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By Justin Podur

Many vicious attacks have been reported. On Friday October 23, a rabbi named Arik Ascherman was chased by a masked man trying to stab him, near the Itamar Israeli settlement. On October 22, a Jerusalem man named Simcha Hodedtov was shot and killed by police as a terrorist. On October 18, a twenty-nine year old named Haftom Zarhum was shot and then beaten to death by a mob in Beersheba. On October 13, Uri Rezken was stabbed in the back while shopping. He screamed “I am a Jew, I am a Jew”, to his attacker, but was stabbed four times anyway.

This list of incidents above is selective, though not exhaustive. It consists solely of attacks by Israelis against Israelis who were mistaken for (or in Ascherman’s case thought to be too close to) Palestinians. It does not include the vast majority of deaths and injuries in this latest round of violence, deaths and injuries of Palestinians attacked by Israeli security forces, accompanied by horror stories of children shot while seeking help; children imprisoned without trial; planted weapons after shootings. Nor does it include massive, organized attacks by mobs of settlers against Palestinian villages. It also does not include the deaths and injuries of Israelis killed by Palestinians in the knife attacks that are much more thoroughly covered in the Western media than the much larger numbers of Palestinians killed.

What started this round of violence? Israel’s armed settler movement is attempting to change the way that Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque is run. In fact, they want the mosque torn down, like the Babri Mosque was torn down in India in 1992. The Israeli government, which the settler movement has largely taken over, has a strategy that probably involves ultimately dividing the mosque site and banning Palestinians from it, as has been done in Hebron. As with the second intifada in 2000, Israel put pressure on the al-Aqsa site until Palestinians resisted. When Palestinians resisted, Israel escalated with lethal force, and now continues to escalate with no end in sight.

In the midst of this violence, Israel’s political leaders are attempting to suppress what a George W. Bush advisor called the “reality-based community” and replace it with a set of racist fantasies. The Israeli Justice Minister who last year brought you the genocidal comment that Palestinian children were “little snakes”, this month has said “there never will be a Palestinian state.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu topped this all off with a rehabilitation of Hitler. Offering a denialist version of history, Netanyahu made a speech claiming that Hitler didn’t want to kill the Jews until the Mufti of Jerusalem gave him the idea. German government spokespeople attempted to correct the record, emphasizing that Germany spends time and energy on Holocaust education and does not wish to see politically convenient revisionism undermining those efforts. Max Blumenthal, who has documented Israel’s descent into chaos in his book Goliath, writes about the effects of Netanyahu’s incitement:

“By blaming a Palestinian for the Final Solution, Netanyahu has helped his countrymen adjust to the macabre reality. He reassured them that they were not settler overlords or vigilante brutes, but Inglorious Bastards curb stomping SS officers in the woods outside Krakow. And he sent them the message that those Palestinians lurking behind concrete walls and under siege in ghettoes were not an occupied, dispossessed people, but a new breed of Nazis hellbent on Jewish extermination. Netanyahu’s comments about the Mufti were much more than a hysterical lie; they were an invitation to act out a blood soaked fantasy of righteous revenge.”

Israel was founded to be a refuge for Jews who were persecuted in Europe. Some of its founders had democratic and socialist aspirations that were contradicted by their militarist and colonizing plans and methods. After decades of failure to reconcile these, Israeli society has abandoned pretense, and embraced racism and violence from the highest levels of government to the settler masses celebrating attacks on social media.

It is obvious why such politics and such fantasies would be appealing to right-wing politicians and their constituencies in the West, like the outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the 5.6 million people who voted for him, or the Democrats and Republicans in the US who support Israel.

What is more difficult to understand is how those who espouse liberal politics can continue to hold on. Some no doubt see Israel as it was decades ago, in some kind of struggle between different kinds of Zionism, one of which sought a two-state solution. Having out-of-date information can be a problem, but refusing to update one’s information is a political decision.

Two months ago when the Canadian election had just begun and the New Democrats were purging pro-Palestine candidates, I argued that they were playing a game they were guaranteed to lose. I strive to stay in the reality-based community: I do not think that being pro-Israel cost them the election. But backing down in the face of right-wing bullying, and declaring unconditional support for a society that is sliding into fascism, form political habits. They broadcast either a lack of courage or the support of a racist and violent project. Julian Assange wrote that “every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.” Could it be that people so trained make uncompelling candidates for progressive voters?

One reason Westerners find themselves with an out-of-date idea of Israel’s society and its trajectory is that we are not allowed to talk about it anywhere, including university campuses. A report called The Palestine Exception, by Palestine Legal, documents 292 incidents of the suppression of free speech on campuses, used against advocates of human rights for Palestinians. The report groups the incidents into nine categories of tactics: 1. False accusations of antisemitism and terrorism; 2. Official denunciations; 3. Bureaucratic barriers; 4. Administrative sanctions; 5. Cancellations and alterations of events; 6. Threats to academic freedom; 7. Lawsuits and legal threats; 8. Legislation; 9. Criminal investigations and prosecutions. The report is important, especially for student activists who are starting out and should know what to expect.

The Palestine Exception reveals many things. One of them: the unconditional defense of Israel regardless of what it does and what it becomes, has political consequences. The more indefensible Israel’s behaviour, the more debate has to be avoided, the more taboos have to be established, and the more those who speak about it have to be punished. This is true on campuses, where the freest possible research is supposed to take place and where students are supposed to be taught to think critically and contribute their knowledge to society. It is also true in the media, which is supposed to inform our decisions about what to do in the world. It is true in democratic politics, in which we are supposed to be able to deliberate with the widest possible range of discussion in order to make decisions. The farther Israel slides down its current path, the more unfree we will all have to be, the more disconnected from reality we will have to become, in order to continue to accept it.

