Tag Archives: middle-east

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT DO YOU KNOW WHEN IT COMES TO IRIAN?

15 Monday Apr 2024

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( Ten minute read)

Iran has scarcely been out of the headlines in recent months. But how far back does the history of Iran stretch?

Like me I am sure we know little or nothing of it history.National Flag of Iran | Iran Flag History, Meaning and Pictures

Long before Iran came to be known in the mid-twentieth century as one of the countries of the Middle East, for nearly two and a half millennia it was known to the Western world as Persia.

So here is a starting point for an exploration of the history of modern Iran.

The Islamic Republic has been in a state of influx almost from its start. It has managed to survive in this state of perpetual crisis — and sometimes even benefited from it — because confrontation, or anticipation of confrontation with a nemesis, that is with the United States, played into its hand. It gives the regime the pretention of legitimacy as the core to national resistance against Western hegemony and regime change. The sense of emergency hence contributed to its survival. Moreover, the ruling clergy and its associated groups, such as the Revolutionary Guards, although a small minority devoid of the true support of a majority of Iranians, survived in power probably because of a strong sense of group solidarity.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution represented the first time in the modern history of the Muslim world that a movement dominated by the clergy took control of a state. Historically, this is a very unusual event, not just in the Islamic world, but anywhere. Religion and state were seen as two pillars of stability in Iranian society.

Shi’ism as a belief system, supported and reinforced by the region’s geopolitical complexity, preserved Iran’s socio-cultural identity.

Through the preservation of the language, Iran managed to preserve a collective memory of its past, which is also rather unusual.

Basically, the memory of Islamic conquest became the foundation myth for the sense of Islamic identity that emerged in Egypt, Syria and eventually Iraq. Iran was different. It preserved its memories of pre-Islamic times and grew quite proud of them.

Iran’s oil industry was basically a colonial industry created and developed by the British. A massive amount of the revenue went to the British government while a much smaller percentage went to the Iranian government. But even that share of the revenue was crucial for a nearly bankrupt Iranian state in the post-WWI era. It provided the necessary funds for greater centralization; for enforcing modern reforms; for strengthening the armed forces; and for the creation of an autocratic regime under the Pahlavis that no longer sought the traditional support of the religious establishment.

The Allied occupation of Iran in September 1941 was a rude shock to most Iranians.

Facing the soldiers of the Red Army, the British Indian Army, and soon after American military personnel seemed almost a surreal reversal of two decades of Pahlavi assurances of Iran’s reclaimed sovereignty and the might of the Iran’s Imperial Armed Forces.

The occupation triggered one of the most eventful episodes in Iran’s modern history and revealed persistent themes in the country’s recent past: the struggle for democracy. The gradual return to autocratic practices after 1953 put an undue end to Iran’s perilous experiment with participatory politics. Instead, an era of stability, albeit politically repressive, began to set in, and with the exception of a brief interlude in the early 1960s, it remained essentially unchanged until the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The exile of Ayatollah Khomeini and the shah’s success, at least for a while, in silencing the forces of opposition generated a sense of royal self-confidence with an almost prophetic mission. The decade of 1963 to 1973 represented, with all its shortcomings, the best of the shah’s years: an age of economic development, success in foreign policy, and relative popularity at home.

Iran in the 1960s and 1970s witnessed an era of cultural florescence, a period remarkable for artistic creativity, the rise of new talents, and greater international exposure but also greater state sponsorship. Expressions of artistic and intellectual dissent, often transmitted through a language of symbols, emerged in cinema, poetry, and popular music.

The tumultuous events that led to the revolution of 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran were a classic example of modern popular revolution.  Out of a broad alliance of Islamic tendencies there emerged a militant clerical leadership, led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Over the course of the following decade, Khomeini played a decisive part in defining the Islamic Republic.

Between August 1978 and February 1979, a period of less than seven months, Iran witnessed a revolution that brought down the Pahlavi regime and abolished the institution of monarchy, wiped out the privileges of the Pahlavi elite, and significantly weakened its secularized middle classes. In its stead Ayatollah Khomeini and his associates created the Islamic Republic, which aimed to establish the “Guardianship of the Jurist” (welayat-e faqih) as the only legitimate model of governance.

That Ayatollah Khomeini and his cohorts put their mark on the Islamic Revolution was more than an accident of history. At least since 1961, and with a greater resolve since 1970, clerical Shi‘ism explored ideological Islam and contemplated juridical authority as an alternative to secular power.

In less than a year after victory of the revolution in February 1979, the new regime managed to consolidate its base, build new institutions, and eliminate its contenders for power.

It conducted a referendum on the change of regime to an Islamic republic, ratified a new constitution, elected a parliament, elected a president to office, and established revolutionary courts, the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Guardian Council, and the Assembly of Experts. All the while the newly established republic was engaged in major domestic and international crises that threatened its very existence.

A crisis of great magnitude was in progress, one that shook Iran’s relations with the outside world and initiated an adversarial encounter with the United States that shaped their relationship for decades to come.

—————–

1979 November – Islamic militants take 52 Americans hostage inside the US embassy in Tehran. They demand the extradition of the Shah, in the US at the time for medical treatment, to face trial in Iran.

The hostage crisis of November 1979 started an international tremor that for the following fourteen months would enrage the United States, preoccupy world media, appal public opinion worldwide, and irreparably damage the image of the Islamic Republic.

1980 22 September – Start of Iran-Iraq war, which lasts for eight years.

1981 January – The American hostages are released, ending 444 days in captivity.

1989 November – The US releases 567 million dollars of frozen Iranian assets.

The magnitude of this paradigmatic shift, and the way a conservative Shi‘i establishment transformed into a radical force of dissent, becomes all the more striking when we set the Islamic Revolution in the broader political and cultural contexts of the past five centuries.

2002 January – US President George Bush describes Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an “axis of evil”, warning of the proliferation of long-range missiles being developed in these countries.

2002 September – Russian technicians begin construction of Iran’s first nuclear reactor at Bushehr despite strong objections from US.

2003 December – 40,000 people are killed in an earthquake in south-east Iran. The city of Bam is devastated

.2007 October – US announces sweeping new sanctions against Iran, the toughest since it first imposed sanctions almost 30 years ago.

2009 September – Iran admits that it is building a uranium enrichment plant near Qom, but insists it is for peaceful purposes.

The country test-fires a series of medium- and longer-range missiles that put Israel and US bases in the Gulf within potential striking range.

