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By Oren Ziv

In mere months, entire Palestinian communities between Ramallah and Jericho have been chased out by settler violence and state policies — paving the way for a total Israeli takeover of thousands of acres of land.

3 Sep 2023 – There are almost no Palestinians remaining in a vast area stretching east from Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho. Most of the communities who lived in the area — which covers around 150,000 dunams, or 150 square kilometers, of the occupied West Bank — have fled for their lives in recent months as a result of intensifying Israeli settler violence and land seizures, backed by the Israeli army and state institutions. The near-total emptying of the region’s Palestinian population shows how Israel’s slow but gradual process of ethnic cleansing is continuing apace, effectively annexing large swathes of the occupied territory for exclusive Jewish settlement.

By Brett Wilkins

“Netanyahu made clear with his little map what normalization really seeks: eliminating Palestine… from the region and legitimizing greater Israel, all with the blessing of Arab regimes,” one critic said.

22 Sep 2023 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angered Palestinians and their defenders today after presenting a map of “The New Middle East” without Palestine during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Speaking to a largely empty chamber, Netanyahu—whose far-right government is widely considered the most extreme in Israeli history—showed a series of maps, including one that did not show the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or Gaza. These Palestinian territories have been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, with the exception of Gaza—from which Israeli forces withdrew in 2005, while maintaining an economic stranglehold over the densely populated coastal strip.

Middle East Eye reported Netanyahu also held up a map of “Israel in 1948″—the year the modern Jewish state was established, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs—that erroneously included the Palestinian territories as part of Israel.

Palestinian Ambassador to Germany Laith Arafeh said on social media that there is “no greater insult to every foundational principle of the United Nations than seeing Netanyahu display before the UNGA a ‘map of Israel’ that straddles the entire land from the river to the sea, negating Palestine and its people, then attempting to spin the audience with rhetoric about ‘peace’ in the region, all the while entrenching the longest ongoing belligerent occupation in today’s world.”

As Middle East Eye noted:

The inclusion of Palestinian lands (and sometimes land belonging to Syria and Lebanon) in Israeli maps is common among believers of the concept of Eretz Yisrael—Greater Israel—a key part of ultra-nationalist Zionism that claims all of these lands belong to a Zionist state.

Earlier this year, Netanyahu’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, spoke from a podium adorned with a map that also included Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria as part of Greater Israel. In the same event, he said there was “no such thing as Palestinians.”

The use of such maps by Israeli officials comes at a time when Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalist government has taken steps that experts say amount to the “de jure annexation” of the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu used the maps in an attempt to illustrate the increasing number of Arab countries normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords brokered by the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump.

“There’s no question the Abraham Accords heralded the dawn of a new age of peace,” the Israeli prime minister said. “But I believe that we are at the cusp of an even more dramatic breakthrough, an historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia will truly create a new Middle East.”

Critics have countered that peace between apartheid Israel and Arab dictatorships has come at the cost of advancing Palestinian rights. In the case of Morocco, the United States recognized the North African nation’s illegal annexation and brutal occupation of Western Sahara in exchange for normalization with Israel.

Netanyahu’s props on Friday reminded numerous observers of the time during his 2012 General Assembly speech when he used a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate Iran’s progress on advancing a nuclear weapons program that both U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies said did not exist.

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

9 October 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Mansoor Durrani

7 Oct 2023 – After 70 years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands; after 50 years of Arab-Israeli Yom Kuppar War; and after 9 months of “low intensity” Israeli violence that killed over 250 Palestinian civilians in the Israeli occupied lands in the first 9 months of 2023 alone, something unprecedented happened around 6:00am local time today!

By Matthew Ehret

The recent dissolution of Nagorno Karabakh and the Armenia embrace of a US-led world order represent something much larger than either small country and have everything to do with destabilizing the largest, and arguably most strategic, mega-project in Eurasia connecting the Russian Arctic to Iran and India.

4 Oct 2023 – Efforts to light geopolitical fires across Russia’s underbelly have been relentless in recent years (with a failed color revolution in Kazakhstan in January 2022, a renewed color revolution effort in Georgia in March of this year, clashes between neighboring Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan in 2022, ongoing threats of color revolution in Serbia, threats to blow up Transnistria in Moldova, and the obvious fire in Ukraine).

Amidst all of these arson attempts, one thing is certain, the technocrats managing the collapsing western death cult are obsessed with kicking over the chess board using every dirty trick in the book.