Justin Podur is the author of Haiti’s New Dictatorship (Pluto Press 2012). He has contributed chapters to Empire’s Ally: Canada and the War in Afghanistan (University of Toronto Press 2013) and Real Utopia (AK Press 2008). He is an Associate Professor at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies.
31 October, 2015
TeleSUR English

 

By Bill Van Auken

The announcement by the Obama White House that up to 50 US Special Forces troops are being deployed on the ground in Syria represents a qualitative escalation of Washington’s illegal intervention in the war-ravaged country.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest confirmed the deployment of what he described as the “special operators” at a press conference Friday. Earnest spent most of the conference attempting to deny the obvious: that this latest military escalation stands in direct contradiction to repeated promises made by Obama since 2013, when he pledged in an address to the American people that he would not “put American boots on the ground in Syria.”

Earnest claimed that the earlier statements were “related to what we were prepared to do to ensure that our concerns about the Assad regime and the need for regime change were implemented,” while the latest escalation was directed against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

This is all nonsense and obfuscation. Washington has intervened over more than four years in Syria with the principal objective of toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad and imposing a puppet of US interests in his place.

Initially, it waged its campaign for regime change under the banner of “human rights,” while the CIA coordinated efforts with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to funnel billions of dollars worth of arms and funding to al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias like ISIS and the al-Nusra Front to foment a bloody sectarian civil war against the government in Damascus.

When ISIS headed eastward from Syria and overran roughly a third of Iraq, including its third-largest city, Mosul, the Obama administration launched its direct intervention in both countries, conducting air strikes and redeploying some 3,500 US troops to Iraq. Now the intervention has morphed into a war against ISIS dubbed “Operation Inherent Resolve.”

More than a year after that “war” was launched, the grip of ISIS over large swathes of both Iraq and Syria remains virtually unchanged. The desultory character of the US campaign is explicable only from the standpoint that Washington has no desire to destroy the Islamist militia, which it still counts as one of the main fighting forces in the war for regime change, which remains the principal US objective.

What has now prompted the deployment of combat troops in Syria, along with the recent flurry of diplomatic activity in Vienna, is Russia’s military intervention in support of the Assad government. In just one month of air strikes, the Russian military has done far more damage to ISIS and other Islamist militias than the US and its so-called coalition inflicted in the course of over a year.

It is in response to this Russian campaign, which is beginning to turn the tide against the al Qaeda-linked militias backed by Washington and its regional allies, that the US is sending in the Special Forces.

Simultaneously, it is trying to achieve through negotiations in Vienna with Moscow and Tehran, Assad’s principal backers, what the US and its allies have been unable to impose through the protracted slaughter in Syria itself.

Outside of initiating a far broader US military deployment in Syria, it is difficult to discern any coherent strategy underlying the deployment of 50 Special Forces troops. It is widely reported that they are being sent to the northeast of the country to train, advise and coordinate the further arming of the Syrian Kurdish militia, the YPG, and a significantly smaller allied Syrian Arab tribal force.

The YPG operates in the area with the tacit approval of the Assad government. Its main objective is to link up the area it controls in the northeast near the Turkish border with the border city of Kobani, further west, in order to carve out an autonomous Kurdish enclave.

Turkey, Washington’s NATO ally, acknowledged this week that its forces had twice carried out attacks on the YPG, and has made it clear that it is prepared to intervene militarily to prevent the Syrian Kurdish militia from achieving its aims.

Thus, the US Special Forces unit faces the possibility of coming into armed conflict not only with ISIS, Syrian government forces and their Russian backers, but also with America’s ally, Turkey.

In addition, utilizing the YPG as a proxy army for retaking territory from ISIS is complicated by the fact that the Kurdish militia was accused by Amnesty International earlier this month of carrying out “war crimes” against Arabs and Turkmens in the areas under its control. In some cases, it has razed entire villages and driven out their residents with the threat of calling in US air strikes against them.

Under these conditions, it is difficult to see how an advise-and-train mission with the YPG would prove any more effective in resolving the Syrian conflict than the notoriously failed Pentagon bid to train “vetted rebels.”

Its purpose is a show of force directed first and foremost against Russia. As such, it can only be the precursor to an increasingly substantial and dangerous escalation of the US intervention, carrying with it the threat of an armed confrontation between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

US imperialism is responsible for the ravaging of Syria, with a quarter million dead and half of the population displaced. Backing and arming the Islamist militias, it sought to repeat the “success” of its regime change operation in Libya that ended with the overthrow of the government, the murder of Muammar Gaddafi and the descent of the country into chaos and civil war that continues four years later.

The escalation of the US intervention is a crime under international law. It has been authorized by neither the United Nations nor the Syrian government and represents a continuation of the militarist aggression launched by the Bush administration with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Neither the deployment of US troops on the ground in Syria nor the bombing of the country from the air has ever been debated, much less approved, by the US Congress, and there is every indication that the launching of a new ground war in the Middle East is bitterly opposed by the vast majority of the American people.

The target of the US intervention is not ISIS and not merely the Syrian government. Washington seeks regime change in Damascus as part of a wider strategy of asserting hegemony over the Middle East and preparing for even bloodier military conflicts with Syria’s main allies, Iran and Russia.

The US announced the deployment of ground troops in Syria during the same week in which plans were made public for the stationing of 4,000 NATO troops on Russia’s borders, and as provocative US naval operations in the South China Sea raise the threat of a military confrontation with China.

Barack Obama, elected on promises to end US wars in the Middle East, is presiding over an unprecedented eruption of American militarism that threatens to drag the entire region and potentially the whole world into a military conflagration.

