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U.S. strategy seems to be shifting toward creating a buffer state between Iran and Israel.

By Sharmine Narwani

BEIRUT—Given the rhetoric of most U.S. policymakers, one might conclude that the conflict in Syria is about establishing freedom and democracy in the Levantine state. But no genuine aspiration for democracy ever came from a line-up of allies that includes countries like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, and Turkey. Seen from the Middle East, American intervention here appears to be aimed at putting the last genuinely independent Arab state under Washington’s sphere of influence—and cutting off a key Iranian ally in the region.

Today, after six years of regime-change operations that failed to unseat Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and install a compliant regime in Damascus, the west’s strategy seems to be shifting toward partitioning Syria. Specifically, the new U.S. policy would seek to sever the unimpeded geographic line between Iran and Israel by creating a buffer entity that runs through Iraq and Syria.

But here’s the twist: in Syria’s northeast/east and in Iraq’s northwest/west, where the Islamic State once occupied a vast swathe of territory, ISIS has helped to enable this U.S. goal by delineating the borders of this future buffer zone.

The only question is which U.S. “asset” will rule that buffer zone once it is liberated from ISIS. Would it be Sunni Arabs of the sectarian variety? A declassified 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report seemed to suggest this option when it confirmed U.S. and Western support for the establishment of a “Salafist Principality” on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Or will it be a Kurdish-ruled zone? U.S.-Kurdish machinations have, after all, borne a similar Shia-thwarting buffer on Iran’s western border with Iraq, with the creation of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) headed by the famously opportunistic and corrupt Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani.

Either way, what transpired is this: ISIS occupied the areas flanking Syria and Iraq’s northern border. The U.S.-led coalition has had a presence in these territories for several years, without impairing ISIS control. At the right time, under U.S. cover, Kurds are moving in to “recapture” them.

Kurds constitute a minority in all these governorates, which is how the presence of ISIS became a valuable U.S./Kurdish strategic asset. ISIS’s invasion of these areas is delineating the borders of the new entity and depopulating it—creating an opportunity for Washington to champion the Kurds as the primary “liberating” force within those borders, after which Kurds can claim this territorial bounty.

“This is conquest masquerading as liberation,” says Assyrian writer Max Joseph, who explains how KDP Peshmerga forces disarmed Assyrian Christians and Yezidis two weeks before ISIS invaded in August 2014, then retreated from their promise to protect those populations just as ISIS entered Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains.

In the immediate aftermath of the ISIS invasion, Reuters quoted a KRG official saying: “Everyone is worried, but this is a big chance for us. ISIL gave us in two weeks what Maliki couldn’t give us in eight years.”

“By disarming and disabling communities who live in territories the Kurdish leadership have designs on controlling, then letting a ready-made aggressive foreign force invade and uproot native communities, forcing them to flee, KRG forces backed by Western airstrikes will be seen as ‘retaking’ land never even theirs,” explains Joseph.

Two years later, in July 2016, the KRG’s Peshmerga ministry gave credence to those claims by announcing that “Peshmerga forces will not withdraw from areas they have recaptured from the Islamic State.”

This is nothing less than an attempt to establish “Kurdistan,” a nation for the historically stateless Kurds, which has long-envisioned swallowing up parts of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran.

Some context helps explain the current situation. The KDP-ruled Kurdish entity in Iraq currently governs vast areas stretching from Iran’s western border to the Turkish border, stopping short east of Mosul and Kirkuk (an oil-rich city it openly covets). But the KDP has aspirations that run through Mosul to the western province of Nineveh—the historic home of a Christian Assyrian population—which would create a contiguous line across the north of Iraq to the Syrian border.

Last week, the “Kurdistan” flag was hoisted above all government buildings in Kirkuk—a move deemed unconstitutional and opposed by local non-Kurdish leaders and the Iraqi government alike.

A Syrian-Kurdish Entity?

In Syria, one can see a picture developing that mirrors Iraq’s experiences with the Kurds, Americans, and ISIS. Under U.S. patronage, areas occupied by the terror group are allowed to be “recaptured” by Kurdish forces, with a smattering of subordinate Arab Sunni forces to lend broader legitimacy.

Kurdish-controlled territory now traverses much of Syria’s three northern governorates where Kurds remain a minority—Hasakah, Raqqa, and Aleppo—and has earned the wrath of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has sent in troops and Arab proxies to break this “Kurdish corridor,” placing him in direct confrontation with the objectives of Washington, his NATO ally.

The Kurdish Nationalist Party (PYD) and its military wing. the People’s Protection Units (YPG), have unilaterally declared Hasakah a federal Kurdish state, a designation that is unrecognized by the Syrian government and other states. But Kurds barely make up 40 percent of the governorate’s population, which consists of Assyrians, Arabs, Armenians, Turkmen, and other ethnic groups as well. Likewise, in Aleppo, the most populous of Syria’s 14 governorates, where 40 percent of Syrian Kurds reside, Kurds make up only 15 percent of the population and are a majority only in Afrin and Ayn al-Arab (Kobane).

Meanwhile, Kurdish nationalists identify all of Hasakah and northern Raqqa/ Aleppo as “Rojova”—or Western Kurdistan—even though significant Kurdish populations live outside these areas and significant non-Kurdish populations live within them. Furthermore, many of these Kurds are not of Syrian origin, but fled Turkey last century after several failed uprisings against that state. The entire Kurdish population of Syria amounts to about 10 percent (although figures are slightly disputed both upward and downward). Hundreds of thousands of Kurds have since fled the conflict in Syria for safer shores. And there is not a single contiguous line of Kurdish majority-populated areas from the northeast to northwest of Syria.

Yet the U.S. is storming ahead with Project Buffer State, erecting military bases left, right, and center, in violation of Syria’s sovereignty and international law. Various news reports claim the Pentagon and its 1,000 or so troops in Syria have established up to six bases in the north of the country—in the Rmelan region near the Iraqi border, in Qamishli (Hasakah), Kobane (Aleppo), and now in Tabqa, several dozen kilometers west of the ISIS capital of Raqqa.

But the American plan to storm Raqqa has stalled due to Turkey’s refusal to be excluded, and its objection to Syrian Kurdish involvement. Washington wants its Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) allies to liberate the city, but this group consists mainly of YPG Kurds who are aligned with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a Turkish and U.S.-designated terrorist group. The U.S. pretends these Kurdish militias are the only fighting force that can defeat ISIS. Never mind that the Syrian army and its allied troops have been defeating ISIS and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants around the country for years.

The inconvenient fact is, besides the Kurds—not all of whom back the U.S. project on the Syrian-Iraqi border—no forces have fought ISIS and other terrorist groups more successfully than the Syrian army and its Iranian, Russian, and Hezbollah allies.

By contrast, ISIS actually expanded and strengthened after the U.S.-led coalition began its strikes against the terror group. Recall ISIS trekking in plain sight across the Syrian border from Iraq to capture Palmyra—or tankers filled with ISIS oil crossing over to Turkey with nary a U.S. strike. It wasn’t until the Russian air force entered the fray and shamed the U.S. coalition that ISIS began to suffer some defeats. Washington had only really contained ISIS within the borders it was shaping, not struck any serious blows to the group.

After all, it is Washington’s awkward alliance in the region—Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Britain, France, Israel—that has supported the growth of ISIS and like-minded extremists. U.S. President Donald Trump even went so far as to accuse his predecessor Barack Obama of being “the founder of ISIS.”

Certainly, Obama watched as his Turkish NATO ally allowed ISIS freedom of movement across its borders and purchased its stolen oil in bulk. We also now know via email leaks that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was aware that U.S. anti-ISIS coalition allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar were funding ISIS.