Introducing The International North South Transportation Corridor

Until recently, the primary trade route for goods passing from India to Europe has been the maritime shipping corridor passing through the Bab El-Mandeb Strait linking the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, via the highly bottlenecked Suez Canal, through the Mediterranean and onward to Europe via ports and rail/road corridors.

Following this western-dominated route, average transit times take about 40 days to reach ports of Northern Europe or Russia. Geopolitical realities of the western technocratic obsession with global governance have made this NATO-controlled route more than a little unreliable.

On top of that, Russia remains one of the most important global suppliers of oil, natural gas, fertilizers and grain – but with the NATO/EU clown show increasingly sabotaging access to Russian goods, new connections are desperately needed to avoid plunging the world into a chain reaction collapse.

Despite being far from complete, goods moving across the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) from India to Russia have already finished their journey 14 days sooner then their Suez-bound counterparts while also seeing a whopping 30 percent reduction in total shipping costs.

These figures are expected to fall further as the project progresses. Most importantly, the INSTC would also provide a new basis for international win-win cooperation much more in harmony with the spirit of geo-economics unveiled by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013.

Doing Business Without Killing Your Customers

Originally agreed upon by Russia, Iran, and India in September 2000, the INSTC only began moving in earnest in 2002 – albeit much more slowly than its architects had hoped.

This 7,200 km multimodal megaproject involves integrating several Eurasian nations directly or indirectly with rail, roads, and shipping corridors into a united and tight-knit web of interdependency. Along each artery, opportunities to build energy projects, mining, and high tech special economic zones (SEZs) will abound giving each participating nation the economic power to lift their people out of poverty, increase their stability and their national power to chart their own destinies.

Beyond the founding three nations, the other 10 states who have signed onto this project over the years include Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Oman, Syria and even Ukraine (although this last member may not remain on board for long). In recent months, India has officially invited Afghanistan and Uzbekistan to join too.

While western think tanks and geopolitical analysts attempt to frame the INSTC as an opponent to China’s BRI, the reality is that both systems are extremely synergistic on multiple levels.

Unlike the West’s speculation-driven bubble economy, both the BRI and INSTC define economic value and self-interest around improving the productivity and living standards of the real economy. While short term thinking predominates in the myopic London-Wall Street paradigm, the BRI and INSTC investment strategies are driven by long-term thinking and mutual self-interest.

It is no small irony that such policies once animated the best traditions of the West before the rot of unipolar thinking took over and the West lost its moral compass.

An Integrated Alternative

The INSTC’s two major bookends are the productive zone of Mumbai, in India’s Southeast region of Gujarat, and the northern-most Arctic port of Lavna in Russia’s Kola Peninsula of Murmansk.

This is not only the first port constructed by Russia in decades, but when completed, will be one of the world’s largest commercial ports with an expected capacity to process 80 million tons of goods by 2030.

The Lavna Port is an integral part of Russia’s Arctic and Far East Development vision and is a central piece to Russia’s current Comprehensive Plan for Modernization and Expansion of Main Infrastructure and its Northern Sea Route which is expected to see a five-fold increase of Arctic freight traffic over the coming years. These projects are integrally linked to China’s Polar Silk Road.

Between these bookends, the INSTC moves freight from India into Iran’s Port of Bandar Abbas where it is loaded onto double-tracked rail to the Iranian city of Bafq and then to Tehran before coming to the Anzali Port on the southern Caspian Sea.

Because the INSTC is based on a flexible design concept capable of adapting to a changing geopolitical environment (very much like the BRI), there are a multitude of connecting lines that branch off the main North-South artery before goods make it to the Caspian Sea.

These include an eastern and western corridor branching off from the city of Bafq towards Turkey and thence Europe via the Bosporus and also eastward from Tehran to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and thereafter into Urumqi in China.

The Strategic Importance Of Railways

From the Anzali Port in the north of Iran, goods may travel by the Caspian Sea towards Russia’s Astrakhan Port where it is then loaded onto trains and trucks for transport to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Murmansk. Inversely, goods may also travel over land to Azerbaijan where the 35 km Iran Rasht-Caspian railway is currently under construction with 11 km completed as of this writing.

Once completed, the line will connect the Port of Anzali with Azerbaijan’s Baku, offering goods a chance to either continue onwards to Russia or westward toward Europe. A Tehran-Baku rail route already exists.