31 October, 2015
WSWS.org

By Dr Vacy Vlazna

The reprehensible draft ‘resolution’ circulated by New Zealand (NZ), the present chair of the UN Security Council, is so blatantly biased against the Palestinian people that it proffers, in this instance, the correct diplomatic protocol to mind it’s own business….. particularly as NZ is an on-the-record, apologist and morally blind supporter of Israel. On July 22, 2014 as Israel’s vicious war on the people of Gaza raged savagely and relentlessly, Prime Minister John Key, repeated the zionist mantra that “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

In June this year, during a visit to Israel, NZ’s Foreign Minister Murray McCully ran the idea of the resolution by Netanyahu. So, sure enough, NZ, like all western governments, obsequiously replicated zionist propaganda in the ‘resolution’:

NZ normalises Israeli atrocities by falsely presenting Israel and Palestine as equal perpetrators and equal victims and

by pushing the demand that Palestine gives up its endeavour for justice in the International Criminal Court thus letting Israel off scott free for its monstrous war crimes and crimes against humanity.

While NZ demands that Israel freezes its rapacious settlement expansion (in which NZ invests..see below), it absurdly promotes the farce of negotiations that expand settlements. There is no demand by NZ that the zionist infiltrators leave the present settlements that have illegally expropriated half of the remaining Palestinian West Bank.

NZ obediently keeps up the pretence of a two state solution when Netanyahu has repeatedly ruled out Palestinian sovereignty:

“At the height of the 2014 Gaza war, Netanyahu revealed that he doesn’t envision Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank any time soon. “I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan,” he said at a press conference in Jerusalem. In other words: no withdrawal and no Palestinian sovereignty, which means no state of Palestine.

A few months later, Netanyahu said, in a much quoted interview on the eve of the March 17 election, that, “indeed,” no Palestinian state would be created under his leadership.”

To add insult to hypocrisy, NZ does not act on its recommendations – it will not “make a move to first recognise the Palestinian state.”

Then loading more inanity on the ridiculous, NZ calls on the same incompetent clowns “the Quartet (United States, Russia, United Nations and European Union), Security Council members and Arab states” to maintain the posturing of the nihilistic negotiations.

So what can the people of Palestine expect from a flunkey state that belongs to the Impunity- for- Israel’s- War- Crimes Club?

A state furthermore that owns a government body, the New Zealand Super Fund that invests in and profits from a number of Israeli companies integrally connected to the illegal settlements and/or Israel’s arms industry such as Israel Chemicals which supplies white phosphorus to the USA which in turn sells its white phosphorous munitions back to Israel which then fires them illegally on innocent Gaza children such as little Hamza Almidani, 3.

Palestinians can expect the same old bystander impunity that exacerbates their suffering caused by the ongoing betrayal of NZ’s own obligations as a High Contracting Party to the Geneva Conventions to protect and uphold Palestinian political and human rights.

This dishonourable ‘resolution’ comes at a crucial time when Palestinian children and youth are being extrajudicially executed in the street for their courageous efforts to uphold their rights while NZ fails them and, in doing so, shames the decency of the people of New Zealand.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.

30 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org

By Stuart Smith

As the hysterical outpourings of the Western media and their relentless anti-Putin narrative becomes ever more ridiculous. Let’s look at why.
Vladimir Putin wants to cut off your internet. At least, if you are a reader of the New York Times, you may well believe this. The NYT recently reported that “Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications.”

The NYT didn’t bother to expand on how a submarine might go about acting ‘aggressively’ in the presence of inert under sea cables in international waters. Indeed, later in the article they admit that there is “no evidence of any cable cutting.” So the real story here is in fact: Russian submarine in the sea.

That doesn’t sound like a terribly catchy headline though does it?

If you are a Mail on Sunday reader of the print edition, you were recently treated to a two page headline declaring “Putin’s bombing of the innocents.”
Curiously, the online version of that story omitted that headline.

The Mail is good at this. They can find a reason to blame Russia (quoted from someone else of course) in almost any story. The UK telephone company Talk Talk recently suffered a database hacking. The Mail ran a story about it. Sure enough, in that story we find a quote by someone called Ewan Lawson: “this could be part of a wider pattern of activity encouraged or even supported by the Russian state as part of an effort to destabilise the West.”

Colour me sceptical, but I can’t really see the West being destabilised because someone hacked the database of a minor mobile telephone company.

It must have been a quiet day at the Daily Express this week; they are again suggesting Russia is set to start WW3. Apparently, the Express “laid bare” Putin’s “imperialist ambitions”. The reason? Russia plans to build a military base – in Russia.

We see such nonsense in the Western media more than usual right now. When the editors want to keep a narrative alive, or bury some inconvenient actual news, they will publish something, anything, which allows them to use the headlines that apply to that narrative.

Often these stories are essentially made up, but they allow the use of the words and phrases the narrative dictates, and the narrative remains in the ‘news’.

Continual hyperventilating about so-called (and usually non-existent) ‘Russian aggression’ keeps things like the US bombing of a hospital in Afghanistan off the front pages. Certainly it will keep out of the news the US tank that crashed through the gates of the same hospital destroying evidence less than two weeks later.

That is what is happening here. The Western media have had nothing credible to bash Russia with for some time. There’s not a lot being published about American bumbling in the Middle East, Ukraine is yesterday’s news while Petro Poroshenko decides how to further eviscerate the country that he is, nominally, the leader of. Few in the Western media really want to run stories about how Russia is obliterating ISIS positions in a matter of weeks where the US failed over a year and a half.

So instead, we get silly pieces that enable writers and thought leaders to keep the anti-Russian meme going with their audiences. Make something up, quote an unnamed source, add a stock photo of Putin with no shirt, and the anti-Putin propaganda train keeps on rumbling down the tracks.

Why the Western media misunderstand Russia

Much of the Western media fundamentally misunderstand Russians and Russia. Many blame Putin’s 89 percent popularity rating in Russia on a ludicrous notion that people answer poll questions while gripped with fear. US News recently reported that “Russians that truly do support Putin form their opinions in a virtual information vacuum. The Russian public’s news and information is overwhelmingly created, or at least vetted, by the Kremlin.”