2015 July – After years of negotiations, world powers reach deal with Iran on limiting Iranian nuclear activity in return for lifting of international economic sanctions. The deal gives UN nuclear inspectors extensive but not automatic access to Iranian sites.

2018 May-June – President Trump announces the US withdrawal from the 2015 international deal on Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran in turn warns that it will begin increasing its uranium enrichment capacity if the deal collapses as a result of the US move.

2020 January – Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, responsible for Iran’s military support for the Syrian government, killed in a US air strike at Baghdad Airport, prompting Iranian threats of retaliation.

2024 April  Iran fires hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation of Israel attack on its Embassy in Syria.

If the current regime caves under another popular upheaval, the outcome may not be promising at all.

The recent Middle East popular movements of political reform, such as the Arab Spring, have by and large failed. Likewise, any attempt toward a regime change through military option or covert operation almost definitely helps strengthen the regime’s popular base. On the other hand, if it is left to its own devices, will Iran become another China? Whether it moves away from a hostile ideological position to a more pragmatic regime with capitalist economy and friendlier posture toward the outside world is a matter of speculation. The recent U.S. departure from the Five Plus One nuclear deal with Iran, and the impending re-imposition of sanctions, does not offer a bright prelude for success of the latter option.

You only have to look at Israeli and the Iranian recent UN Security Council presentations after Iran’s direct attack to see that the Middle East is now a tinder box that no amount of Verbal is going to solve.

Iran’s ambassador repeated Tehran’s claim that it was responding in “self-defence” after the April 1 explosion at its Damascus consulate in Syria, for which Iran blamed Israel.

Israel will exact a price from Iran in response to Saturday’s attack when the time is right.

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Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S : WHEN THIS WAR BETWEEN ISRAEL AND PALISTIAN ENDS WHAT SORT OF COUNTRY WILL ISRAEL BE? NEVER MIND WHAT’S LEFT OF PALISTIAN.

04 Thursday Apr 2024

Posted by in Israel and Palestine, Uncategorized

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( Fifteen minute read)

As global attention has turned to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, many Israelis are on a parallel warpath to convince the world they are victims, not aggressors.

Indeed any country has the right to defend its self but not to extent that it creates a genocide.

The slogan Yachad Nenatzeach!, Together We Will Win!, is everywhere in Israel:

Once there is no more Muslim land in the land of Israel … after we make it the land of Israel, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom.

Of all forms of human error, prophecy is the most avoidable.

Israelis’ sense of security has been undermined.

The fear among Israelis is that if Hamas can do it once they can do it again.

By moving methodically through the Strip, Israel slowly pushed over a million Gazans into Rafah along Gaza’s southern border. It is only now poised to take Hamas’s last remaining stronghold, with international opposition, even among Israel’s closest friends, reaching a verbal fever pitch, the UK/USA are breaching international law by continuing to arm Israel.

The UK government does not directly supply Israel with weapons, but does grant export licences for British companies to sell arms to the country.

————————-

When people fight a war that begins with a murderous genocidal attack by one side on the other, the side that was attacked is less inclined to be empathetic towards its enemies.A woman in a headscarf carries bags through the rubble of a destroyed building

However the demolition of much of Gaza will make it difficult for Israel as a society to function.

“More of the same”

Continuation of a war in the Gaza Strip, albeit at a diminished intensity, dragging on for an extended period, turning into a protracted war of attrition, resembling the eighteen-year Israeli presence in the security strip in southern Lebanon or the Soviet engagement in Afghanistan aligns well with the alt-right’s so-called Decisive Plan.

While everyone’s attention would remain fixated on Gaza, where the primary efforts of the regular army would continue to be concentrated, local settlement guards or militias functioning as irregular or semiregular units, akin to paramilitaries, could turn the West Bank into hell on Earth.

———————

Is there a way back from the hardness of Israeli hearts in the face of hundreds of thousands of people who because of our war are fighting like animals for pieces of food, a safe place where their children can lay down their heads, medicine, clean water and dignity?  The answer is probably yes, but its going to take generations.

On the current trajectory of Israel’s attacks from the air, sea and the ground, Gaza looks set to be an enclave with 2.3 million people essentially living in rubble.

The fear among Palestinians is that Israel wants a “second Nakba”. Palestinians use the word Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — to refer to the estimated 750,000 Palestinians who were forced to leave — or fled in fear – upon the formation of Israel in 1948. Many Palestinians believe the reason Israel is bombing Gaza so heavily is to make it unliveable so that eventually the majority, if not all, of the citizens, facing starvation, will force their way into Egypt.

The 1948 expulsion remains an animating force in Palestinian identity, and it changed the demographics of Israel.

The Jerusalem Post — has carried a prominent opinion piece advocating the emptying of Gaza. That in itself is extraordinary — the most read English-language newspaper for Jewish communities around the world running the argument that the new home for Palestinians in Gaza should be Egypt.

Flattening the whole strip so it becomes an empty museum like Auschwitz.

Joel Roskin, an academic from Israel’s Bar Ilan University, said  that the major portions of Gaza were now considerably incapacitated and cannot be simply fixed. “Rather, the damaged and destroyed structures must be completely torn down. The tunnelled – and consequently exploded and bulldozed — soil must undergo extensive environmental and engineering rehabilitation … the facts demonstrate that the northern Sinai Peninsula is an ideal location to develop a spacious resettlement for the people of Gaza. Its open areas, along with the existing infrastructure, can easily host large-scale development projects that, if led by the Chinese and supported by local labour, for example, can easily mature in just one to two years.”  Bull shit!

Writing in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Sfard questioned who Israelis would be after the war, asking “how many tons of coldness and indifference have settled inside us in order for us to turn high-rise buildings into dust, promenades and plazas into ruins and a million and a half people into displaced people who have nothing?

“And what will become of a society whose media outlets, which provide it with information about its deeds, have refrained for over 10 weeks from bringing even a single interview – a single one! – with a resident of Gaza to tell what’s happening to them; who censor the pictures of the dead children and the weeping mothers, the children that we killed and the mothers whose bereavement we caused? The Israeli TV channels are shaping our collective perceptions not only by means of what they show, but also, and perhaps mainly, by means of what they’re hiding from us.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects any suggestion of ethnic cleansing, insisting that the primary aim of Israel’s military action is to “destroy Hamas”.