Additionally, Azerbaijan and Iran are currently collaborating on a vast $2 billion rail line connecting the 175 km Qazvin-Rasht railway which began operations in 2019 with a strategic rail line connecting Iran’s Rasht port on the Caspian to the Bandar Abbas Complex in the south (to be completed in 2025). Sergey Pavlov, First Deputy Managing Director of Russian Railways stated in March 2023: “The Ministry of Transport is preparing two intergovernmental agreements: Iran-Russia and trilateral Azerbaijan-Russia-Iran.”

In recent months, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has lobbied to incorporate the joint Iran-India built Chabahar Port into the INSTC which will likely occur since another 628 km rail line from the port to the Iranian city of Zahedan is currently under construction.

Since 2014, a vast rail and transportation complex has grown around the co-signers of the Ashkabat Agreement (launched in 2011 and upgraded several times over the past decade). These rail networks include the 917.5 km Iran-Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan route launched in 2014, and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan rail/energy project launched in 2016 which is currently seeing extensions that could easily go into Pakistan.

In December 2021, the 6540 km Islamabad to Istanbul rail line (via Iran) recommenced operations after a decade of inaction. This route cuts the conventional sea transit route time of 21 days by half. Discussions are already underway to extend the line from Pakistan into China’s Xinjiang Province linking the INSTC ever more closely into the BRI on yet another front.

Finally, June 2022 saw the long-awaited unveiling of the 6108 km Kazakhstan-Iran-Turkey rail line which provides an alternative route to the under-developed Middle Corridor. Celebrating the inaugural 12 day voyage of cargo, Kazakhstan’s President Kasym-Jomart Tokayev stated:

“Today, we welcomed the container train, which left Kazakhstan a week ago. Then it will go to Turkey. This is a significant event, given the difficult geopolitical conditions.”

Under these dynamics the long overdue Southern Armenian Railway could be built providing the missing 316 km link of the North-South Transport Corridor between the Black Sea and Persian Gulf. This project involves an incredible 84 bridges (19.6 km) and 60 tunnels (102.3 km) through the mountainous terrain ultimately connecting the Persian Gulf’s main artery to Europe with vast benefits for all nations and people involved.

The INSTC, BRI, and other great infrastructure projects would not only create new relationships and open up new markets over the course of many years, but would also provide the basis for new industries, increased productive potential and incredible investment potentials for all interests regardless of religious, ethnic, or other differences which imperialists have sought to exploit for eons.

Unfortunately if the Soros puppet president of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan (installed during a color revolution in 2018) is successful at sabotaging the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union and Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), while embracing NATO, then these prospects for Eurasian integration might go up in flames.

Matthew Ehret is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, a  journalist, and co-founder of the Rising Tide Foundation.

9 October 2023

Source: transcend.org

By Maung Zarni,

Dear Friends,

I know no rational discussion is conceivable between the Colonized and the Colonizer. There is no shared humanity, nor moral foundations between these two sets of populations.
That much we know from history. Situations of categorical and absolute bondage are no dialogic matters.

As the freedman Federic Douglas pointedly wrote, “power never concedes. It never has, and it never will.”

What is most outrageous and morally most repugnant – far more than another Global Powers are including the brutish Russia and China- is the United States as the most imperialist rogue power has for decades given Israel – now officially The Jewish State – a blanket impunity.

When the Wretched of Palestine fight back their occupying Colonizers, they are “terrorists”, or worse.

I may have lost several close Jewish friends over the last few days, including some genocide scholars and fellow leftists

Friendship (or career or even my life) has never been as important to me as my Conscience.

So, it’s not my loss. I am nobody, in the grand scheme of things, without Power, Influence or Status to shape global public opinion.

But I feel this deep existential need to raise my tiny voice. Whether it’s heard or heeded by any other human is not my concern.

I speak – and live – my conscience. I hope you do too.

Not a good time for the 2-million Palestinians.

11 October 2023

Maung Zarni is a Burmese educator, academic, and human rights activist. He is noted for his opposition to the violence in Rakhine State and Rohingya refugee crisis.

The CIA Sponsored Islamic Insurgency (1979- )

By Michel Chossudovsky

The NeoCons’ agenda is not to “win the war” but to engineer the breakup of sovereign nation states, destroy their culture and national identity, derogate fundamental values and human rights.

The strategic objective is to trigger political and social chaos, engineer the collapse of national economies, appropriate the countries’ wealth and resources, impoverish the entire planet including the American Homeland.