The very idea that – in the internet age – the government of a country such as Russia could control the media to such an extent that 127 million people (89 percent) could be hoodwinked en masse is frankly, preposterous.

A better approach for Western hacks might be to take a look at why Putin has such high support in Russia rather than trying to pretend he hasn’t. From that, politicians elsewhere might learn something.

If one judges a politician’s credibility by what they do, compared to what they say they will do, Putin is credible, honest and honourable. He has a long track record of doing what he said he would do. On the whole, when he says a thing, it will be so. If he does not say a thing, then you can be sure that what you are hearing is speculation. Voters like that. In the West, we have almost no experience of this.

On foreign policy, the Western media glibly overlooks the fact that the US has invaded over a dozen countries and tried to overthrow the elected governments of many others since just 1990. Yet Russia is criticised for allowing Crimea to reunify with hardly a shot fired, which undoubtedly saved many lives while following the will of the people.

Russia is somehow ‘aggressive’ when it expresses concern that the US and the EU are surrounding it with missiles placed in FSU countries, but continual US aggression across the world – this week with China – is meant to be seen as somehow ‘spreading democracy’ and a harbinger of some kind of ‘freedom’.

The Western media is confused. To find a president that actually leads, one who puts the national interest first and does what he says he will do is somewhat disturbing for them. Such behaviour is beyond their domestic sphere of experience. So they extrapolate from this that it cannot actually be so. The polls must be faked, people must be rigid with terror and afraid to speak out or they must have no access to news.

How to report what you do not understand?

If so few Western hacks understand Russia, and cannot be bothered to learn, how do they fill their column inches? Rather than critical analysis, investigating a variety of viewpoints or perhaps even talking to some Russians, many just follow the herd and make it up.

Cue another story on ‘Russian aggression’, Russia being poised to invade [choose any country here], Russia encroaching in someone’s airspace or the latest media misrepresentation: Russia killing moderate terrorists (helpfully called ‘rebels’ for that purpose), presented as if eradicating terrorists is a bad thing.

Reading the Western media can easily conjure up an image of Putin that has him cackling in his volcano, stroking a white cat with a control panel of missile launch buttons at his elbow. It is also amusing to note that every decision made at any level of government in Russia is always personally attributed to Putin. The media imagines that he somehow personally approves every piece of media output, every article and every minor decision. He must have some time management skills!

With such an anti-Putin narrative now the norm in the Western media for so long, it becomes quite easy to see how lazy hacks will use him as the default baddie for almost anything that happens. Mobile phone company hacked? Blame Russia. Found a Russian submarine in the sea someplace? See what is nearby and accuse Russia of being aggressive towards it. Facts are irrelevant if you are able to twist words or modify their intent by quoting them out of context. Find someone who is ‘worried’ and sprinkle in the word ‘Kremlin’ here and there for a sinister overtone.

It seems unlikely that the mainstream Western media will ever go back to honest and fair journalism as they have now travelled so far in the other direction. But a good start would be having the hacks who diligently churn out negative content about Russia each and every day to actually go to Russia and learn something.

Better still; send them to Syria to watch the 800,000 refugees returning home thanks to Russia’s efforts to crush ISIS. It’s hard to put a negative spin on that.

Stuart Smith, for RT

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

30 October 2015

www.rt.com

By Seyed Hossein Mousavian

Archrivals Saudi Arabia and Iran are experiencing their first regional talks in Vienna on the Syrian conflict. Since assuming office in August 2013, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has initiated several overtures to Saudi Arabia, attempting to mend what has steadily devolved into a dangerously adversarial relationship in the years since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Rouhani, who called for better ties with Saudi Arabia shortly after his inauguration, made his first diplomatic outreach to Saudi Arabia at a critical juncture. He dispatched his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to visit several of the Arab Persian Gulf states shortly after the November 2013 interim nuclear deal was reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations.

“I believe that our relations with Saudi Arabia should expand as we consider Saudi Arabia as an extremely important country in the region and the Islamic world,” Zarif said at the time. “We believe that Iran and Saudi Arabia should work together in order to promote peace and stability in the region.”

Zarif was in effect signaling that Iran was willing to take proactive steps to ease any concerns its southern neighbors had about a post-nuclear deal regional environment.

Rouhani followed this move with numerous other attempts at détente: Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian visited Riyadh in August 2014, Zarif met with his Saudi counterpart during the 2014 United National General Assembly, and Zarif went to Saudi Arabia to attend the funeral of the late Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz in January 2015.

After the new Saudi king, Salman bin Abdulaziz, appointed U.S. Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir as foreign minister earlier this year, Zarif also congratulated him and announced that he hoped “relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Saudi monarchy will develop.”

Zarif reached out al-Jubeir to meet during this year’s UNGA, but was shunned. Nonetheless, at a recent press conference with Arab reporters in Tehran, Zarif reiterated that Iran and Saudi Arabia “have the same interests” and should “work together.”

For its part, Saudi Arabia has rebuffed all of Iran’s attempts at engagement. To be sure, the Saudi government has not shied from making faux offers of cooperation, predicated on senseless preconditions like Iran ending its “interference” in Arab countries. The unfortunate reality is that Saudi Arabia, doubly so since the ascension of King Salman, has overtly opted for a more confrontational approach towards Iran. As the Brookings Institution’s Suzanne Maloney has said: “Saudi leaders have adopted a more aggressive diplomatic, economic and military campaign aimed both at marginalizing Iran and reasserting its own ambitions for regional dominance.”

There are multiple reasons why Saudi Arabia is not ready for serious negotiations with Iran at present. For one thing, the hothead son of the King Salman, Mohammed bin Salman, is battling for power and to move up in the succession line. The Saudi war in Yemen is largely his design, and the sensational extent to which supposed Iranian intervention in Yemen has been hyped up has helped bin Salman consolidate power, much to the derision of other members of the royal family.