It’s debatable whether this can actually be done — Hamas is in part an ideology and idea, it’s also one of many groups whose aims are “resistance” to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and, along with Egypt, its blockade of Gaza.

Hamas, in turn, makes no secret of its ultimate aim – its charter commits it to the eradication of the state of Israel.

The longer term issue for Israel is that an entire new generation of young Palestinians could be radicalised by seeing their homes and sometimes their families destroyed.

At this crossroads, neither Israel, Iran nor Hezbollah wants an all-out war that would have terrible consequence for all of them. But no side seems ready to stop the slide towards it.

That Israel must, instead, finally agree to a two-state solution under which Palestinians have their own state is a grave mistake.

WHO WOULD WANT TO LIVE IN A COUNTRY THAT WILL NEED MORE THAN WIRE FENCING OR A WALL TO MAKE IT SECURE IN THE FUTURE.

 There will be a profound shift in Israel’s concept of security: many believe they must now protect themselves.

Several proposals have been put forward to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas with the U.S., Egypt and Qatar pushing to de-escalate in phases. But major sticking points about who should govern Gaza are blocking progress as Israel doesn’t want to govern and is against the top contender, the Palestinian Authority. So why is coming to a consensus for a ceasefire or peace deals so difficult?

There’s now only a one state solution.

———————

As the conflict with Hamas bleeds across borders, is wider violence inevitable?

Even if the Gaza war winds down, Israelis are shifting their gaze toward their northern border, preparing themselves for a potential new war — with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Iranian-backed group is better armed than Hamas, with long-range missiles that could paralyze the country.

Historical precedents abound: paramilitary groups of this kind take orders from local commanders or charismatic political figures and are loyal only to them, not directly beholden to the central authority.

Israel’s war with Hamas has served to energise already existing tensions.

Without an end in sight, at present – the war is in danger of creating its own dynamic. And for now at least, the reality of the cross-border exchanges has a greater clarity than the rhetoric enfolding them.

———–

What sort of country will Israel be after this war? And will Gaza be liveable, or will its 2.3 million citizens be forced to move to the Sinai desert in Egypt?

No body really knows how this is going to end.

Even if the Israel pushes what remains of the Palestinians into the Sinai Desert and succeeds in dismantling Hamas as an organized military force in Gaza, it will survive as “a terror group and a guerrilla group.

Even if Israel changes it leader there is little room for wishful thinking here.

The likelihood of a left-wing government materializing due to internal protests appears scant. Far more probable is that Israelis will be drawn to a hawkish leader exemplifying strength and authority, typically a retired general with a distinguished military career, with a capacity to assume responsibility and navigate intra-Jewish divides.

Any withdrawal by Israel, including under a hostage deal, would create a vacuum that Hamas would do everything it can to fill as it emerges from its tunnels.

Those measures might assist in holding off Hamas in the coming months, but Israel still needs a long-term solution. That means actively replacing Hamas while it is still underground.

Discussing a plan for the future governance of Gaza brings with it political complications.

Who will replace Hamas?

Gaza will become an area in deep crisis.

——————-

It’s time for Israel’s allies to say: ‘Enough’

To stop selling arms.

When is a war crime not a war crime?  Answer: when it’s done by an allied nation.

This will only happen when western governments, whose history of hypocrisy that fill many pages of history’s sad story of human exploitation, decide the political cost to them of ignoring the Palestinian deaths inflicted by their own weapons is higher than the cost of the current policy.

Key actors—Palestinian, Israeli, regional, and global—have staked out very different, often antagonistic positions on critical questions. UN interference is necessary, and it should take the shape of an interim, multinational peacekeeping force similar to the one that was tasked to facilitate the transition to an independent East Timor in 1999 or the NATO-led force deployed to Kosovo in the same year.

————–

The world we live in is changing at an astonishing pace. New technologies and ways of thinking are rapidly altering the way that human beings live, do business, communicate and interact with other. In just 40 years we have gone from rotary dial phones to 5G smart devices capable of accessing the collective knowledge of humanity. And the field of warfare is no exception.

Approaches to warfare that 30, 20 or even five years ago would have guaranteed success on the battlefield have now been made redundant. It can no longer be assumed that because a tactic worked in a previous conflict that it will work today. As the current Ukrain war with Russia shows modern day warfare does not require solders on the ground.9Land BMS

Today’s conflicts can also extend to the domains of cyber and space.

In the cyber domain, orchestrated hacking campaigns conducted on the behalf of nations can disable and shut down key pieces of civilian infrastructure and institutions, leaving nations in a state of panic and vulnerable to attack.

New technologies are also constantly rewriting the rule book for warfare –  AI – Drones.

It seems likely that the coming years will see a major focus on soldier systems that ‘declutter’ the battlefield for soldiers by providing information on threats and targets as they are needed.

The decision on whether what that soldier sees is a friend or a foe comes entirely down to their own judgement and discretion. Making the decision can be extremely difficult in a confusing battlefield environment. To make life easier for soldiers, future weapons may have electronically flags popping up in the sight, telling them whether they’re aiming at a friend. Prior to firing, the weapon would send a small electromagnetic pulse at the target. If no response is received back from a friendly transceiver, the soldier will know they are not aiming at their own troops and will be able to confidently proceed.

So, while modern conflicts are being waged in the most complex environments in history, are there solutions to bring clarity to the minds of both soldiers in the field and leaders.  NO.

We see something terrible and then it disappears.

What are the rules of war?

It’s a timely question in the wake of attacks on civilians, aid workers and hospitals in conflict zones around the world.

However enforcing out of date rules can be difficult.

For example, the five veto-holding permanent members of the Security Council — the U.S., China, Russia, the U.K. and France — must vote unanimously to pursue a resolution that might call for an investigation, refer a case to a court for trial, threaten sanctions or propose another motion. But often one or several of these countries has a vested interest in the conflict in question.

You would be more than naïve if you do not realise by now that Israel is not currently using AI.  Indeed its has a program called Lavender choosing targets to bomb. An artificial intelligence tool developed for the war, marked 37,000 Palestinians as suspected Hamas operatives.

Mistakes were treated statistically. SUCH AS THE RECENT KILLING OF SIX INTERNATIONAL AID WORKERS.

We need to keep saying that these protections are valuable, they’re worthy, and they speak to our common humanity.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS THE USA ITCHING FOR YET ANOTHER WAR?

