Sic Semper Tyrannis

Gulfies on the Temple Mount? Haaretz

"When Israel and Bahrain announced the normalization of relations, their joint statement included the affirmation by Israel affirmed that "all Muslims who come in peace may visit and pray at the Al-Asqa Mosque." 

The Old City of Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa compound, also known as the Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount, is the third holiest pilgrimage site in Islam after Mecca and Medina, marking the destination of Muhammed's night journey in Muslim tradition. In theory, Muslim pilgrims who land at Ben-Gurion Airport, Israel will within an hour will be able to visit Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem and pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque."  Haaretz

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Over the decades I have asked various Muslims if they want to visit Al-Quds and the Al-Aqsa mosque.  The answer is always "yes."  

Then I ask them if they are willing to enter Israel through Ben Gurion airport, clear Israeli immigration and travel cross country to Jerusalem where the Jews rule.  The answer is always "no."

The same applies to an entry and passage overland from the Jordan River.

This should be really interesting.  pl 

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-gulf-pilgrims-are-about-to-upset-the-status-quo-at-al-aqsa-1.9207270

"Jewish Soldiers and Civilians Looted Arab Neighbors' Property en Masse in '48. The Authorities Turned a Blind Eye" Haaretz

"Refrigerators and caviar, champagne and carpets – a first-ever comprehensive study by historian Adam Raz reveals the extent to which Jews looted Arab property during the War of Independence, and explains why Ben-Gurion stated: ‘Most of the Jews are thieves’"

"We turned a mahogany closet into a chicken coop and we swept up the garbage with a silver tray. There was chinaware with gold embellishments, and we would spread a sheet on the table and place chinaware and gold on it, and when the food was finished, everything was taken together to the basement. In another place, we found a storeroom with 10,000 boxes of caviar, that’s what they counted. After that, the guys couldn’t touch caviar again their whole life. There was a feeling on one hand of shame at the behavior, and on the other hand a feeling of lawlessness. We spent 12 days there, when Jerusalem was groaning under horrible shortages, and we were putting on weight. We ate chicken and delicacies you wouldn’t believe. In the headquarters at Notre Dame, some people shaved with champagne.”"  Haaretz

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Well, pilgrims, soldiers loot, or "liberate" or take "souvenirs."  American soldiers are particularly prone to this. 

I never looted anywhere.  It would have been a personal fault and contrary to my code of behavior.  It is true that where I fought, the enemy and civilian people had nothing worth taking.  We gave them the means of life rather than the opposite.

But, in WW2, in Europe, US soldiers helped themselves to German civilian goods.  The APO shipped it home for them as "souvenirs."  I have seen a lot of German heirloom silver in the homes of WW2 veterans.  

I am not surprised that Israeli soldiers of the Palmach, Hagganah, Irgun, Stern Gang, etc. looted.  I am a little surprised that Israeli Jewish civilians participated so enthusiastically and that churches and mosques were also looted.  

BTW, "Notre Dame" as mentioned in the last line quoted. is the Notre Dame hostel for pilgrims.  It operates as a hotel in normal times and of course has a kitchen and wine cellar.  It was on the front line right across the street from the wall of the Old City which was then defended by Glubb Pasha's beduin soldiers of the Arab Legion of Jordan.

A friend of mine who was present at the taking of Baghdad in 2003 laughed and said "we took a little and left a little."  A sad and shameful thing.  I thought I had taught him better.

New subject - I see that Israel is now swamped with COVID cases and hospitalizations.  Perhaps Trump can issue an order from his sickbed to send a navy hospital ship to Tel Aviv.  IMO a condition would have to be that the Israelis actually use the ship unlike what happened in New York City.  pl

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.highlight.MAGAZINE-jews-looted-arab-property-en-masse-in-48-the-authorities-let-them-1.9201926

"... the Israeli Victory Is Nearly Complete." Amira Hass

"Twenty years later, the Israeli victory is nearly complete: The well-planned armed robbery of Palestinian land goes on daily unhindered. The model that Israel created in Gaza is being copied in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and translated into something akin to “Pales of Settlement” which, as long as they don’t show signs of fury and rebellion, are of no interest to the Jews in Israel, the supreme ruler."  Amira Hass

Author Bio:  Amira Hass is the Haaretz correspondent for the Occupied Territories.  Born in Jerusalem in 1956, Hass joined Haaretz in 1989, and has been in her current position since 1993. As the correspondent for the territories, she spent three years living in Gaza, which served of the basis for her widely acclaimed book, "Drinking the Sea at Gaza." She has lived in the West Bank city of Ramallah since 1997.

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Yet further evidence of the actual paucity of my knowledge of Israel is the sad truth that I had never heard of Amira Hass until I noticed this article in Haaretz today.  The daughter of two survivors of the Shoa, one Sephardi and the other Ashkenazi, she has clearly devoted her life to truth telling in the matter of systemic Israeli abuse of the Palestinian people.  She has lived for long periods in Gaza and Ramallah.  My. My.  I am impressed.  pl

www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-twenty-years-after-the-second-intifada-the-israeli-victory-is-nearly-complete-1.9195532

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amira

Arab League condemns the "deal of the century"

"The Arab League rejected Trump's plan, saying in a communique it would not lead to a just peace deal and adding it will not cooperate with the United States to execute the plan.
The ministers affirmed Palestinian rights to create a future state based on the land captured and occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, with East Jerusalem as capital, the final communique said.
Israeli officials expressed hope Saturday that the League's rejection could bring the U.S. closer to green-lighting unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank, in light of the fact that Jared Kushner opposed immediate steps toward annexation because he thought the Arab League might support the plan. "  Haaretz

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Well, pilgrims, the truth is that nobody in the States who matters gives a damn about what happens to the Palestinians and it was always thus.  Kushner's "peace plan" is just another real estate scam.  pl

https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/arab-foreign-ministers-meet-in-cairo-to-discuss-trump-s-mideast-plan-1.8475812

"Free at last!" Brexit, etc.

Brexit.  This is it!  Freedom for the UK!  It took the Irish 700 years to achieve independence for part of their island, but here it is for the UK in only 47 years.  The Scots may depart, preferring the yoke of Brussels, but then, the English and Welsh care not.  Brave souls.  Trumpy will be acquitted in his first senate trial today or maybe tomorrow and will announce the commencement of negotiations for the "greatest trade deal of all time" with Boris, his English doppelganger.  There is the pesky little matter of the British NHS, but some way around that problem will be found.  A US/British trade deal is obviously on the "right side of history."  pl

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brexit-news-nigel-farage-gloats-eu-parliament-sings-goodbye-to-united-kingdom-2020-01-31/

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Israel/Palestine.  Recommend the linked article below on the multitudinous defects of the "deal of the century."  It mirrors my thinking and so must be a work of genius.  pl

https://prospect.org/world/dont-call-it-a-peace-plan-israel-palestine-trump/

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Turkish Policy.  IMO the Turks have decided that they don't want to fight the R+6 for a piece or all of Idlib Province in Syria.  They haven't really fought anyone since the Korean War and contrary to civilian delusions war is not just a matter of who has the most and biggest toys.  Practice counts a lot.  And, even Erdo may realize that the number and depth of the purges he has inflicted on the Turkish officer corps have certainly caused a decline in the quality of the force.  It is noticeable that when confronted up close by R+6 forces the Turks shy from actual combat.  I remain convinced that a lot of Turkish ambition in Syria is fueled by neo-Ottoman irredentism.  Syria was part of the empire for hundreds of years and the same thing is true of Libya until the Senussi Sufi order's revolt against Ottoman rule in 1911.  Turkey is now exporting pet jihadis from Syria to Libya.  Sounds like they are beginning to give up on long term acquisitions in Syria.  pl 

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/01/turkey-deployment-libya-threat-escalation-russia-townsend.html

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SpaceX TV and Space voyeurism.  One of the marvels of the modern world is the ability to watch rocket launches into earth orbit on Space X's TeeVee  channel.  You can follow the whole process from the count-down to first stage recovery to delivery of the payload to orbit on Space X Tee Vee live.   https://www.spacex.com/

And … You can get a free app for your phone at the App Store that will notify you when the next launch is ready.  pl 

Flash! Trump has solved the Israeli-Palestinian problem. (irony)

Bibi Natanyahu was formally indicted today back home in Israel but he and Sarah were there in the WH to celebrate their victory by joining Trump in making a deal over the heads of the Palestinians.

The Palestinians are offered very little in this final reconciliation between the US and the forces of Zionisn within and without the US.  If the sons and daughters of Ishmael (look it up) behave and cooperate with their Israeli guardians, they will be rewarded with development money intended to comfort them in their helotry.  Trump did say to Bibi at the ceremony that Bibi would have the Palestinian money with which to influence future events, but perhaps that was merely clumsy.  Trump also referred to "Israel's Holy Land."  I suppose that still leaves open the possibility of "religious tourism" as the Israelis call pilgrimage?