Furthermore, as one member of the House of Saud told me in New York City during this year’s UNGA, the Saudis do not want come to the table with Iran because they believe Iran has the upper hand in the region. They feel that if they did engage Iran, it would be tantamount to accepting Iran’s position the region. However, if this is indeed the case, the Saudis have fundamentally misread Iranian strategic thinking in this regard. Iran’s history since the revolution demonstrates that whenever it feels it is in a position of strength, it becomes more flexible, and whenever it comes under increased pressure, it becomes obstinate and acts in ways to increase the cost of pressuring it.

By opting to increase rather than ameliorate tensions with Iran, Saudi Arabia has brought itself and the rest of the region to a dangerous precipice. Dialogue and broad cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Iran is the only way forward and imperative if the various crises in the region, whether in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen or elsewhere, are to be resolved. Saudi Arabia and Iran can either jumpstart negotiations or continue down the path of escalation, practically ensuring a devastating war becomes an inevitability.

There are three paths Saudi Arabia and Iran can take to bridge their differences. The first is formal, official high-level talks between foreign ministers and other senior representatives of the respective governments. Unfortunately, the Saudi government does not appear receptive of this option at this stage. Another alternative is for the two countries to engage in track one-and a-half or track-two diplomacy — contacts between former officials and prominent non-government figures and experts — to discuss a package to build trust and move towards official dialogue. There have been some efforts made on that front, but it is crucial that they be significantly expanded.

One other way of escaping the pressures of public negotiations is for Saudi Arabia and Iran to confidentially exchange special envoys. These meetings would be strictly off the record and allow for the two sides to engage in high-level talks and more effectively hash out their differences. During the mid-1990s, I engaged in precisely this type of diplomacy with Saudi Arabia in my capacity as a senior diplomat and advisor to then-president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Back then, Saudi Arabia and Iran both sought to take steps to reconcile with one another after more than a decade of hostilities. I negotiated and agreed on a “peace package” with then-Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, during that time. After four nights of intense negotiations, we reached agreements which paved the road for amicable relations between our countries that would last until the mid-2000s.

Rather than trying to constrain Iran and isolate it in its own region, the leaders of Saudi Arabia should acknowledge that Iran is their neighbor and that they can and should live in peace with each other. Negotiations should be done without preconditions and both sides should act to understand and address one another’s concerns. Cooperation between Saudi Arabia, Iran and the other Persian Gulf states is vital and will fill the vacuum causing much of the conflicts raging in the region today. Détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia can indeed be the first step in creating a formal regional cooperation system that makes this goal a reality and helps stabilize the region.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is Head of Foreign Relations Committee of Iran’s National Security Council (1997-2005)

30 October 2015

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

By Indian Writers Forum

Romila Thapar, at the launch of the two websites of the Indian Writers’ Forum Trust, speaks on the recent attempts at the rewriting of history to suit the purposes of a Hindu India. The proponents of this theory claim that history must not only be rewritten, but corrected – a more dangerous proposition than rewriting.

https://youtu.be/STXzvkO6bZ4

She does not find the approach – inspite of its absurdity -, the working of some fantasy, but a very systematic approach to suit history for the argument of a Hindu state. Most of these claims are based on the work of colonial scholarship such as the historians James Mill, Max Mueller, and Colonel Olcott. The irony of the fact remains that those who oppose the secular history as Western must fall back on colonial scholarship of Indian history done by – to borrow the vocabulary of the Hindu Right – Westerners. “It is colonial scholarship which is at the foundation of this new so-called indigenous history”, says Thapar.

She concludes by saying that there may be various versions of history, but pleads for a space where these versions can be debated and discussed in public or in institutions. What must be opposed is the reduction of all knowledge to a single narrative and the grounding of that knowledge on a ingle ideology.

Romila Thapar is a distinguished Indian historian whose principal area of study is ancient India. She is the author of numerous books including the popular classic, A History of India, and is currently Professor Emerita at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi.
28 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org

By James Cogan

Yesterday’s US deployment of the destroyer USS Lassen and surveillance aircraft into the 12-nautical mile zone surrounding the Chinese-controlled Subi and Mischief reefs in the South China Sea has qualitatively escalated tensions across Asia.

The aim of the US action is to humiliate the Chinese regime and present it with only two options: either make a forceful response or bow down to Washington’s flagrant trampling on its long-standing sovereignty claims. The pretext for the military provocation is the claim that the US is asserting its “right of freedom of navigation” in international, not Chinese, waters. This assertion has no more credibility than the claims that Iraq was attacked because of “weapons of mass destruction” or that the US waged war on Libya to defend “human rights.”

Beijing has responded diplomatically and militarily. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang told a press conference yesterday that the USS Lassen “illegally entered” Chinese waters. He stated: “The Chinese side will firmly respond to any deliberate provocation by any country… and take all necessary measures as needed.” Beijing, he declared, urged the US to “honour its commitment of not taking sides on disputes over territorial sovereignty so as to avoid any further damage to China-US relations and regional peace and stability.”

Last night, the US ambassador to China, Max Baucus, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to receive a formal expression of “strong discontent” from the Chinese government over Washington’s provocation.

The editorial of today’s Chinese state-controlled Global Times asserted: “Beijing should deal with Washington tactfully and prepare for the worst. This can convince the White House that China, despite its unwillingness, is not frightened to fight a war with the US in the region, and is determined to safeguard its national interests and dignity.”

Beijing, the Global Times declared, should “track the US warships … launch electronic interventions, and even send out warships, lock them by fire-control radar and fly over the US vessels.”