04 Sunday Feb 2024

Posted by in 2024 the year of disconnection, President of the USA., The USA., Ukraine/Russian war., Unanswered Questions., USA Presidential Election, Wars, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders

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( Four minute read)

The U.S. is in danger of slow-walking itself into a war with Iran.

ONE WOULD THINK:  THAT AFTER THE RECENT US INVOLVEMENT IN DISASTROUS WARS, THAT IT AND ALL OF US, WOULD LEARN THAT MILARTY DETERRENCES DON’T WORK.

Since Biden refuses to pressure Israel to stop its bombardment of Gaza and accept a ceasefire, he is escalating the US confrontation with the Houthis.

Biden and his administration are practically sleepwalking the US into another war.

In the process, Biden risks entangling the US in another open-ended conflict, which is likely to expand by accident or miscalculation, rather than by design.

Either way, it threatens to prolong the forever war.

With persistent support of Israel, the Biden administration has alienated its allies in the Arab world and is now a heartbeat or an election result away from another war that it will lose.

The Gaza invasion has already spilled into clashes in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Red Sea.

They all require serious effort and inevitable trade-offs.

Why

Because it’s nearly impossible to dislodge an Indigenous insurgent movement without a huge commitment of ground troops.

Because today’s U.S. military is not designed to fight wars against two major rivals simultaneously.

This isn’t because the United States is in decline.

It’s because unlike the United States, which needs to be strong in all three of these places, each of its adversaries—China, Russia, and Iran—only has to be strong in its own home region to achieve its objectives.

Because in past conflicts, it was always able to outproduce its opponents. That’s no longer the case:

Because in past conflicts, it could easily outspend adversaries. That’s no longer the case:

All of that pales alongside the human costs that the United States could suffer in a global conflict.

In the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan, the United States would be hard-pressed to rebuff the attack while keeping up the flow of support to Ukraine and Israel.

——————-

The US administration has multiple options to lean on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

It could threaten to withhold billions of dollars in military aid, which allow Israel to continue its assault, or it could stop using Washington’s veto power on the UN security council to quash resolutions calling for a ceasefire.

The Houthis are portraying themselves as one of the few forces in the Middle East willing to stand against Israel and its western allies in defence of the Palestinian cause. Aside from the Houthis and Hamas, the alliance also includes several Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, and the powerful Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

True global leadership at this moment means de-escalation and forging visions for a just future for all.

Without demanding a ceasefire in the immediate future, the putative US/UK commitment’s to peace rings hollow and feels more like it’s been overshadowed by their own and very real addictions to war.,

Any sane person would hear this.

Do most Americans realize how steeped in violence their country is?

A country beholden to its own violence’s is not limited to mass murderers.

How many of us have read the Creed of a United States Marine? “My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life,” it states, along with “my rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.”

Maybe this makes sense as part of military indoctrination but, let’s face it, culturally, we are all expected to buy into this idea, and with interest.

The truth of the matter is that the US make a lot of war.

Military conflicts make up perhaps 93% of its history. Roughly a quarter of the country has lived only in a time of war. And within that history, American weapons are an industry, a mythology and identity simultaneously.

Why do they call armed, military helicopters “Apache” helicopters for goodness’ sake?

When will the US face the fact that it is a country baked in its own violence, much of it racist in intent and effect?  That reflects its own genocidal and racist past. If they were to be honest they would see that this dark heart of violence is not simply a partisan issue but is a much longer and more intimate part of its our own national tragedy.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WARS DON’T USUALLY COME OUT OF NOWHERE.

17 Wednesday Jan 2024

Posted by in The cost of war., The new year 2024, The Obvious., The world to day., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , War, Wars

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( Eight minute read) 

Endeavours to understand the nature of war, to formulate some theory of its causes, conduct, and prevention, are of great importance, for theory shapes human expectations and determines human behaviour.

If the source of a conflict doesn’t go away, however, there is every possibility that the conflict will erupt again, violently or otherwise.

However war is an extremely complex social phenomenon that cannot be explained by any single factor or through any single approach. The first thing to remember is that people have a penchant for violence so the causes of a war are usually numerous and can often be intertwined in a complicated way.

Although the theoretical understanding of the various causes of wars is developing well, and there are innumerable case studies of war and analyses of particular conflicts, systematic empirical work that analyzes the origins of wars across many cases is still relatively lacking.

A richer understanding of the origins of wars would help further advance the theory, and would help in sorting more frequent and important causes, from those which are less so and ultimately would help in developing policies aimed at avoiding the costs of conflict.

You could say that the above is a load of crap.  After all War is War and only stops when one side sumits to the other.   

Here is my theory. 

Wars in the main are caused by Inequality. 

Once the military function became differentiated and separated from civilian ones, a tension between the two became one of the most important issues of politics.

Why? 

Because the military strive for war, in which they attain greater resources and can satisfy their status seeking and, sometimes, also an aspiration for direct and full political power.

Explosion

It’s not World War III yet, but there are more wars raging across the globe today than there have been since 1945. Foreboding figures from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) reveal the number of people globally engaged in deadly conflict shot up a staggering 97 percent in 2022 – sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And since the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel, yet another major war to a growing list of 57 major and smaller conflicts.

As we begin 2024, if wars weren’t worrying enough, international storm clouds are coming with the US and the Uk Elections, both now engaging the Huti in Yemen, while the Libyan and Iran and Iraq are more and more likely to get involved in a widening the current war. 

For 16 years, Israel’s illegal blockade has made Gaza the world’s biggest open-air prison – the international community must act now to prevent it becoming a giant graveyard.

Decades of impunity and injustice and the unprecedented level of death and destruction of the current offensive will only result in further violence and instability in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

We are now looking at a potential expansion of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, which has already devastated much of the territory and forced 1.8 million people from their homes, killing at least 23,968 people, mostly women and children. As the world watches on helpless, because of American and British support.

Is there anything that you can do?  Yes boycott buying any Israel products.Members of the United Nations Security Council vote on a proposal to demand that Israel and Hamas allow aid access to the Gaza Strip - via land, sea and air routes - and set up U.N. monitoring of the humanitarian assistance delivered, during a meeting at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., December 22, 2023. REUTERS/David Dee Delgado

 WHAT CAN THE UNITED NATIONS DO? 

At the moment, there is a lot of talk about warfare—and very little about peace solutions.

Along the road to ending apartheid in South Africa the Security Council, in 1963, instituted a voluntary arms embargo against South Africa, and the General Assembly refused to accept the country’s credentials from 1970 to 1974. Following this ban, South Africa did not participate in further proceedings of the Assembly until the end of apartheid in 1994.