In Trump's plan Israel will forever control a strip of territory along the Jordanian border as sovereign to themselves.  But, in return the Palestinian "state" might receive an embassy from the US, located in "eastern" Jerusalem.  I suppose that would be out in that valley to the east that the mandatory British government included as being within the boundaries of Jerusalem.

Trump seems really to think that Palestinians are like stray dogs who will lick your hand if you give them something, anything, to eat.  Perhaps that is the general attitude in New York City.  

Mahmoud Abbas has stated that his side will not accept this, but at least there is peace between the US and Israel.  pl

The ME may yet destroy Trump

President Trump will easily be acquitted in the senate trial.  This may occur this week and there will probably be no witnesses called.  That will be an additional victory for him and will add to the effect of his trade deal victories and the general state of the US economy.  These factors should point to a solid victory in November for him and the GOP in Congress.

Ah!  Not so fast the cognoscenti may cry out.  Not so fast.  The Middle East is a graveyard of dreams:

1.  Iraq.  Street demonstrations in Iraq against a US alliance are growing more intense.  There may well have been a million people in Muqtada al-Sadr's extravaganza.  Shia fury over the death of Soleimani is quite real.  Trump's belief that in a contest of the will he will prevail over the Iraqi Shia is a delusion, a delusion born of his narcissistic personality and his unwillingness to listen to people who do not share his delusions.  A hostile Iraqi government and street mobs would make life unbearable for US forces there. 

2.  Syria.  The handful of American troops east and north of the Euphrates "guarding" Syrian oil from the Syrian government are in a precarious position with the Shia Iraqis at their backs across the border and a  hostile array of SAA, Turks, jihadis and potentially Russians to their front and on their flanks.

3.  Palestine.  The "Deal of the Century" is approaching announcement.  From what is known of its contours, the deal will kill any remaining prospects for Palestinian statehood and will relegate all Palestinians (both Israeli citizens and the merely occupied) to the status of helots forever .  Look it up.  In return the deal will offer the helotry substantial bribes in economic aid money.  Trump evidently continues to believe that Palestinians are untermenschen .  He believe they will sell their freedom. The Palestinian Authority has already rejected this deal.  IMO their reaction to the imposition of this regime is likely to be another intifada.

Some combination of the disasters that may emerge from these ME factors might well turn Trump's base against him and this result would be entirely of his own making.  pl

"Joltin'" Jack Keane wants your kids to fight Russia and Syria over Syrian oil.

"Joltin" Jack Keane, General (ret.), Fox Business Senior Strategery Analyst,  Chairman of the Board of the Kagan run neocon "Institute for the Study of War" (ISW)  and Graduate Extraordinaire of Fordham University, was on with Lou Dobbs last night.  Dobbs appears to have developed a deep suspicion of this paladin.  He stood up to Keane remarkably well.  This was refreshing in light of the fawning deference paid to Keane by all the rest of the Fox crew.

In the course of this dialogue Keane let slip the slightly disguised truth that he and the other warmongers want to keep something like 200 US soldiers and airmen in Syria east of the Euphrates so that they can keep Iran or any other "Iranian proxy forces" from crossing the Euphrates from SAG controlled territory to take control of Syrian sovereign territory and the oil and gas deposits that are rightly the property  of the Syrian people and their government owned oil company.  The map above shows how many of these resources are east of the Euphrates.  Pilgrims!  It is not a lot of oil and gas judged by global needs and markets, but to Syria and its prospects for reconstruction it is a hell of a lot! 

Keane was clear that what he means by "Iranian proxy forces" is the Syrian Arab Army, the national army of that country.  If they dare cross the river, to rest in the shade of their own palm trees, then in his opinion the air forces of FUKUS should attack them and any 3rd party air forces (Russia) who support them

This morning, on said Fox Business News with Charles Payne, Keane was even clearer and stated specifically that if "Syria" tries to cross the river they must be fought.

IMO he and Lindsey Graham are raving lunatics brainwashed for years with the Iran obsession and they are a danger to us all.  pl

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/graham-fox-news-star-showed-trump-map-change-his-mind-n1069901

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Syria

Decameron: `The stone that the builders rejected became a cornerstone.'

“Every time I take my youngest daughter, Sham, to her school, I see a passage written on the wall from the Book of Psalms: `The stone that the builders rejected became a cornerstone.' ”    Ayman Odeh, Chairman of Joint List, 13 elected members of Knesset

The Arab-Israeli citizens' votes won the Joint List the rank of 3rd largest bloc in Knesset with 13 seats.   Breaking with their historical pattern of not recommending a PM, the Joint List decided to back Gantz in order to "end" Netanyahu's career, according to a piece by Ayman Odeh’s opinion column that appeared in the New York Times, September 22, 2019.

Opinion | Ayman Odeh: We Are Ending Netanyahu’s Grip on Israel - The New York Times

But, despite the compelling Opinion piece that Odeh had in the New York Times, 3 elected Members of Knesset from the Balad party in his bloc, said that they will not recommend a PM.  This morning, the Times of Israel and other papers published this statement from one of the Joint List party leaders, reportedly from a letter delivered to Israeli President Rivlin on Sunday.   The statement says:

"`I would like to announce that the three Balad Knesset members have asked me as the faction chairman to declare that the Joint List’s recommendation of MK Benny Gantz does not include them, and therefore the recommendation is in the name of ten MKs and not 13,’|” MK Ahmad Tibi of Ta’al wrote in a letter, which was apparently sent to Rivlin on Sunday and published Monday morning.   (Times of Israel)

Now what?

Both Likud and Blue & White are short of the coalition total of 60.  But now, the totals are:

B&W (33 seats) coalition is 54 seats

Likud (31 seats) coalition is 55 or 56 seats

What will President Rivlin do?    Previous presidents have asked the lead party to form a government, but he apparently has some discretion.    

Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beiteinu endorsed no-one, leaving 8 seats in the balance.   That could make either bloc take the government, but he has said "NO" to religious parties, and it was he who essentially brought down Netanyahu after the April election.   What is Liberman, standard bearer for the “Russian” vote, made of?  We will see. 

Possibilities

Rivlin invites Gantz to form a government based on B&W's 33 seats.

Rivlin invites Netanyahu to form a government, based on the fact that his "coalition" (Likud + religious parties+ extreme right wing settlers/annexationists) has 1 or 2 commitments more than B&W

Grand Coalition without Netanyahu:  B&W with Gantz PM, Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu: PM will rotate, Gantz first.

Grand Coalition with Netanyahu: B&W, Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu. Almost the same as the last 12 years; very unstable, B&W or YB could leave at any time.

New Elections:   Rivlin goes with one of the above options which doesn't make it. 

To be clear, Liberman has said all along that his party will NOT join a government endorsed by the Arabs; but he also says that his bloc will NOT join a government with the religious parties.  

In Israeli politics, said a recent Israeli newspaper, "anything is possible."

HARPER: POMPEO PRONOUNCES KUSHNER PLAN DOA

On May 28, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in New York City for a closed-door meeting with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.  In remarks that were covertly recorded and passed along to the Washington Post, Pompeo effectively declared that the Middle East peace plan conjured by First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner was a non-starter and would be rejected by most parties.  Instead of the "deal of the century" touted by President Donald Trump, Pompeo conceded that the peace scheme was a losing proposition.  "I get why people think this is a deal that only Israel could love.  I understand the perception of that.  I just hope everyone will give the space to listen and settle in a bit." Pompeo continued his blunt remarks:  "I don't want to call it failing.  Call it whatever.  I fail a lot, so it's not about using a word like that."  Pompeo admitted that the State Department is giving a good deal of attention to what to do next if the Kushner Plan flops.

Until Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu failed to put together a majority cabinet this week and had to call snap elections for September, it had been expected that the long-awaited Kushner Plan would be rolled out this month.  Now the launch date is delayed until late September or early October after a new Israeli government is formed and sworn in.

Pompeo has shown some unexpected political savvy by distancing himself from the doomed "peace plan," which appears to be little more than a scheme to buy Palestinian capitulation through a combination of promises of Arab money and political strong-arming from the Gulf States and Israel.

Giddoutahere!

"Things keep heating up in Venezuela, with possible “military options” now being seriously discussed at the Pentagon. And of course you know what that means! That’s right, it means we can expect to see even more lies and manipulations from the political/media class as the narrative managers try to get their rapey little fingers into our minds to manufacture support for unconscionable acts."  Johnstone

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Trumpy!  These stiffs are losers!  Losers!  They lost in Iraq!.  Remember!  You say you like to win.  These guys are losers.  Keeping these losers will just drag you down!  You always dump losers like these.  Remember!  Where did you get these stiffs?  Who pushed them off on you?  Get rid of them losers too!

