referred to as the world’s “most intractable conflict”, with the ongoing Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip reaching 52 years.

There can be no peace between Muslims and Non-Muslims because what is happing in Israel goes beyond it.

The world is now preoccupied with crisis management so even if the Palestinian case is settled it won’t stop there. 

Worldwide wide it is consumerist capitalism versus religion and tribal fundamentalism.

So if religion determines what we believe what does race tell us?

Nothing when it comes to  COVID-19 it is non-races no matter whether you are Muslim or Christian the price of faith means nothing if you are dead.

All of us no matter what race you are, Black or White, Christian, Jews, Muslim,  Buddhist, Hindu, call ourselves after the country we are born in only if the expression of religious beliefs is enshrined in the countries constitution with equal rights and freedoms. Where one can be our race and practice our religion.

 A sense of self maybe? 

Perhaps it is a race that makes us different from others.

The Irish were considered as being subhuman to the British many years ago before the Great Famine in the 1800s.

Lived segregated cultural traditions do not work. 700 hundred-odd years later, even in a Europen union setting Northern Ireland remains a divided society by religious beliefs, and a border created by colonization.    

I’m American, I’m European, I’m Chines, I’m Irish, I’m Jews Irish, I’m Israelian, I’M Arab,  I’m Israelian, I’m Palestinian.

If we were paid a visit by another race that was intelligent to get here in the first place they would not give an F…  what race we were or had been. 

Not until the human race understand that is one race will there be any hope in addressing the present problems we all face.     

This will remain so till there is a solution to the Israelis and Muslim Palestinian conflict which in my opinion can now only be solved with a one-state solution, not two-states which has no hope of removing the inherent flaws and injustices or resentment of both sides.

All are intertwined forces that are both tearing apart and bring together the world.

What am I saying here is that the Middle East conflict is not just over religion or race it is also over land.   

The 9/ 11 atrocity claimed nearly 3,000 lives and shocked the world but now many people are unable to remember the date of the tragedy – 11 September 2001 – 19 years ago the beginning of the Iraq invasion. An invasion that totally and utterly did not understand that Islam is not their religion, it is their life and remains so to this present day. 

Instead of world leaders making an effort to prevent the Iraqi invasion according to Mr. Bush, there were no options but to use force which has now lead to one of the most inhuman periods in our recent history. 

Recent work also shows that Islamophobia in the West is abetting the Islamophobia in China, with global leaders willing to stay silent about the treatment of Muslims.

These days what one hears over and over is the phrase ” What is needed is “

On top of this, we now have a world pandemic, climate change, America, and Britain first, the erosion of any long term policies by social media, the smartphone, and unregulated artificial intelligence, with religion shrinking in a digital world run by Five Titanic digital companies, run for profit.

It might not be possible to carry on in a world of two deities God and Allah. 

If you ask me it’s all ridiculous the last ones standing to go to heaven and who will be there to greet them, is God, Allah, or Jesus?  It just doesn’t make sense, intellectual, religious-philosophical, or any other sense.

 The world whether it is China and the Muslim or whatever has to come together in new ways.

Wars that are now seen by moderate Muslims as virtually and ultimately as a war against Muslims and Islam across the ethic board.


What does the word Islam actually mean?

It means surrender.

And if we want a world worth living on, surrender is what we will all have to do in the end.

Shalom in Hebrew means peace.

Hebrew: shalom aleichom meaning-peace be upon you.

Arabic: salam alaikum meaning-peace be upon you. 

So take the knee, not to race, not to religion, but to the planet. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucks in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but despite the bad press, Islam gets its a religion with enormous wells of compassion that is not promoted in the west.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE RETURNS TO THE ISRAELI- PALESTINIAN PROBLEM.

01 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in THE ISRAELI- PALESTINIAN PROBLEM., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( A four-minute read.)

Are you “pro-Israel” or “pro-Palestine”?

It isn’t even noon yet as I write this, and I’ve already been accused of being both.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of israel"

These terms intrigue me because they directly speak to the doggedly tribal nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

You don’t hear of too many other countries being universally spoken of this way. Why these two?

Both Israelis and Palestinians are complex, with diverse histories and cultures, and two incredibly similar (if divisive) religions.

After World War II, Britain decided to let the United Nations decide what to do with Palestine.