It’s a mesh of weapons of mass destruction, covert intelligence operations, propaganda and “strong economic medicine”. The criminality of the US/NATO hegemonic agenda is beyond description.

This short article focusses on Women’s Rights in Afghanistan “Before” and “After” the conduct of Washington’s “Humanitarian War” against Afghanistan, which commenced at the height of the Cold War in 1979. It was a carefully planned  intelligence operation. The CIA was directly involved from the outset in recruiting and supporting the “Islamic brigades”.

A second war and invasion of Afghanistan under US-NATO auspices was carried on October 7, 2001, four weeks after the tragic events of 9/11.

Prior to the CIA-Sponsored “Islamic Insurgency” against the People of Afghanistan

“Before”

Unknown to Americans, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Kabul was “a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture, engineering and business at the city’s university. Afghan women held government jobs”.

“Prior to the rise of the Taliban [which was instrumented by the CIA], women in Afghanistan were protected under law and increasingly afforded rights in Afghan society. Women received the right to vote in the 1920s; and as early as the 1960s, the Afghan constitution provided for equality for women. There was a mood of tolerance and openness as the country began moving toward democracy.

Women were making important contributions to national development. In 1977, women comprised over 15% of Afghanistan’s highest legislative body. It is estimated that by the early 1990s, 70% of schoolteachers, 50% of government workers and university students, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women.” (Bureau of Democracy and Human Rights, U.S. State Department, 2001, link no longer functional)

Starting Under Reagan. Derogation of Women’s Rights. Destruction of an Entire Country

“After”

Osama bin Laden, America’s bogyman, was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US-sponsored jihad.

He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA-sponsored guerrilla training camp. The architects of the covert operation in support of “Islamic fundamentalism” launched during the Reagan presidency played a key role in launching the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) in the wake of 9/11.

Under the Reagan adminstration, US foreign policy evolved towards the unconditional support and endorsement of the Islamic “freedom fighters”. In today’s world, the “freedom fighters” are labelled “Islamic terrorists”.

The Soviet-Afghan War

The Soviet-Afghan war was part of a CIA covert agenda initiated during the Carter administration, which consisted  in actively supporting and financing the Islamic brigades, later known as Al Qaeda.

The number of CIA-sponsored religious schools (madrasahs) increased from 2,500 in 1980 to over 39,000. USAID generously financed the process of religious indoctrination, largely to secure the demise of secular institutions and the collapse of civil society.

In the Pashtun language, the word “Taliban” means “Students”, or graduates of the madrasahs (places of learning or coranic schools) set up by the Wahhabi missions from Saudi Arabia, with the support of the CIA.

“The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings….

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books ….

‘The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school students, but the texts are even much worse’ said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, an Afghan educator [working with] a Pakistan-based nonprofit.

An aid worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or passages.

Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.“ (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)

“Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the [Islamic] Jihad.” (Pervez  Hoodbhoy, Peace Research, 1 May 2005)

“Bin Laden recruited 4,000 volunteers from his own country and developed close relations with the most radical mujahideen leaders. He also worked closely with the CIA, … Since September 11, [2001] CIA officials have been claiming they had no direct link to bin Laden.” (Phil Gasper, International Socialist Review, November-December 2001)

Women’s Rights, Poverty and Despair

The media casually blames this on the Taliban, without acknowledging that Islamic Fundamentalism and the koranic schools had been imposed by the CIA.

Public education was destroyed and the rights of women in a predominately secular society which took its roots in the 1920s were DESTROYED.

This destruction is coupled with the massive impoverishment of an entire country.

“Before” and “After”

A Criminal Undertaking. Who’s Behind It?

“A once prosperous country has been precipitated into extreme poverty and despair. It’s a crime against humanity.

According to the UN, Afghanistan is currently experiencing extensive food shortages and famine.

It should be understood that this war started more than 40 years ago in 1979 with the CIA recruitment of jihadist mercenaries (Al Qaeda) funded by the trade in narcotics.

The endgame was to destroy Afghanistan as a progressive and independent nation-state committed to education, culture and women’s rights.”

What the media describes as the “tyrannical policies of the Taliban” bears the footprints of the CIA which imposed Islamic Fundamentalism, while concurrently engineering the collapse and impoverishment of a progressive secular nation-state.