Bolton torpedoed your deal with your friend Kim!  Remember.  Is he trying to torpedo your deal with China?

You know that you  have to make some kind of deal with Russia and the great judomaster.  Is Bolton trying to screw that up ?

The three stooges.  Ah, no, Pompey the Magnificent is missing from the group mug shot.   Trumpster! You should dump these guys, AND the crews who gave us the messes in Ukraine, Syria, Gaza, the Golan Heights, Kushner's deal of the century, and the coming good deal in Lebanon.

Get some new ones.  You can't let little people losers drag you down.  pl

https://southfront.org/caitlin-johnstone-venezuela-establishment-talking-points-translation-key/

Yet another piece of Kushner's "Deal of the Century"

"The king said that the plan was dangerous and not simple to implement, in particular the part relating to the land swaps in Tzofar, a moshav in the Arava desert, and Naharayim, where Jordan conquered in 1948 the Island of Peace and a hydroelectric power-plant that belonged to Israel. According to the Trump proposal, Jordan would receive from Saudi Arabia an area equal in size to these territories which Israel would reacquire.

In addition, Jordan has been asked to take in a million “Palestinian” refugees in several stages, in return for $45 billion in investments. Jordan’s entire GDP is only $40 billion. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states will finance these investments."  Jewish Press

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The full "good deal of the century" will evidently be revealed after the Israeli election. 

Pieces of the "good deal of the century" have previously been revealed.

The move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem has been followed by endless Palestinian waves of self immolation along the Gaza "dead line."  This will continue indefinitely unless the Beebster or his successor decide to  re-occupy Gaza to stop Palestinian rockets reaching Tel Aviv.  Now, that  would be a spectacle.

Another piece of "The Kushner Plan" was the cession by the US of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights to Israel.  The justification for this was that the Israelis hold it by force of arms.  Syria, of, course does not accept the US transfer of title deed to part of its territory.

These two things are typical of Trump's NY City real estate methodology.  In his mind he is systematically taking points of contention off "the bargaining table" so that he can "close" over what's left.

This latest "offer" made to Jordan is part of what is left.  Perhaps some savant can explain what the various parts of this "partial good deal" mean. " A million Palestinians?"  Where would they come from?  Would they be round up for transportation to The East?  Saudi Arabia would transfer land to Jordan?  Where?  On the Gulf of Akabah coast near Tabuk?  Really?  The Saudis and Gulfies would cough up $45 billion for investments in Jordan?  To do what?  Tourism?  Really?  And who would own these enterprises?  Lebanon will give its citizenship to the hordes of Palestinian descended people who inhabit the country?  They have firmly resisted this for decades. 

Explain all this, someone.  pl

https://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/al-akhbar-trump-wants-jordan-to-take-in-1-million-palestinians/2019/04/05/

What is HAMAS?

"When Hamas was created, with the aided influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization was not at first much of an armed group, that came five years later in the form of the Izz Ad-Deen Al-Qassam Brigades (Armed wing of Hamas).

Hamas however was far more radical than the Mujamma, had a Palestinian nationalist flavor to its Islamic ideology and attempted to follow in the footsteps of the likes of the Islamic revolution in Iran.

A famous speech, delivered by former US representative for Texas, Ron Paul, is often used as reference point for claiming that Hamas was an invention of Israel and hence prompting the idea that Hamas must be controlled by them still.
Ron Paul stated that, “if you look at the history, Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel, because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat”.

This speech seems to be the reference point for many today, when it comes to their allegations of Israelis controlling and starting Hamas.

Although what Dr. Paul said, was very close to the truth, it was extremely broad and is often misinterpreted into something entirely false.

For some time, Israel still allowed for Hamas to operate, taking a hands off approach as it did with the Mujamma. It is completely true that Israel was utilizing Hamas as a counterweight to the Fatah movement, although there is no proof of any further cooperation with Hamas than this.

In 1984, the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Yassin, had already been imprisoned – until his release a year later as the result of a prisoner swap – for weapons smuggling. Israel was not the same partner that it had been to the Mujamma and was a lot more aware of its [Hamas] ambitions to reclaim Palestine."  AMN

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I was the head of liaison between DoD (DIA) and IDF General Staff intelligence for nine years (1985-1994).  As such I was the "minder" for the IDF reps in Washington based in their embassy.  The CIA tried continuously to acquire this task but without success.  They were not content to nurture their long standing relationship with Mossad, the Israeli civilian intelligence service.  In Israel, IDF intelligence is the senior service and the national estimator.

The brigadiers who seriatim were the chief military attache in the embassy spent a lot of time in my office consulting, being given guidance as to their sometimes arrogant and unacceptable behavior with regard to the DC police, and just chatting.  There were a lot of lunches and dinners with wives.  It was a very friendly set of relationships.  I used to take them to WBS battlefields both for the educational benefit for them concerning the US and to have a day in which to study them as individuals.

One day, sitting in my Pentagon office, the head man from the embassy began to tell me of his concern with regard to what was happening in the 2nd Intifada, then ongoing.  He told me that Israel had sponsored the growth of Hamas as a rival to the PLO, then in exile in Tunisia, believing that a religiously based resistance movement would attract many Palestinians, splitting them off from the PLO and generally weakening the Palestinian resistance.  Instead, the al-Qassem Brigades of Hamas were proving to be daunting opponents in the rebellion.  "Sometimes we outsmart ourselves," he said with a sad smile.  He was a very skilled man.  He was one of a small number of IDF officers trained as an Arab affairs specialist from secondary school onward. At one point he was Military Governor of the occupied West Bank.  I believe him.  pl

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/was-hamas-really-created-by-israel/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organization#Tunis

Michelle Alexander on Israel and the Palestinians

"Our elected representatives, who operate in a political environment where Israel's political lobby holds well-documented power, have consistently minimized and deflected criticism of the State of Israel, even as it has grown more emboldened in its occupation of Palestinian territory and adopted some practices reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow segregation in the United States.

Many civil rights activists and organizations have remained silent as well, not because they lack concern or sympathy for the Palestinian people, but because they fear loss of funding from foundations, and false charges of anti-Semitism. They worry, as I once did, that their important social justice work will be compromised or discredited by smear campaigns.

Similarly, many students are fearful of expressing support for Palestinian rights because of the McCarthyite tactics of secret organizations like Canary Mission, which blacklists those who publicly dare to support boycotts against Israel, jeopardizing their employment prospects and future careers."  Michelle Alexander

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What on earth is happening at the New York Times?  The intimidation of critics of Israel that Alexander writes of has had a bastion of support at the Times for a long time. 

I don't write much about the plight of the Palestinians.  I gave up on that a long time ago.  I have other concerns.  The murderous hatred of the Israeli Jews toward the Palestinians is acted out just about every day.  Actual violence, demeaning insult, seizure of private property are all the lot of the Palestinians both in the occupied territories and also in Israel proper.  "Arab Israelis?  Don't make me laugh!  No one in Israel believes that Arab citizens of Israel are anything like first class citizens.

Are the Palestinians born without Original Sin?  Not at all, not at all, they fight back with knives, stones and in the past with large scale and terrible attacks on Jewish civilians.  Before Israeli independence they repeatedly attacked Jewish settlements and fought a three year rebellion in Palestine in attempting to roll back the Jewish tide of immigration.  Did the Mufti of Jerusalem side with the Nazis in the hope of exterminating the Jews in Palestine if Germany won the world war.  Yes!  He did!

I stopped going to Israel some time ago because I was beginning to dislike both groups.  The Jews treat the Palestinians like pariah dogs, and the Palestinians are not capable of dealing with their situation at any level beyond whining menace.

A pox on both their houses, but something very odd is happening at the New York Times.  pl

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/opinion/sunday/martin-luther-king-palestine-israel.html

"Who needs Saudi Arabia?" Washpost editorial

 

"As for arms sales, someone needs to brief Mr. Trump on the actual results of the promises made to him when he visited Riyadh last year. As Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution sums it up, “The Saudis have not concluded a single major arms deal with Washington on Trump’s watch.” Moreover, an end to supplies of U.S. spare parts and technical support, something Russia cannot provide, would quickly ground the Saudi air force. That would have the welcome effect of ending a bloody bombing campaign in Yemen that a U.N. investigation concluded was probably responsible for war crimes."  Washpost

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Once again, I am not a great fan of Bezos or his blog, but two days in a row they have printed something I can agree with.  Something has changed for him.

It has become a meme in the blather that runs shrill and shallow in the US media, that Saudi Arabia is a faithful, and indispensable ally of the US in the ME.  Bezos disputes this and so do I. 