Why would Washington tolerate allied support of the very terrorist group it claims to want to destroy? By portraying ISIS as the worst of all terror groups, al-Qaeda and its affiliates—by far the most efficient fighting force against the Syrian army and its allies—were able to fly under the radar to fight for regime change. Furthermore, a globally demonized ISIS has also provided justification for direct Western action that might otherwise have been impossible after “humanitarian interventions” lost their allure, post-Libya. Finally, this supposedly very dangerous ISIS was able to invade and occupy, for great lengths of time, territories on the Syrian-Iraqi border that would create the boundaries for a buffer state that could eventually be “liberated” and led by Western-controlled proxies.

Stealing Syria

If the U.S. forges ahead with plans to lead its Kurdish allies into the Raqqa battle it will risk further alienating Turkey. Don’t expect ISIS to be defeated, however. Instead, expect ISIS to be driven southward toward Deirezzor and other eastern points along Iraq’s border, where the terror group’s presence can act yet again as a U.S. strategic asset—specifically, by moving the fight away from Washington’s Kurdish project in the north and hindering the ability of Iraqi militias to cross the border in aid of Syrian troops.

That’s not such a leap. Deirezzor is where U.S. fighter jets bombed the Syrian army for an hour straight last September, killing over 100 Syrian forces. The strikes enabled ISIS to capture several strategic points around Deirezzor airport, which the Syrian state was dependent on to protect populations in the ISIS-besieged area. The Pentagon swore it was an error, the Syrians and Russians swore it was not.

Meanwhile, in Syria’s south, U.S.-backed militants, aided by Jordanians, Saudis, and the usual Western suspects,  are rallying their forces to expand the ground battle inside Syria.

Why the sudden surge of activity? Mainly because the Syrian government and its allies have, since the liberation of East Aleppo in January, succeeded in pushing back terrorists in key areas, regaining strategic territory, and striking reconciliation and ceasefire deals in other parts of the state.

“Western states with the United States at their head interfere in favor of the terrorists whenever the Syrian Arab Army makes a significant advance,” Assad observed in a recent interview.

But the U.S. overestimates its capabilities. With few troops on the ground, radical militants as allies, and pushback from Syria, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and Iraq, Washington will face a steep climb ahead.

In fact, all U.S. gains could be abruptly reversed with this one Kurdish card. Nothing is more likely to draw Syrians, Iraqis, Turks, and Iranians together than the threat of a Kurdish national entity that will seek to carve itself out of these four states. And as the U.S. tries to establish “self-rule” by its allies in the northeast of Syria, it will once again be confronted with the same crippling infighting that comes from foisting an un-organic leadership onto populations.

Syria will become an American quagmire. Washington simply cannot manage its partition plans with so few troops on the ground, surrounded by the terror forces it so recently spawned, as able adversaries chip away at its project. Stealing Syria will not be an easy trick.

Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Mideast geopolitics, based in Beirut.

11 May 2017

By Stephen Lendman

In response to violence allegedly instigated by ISIS in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao, imposed military rule, and threatened to extend it nationwide to defeat the threat.

What’s going on? Why did ISIS begin operating in the Philippines? Weeks after taking office in mid-2016, Duterte blasted Western imperial Middle East policies, saying the Obama administration and Britain “destroyed the (region)…forc(ing) their way into Iraq and kill(ing) Saddam.”

“Look at Iraq now. Look what happened to Libya. Look what happened to Syria.”

He blasted former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for failing to act responsibly against what’s gone on for years – on the phony pretext of humanitarian intervention and democracy building.

He called Obama a “son-of-a-bitch” for his unaccountable actions – no way to make friends in Washington, especially if his geopolitical agenda conflicts with US aims.

On the day he declared martial law, he met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow for discussions on future military and economic cooperation.

He seeks improved economic and military ties with China. Ahead of visiting Beijing last October, he said

“only China…can help us,” adding:

“All that I would need to do is just to talk and get a firm handshake from the officials and say that we are Filipinos and we are ready to cooperate with you, to help us in building our economy and building our country.”

“If we can have the things you have given to other countries by the way of assistance, we’d also like to be a part of it and to be a part of the greater plans of China about the whole of Asia, particularly Southeast Asia.”

He promised to cool tensions over South China Sea disputes.

“There is no sense fighting over a body of water,” he said.

“We want to talk about friendship (with Beijing). We want to talk about cooperation, and most of all, we want to talk about business. War would lead us to nowhere.”

He announced no further joint military exercises with America, saying he’s open to holding them with China and Russia.

Shifting away from longstanding US ties doesn’t go down well in Washington. Are efforts by ISIS to establish a Philippines foothold part of an anti-Duterte Trump administration or CIA plot independent of his authority?

According to a June 2 Duran.com report, retired Philippine military official Abe Purugganan claims ISIS violence in Mindanao is part of an opposition Liberal Party plan to undermine Duterte and oust him from office – citing information from a party whistleblower.

Below are the comments The Duran posted, saying:

“There is a lot of noises and chatters flooding the cyberspace, you got to use your discernment to filter all these information.”

“LETS PLAY FIRE WITH FIRE,” explaining “(t)hese are the exact words stated by Loida Lewis and her fellow oligarchs on a meeting months ago with Liberal Party members abroad,” adding:

Their plan is to use ISIS or ISIS-connected terrorists to instigate violence and chaos in Mindanao, wanting Duterte’s government destabilized and ousted.

If the information reported is accurate, it explains what’s now going on, likely to worsen, perhaps spread to other parts of the country.

Last week, Duterte said

“if I cannot confront (ISIS terrorists threatening the country), I will resign. “If I am incompetent and incapable of keeping order in this country, let me step down and give the job to somebody else.”

If US dirty hands are behind the ISIS insurgency, he’s got a long struggle ahead, trying to overcome the attack on him and perhaps Philippine sovereignty.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

2 June 2017

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Pakistan is reconsidering its position on the so-called 41-nation Islamic military alliance, led by Saudi Arabia, to avoid straining its relationship with neighboring Iran, according to Pakistan media reports. The military alliance was to be commanded by General Raheel Sharif, the former commander-in-chief of Pakistan army who retired from the Pak army last year.

Its decision comes after statements by Saudi authorities at the Arab Islamic-US summit in Riyadh on 20-21 May suggested that the military alliance was meant primarily to counter Iran, the media report said adding that the Riyadh summit focused on isolating Iran — which was kept out of the summit.

The officials argued that the Pakistan government in-principle agreed to be a part of the initiative if its sole purpose was to fight terrorism. It was believed that the government had joined the alliance when in April it allowed General Sharif to leave Pakistan to lead the alliance.

But the officials said a final decision will be made once the terms of reference (ToRs) of the alliance are finalized. The ToRs would be finalized during a meeting of the defense ministers of the participating countries in Saudi Arabia soon.

Pakistan, according to the officials, would recommend that the military alliance should have a clear objective, that is to fight terrorism. Any deviation from this goal, they added, will not only undermine the alliance but lead to more divisions in the Muslim world. “We are very clear that we will join this alliance only to fight terrorism,” the officials emphasized.

Defense minister Khawaja Asif on the floor of the National Assembly has said that Pakistan would withdraw from the alliance if it turns out to be sectarian in nature.

Pakistani lawmakers have said that they do not want their country to be part of any sectarian alliance as it also goes against the country’s constitution.

Pakistan’s two main opposition parties — Tehreek-i-Insaf and Pakistan People’s Party — have been calling for maintaining “neutrality” in the Arab-Iran rivalry. But given the longstanding strategic ties with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan is unlikely to completely withdraw from the alliance.

Iran has expressed its reservations regarding the appointment of the former army chief, retired Gen Raheel Sharif, as head of the Saudi-led 41-nation so-called Islamic military alliance, saying it is not ‘satisfied’ with the coalition.