We may as well add the Israeli-Palestinian War (or genocide), since grounds were set in 1994 for a true Palestinian state. Israel first took over their water supply, then their best agricultural lands, and has been forcefully encroaching themselves further and further into Palestinian territory ever since.

Someone who did not condemn Hamas for the brutal massacre of 1,200 Israelis … but instead condemns Israel, a democratic country that protects its citizens, cannot serve in the UN and cannot enter Israel!”

At least 130 UNRWA staff have been killed in Israeli bombings throughout the war. This is the highest number of UN personnel killed in a conflict in the history of the organisation.

Why not suspend Israel? 

The United Nations General Assembly passed more resolutions critical of Israel than against all other nations combined in 2022, contributing to what observers call an ongoing lopsided focus on the Jewish state at the world body.

The UN Security Council is unable to act because of the lack of unanimity among its five veto-wielding permanent members, the Assembly has the power to make recommendations to the wider UN membership for collective measures to maintain or restore international peace and security. However, unlike Security Council resolutions, General Assembly resolutions are non-binding, meaning that countries are not obligated to implement them.

Unless they agree to their own expulsion or suspension, permanent Council members can only be removed through an amendment of the UN Charter, as set out in Chapter XVIII. 

Impose a comprehensive arms embargo on all parties to the conflict given that serious violations amounting to crimes under international law are being committed. States must refrain from supplying Israel with arms and military materiel, including related technologies, parts and components, technical assistance, training, financial or other assistance. They should also call on states supplying arms to Palestinian armed groups to refrain from doing so.

Pressure Israel to lift its illegal 16-year blockade of the Gaza strip which amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s population, is a war crime and is a key aspect of Israel’s apartheid system.

Wars have been a part of human history for thousands of years, and have become increasingly destructive as industrialization and technology have advanced.

Literature on war and its causes assumes security is the principal motive of states and insecurity the major cause of war.

Whatever the other reasons for a war may be, there is very often an economic motive underlying most conflicts, even if the stated aim of the war is presented to the public as something more noble.

When war breaks out the basic questions are however the same:

What are the interests of the actors involved? What positions do they hold?

Of course these can be more than complex when deep rooted religious beliefs are involved. They can lie dormant for decades, only to re-emerge in a flash at a later date. Nationalism in this context essentially means attempting to prove that your country is superior to another by violent subjugation.

This often takes the form of an invasion.

Related to nationalism is imperialism, which is built on the idea that conquering other countries is glorious and brings honor and esteem to the conqueror. Racism can also be linked to nationalism. Revenge also relates to nationalism, as the people of a country which has been wronged are motivated to fight back.

Of course, the points of view differ greatly. As long as opinions exist, there will always be conflict.

Most wars are fought with the intention of beating the enemy and effectively imposing peace on the victor’s terms. Unfortunately, this can lead to an endless chain of retaliatory wars being set in motion which is very difficult to stop.

Today none of these motives are effectively served by war – it is increasingly counterproductive – and that there is growing recognition of this political reality. In the modern world, where military aggression is more widely questioned, countries will often argue that they are fighting in a purely defensive capacity against an aggressor, or potential aggressor, and that their war is therefore a “just” war.

Of course, the viability of any solutions will depend on the course of the wars in the days and weeks ahead.

We have created Nato a war Pact disguised as a peace pact, with increased military preparedness may result in increased tensions and thus indirectly lead to the outbreak of war. This is why admitting the Ukraine into Nato will cause world war three.  

As technologies advance, wars can be fought increasingly with automated weaponry, such as drones and missiles, with less and less need for a traditional army. Cyber warfare is also on the rise.

Although industrialists in all the technologically advanced systems are undoubtedly influential in determining such factors as the level of armaments to be maintained, it is difficult to assume that their influence is or could be decisive when actual questions concerning war or peace are being decided by politicians. Attacking them before they inevitably attack us.

Consequently, although modern war technology depends heavily upon scientists and although many of them are employed by governments in work directly or indirectly concerned with this technology, scientists as a group are far from being wedded to war.

On the contrary, many of them are deeply concerned with the mass destruction made possible by science and participate in international pacifist movements.

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Finally if one looks at war from a philosophically point of view, how can one own what one did not create?

No human created the universe. How can human own parts of the universe?

The phenomenon of war must, therefore, be analyzed at the universal level.

Regional integration is an important advance toward reducing the incidence of war. Even if it were to become generally successful, however, regional integration would simply shift the problem of war to a different level: there would be fewer possibilities of war because interregional conflicts would be contained, but interregional conflicts could still give rise to wars of much greater scope and severity.

International law, although they differ fundamentally from municipal law because no sovereign exists who can enforce them. It concerns itself largely with two aspects of war: its legality and its regulation.

On multiple occasions that international humanitarian law was being violated in the war between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas.

Hence, what the procedures really offer is a means of slowing down the progression of a dispute toward war, giving reason a chance to prevail. 

We have Russia claiming that the Ukrainian state is an artificial entity,  China claiming that Twain is not a state but is part of China, and we have Israel a Western manufacturer state, denying statehood to Palestine.

The apapity of Americans (now living in the only world democracy that is unable to transfer power with an election) is going to face the amber of a civil war if Trump get elected or not elected at the end of the year. 

If individual states in competitive situations are governed by a short-term conception of their interests, acute conflicts between them will occur and will show a strong tendency to escalate as future wars caused by climate change, will be fought more often over fundamental essentials, such as water and food.

It is thus possible that international organizations can contribute to the prevention of wars by devising and institutionalizing alternative, peaceful techniques for the settlement of disputes and by persuading the states to use them.

The scope of this approach is limited, for states are notoriously reluctant to abide by impartial findings on matters they regard as being of vital importance.

War’s can only be abolished by a full-scale world government to the prevention and mitigation of war with all the means at their disposal. 

Nations have not managed to agree on an unequivocal definition of aggression, have not in practice accepted the principle that aggression must be acted against independently of the identity of the perpetrator, and, therefore, have not established the international collective security force.

If they were to establish such a force that concentrates upon forestalling violence by bringing to bear an overwhelmingly superior international force against any aggressor. It would not work without the use of nuclear weapons which might see the demise of the Human species and the end of wars. 

Ask yourself, looking at today’s conflicts across the world, is it more likely that that number grows or reduces?