A few points:

Yes, they chop heads off after Friday prayers outside the local mosque.  They also do hands and feet.  They stone to death women found guilty of adultery.  They sew them in bags before the men present throw handy five pound rocks at them.  The government is deeply approving of this.  Sound familiar?  Yes, it should. The jihadis whom the Saudis sponsor in Syria do the same things.  The Sunni jihadis  are nearly defeated in Syria and it has become clear that the Saudi government has been evacuating their leaders, probably with US connivance, so that they can pursue greater visions of jihad elsewhere.

The importance of Saudi Arabia in the world oil market is IMO now much exaggerated.  They can undoubtedly do some damage by manipulating the short term contract (spot) market but this is something they would pay for heavily.  The Kingdom is cash strapped.  It was not for nothing that MBS turned the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh into a prison for the wealthy including many of his own kin in order to squeeze and in some cases torture them into handing over a lot of their cash to the government.  Depressed petro sales at artificial prices will only further reduce revenue to the government.

The notion that Saudi intelligence contributes much to the GWOT is a joke.  Saudi intelligence competence is something that exists only in pitchmen's claims voiced by TV touts.  In fact, they get almost everything they have from the US and are like greedy baby birds always looking to be fed.  They cannot organize a trip to the gold plated toilet.  It took 15 of them to ambush Khashoggi, well, OK, 14 of them and a doctor to carry the electric bone-saw.

We need to sell them more equipment that they cannot use?  It does not appear to me that any of the contracts that they promised to DJT has been signed.  Their technique is simple.  Keep the hope of profit for the US alive as leverage.

Lastly, the chimera of a great Arab alliance (a la NATO) is delusory.  The Saudis lack both the organizational ability for such a thing and significant military power. They possess one of the world's largest static displays of military equipment.  They have neither the manpower nor the aptitude to use such equipment effectively.  As I have written previously, the Gulf Arabs have long had such an alliance.  It is the GCC and it has never amounted to anything except a venue for the Arab delight in meetings and blather. 

The basis for the desire for such an alliance is the Israeli strategic objective of isolating Iran and its allies; Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas with an eventual hope of destroying the Iranian theocracy.  Israel is frightened of a possible salvo of many thousands of missiles and rockets into Israel from Lebanon as well as an eventual successful creation of a missile deliverable nuclear weapon by the Iranians.  These are real and credible threats for Israel, but not for FUKUS.  Israel has only two really valuable counter-value targets; Haifa and Tel Aviv.  A hit on one or both with a nuclear weapon would be the end of Israel.  The Israelis know that.

Adroit information operations carried out over generations by the Israeli government and its supporters have created in the collective US mind an image of Iran as a disguised 3rd Reich.  This was well done.  The same operation was run against Iraq with magnificent results from the POV of Israel

Saudi Arabia is a worthless ally.  pl 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/who-needs-saudi-arabia/2018/10/15/3ebe473c-d0a1-11e8-8c22-fa2ef74bd6d6_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a339b03b5abf

Ireland may recognize Palestine as a country

 

"On September 22^nd, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said that Ireland may recognize Palestine as a state if talks over a two-state solution with Israel continue failing.

He made the remarks during a joint press conference with visiting Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, who was accompanying President Mahmoud Abbas.

“We have made a choice not to officially recognize the state of Palestine just yet,” the Irish Times quoted Coveney as saying.

However, he did say that Ireland has already committed to recognizing a Palestinian state as part of a peace process. However, if the negotiations fail, the Irish government might “have to forget the second part of that.” He also speculated that other European countries would possibly take a similar position.

The Palestinian delegation also met Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and President Michael D Higgins. It is on its way to New York where Abbas will speak at the United Nations General Assembly. The essence of his address will be the need for the international community to rescue the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or abandon it altogether."  SF

----------

 The Irish should be careful  Trump will have to put tariffs on Guinness.  pl 

https://southfront.org/ireland-may-recognize-palestine-if-peace-talks-collapse/

IMO Trump cares nothing for either Israel or Palestine

"The United States currently provides nearly $4 billion in mostly military annual aid to Israel."

"As it readies its peace plan, now 18 months in the making with no release date in sight, the White House is seeking to take the right of return off the table, as Trump has said he eliminated the future of the contested city of Jerusalem from negotiations late last year when he recognized it as the capital of Israel.

Ever since the Jerusalem decision, the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to meet with White House aides Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt and others working on the plan. While they have released no details, U.S. officials have indicated the plan is likely to include infusions of development aid, particularly to Hamas-controlled Gaza.

The goal, officials have said, is both to woo Palestinians away from Hamas, by appealing to their desire for better lives amid seemingly endless strife and deprivation under terrorist leaders, and to make it more difficult for Abbas, a Hamas rival, to continue to rebuff U.S. overtures."  washpost

-------------

IMO the United States is intent on bullying and intimidating the Palestinians, all of them, into accepting an eternal status as helots existing in second or third class status in a Greater Israel.

Our cancellation of direct US assistance to the Palestinians and our Nikki run move to deprive Palestinians of their UN status as people driven from their homeland into exile are programmatic steps by the US and Trump to make the Palestinians subjects of Israel.

At the same time, Trump, IMO cares nothing for either group and is only seeking fulfillment of his egotistical vision of himself as "the Greatest President."

Amusingly, McCain, trump's rival in egotism has probably stolen from him the possibility of a future imperial funeral.  pl   

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-to-end-us-funding-to-un-program-for-palestinian-refugees/2018/08/30/009d9bc6-ac64-11e8-b1da-ff7faa680710_story.html?utm_term=.99b7620f56ff

King Salman "walks" on Jared's "good deal"

"Saudi Arabia has reassured Arab allies it will not endorse any Middle East peace plan that fails to address Jerusalem’s status or refugees’ right of return, easing their concerns that the kingdom might back a nascent U.S. deal which aligns with Israel on key issues. "  Reuters

 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-paelestinians-usa-saudi/as-u-s-pushes-for-mideast-peace-saudi-king-reassures-allies-idUSKBN1KJ0F9

******

I published the  following post on 3 January 2018:  It is as true now as it was then that man does not live by bread alone.

"... we have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table.  We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don't even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel," Trump tweeted. "We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?" CNN quoting DJT

 

"We are not taking a position on any of the final status issues including the final boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem," Trump said last month as he made his Jerusalem announcement. "Those questions are up to the parties involved. The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides."  Quoting DJT

 

Trump's statement at the announcement was intended to reassure Palestinians and the broader Arab and Muslim world that the US was not giving away control of Jerusalem to Israel or forsaking Palestinian claims to the holy city."  CNN

 

---------------

 

DJT's statements concerning the effect of his recognition of the Holy City as Israel's capital are nonsensical.   The Israelis, the Palestinians, the Europeans and every Muslim in the world understand that by taking Jerusalem "off the table" DJT has effectively eliminated the possibility of a negotiation over the city that would in any way relate to the real world.

 

Evidently DJT thinks that an issue like this that concerns the essential identity and self image of millions and millions of Muslims can be handled as though the adversaries in this dispute are business people in a contract discussion.  In that setting a feature of the proposed contract that cannot be agreed on is removed from consideration so that closure can occur on the rest.

 

Well, pilgrims,  the ownership of Jerusalem is not a hotel or skyscraper deal.  Trump's evident belief that the US has hired the Palestinian people through USAID projects and budget support is altogether incorrect.  His belief that the Palestinians are effectively his employees and therefore must settle for a Bantustan created out of some part of what is left without Jerusalem is delusional.

 

The Israelis and other Zionists, like Kushner and Ivanka, have long held the Palestinians in contempt as inferior beings fit only to be cheap labor in the Israeli economy.  That they could have sold that idea to Trump is the measure of the man.  pl"

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/02/politics/trump-palestinian-aid/index.html 

 http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/01/httpwwwcnncom20180102politicstrump-palestinian-aidindexhtml.html

A Poisoned Chalice by David Habakkuk - Re-published 6 June 2018

 

(This is the post that Mezvinsky was answering)

The proposals that Israel should be admitted to NATO, discussed by Clifford Kiracofe in a post not long ago, provide yet another illustration of the inability of so many of that country's most committed supporters, both in United States and elsewhere in the West, to grasp the suicidal nature of the course they have encouraged it to follow.

At a time when the waves of unrest sweeping the Arab world are calling fundamentally into question the ability of the United States to persuade governments in crucial countries – above all Egypt – to act in ways which Israel wants, support for that country in some of the traditionally most loyal allies of the US has been collapsing. Certainly, the Israeli government's presentation of its policies towards the Palestinians – and also Lebanon and Iran – as the unavoidable defensive responses of a beleaguered outpost of Western civilisation, confronted by that civilisation's implacable Arab and Muslim enemies, retains powerful traction, particularly among neoconservatives, in Europe as in the United States.