Iran expresses concern

“We are concerned about this issue… that it may impact the unity of Islamic countries,” Iran’s Ambassador to Pakistan Mehdi Honardoost was quoted as saying.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted Honardoost as saying that Pakistan had contacted Iranian officials before issuing the no-objection certificate (NOC) to Gen Sharif to lead the Saudi alliance. “But that does not indicate that Iran is satisfied with this decision or it has accepted the same,” the envoy said.

The ambassador proposed that all important Islamic countries come together to form a “coalition of peace” in order to resolve their issues “rather [than] forming a controversial military alliance”.

A controversial appointment

The appointment of General Sharif as the leader of the military alliance sparked debate over how the move will impact Pakistan’s foreign policy, and whether it was fully sanctioned by parliament.

Pakistan had initially found itself in the crosshairs of Middle Eastern politics as Saudi Arabia named it as part of its newly formed military alliance of Muslim countries meant to combat terrorism, without first getting its consent, the daily Dawn reported.

However, after initial ambiguity, the government had confirmed its participation in the alliance, but had said that the scope of its participation would be defined after Riyadh shared the details of the coalition it was assembling.

General Sharif last March accompanied the prime minister to Raadal Shamaal, the first military exercises of the alliance in which Pakistani troops also participated.

The Saudi government had surprised

The Saudi government had surprised many countries by announcing that it had forged a coalition for coordinating and supporting military operations against terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan. Iran was absent from the states named as participants.

Last April, Saudi Religious Affairs Minister Sheikh Saleh bin Abdul Aziz described the Pakistan-Saudi Arabia military alliance a “victory of Islam” and its main objective is “renaissance of Islam”.

Addressing a well-attended public meeting on the first day of centenary celebrations of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F) in Pakistan , Sheikh Saleh bin Abdul Aziz said that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia would jointly take on the enemies of Islam and the holy places in Saudi Arabia.

According to Tribune Express, in order to avoid any strain with Iran, Pakistan pushed for mediation between Tehran and Riyadh. Islamabad even mooted the idea of inclusion of Iran in the alliance.

However, all those efforts could not succeed since Saudi Arabia and Iran have serious differences on regional disputes particularly the current hotspots in Middle East.

But given longstanding strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan is unlikely to completely withdraw from the alliance. Nevertheless, its participation would only remain confined to counter-terrorism efforts, the Tribune report said.

The 41-nation armed coalition was initially proposed as a platform for security cooperation among Muslim countries and included provisions for training, equipment and troops, and the involvement of religious scholars for devising a counter-terrorism narrative.

Senator Syed Dilawar Abbas

Pakistan Muslim League Quaid (PML-Q) Senior Vice President Senator Syed Dilawar Abbas has said that former army chief General Raheel Sharif should quit the Saudi-led force’s command as it will not prove useful for Pakistan in the prevailing situation.

He said that Iran is a brotherly Islamic country and above all our immediate neighbor, who always supported Pakistan in time of need. We can’t afford to let our friends get upset for the sake of others, he added. He said that the United States had always played a key role in division of Muslims for securing its own interests in the region. He also condemned US President Donald Trump’s remarks that Iran is sponsoring terrorism in the region.

Senator Abbas said that the coalition was not an Islamic army but a Saudi-led alliance. If Saudi Arabia wants to safeguard the rights of Muslim world then all should have included all Islamic states in the force. Why some countries are part of the army while highly important Muslim states, including Iran, Syria and others, have not been included in it, he questioned.

He said that it clearly indicates that Saudi Arabia had their own interests and as a nuclear Islamic State, Pakistan must clearly inform the Saudis that we cannot become part of American hidden agenda against any Muslim state. Why should we become stooges of the United States, he added.

The Nation

In a comment on the current controversy, a Pakistani newspaper the Nation, asked: Did the fact that the coalition was first announced in December 2015 – ninth months into Saudi military intervention in Yemen and a month before the execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr – also not give Islamabad an idea who this alliance would be aligned against?

One would’ve been prompted to even hint that this belated suggestion of a potential back-peddling, if not complete retraction, is a reaction to the snub at the summit where Trump and King Salman collectively humiliated Pakistan by first not allowing the premier to speak and then by even refusing to include him in any publicized meetings or photo-ops.

Commenting on Pakistan’s stance that it will join this alliance “only to fight terrorism,” the Nation said that the term ‘terrorism’ is loaded, or aligned with state policies.

“A Kashmiri freedom fighter who picks up the gun is a terrorist for India. A separatist militant in Balochistan is a terrorist for Pakistan. A mujahid can be a terrorist or strategic asset depending on whether s/he is waging war against the military establishment or against it. So maybe it’s a good idea to modalities of terrorism as well, before we agree to defend Saudi Arabia against terrorists,” the paper said adding:

“A country that has unequivocally upheld that ‘atheists are terrorists’, clearly doesn’t even need an individual to take up arms for them to be lumped into the bin of terrorism. It also underscores that terrorism for the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is primarily based on ideological affiliations. And there are no prizes was guessing the one ideology that Wahabbism is antagonistic to even more than non-belief.”

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail.com

1 June 2017

By John Pilger

The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review”.

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years.

The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organisation which seeks a “hardline Islamic state” in Libya and “is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida”.

The “smoking gun” is that when Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in “battle”: first to remove Mu’ammar Gadaffi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a “terrorist watch list” and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a “political target” in Britain. Why wasn’t he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May?

These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the “lone wolf” spin in the wake of the 22 May attack – thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump’s apology.

The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest weapons customer.

This imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a modern secularism, asserting their independence from the imperial west and controlling their resources.  The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is division and conquest.

In 2011, according to Middle East Eye, the LIFG in Manchester were known as the “Manchester boys”.  Implacably opposed to Mu’ammar Gadaffi, they were considered high risk and a number were under Home Office control orders – house arrest – when anti-Gadaffi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.

Suddenly the control orders were lifted. “I was allowed to go, no questions asked,” said one LIFG member. MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.

The overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africa’s largest oil reserves, had been long been planned in Washington and London. According to French intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination attempts on Gadaffi in the 1990s – bank-rolled by British intelligence.  In March 2011, France, Britain and the US seized the opportunity of a “humanitarian intervention” and attacked Libya. They were joined by Nato under cover of a UN resolution to “protect civilians”.

Last September, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry concluded that then Prime Minister David Cameron had taken the country to war against Gaddafi on a series of “erroneous assumptions” and that the attack “had led to the rise of Islamic State in North Africa”. The Commons committee quoted what it called Barack Obama’s “pithy” description of Cameron’s role in Libya as a “shit show”.

In fact, Obama was a leading actor in the “shit show”, urged on by his warmongering Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and a media accusing Gaddafi of planning “genocide” against his own people. “We knew… that if we waited one more day,” said Obama, “Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

The massacre story was fabricated by Salafist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda”. The Commons committee reported, “The proposition that Mu’ammarGaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence”.

Britain, France and the United States effectively destroyed Libya as a modern state. According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties”, of which more than a third hit civilian targets. They included fragmentation bombs and missiles with uranium warheads. The cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. Unicef, the UN children’s organisation, reported a high proportion of the children killed “were under the age of ten”.

More than “giving rise” to Islamic State — ISIS had already taken root in the ruins of Iraq following the Blair and Bush invasion in 2003 — these ultimate medievalists now had all of north Africa as a base. The attack also triggered a stampede of refugees fleeing to Europe.

Cameron was celebrated in Tripoli as a “liberator”, or imagined he was. The crowds cheering him included those  secretly supplied and trained by Britain’s SAS and inspired by Islamic State, such as the “Manchester boys”.

To the Americans and British, Gadaffi’s true crime was his iconoclastic independence and his plan to abandon the petrodollar, a pillar of American imperial power. He had audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would have happened, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to “enter” Africa and bribe African governments with military “partnerships”.

The fallen dictator fled for his life. A Royal Air Force plane spotted his convoy, and in the rubble of Sirte, he was sodomised with a knife by a fanatic described in the news as “a rebel”.