What can be done?

Governments place sanctions, you can place #boycotts.  THERE ARE NO LAWS TO STOP YOU doing so.  

The photo released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Jan. 14, 2024 Israeli troops conducting a military operation in Gaza Strip

Whether you like it or not the Gun rules the world and there are thousands to choose from,  Kalashnikov- MG24 – BREN-VICKER-THOMPSON-STEN – LEWIS  – LUGER- BERETTA -LUSSO to mention a few that have killed thousands all with nice names. 

ALL HUMAN COMMENTS APPRECIATED. ALL LIKE CLICKS AND ABUSE CHUCKED IN THE BIN

CONTACT: BOBDILLON33@GMAIL.COM  

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: WHY DOES THE USA SUPPORT ISRAEL? IF THE BIDEN ADMI CAN’T STAND UP TO AN ALLY WHO CAN IT STAND UP TO ?

28 Thursday Dec 2023

Posted by in #whatif.com, Arms Trade., Civilization., Collective stupidity., Colonialism., Consciousness., Cruelty., Dehumanization., Democracy., Donald Trump., Erasing history., Extermination., Freedom, Holocaust 100 remembrance day., How to do it., Humanity., Israel and Palestine, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The Ukraine.

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(Twenty minute read)

Seventy-five years ago this week, an anomalous state was imposed on the Arab Middle East.

The new creation was alien in every sense to the region’s culture and anti-colonial struggle, which it would put into reverse – and it had no historical antecedents in the Arab world, despite the relentless promotion of biblical mythology to pretend otherwise.

From the start, Israel was a western creation:

A settler-colonial state set up with the aim of absorbing the Jews of the world.

The gift of Palestine as compensation to Jews for their suffering, not least the western antisemitism that was behind it, has been fundamental to western support for Israel, although it is unlikely that anyone today is conscious of it.

The residual legacy of guilt about Jewish suffering, and the idea that Jews are owed a state, still runs deep in western psychology – most obviously in Germany, but also elsewhere in Europe and among European-origin Americans.

The new state went on to violate international law repeatedly, attack its neighbours, persecute the native Palestinian population, and impose a system of apartheid rule over them.

Astonishingly, it became the recipient of unstinting support from powerful western states, apparently unshaken by any of its excesses.

(Russia’s crimes against Ukraine were swiftly punished by the imposition of ferocious western sanctions, while Israel has been forgiven for similar crimes against Palestinians – and its privileged status in western esteem has not changed. ) Palestine was a godsend to be exploited.

The US has stood with Israel throughout history.

It is hard for the US to distance itself in any way from Israeli military operations.

The US was the first country to offer de facto recognition to the new Israeli government when the Jewish state declared independence on 14 May 1948. Seventy-five years later, Washington has long been Israel’s strongest military and diplomatic ally.People gather for a 'Stand With Israel Rally' in Freedom Plaza on 13 October in Washington.

There are multiple US laws that require monitoring and cutting off military aid to countries that use it to violate human rights and commit war crimes – which raises the question of why Biden is creating an entirely separate mechanism to enforce the same standards American lawmakers and his own administration created.

With Israel, however, the US provides so much military aid that it has become impossible to track down to an individual unit. So the vetting doesn’t actually happen before the provision of military aid to Israel as the law requires. ( Section 620(i) of the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits sending arms to a country that prohibits or restricts the transport or delivery of humanitarian aid is ignored.)

One need look no further than the US position on the military occupation of Palestine v the military occupation of Ukraine to see the hypocrisy of its position.

One would think that by now the USA government believes – and finds it deeply disturbing – that Israel is not taking into sufficient consideration how many civilians it kills and is forcibly displaying civilians far beyond what’s necessary.

All of this becomes especially troubling when considering the reasons that Biden is communicating conditions behind closed doors where there can be no oversight or accountability. That he still does not feels the need to break from decades of exempting Israel from scrutiny.

Despite that conclusion, and instead of immediately halting arms transfers, the Biden administration is still sending a bottomless tray of armaments to Israel.

However there is a law:

The US, it states, will not send weapons overseas if it “assesses that it is more likely than not” that they will be used to commit grave breaches of the Geneva conventions, specifically mentioning “attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such; or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law”.

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Though both Jews and Arab Muslims date their claims to the land back a couple thousand years, the current political conflict began in the early 20th century. An early United Nations plan to give each group part of the land failed, and Israel and the surrounding Arab nations fought several wars over the territory.

Today’s lines largely reflect the outcomes of two of  wars, one waged in 1948 and another in 1967.

The relationship only really began to flourish following the 1967 War which saw Israel defeat a coalition of Arab states, suffering comparatively few casualties in the process with little help from outside forces, and occupy swaths of new territory, including Gaza and the West Bank.

From the beginning. Former US President Harry Truman was the first world leader to recognise Israel when it was created in 1948.

In the 1980s and ’90s, the US and Israel began cooperating on research and development and production of weaponry.

After the 9/11 terror attacks, that money helped spur advancements in Israel’s surveillance technology and signal intelligence.

Currently, Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid from the US annually under a memorandum signed in 2019. That accounted for about 16 percent of Israel’s total military budget in 2022 — a significant fraction, but not so large that Israel still depends on US aid in the way it once did.

This has made Israel the 10th largest military exporter in the world — and also made the US conversely reliant on Israel.

Even in the face of global opposition to Israeli  treatment of Palestinians the US is continued its unconditional aid to Israel, which has totaled $158 billion (not adjusted for inflation) since World War II.

The US is Israel’s top trading partner, with annual bilateral trade of nearly $50 billion in goods and services. “American capacities are now to some extent dependent on Israel.”

Washington has failed to urge an immediate ceasefire or utter a word of criticism directed at Israel.

The US president’s position is not unique among a long line of US presidents who have shown nearly unconditional support for Israel in times of conflict. The US also blocked a United Nations Security Council statement that would have called for an end to the violence.

In 2016, then-President Barack Obama signed a defence agreement with Israel providing $38bn in US military support over 10 years including funding for the Iron Dome missile defence system. The responsibility for these tragic deaths rests squarely with Hamas. “No nation should accept rockets being fired into its borders, or terrorists tunnelling into its territory,” Obama said.

This recent outburst of violence was instigated by Hamas – a Palestinian terrorist group supported by Iran and Syria that calls for Israel’s destruction,” Bush said.