President Ronald Reagan issued (and signed) the National Security Decision Directive 166 (NSDD 166), which de facto authorized  “stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen” as well as CIA support to religious indoctrination.

The promotion of “Radical Islam” was a deliberate CIA initiative (NSDD 166) which in the wake of 9/11 has served as justification to waging a “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) in the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and sub–Saharan Africa.

Our thoughts are with the people of Afghanistan.

5 October 2023

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. He is also one of JUST’s International Advisory Panel Members.

Source: substack.com

Normalization with the racist, settler-colonialist, zionist entity of Israel often begins with a U.S. directive aimed at Arab regimes, as evidenced by the first attempt with the Camp David Accords in 1978, which led to a “peace” agreement between Egypt and Israel. In essence, normalization coerces Arab regimes in the region to accept their subjugated status as compliant agents, which serves the zionist agenda and its U.S. imperialist patron. In light of the fast pace of change in today’s world order, the U.S. finds it necessary to push for normalization in order to maintain its global, imperialist dominance over Arab nations and thwart their progress toward independent, modern democracies.

Therefore, the current Saudi Arabian (and previous efforts like the Abraham Accords and others) push towards normalization with the zionist enemy fundamentally signifies a recognition of the settler-colonialist state’s legitimacy and an attempt to erase our people’s historical and national rights in all of Palestine. Any discussion about the so-called “two-state solution” is nothing but an attempt to stall and buy time to create new realities on the ground that will be impossible to reverse. This is when submission, surrender, and betrayal become the inherent traits of Saudi Arabia or any other Arab regime that normalizes relations with Israel. The Saudis and the other normalizers have always supported the repression of the Palestine national liberation movement, and believe that peace deals with Israel will eventually quell Palestinian resistance and bring quiet and “stability” to the region.

Within the normalization context, the zionist entity aims to establish economic, security, and political dominance over neighboring Arab nations, while extending its influence to North African nations as well. All these countries are envisioned as expansive markets for global – predominantly U.S. – capital, perpetuating their dependency and disintegration under the auspices of sell-out regimes, especially that of the most reactionary and traitorous of them all, the criminal kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Although our Arab masses reject normalization, and have been resisting it in the Gulf and other Arab nations like Egypt and Jordan for decades, these deals – brokered by a U.S. government that pays lip service to “democracy,” but promotes all the dictators (who are also, unsurprisingly, the normalizers) in the region – also allow Israel to focus its military firepower on the Palestinian people, as the militaries of the submissive and surrendering Arab states are neutralized.

In addition, it is very clear that the current Palestinian Authority has lost all credibility to represent our struggle and challenge normalization. Instead, it plays the role of one of its many agents.

As for the Palestinian people and our allies everywhere: in a world shaped by this new reality of normalization, we continue to struggle and resist occupation and colonization every day. Israeli attacks against our people in the West Bank, Al Quds (Jerusalem), refugee camps, 1948 Palestine, and Gaza, as well as the criminalization of our resistance inside Palestine and our solidarity work in the West, especially the U.S., makes us more determined than ever to condemn and battle normalization and the Saudi Arabian normalizers, to reassert our narrative, and to reclaim our voice.

And to resist – by any means necessary – until we have defeated the zionist entity, the normalizers, and their U.S.-imperialist patrons; and until we have won the full liberation of all of historical Palestine, freedom for all Palestinian political prisoners, and the Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

Until Liberation and Return,

U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)

October 3rd, 2023

#NoToNormalization

By Press Release

October 7, 2023 – The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) is horrified at the new war that has just broken out in Israel/Palestine. FOR, a pacifist organization since its conception in 1914 in Europe and 1915 in the United States, condemns the initiation of this latest stage of violent conflict. In condemning Hamas’s attack launched on Shabbat and Simchat Torah, we are also led to condemn Israel for its decades of occupation, siege, and human rights violations and abuses that have led up to this moment.

At least 100 Israelis have been killed, over 900 wounded. Dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians are missing and Hamas is reporting that they have been taken hostage.. The Health Ministry in Gaza is reporting around 200 Palestinians killed so far by Israeli air strikes and over 1,600 injured and we expect this number to climb exponentially in the coming days. Among the strikes that Israel has already conducted, was the bombing of the tall Palestine Tower in Gaza City, which houses media institutions, offices, as well as apartments. According to Palestinian sources, the Department of Charitable Institutions building in Gaza City has been completely destroyed by airstrikes.