Having plundered Libya’s $30 billion arsenal, the “rebels” advanced south, terrorising towns and villages. Crossing into sub-Saharan Mali, they destroyed that country’s fragile stability. The ever-eager French sent planes and troops to their former colony “to fight al-Qaida”, or the menace they had helped create.

On 14 October, 2011, President Obama announced he was sending special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops were sent to South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent was under way, largely unreported.

In London, one of the world’s biggest arms fairs was staged by the British government.  The buzz in the stands was the “demonstration effect in Libya”. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled “Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies”. The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs, which were used extensively against civilian targets in Libya. The blurb for the bank’s arms party lauded the “unprecedented opportunities for UK defence and security companies.”

Last month, Prime Minister Theresa May was in Saudi Arabia, selling more of the £3 billion worth of British arms which the Saudis have used against Yemen. Based in control rooms in Riyadh, British military advisers assist the Saudi bombing raids, which have killed more than 10,000 civilians. There are now clear signs of famine. A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes from preventable disease, says Unicef.

The Manchester atrocity on 22 May was the product of such unrelenting state violence in faraway places, much of it British sponsored. The lives and names of the victims are almost never known to us.

This truth struggles to be heard, just as it struggled to be heard when the London Underground was bombed on July 7, 2005. Occasionally, a member of the public would break the silence, such as the east Londoner who walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. “Iraq!” he said. “We invaded Iraq. What did we expect? Go on, say it.”

At a large media gathering I attended, many of the important guests uttered “Iraq” and “Blair” as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly.

Yet, before he invaded Iraq, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that “the threat from al-Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq … The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly”.

Just as Blair brought home to Britain the violence of his and George W Bush’s blood-soaked “shit show”, so David Cameron, supported by Theresa May, compounded his crime in Libya and its horrific aftermath, including those killed and maimed in Manchester Arena on 22 May.

The spin is back, not surprisingly. Salman Abedi acted alone. He was a petty criminal, no more. The extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished.  But the questions have not.

Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a “political target” in Britain?

In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made a guarded reference to a “war on terror that has failed”. As he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest and subjugation. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Iran is said to be next.  Before there is another Manchester, who will have the courage to say that?

John Pilger can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com

31 May 2017

By Andrew Cheetham

Dear Diary, I can’t show this letter to the innocent people of America and the world, so it’s just between you and me. Imagine the shock and the outrage if I say that we have to embrace Islamic terrorism! The average person doesn’t understand what’s at stake and how sometimes the elites need to rely on “controlled chaos” for the greater good.

Islamic terrorists are wonderful instruments for proxy wars – they cost very little but fight fearlessly. They are a global resource that can be brought into any local conflict. They are also expendable – we use them when convenient and kill them when inconvenient.

If this shocks the conscience of people, it just means they haven’t been paying keen attention. Consider the following examples:

• Thomas Friedman of The New York Times wrote that we shouldn’t attack ISIS in Syria 1; and we should even consider arming ISIS to overthrow Assad 2

• John Kerry admitted, “U.S. tried to use ISIS to force Assad into negotiations.” 3

• Israeli military chief explained, “Israel prefers ISIS to Assad” 4

• Israeli defense minister recounted, “ISIS never intentionally attacks us; and when it happened once, ISIS apologized immediately.” 5 Hello!

• Hillary Clinton wrote, “Saudi Arabia and Qatar fund and arm ISIS.” 6

• Joe Biden, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Gen. Wesley Clark all have stated that US allies in the Middle East arm and fund Al Qaeda and ISIS. 7, 8, 9

• Several State Department cables have clearly laid out how Saudi Arabia is the #1 source of funding for terrorism around the world – not just in the Middle East. 10

Ever wonder why we never go to war against or impose sanctions on these sponsors of terrorism? Heck we don’t even condemn them!

What goes through a reader’s mind when they see an article titled “Accepting Al Qaeda” 11 that is published by Council on Foreign Relations – the think tank behind US foreign policy? Or when Hillary Clinton’s chief foreign policy advisor wrote to her, “Al Qaeda is on our side”? 12

I can give many more such examples, but let’s hop on the time machine for a moment.

Afghanistan, 1979 – 1989. We used the Mujahideen to defeat the Soviet Union. Was that not a good thing? Remember how the media and Hollywood glorified those Afghan fighters in the 1980’s? The Afghan rebels even got to visit the White House.

There are two critical factors that are often forgotten in the Mujahideen story: foreign fighters from all over the world and fundamentalist Islam.

In the 1980’s, more than 35,000 so-called Arab Afghans came from all over the world to fight the Russians 13; and we wouldn’t have been able to motivate them to do so without appealing to the concept of Islam, Caliphate or jihad. “Fight for Allah” is far more effective than “Fight for Country X.” Fighters motivated by religion are also extremely useful in the battlefield since they are not afraid of death. This mindset is essential for the use of suicide bombers without whom many battles and wars would not have been won.

We also learned from Saudi Arabia that indoctrination is essential to create good soldiers. So the CIA came up with clever textbooks for Afghan kids that introduced them to concepts of jihad, weapons and hatred for Russians. 14

(Since then, Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars on Islamic schools – Madrassas – all over the world. These schools act as breeding grounds for future activists, extremists and fighters. Saudis also print textbooks that are used all over the world. Kids learn loving messages such as “Kill Shiites, Christians and Jews.” 15 Saudi mosques and preachers all over the world also continue spreading extremist messages.)

When the Afghan war was about to be won, it dawned on us that the Mujahideen project was a brilliant playbook that could be replicated in other parts of the world.

That’s when Al Qaeda was formed. And it was perfect timing.

You see, Halliburton had just discovered huge oil reserves near the Caspian Sea, but the countries around that region were all pro-Russia even after the fall of the USSR. 16

Without the knowledge of the American public, the Mujahideen were very active all throughout the 1990’s in Bosnia, Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Dagestan, Chechnya etc. 17 These fighters were used for three major purposes:

• throw out pro-Russia dictators

• install pro-West leaders who would help us build oil/gas pipelines and agree to host US military bases, and

• disrupt Russian pipelines and other interests

Azerbaijan was an easy one and we got our man in 1993. Georgia took a long time, but George Soros and his color revolution finally installed our guy in 2005. Within a year, we had a 1000-mile pipeline that linked Azerbaijan (Caspian Sea), Georgia and Turkey!

Chechnya was a partial success. They were struggling for independence from Russia and thus gladly welcomed the Mujahideen who also had plenty of Saudi money and US weapons. Within a short time, the non-violent and mystical Sufism of Chechnya was taken over by Saudi Wahhabism.

Al Qaeda started blowing up Russian pipelines. Russia invaded Chechnya in 1994, lost the war, and withdrew. It was fun to watch the news those days. But then Putin became the Prime Minister three years later, waged a ruthless war against the jihadists, won decisively and installed his own strongman in Chechnya 18. Even Sufism has seen a major revival lately and Chechens have now started rejecting Wahhabism and jihadism. 19

Al Qaeda was extremely helpful in Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo. In the late 1990’s, we used trumped-up charges and NATO bombing to get rid of the pro-Russia guy in Serbia.

Away from the heart of Eurasia, Islamic extremism and terrorism play major roles in Africa, Middle East and Asia to catalyze geopolitical transformations.

In Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia, we depend on Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and Salafists (those who follow extreme, fundamentalist Sunni Islam).

In Libya, we leveraged the Al Qaeda affiliate called Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) 20. We released its leader (Belhadj) from the CIA prison, dressed him up in a nice suit, arranged a photo-op with John McCain, and he became the freedom fighter who fought Gaddafi, the brutal

In Syria, tens of thousands of Al Qaeda fighters were flown in from all over the world to topple Assad 21. If it were not for Putin’s evil interventions, we would now have a Qatar pipeline through Syria, and Israel would be drilling oil in Golan Heights 22. A tragic situation indeed.