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper, the People’s Daily, reported today that the Chinese military ordered two destroyers, the Lanzhou and Taizhou, “to warn the trespassing US warship.” A US official reported that the Chinese vessels “shadowed” the Lassen yesterday but kept a “safe distance.”
The reckless calculation in Washington is that such statements from the Chinese regime are nothing more than rhetoric to try to appease domestic nationalist outrage over the US actions.

The Obama administration and the Pentagon indicated that the Lassen’s deployment is only the start of repeated intrusions into Chinese-claimed areas, with the intention of compelling China to bow to US military dominance over the South China Sea. An unnamed Defense Department official told journalists: “I would expect that this becomes a regular operation.”

Retired Chinese Rear Admiral Yang Yi, a researcher at the People’s Liberation Army National Defense University, responded by telling the Washington Post that if incursions did become “a regular thing, military conflict in the region is inevitable and the US would be the one who started it.”

The Australian and Japanese navies, at Washington’s request, may participate in future and larger-scale intrusions. While only the Lassen was used in yesterday’s provocation, dozens of US and Japanese warships, including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, as well as two Australian frigates, are within striking range of the South China Sea,.

The Australian government immediately declared its backing for the US action. Defence Minister Marise Payne stated that while Australia was not part of yesterday’s operation, it “strongly supports” the “rights” of freedom of navigation and overflight and “continues to cooperate with the United States and regional partners on maritime security.” Press reports indicated that Payne and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop were thoroughly briefed on the planned South China Sea provocation when they were in Washington for ministerial talks earlier this month.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that Japan was “exchanging information” with Washington and “closely monitoring the issue before we decide how to proceed.” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has stated previously that it is prepared to conduct “freedom of navigation” military operations, either alongside or independently of the US.

Kaoru Imori, from Japan’s Meiji Gakuin University, told the Chinese Xinhua news agency yesterday: “The advantage now for the US is that, in essence at least, it has a second de-facto military in the form of Japan—a country with a healthy military budget and cutting-edge means to both produce and export military hardware.”

Japan and Australia are the key partners of the US “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia. Both countries provide crucial bases for the American military and have integrated their armed forces into the US “AirSea Battle” plan. AirSea Battle is a detailed and now well-rehearsed outline of how the US and its allies will launch air and sea attacks on mainland Chinese military facilities in the event of war. The plan also involves imposing a naval blockade to prevent Chinese shipping passing between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, thus starving China of essential imports of energy and raw materials.

The timing of the US operations in the South China Sea underscores the fact that the “pivot” is motivated by the determination of American imperialism, backed at this point by its regional allies, to maintain its post-World War II dominance in Asia. The growth of China’s global economic and geopolitical influence over the past 15 years is viewed in US ruling circles as an unacceptable potential challenge. The ultimate objective of the US confrontation with Beijing is to return China to the status of a semi-colony, economically under the sway of American banks and corporations and politically subordinated to Washington’s dictates.

The deployment of the Lassen was ordered just days after Chinese President Xi Jingping’s tour of Britain and just days ahead of highly touted visits to China by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. Following the sweeping trade and investment agreements struck between Britain and China, the People’s Daily editorialised yesterday—before the US provocation—that the “major European countries are vying for its attention” and that closer economic and political relations with Europe could “offset the restraints imposed by the US-Japan alliance on China.”

Now Merkel, along with the head of Volkswagen and dozens of other German corporate executives, will arrive in Beijing today under conditions in which a military clash could take place between China and the US, Berlin’s ally in the NATO alliance. France’s Hollande is due to visit on November 2.

Over the next two weeks, US President Barack Obama will attend the Asia Pacific Economic Summit in the Philippines, the US-ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Summit and the East Asia Summit in Malaysia. US demands that Asian states fall in behind its actions in the South China Sea will figure prominently at these events, either officially or in backroom talks. Beijing will utilise the two regional summits it attends to apply counter-pressure.

China will expect to be supported by Russia, which has forged closer ties with Beijing as Moscow has come under its own threats and military provocations from the US and NATO in Eastern Europe. Andrei Klimov, a leading Russian parliamentarian close to President Vladimir Putin, told TASS news agency yesterday: “US sabre rattling near the borders of China—a permanent member of the UN Security Council—is likely to draw questions from another UN SC member, Russia. Nobody should feel free to make voyages there without an invitation.” The US, Klimov said, is “playing with fire.”

A fraught process of diplomatic and military brinksmanship is now in motion that could lead to an open clash between nuclear-armed powers and draw countries across the entire Asian region and internationally into a catastrophic war.
28 October, 2015
WSWS.org

 

By Thomas Gaist

The Pentagon is preparing a new escalation of US military operations in Iraq and Syria, including “direct action on the ground,” according to testimony Tuesday by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.

“We won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL [an acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS], or conducting such missions directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground,” Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“We expect to intensify our air campaign, including with additional US and coalition aircraft, to target ISIL with a higher and heavier rate of strikes,” Carter added.

Referring to a raid conducted last week by US Special Forces troops and Kurdish militia to rescue hostages held by ISIS, Carter declared, “While our mission in Iraq is to train, advise, and assist our Iraqi partners, in situations such as that operation—where we have actionable intelligence and a capable partner force—we want to support our partners.”

The “actionable intelligence” in that case proved faulty, as none of the Kurdish hostages being sought were present at the site, and many of those “rescued” turned out to be ISIS members being held by the Islamist militia as suspected spies.

Carter implied that the US will not immediately seek to establish a no-fly zone in Syria, as demanded by many within the military/intelligence and political establishment, but confirmed that such a move was under consideration and, if implemented, would require some type of military occupation on the ground.

“We do not have a concept of operations for a no-fly zone that we’re prepared to recommend,” Carter told the committee. But he later said he would discuss possible no fly zone scenarios behind closed doors with interested senators, and that a no fly zone was “not off the table.”