FOR unequivocally condemns actions of violence that avoid the harder battles of justice. The killing and maiming of civilians, whether by Hamas rockets or Israeli airstrikes are unjustifiable, a war crime under international law. Also, unjustifiable are the actions of Israel that led to this current war: decades of military occupation with no end in sight, apartheid policies, recurrent massacres, and a siege so brutal that has turned Gaza into the largest open-air prison on earth.

FOR recognizes and condemns the failure of the Biden administration to pursue a peaceful solution to this entrenched conflict while providing Israel with almost $3.8 billion annually in unconditional military aid. Even while pursuing normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries, the U.S. has not worked to bring an end to the occupation or demanded an improvement in the rights and status of Palestinians. To call Hamas’s actions “unprovoked,” as the White House initially did in a statement today, is to put one’s head in the sand, ignoring decades of settlement building, land confiscation, child arrests, home demolitions, and the like, as well as recent of settler and military violence against Palestinians. Just one day before the initiation of this current conflict the Israeli military protected an extremist Israeli pogrom in the West Bank village of Huwara, resulting in the death of a 16-year-old Palestinian child.

Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler offered words from Hosea 8:7 that say, “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” “The ignoring of grave injustices against Palestinians, and an Israeli society that begins to resemble the segregation and injustices pre and post-civil war in the US makes for no small wonder that the frustration and pain will result in violence and war,” Rev. Hagler said.

“While horrified by Hamas’s actions and praying for all those, both Israeli and Palestinian, who have been killed, injured, and kidnapped, I am also deeply fearful of the death toll that is yet to come in Gaza,” said FOR Executive Director Ariel Gold. “Past Israeli military actions in Gaza have taken the lives of countless children, women, men, and the elderly and traumatized an entire generation. Whether this current war results in another status quo in Gaza, as past wars have, or a reoccupation of Gaza by Israel, this violence will not aid the aims of safety, equality, freedom, and peace for all people between the river and the sea. In the words of renowned theologian, political analyst, and former FOR executive director, A.J. Muste, ‘There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.”

Ariel Gold, Executive Director, Fellowship of Reconciliation.

8 October 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

A new trend is emerging in the Israeli hasbara discourse targeting Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims: women’s rights.

The word ‘new’ is not exactly accurate. The misuse of the genuine struggle for women’s rights in the Arab and Muslim world is only new insofar as the increasing reliance on the tactic within the larger Israeli propaganda discourse.

This was demonstrated in a most bizarre way during the speech of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on September 19, at the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The story was orchestrated by Gilad Erdan, a mediocre Israeli diplomat and Tel Aviv’s UN Ambassador.

Erdan’s real strength comes from the fact that he is supported by the same Western governments that continue to fund and defend Israel’s war machine and military occupation of Palestine.

Naturally, he is also given a disproportionate amount of media coverage by corporate Western mainstream media, when compared to any other UN diplomat.

Erdan’s work is predicated mostly on a single tactic: If he is not pleased by the conduct of his peers at the UN General Assembly, he simply accuses them of being ‘anti-Semitic’, as a matter of course.

At times, the entire UN political body is accused of being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.

This Israeli strategy – defaming truthsayers as anti-Semites – only succeeds because it is part of a massive political and intellectual discourse that is constantly fed by the media and accepted as a fact by Western politicians.

Indeed, if Erdan is judged as a diplomat, completely independent from the unquestionable support he receives by Western media and governments, he would have been forced to find another profession altogether.

His recent conduct at the UNGA was a perfect illustration. In a terribly choreographed gesture, he began walking up and down the Assembly Hall, raising a photo of Mahsa Amini, who died in Tehran last year. The placard said: “Iranian women deserve freedom now.”

Consistent with the rules of the UN, Erdan was eventually removed by security, which he must have anticipated.

For him, however, his charade was a success, as it created the needed distraction, not only from the speech of the Iranian President, but in the coverage of Raisi’s speech altogether.

Though some have suggested that Erdan had humiliated himself, namely because of his removal from the UNGA hall, I wonder if he was, in any way, surprised by the outcome of his behavior.

He wanted to be a star, at least for like-minded anti-Iranian governments and organizations; he wanted the conversation to shift from the rights of the Palestinians to that of Iranians. For him, the mission was accomplished.

Of the many articles and news coverage that followed Erdan’s display, a few, even in the Middle East, spoke about Israel’s war on Palestinian women: the killings, imprisonment, torture, denial of freedom of movement, daily humiliation, denial of life-saving medications, and much more.