The Trump administration facilitated agreements to normalize relations between Israel and several of its Muslim-majority neighbors, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. There is speculation that Hamas’s attack was intended to upend talks brokered by the Biden administration to also normalize relations between Israel and its main regional rival Saudi Arabia so that they can form a united front against Iran, a common enemy that financially supports Hamas.

Donald Trump was deeply unpopular across much of the world. Israel was an exception after he moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognising the city as Israel’s capital which most countries do not.

There are a number of organisations in the US that advocate for US support of Israel.

The largest and most politically powerful is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Pro-Israel interest groups donate millions to US federal political candidates. During the 2020 campaign, pro-Israel groups donated $30.95m, with 63 percent going to Democrats, 36 percent to Republicans.

Large majorities of the US Congress in the Democratic and Republican parties are avowedly pro-Israel.

It seem on the surface that the US have accepted that it’s just the cost of maintaining the special relationship, which is not just military and political in nature, Biden has reportedly floated a proposal for $2 billion in supplemental aid that would go towards missile interceptors for the Iron Dome, artillery shells, and other munitions. However, the White House could try to tie that aid to other, less bipartisanly popular causes — including funding for Ukraine and Taiwan and border security — which could delay its passage in the Republican-led House.

The continuing US alliance is giving Israel a wide berth for military actions, while disproportionately blaming Palestinians for any violence.  “Israel is in the American camp, no ifs, ands, or buts so is this current war/genocide an American war cleansing.

Decades of brutal Israeli control have demolished the moral case for unconditional US support to the point that these weapons were and are now being used in the commission of war crimes.

”What does it mean for the current Gaza war?

The war is such a major development, with such major implications for the region, that it could transform the nature of Israeli-Palestinian relations as we know them.

This could  stir anti-US sentiment in the Middle East as neighboring countries witness the death and destruction wreaked by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs both want the same land. And a compromise has proven difficult to find.

Israel is the world’s only Jewish state.

Palestine, wants to establish a state by that name on all or part of the same land.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is over who gets what land and how it’s controlled can only be resolved by peace in some form.

The alternative to a two-state solution is a “one-state solution,” wherein all of the land becomes either one big Israel, one big Palestine, or some kind of shared state with a new name.

Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel all live under various regimes of organized discrimination and oppression, much of which makes life nearly unlivable, If you watched only US news, you would be likely to presume that Palestinians always act while Israel only reacts. You might even think that Palestinians are the ones colonizing the land of Israel, no less. And you probably believe that Israel, which holds ultimate control over the lives of 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and yet denies them the right to vote in Israeli elections, is a democracy.

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To be considered a political being you must at the very least be considered a human being. Who gets to count as human? “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant said.

Human animals?

How can such language and an announced policy of collective punishment against all the residents of Gaza be seen by Israel’s supporters in the United States or elsewhere as defensible? Let’s be clear: Gallant’s language is not the rhetoric of deterrence. It’s the language of genocide.

One fundamental way this double standard operates is through a false equivalence, a two-sides-ism that hides the massive asymmetry of power between the state of Israel and the scattered population groupings that make up the Palestinian people. They’re not equal. One dominates while the other is dominated. One colonizes. The other is colonized.

We are very likely entering another long and painful era where armed struggle and violent domination become increasingly and mutually dependent on each other for survival. Yet neither can win. The Palestinians will remain. They cannot be eliminated. Israel too will continue to exist. The future is full of unnecessary and horrific bloodshed all around. Desperate western attachment to morally bankrupt double standards bears a large portion of the blame. The failure of  “the two-state solution.

The failure of the Zionist movement to entice the majority of European and American Jews to come to Palestine between 1897 and 1947 (or since) and its failure to acquire more than 6.5 percent of the land during that time necessitated an arrangement to establish a Jewish settler-colony on at least parts of Palestine, if not all of it.

It is important to point out, is only a solution to the Zionist failure to successfully colonise the whole country.Palestinian protesters shout slogans as they take part in a demonstration against Israel's plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on June 23, 2020.

The crowning efforts of realising the “two-state solution” that legitimises Israel while granting a consolation prize to the PLO in the form of an ever-deferred mini-state.

For the Israelis, who essentially authored the accords, the Oslo deal was no more than a public relations stunt for the “two-state solution,” while they secretly and not-so-secretly sounded the death knell for it, in preparation for the final “one-state solution”.

What the Israelis have in mind is a one state, not unlike what European white colonists had achieved across the Americas, Africa and Oceania, since the late 18th century, namely domination of the natives through land theft and a series of draconian security arrangements legitimised by the signing of a series of treaties.

These arrangements worked relatively well in the United States until the 1960s, when they had to be updated to be more effective in selling white supremacy to white Americans and to the rest of the world as the best form of “democracy”.

This is, with some variations, what had transpired in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

However, the white-supremacist one-state solution which worked well because of the effectiveness of genocide and slavery in establishing white demographic supremacy in the Americas and Oceania was less successful elsewhere, least of all in Africa.

In Palestine, the dilemma of the Jewish colonists who constituted 10 percent of Palestine’s population after World War One and 30 percent after World War Two was how to establish a demographic majority short of genocide. They opted for mass expulsion, a plan they had drawn up as early as the late 1920s and more formally after the mid-1930s. By the time they finished conquering Palestine in late 1948, they had expelled 90 percent of the Palestinian population in the Palestinian areas they conquered and established a Jewish-supremacist one state, in the American, Canadian, and Australian style.

Today, indigenous Palestinians (seven million – 5.1 million in the West Bank and Gaza and 1.9 million in Israel) have again outnumbered their colonisers (6.7 million), not counting the eight million expelled Palestinian refugees living in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon within a 100-mile radius around their homeland.

It is also the major reason why the one-state solution, despite its clear advantages – not to mention, inevitability – has never taken off at the official level, and is unlikely to while the present mindset persists in western countries.

As there are three different arrangements for the ‘one-state solution,’ which one of them does Israel have in mind for the Palestinian people?

Let no one be fooled, unless the one-state solution nullifies all Jewish racial and colonial privileges and decolonizes the country in order to grant equal rights to all, it would be yet another PR campaign to cover up the maintenance of Jewish supremacy under a new guise.

In the end do states have the right to exist. Taken literally – no state has a right to exist, especially settlers states.  States exist because a group of people wants the state to exist for their benefit. If the state is no longer beneficial to its people, it can be changed or dissolved.