In Africa, Nigeria is a strategic country with 170 million people and a land rich in oil and natural resources. That’s where Boko Haram – African ISIS – comes into play. It has been extremely successful in every way. Also, thanks to Boko Haram, half of Nigeria is under Sharia Law, which is a great tool to control people.

In Asia, we need to prevail upon Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. Without them, we lose much of Asia to China. Sharia Law and Salafism are gaining momentum in Indonesia, which is a positive sign. 23

Philippines’ crazy leader, Duterte, has been too friendly with Russia and China 24. He will lose his popularity and get replaced if the ISIS affiliate – Abu Sayyaf – causes enough problems. If he fights back against ISIS, we will cry “human rights” and “Islamophobia” at the UN and impose sanctions.

Thailand has also been foolishly moving into the Russia-China sphere of influence 25. Well, this peaceful, Buddhist country has been facing Sunni/Salafist extremism in the south. Thai leaders must realize that the entire tourism industry is very vulnerable – a few bombings and attacks by jihadists can have serious effects.

Finally, let’s look at Europe. There has been a lot of problems with mass immigration – terrorism, crimes etc. However, every crisis is an opportunity. Some call it the Problem-Reaction-Solution.

Terrorism is the problem. Fear is the reaction. Government is the solution.

Terrorism and crime give us the chance to militarize the police in EU, create an “NSA” for entire Europe, and even an EU army. The financial burden caused by refugees also allows us to impose austerity and cut wasteful welfare spending. Mass immigration will also result in a more homogeneous European society. Twenty years from now, there won’t be much difference between France and Germany. This means much easier management of EU.

Moving forward, the biggest economic challenge for us will be China. However, it has an Achilles heel – the western province of Xinjiang that is predominantly made up of Muslims. With help from Turkey, we have already created in Xinjiang an Islamist movement that is calling for secession 26. China’s One Belt One Road is very dependent on freight trains safely traveling through that region on their way to Europe. Our future Mujahideen in Xinjiang will come in handy if China starts to misbehave.

It took us about 60 years to unify North and South America to a great degree under a common financial, corporate, economic and military system. (Venezuela is the odd man out, but we’re working on it). It may take another sixty years to unify Europe, Russia and China. Then we will have global governance and the ultimate New World Order. No borders and no walls. One World. In bringing that to fruition, we have many arrows in our quiver – trade, financial/military aid, coups, color revolutions, sanctions, wars etc. – but Islamic terrorism and fundamentalism will continue playing indispensable roles, and that’s why we must accept them and embrace them.

30 May 2017

By Raoul Wootliff

Last summer, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a number of intimate briefings with Israeli media outlets in an attempt to counter the negative image of him that he believed they were falsely propagating.

Laying out his vision for the country, the successes of governments that he had led, and the challenges facing the Jewish state in the coming years, Netanyahu painted a picture of Israel as a rising global superpower. The narrative according to which he was a frantic grandstander, obsessed with his own political survival and neglecting the needs of the country, was a distorted fiction, he sought to demonstrate.

Last month, at the Prime Minister’s Office’s traditional Passover toast, Netanyahu articulated directly to the public what he appeared to be trying to convey in those briefings.

“I’ll tell you what I see in the media,” Netanyahu said. “It does not reflect what the public feels. It is an industry of despair. Where they see unemployment, I see full employment. Where they see an economy in ruin, I see a flourishing economy. Where they see traffic jams, I see junctions, trains and bridges. Where they see a crumbling state nearing collapse, I see Israel as a rising global power.”

Rather than the stunning political triumphs that he often points to, or the growth in Israeli settlements he sometimes touts to Hebrew-speaking audiences, above all, he told reporters last year, it was the strong economy that topped the bill of proud achievements proving his success in transforming Israel into a force to be reckoned with.

According to the prime minister, economic might is the most important factor in building a strong country, because without it Israel will be unable to fund its military and defend itself from myriad existential threats. Diplomatic might, he said, while also necessary for the country’s success, is only a consequence of a strong economy and military and can essentially be bought by exporting Israel’s technological and military know-how.

Naturally, academic assessments of Israel’s economic prospects agree with the prime minister that a strong economy is a prerequisite for a strong military. But two new reports looking at both the immediate and long-term strength of Israel’s economy suggest that, while recent years have seen several positive economic signs in a number of areas, Israel faces “worrisome trends” that could ultimately have disastrous effects on its growing population.

According to the “Picture of the Nation 2017” report released Sunday by the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, Israel has the highest lack of disposable income of all OECD countries and, with an aging population and rising costs across the board, its “current sources of economic growth are not sustainable.”

A separate report, released earlier this month by the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research, which looks at economic trends over the entire 69-year history of the country, says that far from guaranteeing Israel as a military and therefore a world power, the economy shows deep-seated and long-term shortcomings that threaten to weaken the army and constitute an “existential threat” to the country’s future.

“The writing is on the wall. One nation-shaking crisis – emanating from the security and/or economic spheres – could spark a process from which there will be no turning back,” the Shoresh Institution report warns apocalyptically. “Israel has reached a critical juncture. Decisions that it makes today will literally determine the existence of the country in a few decades.”

According to Prof. Dan Ben-David, founder and chair of the Shoresh Institution and co-author of the report, if Netanyahu “continues to ignore the future” the country could be facing a catastrophe of massive proportions.

“The past year has seen a decline in unemployment and a large rise in GDP,” reports the annual Picture of the Nation, but “unfortunately, it appears that this positive trend will not continue and new sources of growth must be found.”

While Gross Domestic Product, often seen as a bellwether of economic strength, has grown in the last year by four percent, the Taub Center describes the figure as an “outlier and not a trend.”

Suggesting that the cause for growth came only from a single massive investment by Intel into its Kiryat Gat plant, and a rise in car imports due to an expected change in taxation, “taking a long-term view, growth in the Israeli economy has been disappointing,” the report says. In fact, the previous year saw a further downward trend in labor productivity, following five years of slowing rates.

In addition, whereas Israel ranks near the middle of the OECD pack in terms of GDP (22nd out of 34) and market income poverty rate (24th), it is in last place for disposable income poverty — the amount of money each individual has after paying taxes and regular living costs.

And that results in a startling statistic: Among developed countries, Israel has the highest percentage of its population living below the poverty line.

‘Upheaval’

Titled “Israel’s primary socioeconomic challenges and policy areas requiring core treatment,” the Shoresh Institution report was released in conjunction with this month’s 40th anniversary of the 1977 electoral “upheaval” that propelled the Likud party into the leadership for the first time in Israel’s history.

The Labor Party and its precursors, Mapai and the Alignment, ruled Israel for the country’s first 29 years, never once losing an election. It was only in 1977, when Menachem Begin’s Likud first defeated Shimon Peres’s Alignment, that the left lost its hegemony over Israeli political life.

Taking the long view, Ben-David and co-author Prof. Ayal Kimhi analyzed economic trends since 1948, and particularly during the past four decades, in order to understand the socioeconomic challenges facing Israel today and in the years ahead.

Commissioned, but not paid for, by the government’s National Economic Council, the report was prepared ahead of a detailed policy brief that the advisory body is putting together for the government. While initially intended to be an internal document, Ben-David said he and Kimhi felt it was “something that should not stay just with the government” and decided to release the findings to the public.

“We think that the public needs to be aware of our major challenges going ahead so that we can do something about it while we have the opportunity,” he told The Times of Israel. “We do have an opportunity but we need to get our act together.”

By providing historical context and international benchmarks that compare Israel to other developed countries, the report attempts to debunk the perception that the Israeli economy is doing well. Like the Taub report, it makes a point of noting signs of strength in the short term, such as growth, particularly when compared with the global economic downturn in recent years. But this optimistic analysis, the authors claim, fails to take into account deeply problematic long-term trends.