According to the United Nations, at least 253 women were killed in Gaza in the 2014 war alone.

These numbers are only the tip of the iceberg, as every single Palestinian woman living under Israeli occupation, anywhere in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza suffers daily. These women are hardly removed from the collective struggle and suffering of all Palestinians.

Erdan had no signs prepared for those women; neither do many mainstream, supposedly feminist organizations that continue to rally in solidarity with Iranian women, while ignoring the pain and humiliation of Palestinian women at the hands of the Israeli military and government.

Sadly, little action followed a damning report issued by Israel’s rights organization, B’Tselem on September 5, where Palestinian women from the Ajlouni family were humiliated and paraded completely naked in front of their children. This episode took place while the Ajlouni’s boys and men were handcuffed and blindfolded, and while Israeli soldiers stole the women’s gold and money.

This is, of course, the norm, not the exception. It seems that whatever Israel does to Palestinian women, little action, aside from that organized by Palestinians and their supporters, ever follows: No placards at the UNGA, no US State Department-led campaigns, no unique hashtags, no mass protests, nothing of the sort.

When advocacy for human and women’s rights only applies in situations where the culprit is an enemy of the US, one must question if human rights have anything to do with the discussion altogether.

The irony is that Israel has been one of the main political forces behind the deadly US-Western sanctions imposed on Iran for years, which devastating Iranian society and families – women and men alike.

That, too, was another missing context from the coverage following Erdan’s UN act.

But Erdan is not alone. Sheltering behind women’s rights in the Middle East is now the go-to tactic in many public conversations, conferences and media coverage of Israel and Palestine.

Even if the tactic fails to strike a major shift in the perception of the Israeli occupation and apartheid in Palestine, at least, in the minds of some, it does create a distraction.

I have personally experienced this during many of my tours in various parts of the world, from Vancouver Canada, to Madrid, to Nairobi. Sadly, often well-intentioned people engage in the side discussion, either defending Middle Eastern societies, or nodding in agreement with the self-proclaimed women’s rights ‘activists’.

But Israel did not invent the ‘liberation of women’ as a strategy aimed at deflecting or justifying its own war crimes against civilians. The US used it as a backbone of its massive propaganda that preceded the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

And, of course, once the invasions and subduing of these countries were completed, Iraqi and Afghani women disappeared from media coverage.

In both cases, tens of thousands of women were killed, raped and tortured by the US military. As for those ‘activists’ who had originally joined the initial US-championed women’s rights campaigns, they often disappear when women become victims of the US, the West and Israel.

While Arab and Muslim societies have their own social and political struggles, we must be wary not to allow Tel Aviv and Washington to hijack these struggles for their own politically sinister reasons.

It does not follow that, for women to be ‘freed’ from one society, the women of another society would have to live in perpetual bondage, of permanent occupation and racist apartheid.

This logic should apply to all situations of inequality, injustice, discrimination and racism, anywhere in the world.

And, a defender of war crimes, like Gilad Erdan, must not be allowed to serve two roles: an apologist for the mistreatment of women in Palestine, and a freedom fighter for women anywhere else.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

5 October 2023

Source: countercurrents.org

By Philip A Farruggio

Can you imagine that after my generation either was pushed into the Vietnam phony war or pushed into the streets to get us out, we have arrived at this, this ****? Bad enough that less than twenty years later we twice destroyed and invaded Iraq ( occupying it the second round), destroyed much of Afghanistan and set our sights on the rest of the Middle East. Let’s look at what the rigged system has given us since 1980:

The ‘ crème de la crème’ had to then be Dutch Reagan, informer for the HUAC ( House Un-American Activities Committee) and friend of the California Super Rich Mafia. Already going senile, Reagan actually used the moniker that Trump later stole: MAGA ( Make America Great Again) to convince many Two Party/One Party suckers…sorry, voters, to make him the quintessential front man for the Super Rich corporate predators. While his wife’s war on drugs was going on, the CIA, handled by his VP and former CIA boss Bush #1, was making sure plenty of crack cocaine was flowing into the US, especially Southern California. Ronnie baby meanwhile made sure the super rich got lower tax rates as the nation saw less and less private sector unions. The great illusion was when states passed the contradictory ‘ Right to Work’ laws, which meant having to work with NO union to protect you. None!