The Obama administration may authorize the new ground operations in both Iraq and Syria as early as this week, according to the Washington Post. The plans were developed by US military commanders over a period of months following a highly publicized visit by Obama to the Pentagon in July, according to the Post .

Among the operations proposed by the Pentagon are plans to embed US Special Forces teams with Syrian and Kurdish groups in northern Iraq and Syria in preparation for US-backed ground offensives in both areas. “The changes would represent a significant escalation of the American role in Iraq and Syria,” the Post noted.

Carter’s statements and the Post revelations constitute an unambiguous repudiation of the promises of the Obama administration that US troops would not participate in ground combat as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the renewed US military intervention in Iraq authorized by the White House in June 2014.

In his remarks Tuesday, Secretary Carter made clear that the moves are being taken largely in response to the growing Russian intervention in the region. Carter denounced the Russian government for “doubling down on their longstanding relationship with [Syrian President] Assad,” and warned senators about the strengthening of Russian and Iranian influence over the US-installed Baghdad regime.

“I’d have to be candid,” Carter said, “[Iraqi Prime Minister] Abadi does not have complete sway over what happens in Iraq.”

For their part, the Armed Services Committee members from both parties expressed support for aggressive measures to build up Sunni and Kurdish forces as US proxies and bulwarks against an Iranian-Russian dominated Iraq.

In remarks that have been echoed across the US political establishment in recent weeks, Republican Senator Joni Ernst said the Kurdish Peshmerga militias “have been great allies to us” and represented the “only force on the ground that has any momentum.”

The praise lavished on Kurdish militias in the Senate chamber only underscored the immense crisis and deep contradictions plaguing the US intervention in the region. The Senate hearing was held on the same day that the government of Turkey, Washington’s NATO ally, acknowledged that it had launched strikes against US-backed Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

The Kurdish groups struck by Turkey, including People Protection Units (YPG) forces, were “some of the most important allies within Syria of the American-led coalition,” according to the New York Times.

The Turkish strikes, which included attacks against two strategic towns along the Syrian-Turkish border, were intended to shape the military situation in preparation for the establishment of “safe zones” in northern Syria under the auspices of Turkish ground and air forces, according to comments by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday.

“If the YPG moves to the west of the river Euphrates, we will hit it,” the Turkish prime minister said in a televised appearance.

Tuesday’s strikes reflected “a new determination by Turkey to expand military operations against the American-allied group,” the Times wrote.

In off-the-record conversations cited by the Wall Street Journal, unnamed Obama administration officials acknowledged that some portion of the at least 50 tons of military assistance airdropped by the US over northern Syria ended up in the hands of the YPG and other Kurdish groups that are effectively at war with the Turkish state.

“The deepening US cooperation with the YPG in Syria sets the stage for a military response from Turkey, which is worried that emboldened Kurdish leaders will step up their demands for an independent state in Kurdish dominated areas straddling parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran,” the Journal noted Tuesday.

Even amid reports Tuesday that Iran will attend US-Russian sponsored political talks over Syria, the staunchly anti-Iranian Gulf States are signaling their readiness to launch their own military incursions against the Syrian government.

The Qatari foreign minister told CNN last week that Qatar could launch a military intervention in Syria, potentially in league with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, if this became necessary to “protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the regime.”

The fundamental factor driving the Middle East into ever deeper chaos and bloodletting is the continuing, ever more volcanic eruption of US militarism. Faced with the failure of its Middle East policy, Washington is responding with yet another military escalation. President Obama, sold to the American public as the candidate who would end the hated Iraq war, is now committing US troops to combat operations on an open-ended timeline, not just in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq and Syria.

28 October, 2015
WSWS.org

 

He also said ‘more than half’ of the recent stabbing attacks against Jews in Israel had been fabricated

By Doug Bolton

Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman has allegedly accused Israel of fabricating some recent stories about knife attacks against Jews in Israel, and claimed the Conservative party is influenced by “Jewish money,” in a speech at a pro-Palestine event at Parliament.

As reported by The Jewish Chronicle, Kaufman, MP for Manchester Gorton and Father of the House, told the audience at a Palestine Return Centre event that the Government has become more pro-Israel in recent years due to donations from Jewish groups.

“It’s Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative Party – as in the general election in May – support from The Jewish Chronicle, all of those things, bias the Conservatives,” he said.

“There is now a big group of Conservative members of Parliament who are pro-Israel whatever government does and they are not interested in what Israel, in what the Israeli government does.”

He added: “They’re not interested in the fact that Palestianians are living a repressed life, and are liable to be shot at any time. In the last few days alone the Israelis have murdered 52 Palestianians and nobody pays attention and this government doesn’t care.”

Kaufman then went on to claim “more than half” of the stabbings that have recently happened in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the rest of Israel were fabricated, in comments that were recorded by blogger David Collier.

Reading from an email from a friend who lives in East Jerusalem, Kaufman said: “More than half of the stabbing claims were definitely fabricated. The other half, some were true, the others there was no way to tell since they executed Palestianians and no one asked questions.”

“Not only that, they got to the point of executing Arab-looking people and in the past few days they killed two Jewish Israelis and an Eritrean just because they looked Arab.

“They fabricated a stabbing story to justify the killings before they found out they were not Palestinians.”

Kaufman was referring to an incident which took place earlier this month, in which an Eritrean man was killed by an angry crowd who incorrectly believed he was the accomplice of an Arab attacker.

The Palestine Return Centre, who organised the roundtable event where Kaufman made the comments, is a consultancy which focuses on issues relating to dispersed Palestians and their return to Israel.

Kaufman has been an MP since June 1970, making him the longest-serving MP currently in the House of Commons. He is Jewish, and has long been an outspoken critic of Israel and the Israeli government.