 

So in Britain for example a prominent neoconservative, Michael Gove – Education Secretary in the current Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition government – has argued in his influential polemic on the Islamist threat to Western civilisation, Celsius 7/7, that Israel must be defended all costs because it 'is an integral part of the West, a vessel for its values, an example of its virtues and is hated not for what it does but what it is'.

But neoconservatives like Gove – who in 2008 described the invasion of Iraq as ‘a proper British foreign policy success’ – are not being entirely successful in persuading their own peoples. While the events of the past decade have encouraged a wave of Islamophobia in Europe, as in the United States, this has signally failed to produce an increased sense of solidarity with Israel among the population at large. The annual poll of perceptions of the global role of different countries done for the BBC World Service, published earlier this month, showed a marginal improvement in Israel's worldwide rating, which still however left Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea as the only countries surveyed ranked as having a more negative influence.  Among the generally very negative views of the country in Europe, a particularly dramatic change was the increase in negative ratings in the UK from 50% to 66% – with only 14% now giving the country a positive rating.

 

Razan al-Najjar (F B Ali)

Razan al-Najjar died on Friday, June 1^st.

She was a 21-year old Palestinian nurse and paramedic. And a mother.

She was killed while running (along with other paramedics) towards the Gaza border fence with Israel.

They were running to treat some Palestinian protesters who had been wounded by shots fired from across the border.

Like the others with her, she was wearing her white paramedic uniform and waving her arms above her head as she ran towards the fence.

An Israeli sniper on the other side of the fence aimed at her, and put a bullet in her chest.

Razan al-Najjar is dead. Like the 120 or so others killed at the fence in the last couple of months.

Razan al-Najjar is dead. The Israeli military says it will investigate.   

Razan al-Najjar is dead. Is there anything further to say?

Oh! yes, one thing: I prefer this picture of hers to the other one.

 

"We're taking names..." Ambassador Nikki Haley

"Washington is exerting pressure on Turkey to make it abandon the plans to purchase Russia S-400 Triumf state-of-the-art air defense systems. So far, Ankara stood tall refusing to bow. US Congress is already considering the proposals on halting US arms sales to that country."  Korzun

"Unlike Turkey, India is not a NATO ally but its desire to acquire the Triumf triggers a negative reaction in the US. American lawmakers not only express concern over the planned deal but also issue warnings that sensitive American military technology may be banned from being shared with India in future. According to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, “There is a lot of concern in the US administration and Congress with the S-400.” India’s decision will be made final before the October Russia-India summit. During the informal talks in Sochi in May 2018, President Putin and Prime Minister Modi discussed the ways to get around the US potential sanctions when the deal goes through. Both countries have pledged to jointly create a plan to keep it out of CAATSA. New Delhi has just concluded price talks on the S-400 deal with Moscow, saying it will go ahead, no matter what the US says or does.

Those who follow the news on arms trade know well that India is interested in purchasing 22 American Predator Guardian drones for its Navy. It’s also willing to acquire the weapon the US has not sold anyone so far: 80-100 Avenger (Predator C) armed drones for the Air Force. The price may be as high as $8 billion. The F-16 production on Indian soil is also in doubt. All these projects are questioned as the US sticks to its guns implementing the “do it or else” policy. But it will hardly work with India, a nation known for its independent foreign policy. It has never bowed to any pressure from outside since its independence.

Iraq, Egypt, the UAE, Qatar, Morocco, Indonesia and Vietnam are among the countries threatened by sanctions if they go on with the plans to purchase Russian weapons. Many of them are particularly interested in the S-400."  Korzun 

https://southfront.org/us-warns-india-not-to-buy-russian-weapons/

-------------

America leads the way!  Or else.  Well, folks the international situation would be at least this bad with the wandering basket case Hillary Clinton in charge.

It appears that Israel is wasting American money by maintaining its own ambassador at the UN since they already have Nikki Haley.  They should make her status official and save money.  Yesterday she vetoed Kuwait's draft resolution on Gaza and was joined by no other country on that.  Then she offered a US resolution condemning Hamas for the Palestinian deaths on the Gaza border and was joined by none.  Not even the usual European toadies would sign up to support that.  Haley must be planning to run for president on the new Ziotrumpian Party ticket.

The control wielded by the Zionists over Trump appears to be complete at this point.   I doubt if Trump really understands anything about the Middle East.  His "thinking" appears to be a melange and reflection of the Grima Wormtongue murmurings of his family members, the flickering images on the Fox channels, (Hannity the Wise, Jack Keane and Stewart Varney) and his own lack of a reflective mind. 

The Saudis get s big response from him as well.  But, after all, they have disposable cash.  They don't have as much as they did, but they still have a lot.  That counts in the narrow world of The Art of the Deal."

In the arms trade, the objective seems to be to dragoon all these countries into accepting their roles as satrapies of the Peacock Throne,  Will that work?  We will see.

The name of US Pacific Command has been changed to US Indo-Pacific Command.  I don't quite see the significance of that unless it is accompanied by AOR boundary changes in the Unified Command Plan (UCP).  pl 

Israel, Like the Nazis, Values "Postenpflicht" by Publius Tacitus

While you might be inclined to think that my title is a cheap shot, it is not. It is a disgusting reality. Postenpflicht was part of a written order for the SS guards in German concentration camps during World War II:

It required SS guards to shoot prisoners who tried to escape or engage in resistance and to do so without verbal warning or a warning shot. This was relevant for example regarding the so-called "death strip" next to camp fences. The area next to these fences was off-limits and anyone getting too close to it was, in accordance with the Postenpflicht, killed without warning.

73 years since the Nazis were defeated we are witnessing the Israelis shooting largely unarmed protestors for having the audacity to approach a border fence:

 

If you cut us do we not bleed?

 

"Israel’s former national security advisor and a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, Yaakov Amidror, said that the people around the world condemning the violence need to understand this isn’t like a protest in Europe.

“They do not take into consideration that this is a cover for a terrorist organization that is attempting to stop Israel from building a system that would stop their underground terror tunnels,” he said.

Asked if Israel could use less lethal methods to contain the protesters, most of whom were unarmed, Amidror said that such a question was a good example of those who “can sit in an air-conditioned office, drinking coffee and give advice to the Israeli army that is facing off against many thousands of Palestinians.”

Tens of thousands of Palestinians had gathered on the edges of the fenced-off and blockaded territory from midmorning Monday. Many came to peacefully demonstrate, bringing their children and carrying flags. Food stalls sold snacks and music blared. "  Washpost

----------------

 Well, pilgrims, what happened at Gaza yesterday was an attempted jail break, an effort to escape from the world's largest outdoor prison.

When I lived abroad for so long, people would occasionally say things to me that indicated they believed that American Indians were required to live on Reservations in the US.  They are not, but Gaza is a reservation in which the inmates are ringed by walls of sand atop which are positioned Israeli teenagers armed with "military style rifles" who have permission to shoot anyone who looks like trouble or who might be a leader in the attempted escape.

To understand the desperation of the Gazans, it helps to have actually visited this overgrown slum town, a ramshackle jungle of pot-holed streets.  The Israelis have tried hard to stunt the economic growth of the city through refusal to allow imports, and placing obstacles in the path of development projects like the port, the airport and a casino resort.  Ironically, a retired IDF intelligence officer of my acquaintance had the security contracts for these projects but Israeli national policy kept them from being built.

The Israeli-Palestinian struggle is a tribal war, a struggle for the same narrow strip of land between two peoples who hate each other.  In this struggle The Israelis have the US on their side and the Palestinians have the Islamic World.

There is no end in sight.  pl  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/toll-for-gaza-protests-rises-to-59-as-baby-dies-from-tear-gas-with-more-protests-expected/2018/05/15/ee4156f8-57c6-11e8-9889-07bcc1327f4b_story.html?utm_term=.8ed57d5afdcf

IMO there will be no peace for Israel ... Republished 14 May, 2018

Trump thinks he is a friend of Israel?  He has just screwed Israel out of any chance for a peace agreement with the Palestinians.  Urged on by the arch Zionists like Kushner he came to believe that the status of Jerusalem was the Gordian Knot blocking movement toward a peace settlement.  In the best "Art of the Deal" fashion he has now acted to remove this issue frozen in amber from the negotiating table in the belief that this will restore fluidity to the situation.  IMO he is wrong.  This is not a business deal.