Reagan did his job, which meant acting like a commercial pitchman ( which he knew from experience) and napping while Bush #1 ran the corporation… sorry, the country. Then, when Governor and Democratic Party presidential candidate Michael Dukakis wore that silly helmet while foolishly riding on top of a tank as his numbers dissipated, we got Bush #1. He was there when the Deep State wanted to punish Saddam Hussein for not staying on his side of the reservation and getting too big for his britches. So, Saddam became Hitler and the Brits and us destroyed Iraq with the asinine ” Coalition of the Willing… to do Uncle Sam’s bidding’ with mostly our firepower. One surmises that the economy under #1 was enough to turn off the suckers… sorry, voters. Even the yellow ribbon BS on this ‘ Wag The Dog’ phony war ( Go and get that film by Barry Levinson) could not save the day. So, we got ‘ Mr. Bill’….

If there was ever a professional bullshit artist better than Billy Clinton, show me! This guy could BS his way out of any scrap. ‘ I did not inhale’ is as good as it gets. The funny thing is he did what the professional card players call a ‘ Tell’. They can read a person’s hand by how he or she gestures or looks. Books have been written on that skill in reading body language. Well, Billy boy would ‘ Tell’ while having a conversation by giving a ‘ shit eating grin’ or pausing before finishing a thought. You could just know this guy was about to BS, and did he! ‘ I did NOT have sex with that woman!’ Gold, pure gold.

Bush #2 or Junior as his dad referred to him, was a true piece of work. This spoiled frat boy who supported our phony war in Vietnam while conveniently using #2’s influence to fly with the Texas Air National Guard. For you novices on history out there, during the 60s and 70s the last military personnel to ever get sent overseas into any hornet’s nest was our National Guard and Reserves. You would need an attack by North Vietnam on our shores to see those guys in action. After all his personal peccadilloes and failures as a ( so called) businessman Junior got to work for the Texas Rangers. Bush #1 sure did have lots of friends. Then, after a failed attempt at Congress the Super Rich Texas Deep State got Junior into the governor’s mansion. From there, with the help of an army of right wing movers and shakers, Junior became President… in name only. They made sure Tricky Dick Cheney would run things as his Veep. The increasing suspicions as to what really went down on 9/11 led Junior to sign off on War on Iraq 2, to perhaps wash some of that **** away from the public’s attention. Junior became the idiot emperor who just didn’t have any clothes. He ruled MoronAmerika during the absolute worst foreign policy maneuver our nation has ever made.

The damage that the Bush/Cheney Cabal had done just opened the door to the need for ‘ Hope and Change’. Enter Barack Hussein Obama, advertised as a true activist for progressive change. He was handled so well by the Democratic Party movers and shakers that mega millions of suckers… sorry, voters, put this guy into the Oval Office. His greatest foreign policy maneuver was to increase drone missile attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan by tenfold of what the Cheney/Bush Cabal did. How many innocent civilians happened to be near where the **** happened is a tragedy in itself. Barack also continued the bailout AKA gift to the Wall Street banksters on the taxpayer’s dime. He was the reverse front man to Reagan’s own servitude to the Super Rich.

What can one say about The Trumpster that hasn’t been covered by serious researchers? Put it this way: If we were back in the days of the Old West, The Donald would have been the epitome of the con man pushing his medicinal remedies from the back of a wagon. He took the ( rightful) anger of millions of working stiffs ( mostly white, by the way) and mesmerized them with his populist rhetoric. A man who stood up to his knees in the Deep State **** his whole career convinced them that he was anointed to save them. The real twist is that most of them still follow his tune right over the cliffs of reason.

Finally, we have Lunchbox Joe, who they now have to guide to and from the podium. This guy was always a piece of work his entire career. He helped break the railroad workers strike and then had the audacity to stand on the picket line with auto workers. Biden destroyed Anita Hill 32 years ago when she told the world the truth about Clarence Thomas. Biden also supported the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq in ’03. Before that he supported Billy Boy’s welfare reform bill, which took us back closer to the Gilded Age. Now, he follows the orders of the Deep State and keeps sending our tax dollars down the rabbit hole in support of a Neo Nazi infiltrated Ukraine. Read my lips: If they run this guy again he will lose… even to a crook like Trump.

Philip A Farruggio is regular columnist on itstheempirestupid website. He is also frequently posted on Nation of Change and Countercurrents..

5 October 2023

Source: countercurrents.org