The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the UN created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the US governmental establishment supported it.

All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect.

The United Nations suggested dividing Palestine into two countries, one Arab and one Jewish.

The Arab leaders said no to the plan, but the Jewish leaders accepted it and declared the state of Israel. The American President gave his support to the new state.

In reality, while the UN General Assembly recommended the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine, that recommendation was non-binding and never implemented by the Security Council.

The General Assembly passed that recommendation only after Israel proponents threatened and bribed numerous countries in order to gain a required two-thirds of votes.

In 1967 it took still more Palestinian and Syrian land, which is now illegally occupied territory, since the annexation of land through military conquest is outlawed by modern international law.

Israel, which claims to be the “only democracy in the Middle East,” decided not to declare official borders or to write a constitution, a situation which continues to this day.

To this day it has continued this campaign of growth through armed acquisition and illegal confiscation of land.

So where are we?

To come down completely on the side of one or the other doesn’t seem rational to me.

It is telling that most Muslims around the world support Palestinians, and most Jews support Israel.

This, of course, is natural — but it’s also problematic.

It means that this is not about who’s right or wrong as much as which tribe or nation you are loyal to. It means that Palestinian supporters would be just as ardently pro-Israel if they were born in Israeli or Jewish families, and vice versa.

It means that the principles that guide most people’s view of this conflict are largely accidents of birth — that however we intellectualize and analyze the components of the Middle East mess, it remains, at its core, a tribal conflict.

By definition, tribal conflicts thrive and survive when people take sides. Choosing sides in these kinds of conflicts fuels them further and deepens the polarization. And worst of all, you get blood on your hands.

It’s still too early to call Israel an apartheid state, but when John Kerry said Israel could end up as one in the future, he wasn’t completely off the mark. It’s simple math.

Israel was carved out of Palestine for Jews with help from the British in the late 1940s just as Pakistan was carved out of India for Muslims around the same time. The process was painful, and displaced millions in both instances.

There are now only a limited number of ways a bi-national Jewish state with a non-Jewish majority population can retain its Jewish identity.

Let’s face it, the land belongs to both of them now.

BUT Israelis and Palestinians remain caught in a sad, frustrating and vicious cycle that must be broken.
The Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands will turn 50 years old this year.

Some considerable time ago I wrote a blog on the subject.

Then as now I stated that the two state solution is not possible and that the only solution is for Israel to grant Palestinians full Israeli citizenship, creating one state for all.

Settlement expansion is simply incomprehensible. No one really understands the point of it. Virtually every US administration — from Nixon to Bush to Obama — has unequivocally opposed it.

It’s been almost 70 years since Israel came into existence.

There are now at least two or three generations of Israelis who were born and raised in this land, to whom it really is a home, and who are often held accountable and made to pay for historical atrocities that are no fault of their own. They are programmed to oppose “the other” just as Palestinian children are.

At its very core, this is a tribal religious conflict that will never be resolved unless people stop choosing sides.

With Israel now legalizing land grab is it not time to stop dealing with Israel as a country above the law and to make it responsible for systematic violations of international conventions and the rights of the Palestinian people.

There is no justification for it except a Biblical one which makes it slightly more difficult to see Israel’s motives as purely secular.

Let’s go straight to the point:

To end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, everyone would like a two-state solution.

This solution is impossible.

But if it Israel doesn’t work harder towards a two-state (maybe three-state, thanks to Hamas) solution, it will eventually have to make that ugly choice between being a Jewish-majority state or a democracy.

Nothing in the current situation excuses the abhorrent and immoral attacks on civilians, whether coming from Palestinians or Israelis, and any lasting solution must work to guarantee peace and security for everyone.

It’s high time we recognize that the Oslo Accords are as likely to bring peace to the Middle East as Donald Trump is to unite America.

From its conception, Oslo never required Israel to recognize Palestinian rights to statehood and has instead enabled Israeli encroachment on the West Bank.

Until now, the international consensus has been focused on a state-oriented resolution as a way to confer rights and stability to Palestinians and Israelis.

But what if that equation were flipped, if the focus were instead on enshrining full equality for everyone before even considering the creation of two states?

If this was supported by a larger Arab consensus framework, Israel would have little option as would Palestine but to come together.