The difficulty is that Al-Quds (The Holy) i.e., Jerusalem  means far, far more to the Muslims than he understands, or that anyone of significance in the US government evidently understands.  Jerusalem is for the Muslims God's Holy City, as holy in its utter possession by God as Mecca and Medina.  Have we missed the fact that the overseas intervention force of the IRGC is called the "Quds" force?  The Palestinian brigade  fighting alongside the SAA is the "Quds Brigade."  Years ago I was in Riyadh with a delegation of rich American Jews, all of them "soft" Zionists.  At the US Embassy they asked if Saudis cared about Jerusalem and were confidently told that the Saudi interest was minimal.  We went to the foreign ministry where I told the  minister, Saud al-Feisal, what had been said at the embassy.   He grew visibly agitated and told us that that was certainly not the case and that his family and government would NEVER abandon the holy city.  On the same trip we were hosted for dinner and a chat by the "Young President's Club" (whatever it was called).  These were  relatively young men who had made a lot of money even by Saudi standards  At the panel discussion after the meal I raised the same point.  Several cried out "what did you say?"  So, I repeated it in Arabic.  There was a moment of silence and then a mighty tirade from around the room as these billionaires made it clear that they would never accept that their government should give up the right of the 'Umma" to Jerusalem.

The Catholic Church believes in patience as a virtue.  It continues to discreetly maintain that the UN Partition of Palestine in 1947 is the only legal status established for Jerusalem.  That partition made Jerusalem an international city under UN control.  The Church will maintain that position while waiting to see if Israel lasts as a country for more than a couple of hundred years.

So now we will see - Will there be violence?  Will the Arab states adjust their relations with regard to Israel?  Will Turkey call for action against Israel at the OIC meeting that Erdogan has called for at mid-month?  Will the Muslims ever trust the US again to act as an honest broker?  Dennis Ross badly damaged our credibility.  Is it completely gone - perhaps forever?  Will the Muslims accept Zionist possession of the Holy City?  We will see.  pl

“The IDF Is the Most Moral Army in the World…” What happened to Human Rights? by Decameron

Hypocrites.   A powerful word.  What would the US Congress do and say if IRGC snipers had gunned down some Friday-anti-government protesters in Kazeroun last week?   How about if the incident was in Moscow? Or even Venezuela? Or in any country on the enemy’s list of either the neo-conservatives or the “humanitarian interventionist” mafia (the two of which are, by the way, nearly indistinguishable in their list of desired regime changes).  But in Gaza, Palestinians are being killed and wounded with impunity.  And US institutions are silent.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said, “The IDF is the most moral army in the world.”  Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials repeat the meme over and over.

Maybe some of SST’s readers personally know the IDF.  This writer does, and I know that some peace advocates in Israel, including Uri Avnery, are veterans of the IDF, air force, IC, border guard and the like.  But the regime in Israel is celebrating the “hunting of humans”, and continues through yesterday to gun down protesters.  Actually, according to Palestinian legislator and leader, Hanan Ashrawi, Israeli regimes have been shooting down Palestinians who have protested the seizure of their land for 42 years

Enough. Two articles excerpted below speak for themselves.

CNN (April 11 2018) - With international criticism of Israel's response to the Gaza protests growing, video emerged on Monday appearing to show an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) sniper shooting a Palestinian man standing near the border fence.

After the Palestinian man falls to the ground, soldiers are heard cheering in the background. One yells, "What a legendary film!"

The video, which circulated on social media, appears to be through a scope, showing the Gaza border fence and a field behind it.

The sniper is heard discussing the shot with another soldier nearby.

"When he stops, you take him down," the soldier says. "Are you on him?"

"I can't fire because of the barbed wire," the sniper responds a short time later.

"Take out the one in the pink," the other soldier says after a few moments.

IDF soldiers cheer as you hear the gunshot and see the Palestinian man fall.

"Son of a bitch!" one soldier, who appears to have recorded the video, yells. "What a legendary film! I haven't seen this kind of thing for a long time."

"The sniper deserves a medal, and the photographer deserves a demotion," said Israeli Defence Minister Israeli Avigdor Liberman, speaking Tuesday afternoon.

"The IDF is the most moral army in the world, but…”

[The IDF claims that this video was taken in December 2017, not in the recent protests.  But at least 35 people have been killed, according to news reports, since the Land Day marches began on March 30th.  The dead include a fourteen year old boy and journalists, who were clearly identified as PRESS]

Ahmad Tibi, a politician from the Joint Arab List party in Israel's Knesset, said on Facebook: "The crime and the evidence. The hunting of humans, and the gratification the sniper derives from the ruthless murder of an unarmed Palestinian civilian in Gaza. A video recorded by a soldier of the Israeli occupation forces who stood next to the sniper. Difficult to watch."

Israel's Minister of Education and leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party, Naftali Bennett, defended the soldier's actions.

"Seriously do you know what they were doing three minutes before, two minutes before?" he said on Israel Army Radio Tuesday morning.

"Maybe they lost a friend a day before…. I stand behind IDF soldiers. They are guarding us, and we should get back to that a basic understanding which somehow got lost."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/10/middleeast/video-israeli-sniper-intl/index.html

 

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) (April 27 2018) - Since the protests began on March 30, 2018, CPJ has documented at least 14 journalists hit by live rounds fired by Israel Defense Forces two of whom-- Yaser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein--later died from their injuries.

https://cpj.org/2018/04/seven-palestinian-journalists-injured-as-gaza-prot.php 

Population parity in the Holy Land

 

"The Israeli political right was caught off guard by the surprising official figures presented on March 26 at the Knesset by a representative of the Civil Administration, the army unit coordinating the Israeli government’s activities in the occupied territories. The representative indicated that the number of Jews and Arabs living under Israeli control in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean had reached parity at 6.5 million for each side.

Over the years, the Zionist left kept warning about the prospect of a Jewish minority in Israel controlling a Palestinian majority, with only a small number of them enjoying full civil rights. Yet the Israeli right kept dismissing these warnings. It countered with imaginary data showing that some 3 million Palestinians live in Israel and the occupied territories, compared with 6.5 million Jews. However, from the moment the true numbers were communicated to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee with the new data last week by the Israel Defense Forces, the leadership of the political right can no longer argue that political bias is skewing the figures. It is now forced to confront the figures."  Al-Monitor

-------------

 This is really bad news for the Zionist Project.

In what the Palestinians call the Naqba (disaster) in 1947-48 masses of Palestinian Arabs fled the Holy Land from fear of Zionist massacre.  There were many such massacres.  They were carried out by Stern Gang and Irgun terrorists with the specific  intent and purpose of causing panic and flight of the Arab population.  Hundreds of thousans fled into the surrounding countries or overseas neve rto return.

This process caused what can now be seen as a temporary but extended  population majority for the Jewish population between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.  That is evidently is ended.  The much higher birth rate among the Arabs has made up the lost demographic "ground." 

This phenomenon has a lot of implications for Israel's destiny.  Among them:

1.  The Gazans now being openly and gleefully killed during mass demonstrations are bound to be seen by the rest of the Arab population in greater Israel as brothers being butchered by an enemy who no longer have an "edge" in numbers. Will they not now be encouraged in greater boldness?

2. Will Israelis not be downcast and will they not seek to emigrate rather than live with this situation, one that will surely become yet more unfavorable to the Jews?

3.  Will this discourage Western Jews to make Aliyah (immigration) to Israel?

4.  Will Saudi Arabia under MBS continue to see Israel as a winner and will the kingdom continue its policies of a secret embrace of the Jewish state and abandonment of the Palestinian Arabs?

5.  Will DJT see Israel as a "wasting asset" and a "sunk cost?"

6.  Will the hard right in Israel return to contemplation of mass deportations?  pl 

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/04/israel-palestinians-demography-jordan-river-apartheid.html?utm_campaign=20180404&utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Daily%20Newsletter

Giraldi on the Good Friday massacre at Gaza

 

"If you want to understand what the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States really means consider the fact that Israeli Army snipers shot dead seventeen unarmed and largely peaceful Gazan demonstrators on Good Friday without a squeak coming out of the White House or State Department. Some of the protesters were shot in the back while running away, while another 1,000 Palestinians were wounded, an estimated 750 by gunfire, the remainder injured by rubber bullets and tear gas.

The offense committed by the Gazan protesters that has earned them a death sentence was coming too close to the Israeli containment fence that has turned the Gaza strip into the world’s largest outdoor prison. President Donald Trump’s chief Middle East negotiator David Greenblatt described the protest as “a hostile march on the Israel-Gaza border…inciting violence against Israel.” And Nikki Haley at the U.N. has also used the U.S. veto to block any independent inquiry into the violence, demonstrating once again that the White House team is little more than Israel’s echo chamber. America’s enabling of the brutal reality that is today’s Israel makes it fully complicit in the war crimes carried out against the helpless and hapless Palestinian people.

So where was the outrage in the American media about the massacre of civilians? Characteristically, Israel portrays itself as somehow a victim and the U.S. media, when it bothers to report about dead Palestinians at all, picks up on that line. The Jewish State is portrayed as always endangered and struggling to survive even though it is the nuclear armed regional superpower that is only threatened because of its own criminal behavior. And even when it commits what are indisputable war crimes like the use of lethal force against an unarmed civilian population, the Jewish Lobby and its media accomplices are quick to take up the victimhood refrain."  Giraldi 

https://southfront.org/philip-giraldi-special-relationship-born-hell/

The fate of Jerusalem is not a Manhattan real estate deal

 

"... we have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table.  We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don't even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel," Trump tweeted. "We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?" CNN

 

"We are not taking a position on any of the final status issues including the final boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem," Trump said last month as he made his Jerusalem announcement. "Those questions are up to the parties involved. The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides."