The key yardsticks to measuring the strength of Israel’s economy, they say, and the areas in it which it falls far behind other developed countries, are productivity, inequality and poverty rates.

Following the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, Israel’s productivity grew at a faster pace than America’s, almost completely eliminating its gap with the US by the 1970s. But since then, it has moved from closing gaps with the US into a steady backslide.

In terms of GDP, Israel has also been falling further and further behind the G7 average since the mid-1970s, with a more than threefold increase having developed in the gap between them. This, the report says, “reflects steadily widening disparity between what an employed person living in Israel can attain and what that person could attain in the countries that are pulling away from Israel.”

But Israel has not only fallen behind the world’s leading economies. Its labor productivity is now below that of nearly all OECD countries. In 2015, GDP per hour worked in the US hit $68, two-thirds more than the $41 in Israel.

“It’s hard to see how these trajectories can continue to pull apart from one another for several more decades without causing the exodus of educated and skilled people from Israel to reach a magnitude that may become irreversible,” the Shoresh report says.

“Productivity is really what underlies Israel’s, and other countries’, standard of living,” Ben-David said. “In our case, productivity is low and it’s been falling further and further behind the leading countries. It’s been occurring for decades and it’s a very steady and very problematic process.”

And that’s why Israel’s standard of living, normally referred to as income inequality, is increasingly becoming one of the worst in the developed world.

Income inequality is second only to the United States, but the country’s poverty levels are higher than every other developed country and nearly double the OECD average.

According to Ben-David, this is due to a “fundamentally problematic change in the country’s national priorities” beginning in the 1970s.

“National priorities moved from focusing on the general good to focusing on the demands of sectoral groups,” he said, adding that the problems have become more acute in the past decade.

In the early years, “this was a country that did not have a shekel, or a lira, to its name. It was collecting people from around the world with only the clothes on their backs and growing at a phenomenal pace in terms of population. And yet it built universities,” Ben-David said. “We were rationing food in the ’50s, but we were building hospitals. Even though the population was growing exponentially, the number of faculties in research universities was growing even faster. We had seven major research universities by 1970. We haven’t built one since.”

‘You can’t forgo half a society’

Ben-David insisted that the report’s findings must not be relegated to another stale debate about social policy.

If Israel’s educational and economic policies don’t change, its future may be in peril. “You can’t forgo half of society and say, ‘The rest will support everything,’” he said.

Yes, Israel as the startup nation is booming, producing cutting edge high-tech and bio-tech. But that is just one Israel, Ben-David said; there is another Israel that is receiving neither the tools nor the conditions to work in a modern economy. “That other Israel is huge, and it is like a huge weight on our shoulders, pulling everything down.”

Both the Taub Center and the Shoresh Institution describe an education system producing a generation of low-achieving students, low productivity in an Israeli work hour, woefully inadequate transportation infrastructures, a housing market that discourages investment, and substantial inequalities in state healthcare coverage.

For two decades, Israeli schoolchildren have consistently ranked behind other industrialized Western economies in terms of academic achievement.

In the state and state-religious schools systems, which together encompass over 50% of Israel’s elementary school students, academic achievement measured by international standardized tests does not match what is considered “first world” education.

“Children who receive third-world educations will only be capable of sustaining a third-world economy. But a third-world economy will not be able to maintain the first-world army that Israel needs in order to survive in the most dangerous region on the face of the earth,” Ben-David said.

Physical infrastructures, too, have been neglected. Israel’s roads are among the most crowded in the industrialized world, even though car ownership is lower. Since the 1970s Israel has tripled the congestion on the roads.

Healthcare standards have also dropped.

While the Taub Center report says that the overall health of the population in Israel is slightly better than in other leading European countries, it notes that with an aging population, that advantage is “likely to recede… and the state must take appropriate measures in time to deal with these expected demographic changes.”

The Shoresh Institution report is more bleak.

The number of hospital beds per capita in Israel has been falling dramatically since the late 1970s and it is now near the bottom of the OECD, it says. Likewise, Israel has one of the lowest numbers of nurses per capita, and that number, too, is dropping. Those low standards, the report says, have contributed to a doubling of the mortality rate from infectious and parasitic diseases, while the average OECD rate has remained stable over the same period.

“Hospital conditions in Israel do not befit those of a developed nation,” the report says.

Iceberg ahead, unless we change course

But it may not be too late to recover.

“Israel has not yet passed the point of no return,” the Shoresh Institute report says. However, “in light of the rapid pace of current demographic changes, there is just a small window of opportunity remaining for making decisions that are already very difficult to reach today.”

According to Ben-David, the current projections predict one of two “existential” crises: Either Israel’s economy will simply not be able to fund or provide the necessary skills for the military might that Netanyahu says its existence depends upon, or, the younger generation, seeing better opportunities and living standards elsewhere, will leave the country.

“If you continue to put pressure on them, they have a choice — they don’t have to stay here. Right now I think the choice of most is to stay here, but yes, that could change,” he said.

The Prime Minister’s Office and the government’s National Economic Council declined to comment on either report and the findings they present.

Asked if he saw any hope, given the economic policies of recent governments, Ben-David said, “We are all in the same boat. But it’s called the Titanic. And, right now, there is an iceberg ahead. It depends on whether we can change course in time.”

Raoul Wootliff is The Times of Israel Knesset correspondent.

28 May 2017

By Richard Falk

The Palestinian hunger strike protesting Israeli prison conditions was suspended on May 27th after 40 days, at a time when many of the 1000 or so strikers were experiencing serious deteriorations of health, most were by then hospitalized, and the holy period of Ramadan about to commence creating continuity between the daytime fasting of the faithful and the prior desperate protest of the strikers. What was perhaps most notable about this extraordinary gesture of a mass prolonged hunger strike was that it was treated as hardly worthy of notice by the world media or even by the United Nations, which ironically is regularly attacked by diplomats and the media in the West for being overly preoccupied with Israeli wrongdoing.

It needs appreciating that recourse to a collective hunger strike is a most demanding form of political resistance, invariably provoked by prolonged outrage, requiring courage and a willingness to endure hardship by participants, as well subjecting their will to as harsh a test as life offers. To continue foregoing food for 40 days is a life-threatening and heroic, a commitment never lightly undertaken.

With Bobby Sands as their leader ten IRA imprisoned hunger strikers starved themselves unto their death in 1981. The world watched in rapt attention as this extraordinary spectacle of self-inflicted death unfolded day by day. Without openly acknowledging what was happening before their eyes, hardened political leaders in London silently took notice of the moral challenge they confronted, shifting tactics abruptly, and began working toward a political compromise for Northern Ireland in a manner that would have been unthinkable without the strike.

The Palestinians can harbor no such hopes, at least in the near term. Israel deliberately clouds the moral and political embedded challenges by releasing videotapes supposedly showing ‘snacks’ secretly being eaten by the strike leader, Marwan Barghouti. This fact that this accusation was vigorously denied by his immediate family and lawyer is occasionally noted in the world media, but only as a detail that does not diminish the impact of discrediting the authenticity of the strike. Whether true or not, Israel succeeded in shifting attention away from the strike and avoids doing anything significant to improve prison conditions, much less take steps to end the severe abuses of the Palestinian people over the course of an incredible period of 70 years with no end in sight. Prison authorities immediately resorted to punitive measures to torment those prisoners who were on strike. Such a response underscores ‘democratic’ Israel’s refusal to treat with respect nonviolent forms of resistance by the Palestinian people.

At this same time as the prison drama was unfolding, Gaza was experiencing a deepening of its prolonged crisis that has been cruelly manipulated by Israel to keep the civilian population of almost two million on the brink of starvation and in constant fear of military onslaught. Supposedly the caloric intake for subsistence has been used as a benchmark by Israeli authorities for restricting the flow of food to Gaza. And since that seems insufficient to impose the level of draconian control sought by Israel, three massive military attacks and countless incursions since the end of 2008 have inflicted heavy casualties on the civilian population of Gaza and caused much devastation, a cumulative catastrophe for this utterly vulnerable, impoverished, captive population. In such a context, the fact that Hamas has retaliated with what weaponry it possessed, even if indiscriminate, is to be expected even if not in accord with international humanitarian law.