31 October 2015

http://www.independent.co.uk/

By Arshin Adib Moghaddam

“ISIL massacres Shi’a in Iraq”, “Iran wants to Persianise the Arab world”, “Sunni extremist blows up Shi’a mosque in Kuwait”. Headlines like these dominate current media reports about western Asia, conveying the impression that sectarian violence sparked by tempestuous ideologies is at the root of the region’s conflicts. Most of this journalism is simplistic and some of it is plainly wrong. There are no endemic patterns of hatred between Arabs, Persians, Sunni and Shi’a; narratives based on sectarianism are unconvincing. Serious research reveals that none of the traumas that the people of the region are experiencing can be explained simply in terms of a continuous conflict between Shia and Sunni and/or Arab and Persian.

The emotive issue of Syria is an obvious place to start to expose the flaws in the sectarian approach. Iran supports the Assad government, the argument goes, because the core of the Syrian state is Alawite, a sub-branch of Shi’ism. But there are at least three reasons why the idea that a sectarian bond explains Iranian backing for Damascus is wrong.

First, scholars are well aware that the Assad dynasty did not place its ideological bets on religion or a sect. Under the Assads, the ideological foundation of the Syrian state was engineered around Ba’athism, a branch of secular Arab nationalism. Indeed, as members of a minority sect, the Assads were determined to flush out any sectarian references in the official discourse of the state. Syrian children were taught about the glories of Arab history, not the legitimacy of the Alawites or some kind of Shi’a brotherhood. The same is true for Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the Assads’ fellow Ba’athist leader, who was as much non-Sunni as the Assads were non-Shi’a.

Second, Syria has been for Iran a strategic ally since the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), when Hafez al-Assad was the only Arab leader supporting the country against the invading armies of Saddam Hussein. So common interest, not sectarian allegiance, is the reason for the Syrian-Iranian alliance. The point is echoed in the rhetoric of muqawamah (resistance) that linked “Sunni-Arab” Hamas in Palestine, to “Arab-Shi’a” Hizbollah in Lebanon, to “Persian-Shi’a” Iran via “Secular-Arab” Syria. This axis was quite obviously interest-based, and could not be explained along Shi’a/Sunni-Persian/Arab lines.

Third, a Syrian state composed of socialist heathens causes no problem to Iranian decision-makers seeking to build a trusted alliance. For the same reason, Iran can have strong relations with socialist leaders such as the Castros in Cuba, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. If any communist-atheist ruler has a foreign policy conducive to Iran’s agenda, he or she can be embraced as much as would the most pious, god-loving but (essentially) pro-Iranian Shi’a. Conversely, if a Shi’a movement is opposed to the Iranian state, it will be vilified. The thousands of Iranian exiles and secular Shi’a groups can testify to this strict delineation between friend and foe: one based on its stance vis-à-vis the Iranian system, rather than a Shi’a or Iranian “identity”.

A comparable logic applies to Iraq. There, Ayatollah Ali Sistani is not only a Shi’a but a Marja-e Taghlid, a source of emulation constituting the highest clerical rank in the Shi’a hierarchy. His religious credentials outweigh even those of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But Sistani adheres to the quietist tradition of the late Ayatollah al-Khoei (and Ayatollah Boroujerdi in Iran), while Khamenei is heir to Ayatollah Khomeini’s doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (which compels clerics to be political leaders and ideological prophets). There is no love lost between them or their followers.

A need for nuance

Similar dynamics operate elsewhere. Iranian clerics and their Iraqi Shi’a counterparts organised around Muqtada al-Sadr could not agree, but for the opposite reason – i.e., because while Sadr repeatedly positioned himself as a political leader, he was not someone that Iran could work with. In Lebanon,Hizbollah is in Iran’s foreign-policy orbit not because they are Shi’a but on account of the movement’s allegiance to Khomeinism. The late cosmopolitan superstar of Lebanese Shi’ism, Musa al-Sadr (who was of “Iranian origin”), would have been seen in a very different light by today’s leaders in Tehran compared to the combatant Hassan Nasrallah (who is Lebanese). Again, the issue is not Sunni vs Shi’a or Arab vs Persian, but shared interests. In the case of Iraq and Lebanon, this interest is defined by creating a common front against Israel; in the case of Iraq’s prime minister Haider al-Abadi, by finding reliable allies in the fight against Daesh (or ISIL).

Yemen is another example of the trend. The Zai’di Houthis may have overlapping Shi’a beliefs with Iran, but this far from explains the link between the two. The current, Saudi Arabia-led intervention in Yemen has little to do with the danger of an expanding Persian empire, and much more with the threat of a Yemeni government independent of Saudi patronage.

In the intra-Arab “cold war” of the 1960s, a similar factor compelled King Saud to intervene in Yemen (then under British leadership) in order to thwart Nasserite influence. In Oman in the same period, the Shah of Iran – equally opposed to the ambitions of Egypt’s leader – sent troops to quell a Marxist rebellion. But King Saud and the Shah, “objective” allies against Nasserism, were following their own interests and not any sectarian motif. Then and now, the interests of nation or movement override sectarian allegiances: primordial identitarian factors play no major role in the map of conflict. If it were otherwise, Saudi Arabia (“Hanbali-Sunni-Wahhabi”) would be allied to al-Qaida, and ISIL and Iran (“Persian-Twelver Shi’a”) Iran would not support Armenia (“Christian-Orthodox”) in its conflict with Azerbaijan (“Shi’a-Muslim” majority). There are many more such examples.

The same establishment media outlets that view the region’s conflicts through a sectarian prism tend to speak of a unified Islamic threat whenever a terrorist attack happens in north America or Europe. But the people of the region cannot be both imploding in sectarian anarchy and a unified civilisation clashing with the “west”. Such misleading and contradictory paradigms allow damaging myths such as “Arabs vs Persians, Sunni vs Shi’a” to grow. A more informed and refined approach to this complex region, and to world politics generally, is badly needed.

Source: goo.gl/JtxpVh

19 October 2015