Trump's statement at the announcement was intended to reassure Palestinians and the broader Arab and Muslim world that the US was not giving away control of Jerusalem to Israel or forsaking Palestinian claims to the holy city."  CNN

 

---------------

 

DJT's statements concerning the effect of his recognition of the Holy City as Israel's capital are nonsensical.   The Israelis, the Palestinians, the Europeans and every Muslim in the world understand that by taking Jerusalem "off the table" DJT has effectively eliminated the possibility of a negotiation over the city that would in any way relate to the real world.

 

Evidently DJT thinks that an issue like this that concerns the essential identity and self image of millions and millions of Muslims can be handled as though the adversaries in this dispute are business people in a contract discussion.  In that setting a feature of the proposed contract that cannot be agreed on is removed from consideration so that closure can occur on the rest.

 

Well, pilgrims,  the ownership of Jerusalem is not a hotel or skyscraper deal.  Trump's evident belief that the US has hired the Palestinian people through USAID projects and budget support is altogether incorrect.  His belief that the Palestinians are effectively his employees and therefore must settle for a Bantustan created out of some part of what is left without Jerusalem is delusional.

 

The Israelis and other Zionists, like Kushner and Ivanka, have long held the Palestinians in contempt as inferior beings fit only to be cheap labor in the Israeli economy.  That they could have sold that idea to Trump is the measure of the man.  pl

http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/02/politics/trump-palestinian-aid/index.html

NOT SERVING AMERICA'S INTERESTS: DECAMERON

12/18/17  UN Security Council debating and probably voting today (Monday) on resolution to nullify the Trump declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

From DW (Deutsche Welle Akademie) this morning:

“The United Nations Security Council will on Monday vote on a draft resolution earlier next week that would consider any changes to the status of Jerusalem legally invalid and call on any such changes to be reversed.

“While not naming the US specifically, the Egyptian-drafted text, seen by AFP and Reuters news agencies, is a significant repudiation from the international community of US President Donald Trump's decision earlier this month to recognize the holy city as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv.

“The draft resolution states that "any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded in compliance with relevant resolutions of the Security Council."

“The draft also demands that states refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem in accordance with prior Security Council resolutions that declare any changes in the status of Jerusalem as a city divided between Israelis and Palestinians to be violations international law."

http://www.dw.com/en/un-to-vote-on-resolution-rejecting-us-jerusalem-decision/a-41826293

UN debate comes after the OIC, the Arab League, 14 current members of the UNSC (individually) rejected the unilateral pronouncement on Jerusalem by Trump, and after mass demonstrations from Amman to Kuala Lumpur.  Blood is again flowing in the streets of Palestine with Israeli forces using live ammunition.  Liberal Zionists comfort themselves saying that the reaction is not as bad as they expected.  Too soon. -- Decameron

 

Jerusalem update - 10 December 2017

The US decision to give Israel the title deed to ALL of Jerusalem without diplomatic recompense will look worse and worse as time passes.  The street demonstrations breaking out in places like Beirut and Amman are just the beginning of the process of condemnation.  Almost every country in Europe has condemned the action.  The Arab League has condemned the action.  This will put the Arab states in the position of having to make basic decisions about their relations with Israel (Egypt and Jordan) and the US.  In the case of Jordan and Egypt large amounts of free money from the US and Saudi Arabia will be at stake but ... Russia, China and many European companies stand in the wings waiting to expand their influence and activity.  At the same time Sultan Tayyip Erdogan has invited the OIC to convene in Turkey to consider the Islamic World's reaction to Trump's gift to Israel.  Trump apparently decided to do this on the basis of the counsel of his Zionist son-in law acting on behalf of Likudniks who IMO want nothing more than an Israel from the sea to the Jordan River that is Arab free except for a suitable population of helots.   It has been interesting this Sunday morning to watch Jake Tapper ask Nikki Haley how it is that this land deal will promote a settlement.  She smiled a secretive smile redolent of private meetings and knowledge.   We have spoken to both sides she said and you will see that we have restored motion to the process.  Tapper pressed her on this and she could only say that Tapper will understand what a great policy change this is.  He was unconvinced.  IMO Trump, urged on by Kushner, believes that the Palestinians, have no recourse and that having been beaten like dogs will accept anything.  pl 

 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/239095

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5164435/Turkish-President-Erdogan-calls-Israel-terrorist-state.html

 

More on Kushner and company.

First thing to understand is Trump's "Peace Initiative" is a sham. The only thing he is trying to do is to keep the region from exploding. He is under pressure from the Arab countries to do something to make life better for the Palestinians - not necessarily to get them their own state. The Trump administration does not want protests erupting in Arab states because the Israelis do something dumb to the Palestinians. Between Jason Greenblatt, David Friedman and Kushner the information Trump gets on Israel is very heavily skewed. Friedman especially but also Greenblatt to a lesser degree strongly favor the concept of the Greater Israel. While not advocating a complete return of the Kingdom of David, they strongly believe parts of Jordan, Lebanon, the Sinai and Syria BELONG to Israel as G-d promised. I've attended numerous Jewish events in New York City where Friedman and Greenblatt have spoken and they do not hide in any way their dreams for Israel. Israel is getting stronger by the day compared with it's rivals in the region. This strength eliminates the need for any concessions to the Palestinians. For the foreseeable future there will be no Palestinian state, no citizenship for West Bank Palestinians etc. The U.S. declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel even though our embassy is in Tel Aviv sounds like a Trump engineered compromise that will mean absolutely nothing to further a peace agreement. For Israel when they say Jerusalem they mean the territory right up to the border of Ramallah and including Maale Adumim whose municipal boundaries extend all the way to Hebron - a huge chunk of the West Bank. Trump would have pissed off the Palestinians far less if he had just said he was moving the embassy to West Jerusalem. This comment “If you want to look for a silver lining, this administration has been accumulating pro-Israeli credentials,” the former Israeli official said. “When they table a deal, it will be very hard for this [Netanyahu] administration to say no.” Whoever made this comment really will not admit how Israel negotiates. They will graciously say thank you when they get concessions but with their next breath will ask " how about this and that". They will continue to collect concessions until they get 100% of what they want.  jdledell

----------

This was a draft comment from jdledell.  He has great personal knowledge of the subject.  pl

"And justice for all..." Not so fast, Palestinians!

 

"He suggested that Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas' latest speech at the UN General Assembly, in which he suggested taking the issue of Israeli settlements to the International Criminal Court, may have been behind the US stance.

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat has written to the US administration calling the move "unacceptable, an escalatory step and a political decision that threatens to end the US role in the peace process", Malki said.

He said the PA leadership would meet after Monday to discuss its response."  dailymail

------------

Well, it's true.  The Palestinians in Palestine are not Americans, and no one promised them "justice for all,"  Nevertheless it is ironic that the United States in its majesty should threaten their semi-diplomatic office in Washington with closure because they might seek justice before the International Criminal Court in the Hague. 

They have hinted in the past that they might do this over the issue of the lawfulness of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the individual criminal liability of Israeli officials for such things as their wars against the Palestinians in Gaza.

IMO this US law requiring the closing of the office was enacted by the hirelings in Congress and signed into law by Obama as a demonstration of what Bibi said was true when he stated that "the Americans are easily pushed."  pl 

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-5095653/PLO-presence-Washington-threatened-Palestinians.html 

 

Bad news in Beirut for Israel

 

"On Wednesday, Hamas’s deputy political chief Saleh al-Arouri met with Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in Lebanon’s Beirut.

The two sides discussed the recent developments and situation in Gaza in wake of the recent Israeli actions in the the region and emphasized the need of solidarity and unity in front of the Zionist aggression.

They also discussed the Palestinian national reconciliation and the situation in the region.

Narsallah gave condolences for a number of dead Palestinian resistance member by Israel army attack on their tunnel east of Khan Yunis, in an area south of Gaza strip.

In this regard, Hasan Nasrallah spoke with Ramadan Shala, a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement, and gave condolences for the dead resistance members during the recent Israeli attack.

Condemning this action, Nasrallah praised the resistance and sacrifices of the resistance forces in Gaza, especially members of the PIJ."   Islamic World News and South Front

----------------

This was not a pointless "grip and grin."  As the Israelis well know Hizballah holds their population centers at risk in what amounts to a counter-value targeting program.  They have never devised a response to that since they fear to fight Hizballah again on the ground and  general bombing against the Lebanese and their economy will not impress Hizballah.