A leading intellectual resident of Gaza, Haider Eid, has recently written a poignant dispatch from the front lines of continuous flagrant Israelu criminality, “On Gaza and the horror of the siege,” [http://mondoweiss.net/2017/gaza-horror-siege/;, May 25, 2017]. Eid ends his essay with these disturbing lines:

“We fully understand that the deliberate withholding of food or the means to grow food in whatever form is yet another strategy of Israel’s occupation, colonization, and apartheid in Palestine, and, therefore, should be viewed as an abnormality, even a pogrom!

But what we in Gaza cannot fathom is: Why it is allowed to happen?”

At the start of Ramadan, Haider Eid appeals to the world to stand up against what he calls ‘incremental genocide’ “ by heeding the BDS call made by Palestinian Civil Society.”

It is significant that Eid’s appeal is to civil society rather than to the Palestinian Authority entrusted with representing the Palestinian people on the global stage or for a revival of ‘the peace process’ that went on for twenty years within the Oslo Framework or to the UN that accepted responsibility after Britain gave up its Palestine mandate at the end of World War II. These conventional modes of conflict resolution have all failed, while steadily worsening the situation of the Palestinian people and nurturing the ambition of the Zionist movement to reach its goal of territorial expansion.

Beyond this, Eid notes that the authority of BDS is a result of an authoritative Palestinian call to which the peoples of the world are implored to respond. This shift away from intergovernmental empowerment from above to a reliance on empowerment by a victimized people and their authentic representatives embodies Palestinian hopes for a more humane future, and for an eventual realization of long denied rights.

It is appropriate to merge in our moral imagination the ordeals of the prisoners in Israeli jails with that of the people of Gaza without forgetting the encompassing fundamental reality—the Palestinian people as a whole, regardless of their specific circumstances, are being victimized by an Israeli structure of domination and discrimination in a form that constitutes apartheid and different forms of captivity.

It seems that the hunger strike failed to induce Israel to satisfy many of the demands of the strikers for improved conditions. What it did achieve was to remind Palestinians and the world of the leadership gifts of Marwan Barghouti, and it awakened the Palestinian population to the moral and political imperative of sustaining and manifesting resistance as an alternative to despair, passivity, and submission. Israelis and some of their most ardent supporters speak openly of declaring victory for themselves, defeat for the Palestinians. Regardless of our religious or ethnic identity we who live outside the circle of Israeli oppression should be doing our utmost to prevent any outcome that prolongs Palestinian unjust suffering or accepts it as inevitable.

What is unspeakable must become undoable.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. For six years (2008-2014) he acted as UN Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine

29 May 2017

By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: A decision by Donald Trump this Thursday could prove fateful for the immediate future of Jerusalem, the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the region.

He must decide whether to renew a presidential waiver, signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, that expires on June 1. The six-month waiver delays implementing a law passed by Congress in 1995 that requires the US to recognise occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocate its embassy there from Tel Aviv.

It is a law every president for the past 22 years has baulked at. It would pre-empt the Oslo accords and negate Washington’s assumed role as “honest broker”. Carrying out Congress’s wish would deny the Palestinians East Jerusalem, the only credible capital of a future Palestinian state.

But equally significantly, the law would recognise Israel’s efforts to claim sovereignty over the Old City’s holy places, especially the incendiary site of Al Aqsa mosque. That could provoke a conflagration both locally, among Palestinians, and more generally in the Middle East.

Trump’s key advisers are reported to be bitterly divided. Some, such as secretary of state Rex Tillerson, warn that, if the president fails to approve the deferral, his claims to be crafting the “ultimate deal” to bring peace to the region will be doomed from the outset.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies, including in the US Congress, are doing their best to pressure Trump in the opposite direction.

On Sunday, Netanyahu staged a provocative stunt, holding his weekly cabinet meeting in a tunnel under Al Aqsa mosque compound to announce measures to bring millions more Jewish visitors to the occupied Old City, including a new cable car to the edge of the mosque.

It was Netanyahu’s decision to open the Western Wall Tunnel in 1996, when he first became prime minister, that brought the Oslo process into almost terminal crisis at an early stage. Three days of clashes killed more than 100 Palestinians and 17 Israeli soldiers.

Next Tuesday, meanwhile, the US Congress and Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem are due to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Israel’s illegal occupation of the city in a ceremony conducted via video link.

The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday that either Trump or vice-president Mike Pence are due to participate, in what could be interpreted as the first tacit recognition by the White House of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

That would be a continuation of Trump’s break with official US policy towards Jerusalem during his visit to the region last week. He became the first sitting president to visit the Jewish prayer plaza at the Western Wall, below Al Aqsa. It was unclear whether his advisers had explained that where he stood had been a Palestinian neighbourhood 50 years ago, before it was ethnically cleansed.

Trump stuffed a note into the wall, in what observers hoped was a plea for divine help in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But the Western Wall visit was more probably an effort to placate his core supporters. Christian evangelicals paid for dozens of billboards across Jerusalem reminding Trump that he won the election only because of their votes – and that they expect the US embassy to be moved to Jerusalem.

The day after Trump’s departure, Netanyahu exploited the president’s attendance at the wall to further damage prospects for peacemaking. He made a provocative speech to mark “Jerusalem Day”, Israel’s annual show of strength in East Jerusalem.

He claimed that Trump had disproved the “lies” promoted by the United Nations cultural body, Unesco, when it voted this month to re-state that Jerusalem is occupied.

In truth, it was Netanyahu who indulged in gross mendacity, claiming that East Jerusalem had been “desolate” and “neglected” before its occupation. Israel had “redeemed” the city, he said, while Al Aqsa mosque would “always remain under Israeli sovereignty”.

His supporters tried to give that claim concrete expression by staging the largest-ever march through the Old City on Jerusalem Day. Palestinians were forced into hiding or fled early as police allowed 60,000 Jewish ultra-nationalists to besiege the heart of East Jerusalem.

In a sign of the power balance in Israel, a small group of 50 left-wing Jews – many from the US – linked arms to try to block the march at the Old City’s entrance. Footage showed police brutally arresting them, grabbing them in chokeholds and breaking one woman’s arm.

Jerusalem is the most intractable of the final-status issues set out in the Oslo process. Those expecting miracles of Trump are going to be disappointed. His commitment to pressuring Netanyahu is weak, while the Israeli prime minister’s commitment to making concessions is non-existent.

Whether Trump signs the waiver or not on Thursday, all indications are that the US president – faced with domestic pressures and an intransigent Israeli government – is going nowhere with his “ultimate deal”.

The only real question to be decided on Thursday is whether Trump prefers to take the fast or protracted route to failure.

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).

30 May 2017

By Binu Mathew

The new rule notified under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act of 1960 banning cattle trade across India is clear encroachment of states’ rights. It will end federalism and will be a death knell for farmers. It is a virtual beef ban across India and also will destroy the livelihood of millions of farmers.

The states have to come up with new strategies to protect their rights enshrined by the constitution. It is time for state Chief Ministers affected by the rule to come together and protect their rights. The best man to take the lead in this matter is Kerala Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan who has been very vocal and critical of the central government’s new rules. He has written to all Chief Ministers asking them to write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to revoke the new rule. Just shooting off letters to a dictatorial Prime Minister won’t be enough. It’ not the time for prayers but for asserting the rights of the states.