Even after three months of violence and tragedy in Gaza, there remains one theme which is too often danced around or simply ignored. It is the question on which all others depend: does Israel have a right to exist?

How to solve the unsolvable.

It seems to me that the nature of states should be determined by the demographics and democratic will of the people that state governs.

So Israel has the right to maintain its character as a Jewish supremacist ethno-state. But to have a genuine state like all state it must not just reconcile its history but accommodate it in all its forms, granting equality of opportunity to all its citizens no matter what their beliefs.

This is currently not happening through refusing Palestinians citizenship or collaboration as equals, or the right of return to their ancestral lands. Considering the fact that Palestinians have spent the last few decades either in ghettoized villages in the West Bank or in the open air prison camp of Gaza, and embrace absolute resistance to their own disempowerment and exclusion, to say “Israel has the right to exist” is a declaration of commitment to either eternal war, ethnic cleansing, or genocide.

In the case of Israel, the choice the state has faced has been between allowing the Jewish Supremacist nature of the state to change to account for the democratic will of Arabs, African asylum seekers, and other non-Jews, or to deny those non-Jews citizenship and go one claiming to be a “democracy” in the same way that ancient Athens was a democracy- if you happened to be a Greek male citizen, but not if you were a slave, non-Greek, or a woman..

If what we mean by “destroy Israel” is dissolve the nature of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state, than there is nothing wrong with saying so or doing so.

If the will of the actual people living in what is now Israel, want to re-imagine their country as a multicultural democracy or a binational state of Jews and Arabs, than they may do so, and there is nothing immoral or violent about saying so or advocating for this.

There is no other choice as very state formed by settlers colonization is learning to its cost.

Put simply, how can you expect calls for a ceasefire to be heard if you do not recognise the right to exist of those doing the fighting?

Peace depends on the hope of co-existence. Peace also requires leadership that Palestinians have rarely had — and Israel only sometimes. That lack of leadership is linked to opposition to a two-state solution extending back a century, even if the Palestinian Authority technically recognised Israel from 1993.

It’s logical to conclude that the repeated failures of Palestinian leaders to reach a deal for their own state (especially the offers on the table in 2000 and 2008) are inextricably linked to a refusal to consider true co-existence. Accepting a two-state solution means accepting Israel, and for most that cannot happen

.A positive response to “Does Israel have a right to exist?” sticks in the throat of a lot of pro-Palestine protestors, let alone Palestinians themselves.

This aspect of their cause is both fantastical and fantastically futile, since it rests entirely on the forlorn hope that Israel would, ideally, just disappear. The more Western activists adopt an absolutist stance on Israel, the more they put their own ideological purity before the long-term suffering of the Palestinians.

With or without a gencoid, leaving a uninhabitable land there is only a one state solution that can bring permanent peace.

Why not a Federalism? 

States do not have rights. People have rights, and these rights generally exist to protect them from states.

Just like in Northern Ireland when they dont exist to protect them from the states, they exist to protect them from other people.

With a single state likely the inevitable reality, it is past time to start imagining how it could be best implemented.

Fundamentally based on creating an Israeli-Palestinian reality that is shared rather than separate.

Since most peace efforts are based on relationship building, the two-state’s rhetoric of separation ultimately reinforces the perception on both sides that Palestinians are unwanted by Israel.

Regional governments under a larger federal body. This would preserve Israel’s Jewish majority, even in the long term. Israel plus the West Bank is currently 65% Jewish, and birth rates for Jews and Palestinians in this area are almost identical.  The federal government would operate based on a written constitution, which Israel currently lacks.

The constitutions of the cantons could be oriented toward the local majority culture while preserving freedoms of all religions and remaining within the bounds of the federal constitution.

A new parliamentary body representing the cantons would become the upper house, and the existing unicameral Knesset would become the lower house.

Jewish settlements would integrate rather than be dismantled.

The borders of this federation model are more easily defensible than almost any possible with a two-state solution.

Palestinians will likely be concerned about leaving Gaza behind.

To address this, Gaza could receive a port, airport and reasonable border and access arrangements. It would remain independent for as long as expedient. In the future, it could be integrated partly or wholly into the federation. One possibility for Gaza is a proposal related to federation, called confederation. Confederation includes elements of the federation model, such as shared Israeli-Palestinian governmental structures. However, it fundamentally preserves the existing national sovereignties, and so is considered a separate-state solution.

On the Palestinian side, it gives Palestinians the empowerment they have long sought. On the Israeli side, it opens the West Bank, develops Gaza for trade and improves Israel’s worldwide image. It even has the potential to inspire and rally parts of the Jewish Diaspora that are currently apathetic or polarized.

The West set up Israel out of compassion now it must for the same reason offer an alternative with the potential to succeed.

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How do you define genocide?

The term genocide was coined in 1943 by the Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who combined the Greek word “genos” (race or tribe) with the Latin word “cide” (to kill).

But behind that simple definition is a complicated tangle of legal concepts concerning what constitutes genocide and when the term can be applied.

Article Two of the convention defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such”:

  • Killing members of the group
  • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
  • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
  • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
  • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Does what is happing in Palestine qualify?  You decide.

The willingness of citizens to view their neighbors in a civic way – is in an advanced stage of decline or collapse. “I’m afraid that we are reaching the point of no return if we allow a country openly admit its going to commit a genocide.

Out of respect for those who lost their lives in these grievous mass exterminations, let’s spend some time completing these sobering events in human history.

Bangladesh Genocide, The Croatian Ustasha Genocide. The mass extermination of the Mongol Buddhist Dzungar people, or Zunghars,  The Rwandan Genocide, Tutsi ethnic group, with Hutu nationalists annihilating nearly seventy-five percent of the Tutsi people. The Armenian Genocide.The Kazakhstan Goloshchekin Genocide. The Cambodian Genocide. The Ukrainian Genocide. The Holocaust

Combined wiped they out around 38 million and counting. 

Even the darkest moments of human history have an undeniable impact on the future of our world:

IF JOE BIDEN 81, DOESN’T HAVE THE BALLS to turn on the red light THE REST OF US ARE SITTING ON A POWDER KEG of eroding democracy and the looming threat of authoritarianism.

Because Donald is running for president under the shadow of 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions, knowing that regaining the White House might be his best hope of avoiding prison – a calculus that could make him and his supporters more desperate and volatile than ever.

Biden is surrounded by people who are experienced campaign veterans and so is he. Use it.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmaail.com