This is the only realistic goal at this juncture.

To create interim arrangements to set the ground for a final agreement.

Of course both sides as in any conflict would have to want peace which now seems very unlikely.

On the Palestinian side, a lack of internal consensus remains challenging while security is the most important issue to Israel.

In such a context, nearly seventy years after the creation of Israel and the beginning of the conflict, whether the result of such an approach leads to one state or two states or 21 states on the land is immaterial.

We must put aside the concept of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement in favor of an Israeli-Arab agreement as the only realistic means to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The reality on the ground shows that the search for a two-state solution is a farce that suits those who aim at apartheid.

Although the entire world knows that a durable resolution to the conflict is imperative, not in the interests of justice but also in the pursuit of peace in the region. There is only one solution the creation of a single state, in which the safety and the right to the dignity of each one will be preserved.

There are 2,898,927 Palestinians living in the West Bank, 1,850,559 in the Gaza Strip, 1,471,201 in Israel, and a total of 12,365,761 worldwide.

Palestinian citizens of Israel struggle under a system that accords them fewer rights and opportunities than their Jewish counterparts. And regardless of what one thinks of Hamas, the siege that Israel imposes (with Egyptian collusion) on Gaza affects all of its inhabitants and is unconscionable.

According to the Israeli organization Gisha, over 70% of Gaza’s population relies on humanitarian aid, while 47% suffer from food insecurity. In the second quarter of 2016, unemployment was at 41.7%, and at a staggering 57.6% among young people.

(In fact, slim majorities of both Palestinians and Israelis still support a two-state solution.)

What matters is that we finally wake from the 23-year-old slumber induced by Oslo, the numbing half-century of occupation, and the nearly 70 years of Palestinian dispossession, to see that the only durable resolution to this conflict will be one that protects Israelis and Palestinians equally, with liberty and justice for all.

Israelis “deserve security” (and Palestinians don’t?)

Such a move would break with the political history of the United States and would run counter to the UN position, for which the status of Jerusalem, the Palestinian eastern part was occupied in 1967 and annexed by Israel in 1980, could be settled through negotiation.

A Confederation of Districts according to the historical name, defined by the good geographical and ethnic sense. As homogeneous as possible, they would necessarily include religious minorities.

Each have a Parliament and a Constitution which legislate on everything related to religion, taxation, police and education.

Insurance law, the management of national research institutes, diplomacy and the army remain the prerogative of the Confederation.

Thus, the cantonal tax authorities collect the tax and return a minority share to the central power, the wealth of each canton being largely the result of the labor of its inhabitants.

Each canton freely decides its name (in the image of Switzerland, where the Republic and Canton of Geneva, then the State of Vaud, and later the Canton of Valais, With whom everyone lives in peace).

Each district decides on the religion it wishes to inscribe in its Constitution (if it wishes to inscribe one … In Switzerland, the cases are very diverse).Image associée

Thus, Tel Aviv could decide that its official religion is Judaism, with a taxation in support of its religious institutions.

Many issues remain to be negotiated, including the division of districts, the question of return, the participation of the Palestinian populations in the army (with a staggering of the rules over several years), the creation of a national Constitution, a Constituent Assembly, etc.

From the outset, the state would be recognized by all the countries of the Arab world.

According to the initiative of Saudi Arabia in 2002, the benefits would no longer be counted: Disappearance of separation walls and checkpoints, development of very fruitful economic links, and especially the normal life, finally. For everyone.

So you really don’t have to choose between being “pro-Israel” or “pro-Palestine.” If you support secularism, democracy, and a two-state solution — and you oppose Hamas, settlement expansion, and the occupation — you can be both.

Again you don’t have to like what Israel is doing.

If Israel truly wanted to destroy Gaza, it could do so within a day, right from the air.

How can this possibly ever be in Israel’s interest?

 When civilians die, Israel looks like a monster. It draws the ire of even its closest allies. Horrific images of injured and dead innocents flood the media. Ever-growing anti-Israel protests are held everywhere from Norway to New York. And the relatively low number of Israeli casualties repeatedly draws allegations of a “disproportionate” response. Most importantly, civilian deaths help Hamas immensely.
So please tell me — how can anyone conclude that religion isn’t at the root of this, or at least a key driving factor?