In 1996 Jyoti Basu had a ‘golden opportunity’ to become the Prime Minister of India. His own party’s politburo vetoed it. Jyoti Basu had to rue later in life it as a ‘historical blunder’. Now another golden opportunity present itself to Pinarayi Vijayan, Chief Minister of Kerala to take the leadership in building a coalition in protecting federalism against the incursion and intrusion of the central government into the food plates and livelihoods of majority of India’s citizens.

He must urgently call:

1. A meeting of Chief Ministers of South Indian states to ensure the smooth transfer of cattle, meat, and meat products across these states, It is a life or death matter for millions of farmers meat and meat traders of these states.

2. A meeting of all Chief Ministers of India who oppose the intrusion of Central Government into the authority of the state listed under the constitution.

This is a historical juncture in the history of India. It’s time India must ask itself if it must continue to exist as a federal state or ‘cow down’ to the designs and manoeuvrings of the fascist Sangh Parivar. It is time some one must stand up right now and ask the right questions. Pinarayi Vijayan is the right candidate to do it. If he misses this ‘Golden Opportunity’, he’ll have to rue later in life like Jyoti Basu. Morever, he’ll have to regret that he let down India in this historical juncture.

India stands at a crossroads. It’s time to choose the path. One way leads to a fascist ‘Cowistan’, the other way leads to a federalist state which the builders of modern India envisioned. It’s time to choose.

Binu Mathew is the editor of www.countercurrents.org. He can be reached at editor@countercurrents.org

30 May 2017

By Clelia O. Rodríguez

The politics of decolonization are not the same as the act of decolonizing. How rapidly phrases like “decolonize the mind/heart” or simply “decolonize” are being consumed in academic spaces is worrisome. My grandfather was a decolonizer. He is dead now, and if he was alive he would probably scratch his head if these academics explained  the concept to him.

I am concerned about how the term is beginning to evoke a practice of getting rid of colonial practices by those operating fully under those practices. Decolonization sounds and means different things to me, a woman of color, than to a white person. And why does this matter? Why does my skin itch when I hear the term in academic white spaces where POC remain tokens? Why does my throat become a prison of words that cannot be digested into complete sentences? Is it because in these “decolonizing” practices we are being colonized once again?

I am not granted the same humanity as a white scholar or as someone who acts like one. The performance of those granted this humanity who claim to be creating space for people of color needs to be challenged. They promote Affirmative action, for instance, in laughable ways. During hiring practices, we’re demanded to specify if we’re “aliens” or not. Does a white person experience the nasty bitterness that comes when POC sees that word? Or the other derogatory terminology I am forced to endure while continuing in the race to become America’s Next Top Academic? And these same white colleagues who do not know these experiences graciously line up to present at conferences about decolonizing methodology to show their allyship with POC.

The effects of networking are another one of the ways decolonizing in this field of Humanities shows itself to be a farce. As far as I understand history, Christopher Columbus was really great at networking. He tangled people like me in chains, making us believe that it was all in the name of knitting a web to connect us all under the spell of kumbaya.

Academic spaces are not precisely adorned by safety, nor are they where freedom of speech is truly welcome. Not all of us have the luxury to speak freely without getting penalized by being called radicals, too emotional, angry or even not scholarly enough. In true decolonization work, one burns down bridges at the risk of not getting hired. Stating that we are in the field of decolonizing studies is not enough. It is no surprise that even those engaged in decolonizing methods replicate and polish the master’s tools, because we are implicated in colonialism in this corporatized environment.

I want to know what it is you little kids are doing here—that is to say, Why have you traveled to our Mapuche land? What have you come for? To ask us questions? To make us into an object of study? I want to you go home and I want you to address these concerns that I have carried in my heart for a long time.

Such was the response of Mapuche leader Ñana Raquel to a group of Human Rights students from the United States visiting the Curarrehue, Araucanía Region, Chile in April 2015. Her anger motivated me to reflect upon how to re-think, question, undo, and re-read perspectives of how I am experiencing the Humanities and how I am politicizing my ongoing shifts in my rhyzomatic system. Do we do that when we engage in research? Ñana Raquel’s questions, righteous anger, and reaction forced me to reconsider multiple perspectives on what really defines a territory, something my grandfather carefully taught me when I learned how to read ants and bees.

As politicized thinkers, we must reflect on these experiences if we are to engage in bigger discussions about solidarity, resistance and territories in the Humanities. How do we engage in work as scholars in the service of northern canons, and, in so doing, can we really admit what took us there? Many of us, operating in homogeneous academic spaces (with some hints of liberal tendencies), conform when that question is bluntly asked.

As someone who was herself observed and studied under the microscopes by ‘gringos’ in the 1980s, when pedagogues came to ask us what life was like in a war zone in El Salvador, Raquel’s questions especially resonate with me. Both of us have been dispossessed and situated in North American canons that serve particular research agendas. In this sense, we share similar experiences of being ‘read’ according to certain historical criteria.

Raquel’s voice was impassioned. On that day, we had congregated in the Ruka of Riholi. Facing center and in a circle, we were paying attention to the silence of the elders. Raquel taught us a priceless lesson.  After questioning the processes used to realize research projects in Nepal and Jordan, Raquel’s passionate demand introduced a final punch. She showed us that while we may have the outward face of political consciousness, we continued to use an academic discipline to study ‘exotic’ behaviors and, in so doing, were in fact undermining, denigrating and denying lessons of what constitutes cultural exchange from their perspective.

From these interactions in the field emerge questions that go to the heart of the matter: How do we deal with issues of social compromise in the Humanities? In unlearning? In many cases, academic circles resemble circuses rather than centres of higher learning, wherein a culture of competition based on external pressures to do well motivates the relationship between teacher and student.

One of the tragic consequences of a traditional system of higher education is working with colleagues who claim to have expertise on the topic of social activism, but who have never experienced any form of intervention. I am referring here to those academics who have made careers out of the pain of others by consuming knowledge obtained in marginalized communities. This same practice of “speaking about which you know little (or nothing)” is transmitted, whether acknowledged or not, to the students who we, as teachers and mentors, are preparing to undertake research studies about decolonizing.

Linda Smith speaks about the disdain she has for the word “research,” seeing it as one of the dirtiest words in the English language. I couldn’t agree more with her. When we sit down each semester to write a guide to “unlearning’,” or rather a syllabus, we must reflect upon how we can include content that will help to transmit a pre-defined discipline in the Humanities with current social realities. How can we create a space where a student can freely speak his/her mind without fear of receiving a bad grade?

Today, anything and everything is allowed if a postcolonial/decolonizing seal of approval accompanies it, even if it is devoid of any political urgency. These tendencies appear to be ornamental at best, and we must challenge the basis of those attempts. We can’t keep criticizing the neoliberal system while continuing to retain superficial visions of solidarity without striving for a more in-depth understanding. These are acts for which we pat ourselves on the back, but in the end just open up space for future consumers of prestige.

The corridors of the hallways in the institution where I currently work embodies this faux-solidarity in posters about conferences, colloquiums, and trips in the Global South or about the Global South that cost an arm and a leg. As long as you have money to pay for your airfare, hotel, meals and transportation, you too could add two lines in the CV and speak about the new social movement and their radical strategies to dismantle the system. You too can participate in academic dialogues about poverty and labor rights as you pass by an undocumented cleaner who will make your bed while you go to the main conference room to talk about her struggles.

We must do a better job at unpacking the intellectual masturbation we get out of poverty, horror, oppression, and pain–the essentials that stimulate us to have the orgasm. The “release” comes in the forms of discussions, proposing questions, writing grant proposals, etc. Then we move onto other forms of entertainment. Neoliberalism has turned everything into a product or experience. We must scrutinize the logic of power that is behind our syllabi, and our research work. We must listen to the silences, that which is not written, and pay attention to the internal dynamics of communities and how we label their experiences if we are truly committed to the work of decolonizing.

Clelia O. Rodríguez is an educator, born and raised in El Salvador, Central America.

6 April 2017