Therefore, a growing unity of purpose and sympathy between Shia Hizballah  and a largely Sunni and re-united Palestinian movement is bad news for the Israelis.

The tighter that bond grows the more likely it will be that a renewed Israeli war against Gaza's population could trigger a massive Hizballah barrage against the northern half of Israel.  pl 

https://southfront.org/hezbollah-and-hamas-leaders-met-in-lebanons-beirut/

US policy in Islamdom is a chaos. Part 1

The accompanying map does not include India as a  country deeply affected by Islam and Islamicate civilization.  IMO that is a defect.  The terms "Islam," Islamdom," and "Islamicate Civilization." were clarified by the great historian of Islam, Marshell Hodgson.

This is my editorial opinion.

 ------------

 Syria.  The US persists in its nonsensical policy of regime change in Syria.  McGurk, the State Department lead in Syrian affairs is evidently one of the leaders of this foolishness.  The Syrian Government's forces have regained control of most of the country with the help of their Russian, Iranian, Hizbullah, Palestinian and Christian militia allies.   In spite of this the US MSM studiously ignores the efforts of the SAA and allies (R+6).  They are simply never mentioned.  They have been edited out of the US narrative.  Whether DJT has a side agreement with Putin over Syria seems not to affect the MSM narrative at all.  McGurk's statement that the Syrian government would not be allowed into Raqqa City is an announcement of an extra-legal interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign UN member state.  Do we intend to hold Raqqa forever and to what purpose?

Iraq.  In Iraq we have for the moment abandoned the interests of the KRG in its evident desire for independence from Baghdad.  We have done this in spite of outrage expressed by our foreign policy mentors in Israel.  The Israelis are, of course, the chief sponsors of Kurdish statehood.   The Israelis follow a consistent pattern of policy of disrupting surrounding states with a view to reducing them to pastoral rug bazaars.  Our loyalty to the Baghdad government is amusing because it is virtually inevitable that the Shia run government of Iraq will eventually align itself with Iran and ask the US to withdraw from the country.

Iran.  DJT's decision to stop certifying Iranian compliance with JCPOA is merely a reflection of Zionist influence over the president and the hyper-belligerent attitudes of Mattis, and McMaster.  They are revealed as more neocon than the organizational neocons and largely in league with them.  US abandonment of JCPOA will lead to direct policy conflicts with major European allies and the loss of business for American companies like Boeing.   In the end this direction may lead to a US-Iran War as a culmination of Israeli machinations in Washington.

Saudi Arabia.  Trump prostrated himself and his country before the Saudis and the leaders of the Islamic World.  The Saudis expect that this was more than a symbolic and empty gesture.  Saudi Arabia is a weak state in actual capabilities in the world  It is a state that the US will not need much longer as a source of petroleum.  The feebleness of the Saudi government is demonstrated by the ineffectual nature of its war in Yemen,  This genocide is being aided and abetted by the US government as part of its cartoon-like conception of basic social and political structures in Islamdom.  The Saudi government grows ever weaker as   a result of this war and decline in its monetized assets because of a growing surplus of petroleum in the world.  The Saudi princelings are not worth the effort being put into keeping them happy.

 Qatar.  US military operations in the ME are centered around the command and control facility at Al-Obeid in Qatar as well as the air base itself.  The air base is useful but is only one of many used by the US in the ME.  By siding with the Saudis DJT has de-stabilized the US relationsip with Qatar and is driving the Qataris in the direction of an pro-Iranian stance.  Would the US fight to keep al-Obeid?  The Saudis won't do it for the US.

Afghanistan.  DJT made a bad decision in deciding to persist in fighting to establish a coherent government in the country.  The aggressive and successful efforts of the taliban in the last week demonstrate the weakness of a government that has a negligible GDP and no ability to fund its own armed forces.  The defeat of that government is a certainty  when the US eventually withdraws it forces.  The various Afghan peoples are inherently unsuitable material for the formation of a coherent state.  DJT's flawed decision was based on the advice of his national security team.  McMaster, Mattis and Dunford are too powerful.  The US government is inherently a civilian government.  There are too many military men at the top just now.

Try to think past the MIC cult belief and the absurd conception of a US Deep State.

To be continued ... 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Hodgson

Phase Three of Operation Big Dawn - TTG

“BEIRUT, LEBANON (2:30 P.M.) – The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has kicked off the third phase of Operation Big Dawn, tonight, a source told Al-Masdar News.

According to the Syrian military, the army is going to push from the Hamimah area of southeast Homs towards the border-city of Albukamal in the Deir Ezzor Governorate.

While the Syrian Army has not yet stormed the T-2 Pumping Station, they have begun firing a barrage of missiles and artillery shells towards the Islamic State’s positions.

In the coming hours, the Russian Air Force will begin pounding the T-2 Pumping Station, while the Syrian Army’s infantry storms the Islamic State’s last positions in the Hamimah area.”  (Published on 16/09/2017 by Al Masdar News)

*******************

I think the next goal of this offensive is to take the entire Euphrates valley from Deir Ezzor to Al Bukamal. The drive towards the T2 pumping station is only one step in this offensive. SAA and allied forces have linked with Iraqi forces along the border and are coordinating their dual pushes toward Al Bukamal and Al Qaim. IS reactions to these moves now seem to be limited to spoiling raids. A recent IS “counteroffensive” towards Hamimah ended in failure with half their vehicles destroyed by Russian and Syrian airstrikes. The IS is sucking bilge water.

At Deir Ezzor, the SAA has secured the area around the airport. The last pocket of IS jihadis are now surrounded with their backs to the Euphrates. Their only choices are to swim for it or wait for the loving embrace of Issam Zahreddine’s mighty arms. Two large transport planes have already landed with supplies for SAA forces. More are sure to come. 

Saker Island has been captured clearing the way for an SAA river crossing. A Russia24 video shows two pontoon sections being launched in the river and possibly being used to ferry R+6 troops and technicals across the river. The video also shows an old PTS-2 amphibious cargo carrier carrying troops. My guess is that this was part of the operation to secure Saker Island rather than the crossing of the Euphrates. 

However, I do see  the establishment of a functioning pontoon bridge and ferry service to move a large force to the east bank of the Euphrates taking place soon.  I envision a major R+6 advance south on both sides of the Euphrates towards Al Mayadin rather than an R+6 thrust due east to cut off and further YPG/SDF southerly advance. There are reports of the ISIS Hunters already sending a force across the river. Eyes on the prize, boys, eyes on the prize.

TTG

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/breaking-syrian-army-launches-third-phase-operation-big-dawn-deir-ezzor/

https://southfront.org/syrian-and-iraqi-forces-planning-joint-attack-on-isis-border-strongholds-of-al-qaim-and-al-bukamal/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/first-seen-footage-syrian-army-crossing-euphrates-river/

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/breaking-elite-syrian-troops-reach-east-bank-euphrates-deir-ezzor/

The Dream of Kurdistan leads where exactly?

The Iraqi Kurdish parliament has voted for a referendum on the 25th of this month.  The present Barzani leader of that parliament says that they might postpone that a bit if the somewhat frightened concerned powers propose an actual alternative date, one that is not just diplomatic pettifoggery and empty rhetoric.

The Iraqi parliament and Iraq's Shia Arab president, Abadi, have made it very clear that the state of Iraq will not accept a vote in Kurdistan for an independent Kurdish state.  The history of Iraq as a country from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the present is an endless series of iterations of resistance to Baghdad's authority followed by various combinations of Kurdish factions cooperating with the government against the other Kurdish factions.  This usually took the shape of the Talabani Kurds and the Barzani Kurds thinking of themselves as two sides of a triangular struggle with the government.  This moiety in Kurdish society seems eternal.

 Complicating the present situation is the nature of the Baghdad government which is now Shia while 90% of the Iraqi Kurds are thought to be Sunni Muslims.

A serious attempt to separate Iraqi Kurdistan from Iraq proper seems likely to lead to yet another war between Baghdad and the Kurds.

Iran, Turkey, Syria, the US are all opposed to the idea of an independent Kurdish state carved out of the existing countries of the region.  Only the Kurds and the Israelis favor the idea.  STT discussed their attitude in the wake of my piece "Is this what is driving US Kurdish policy?" on 12 September.   The Israeli attitude on this seems a part of their general policy and desire to foster enfeeblement of the countries of the region so as to have greater relative weight in the region's business.  pl

 

https://southfront.org/kurdistan-region-parliament-approves-independence-referendum-on-september-25/

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/iraqi-kurdistan-moves-forward-independence-referendum/

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/kurdish-authorities-playing-fire-iraqi-prime-minister-abadi/

 

Did Trump Get it Right by Accident? by Publius Tacitus

Following up on Colonel Lang's post regarding the Saudi Arabian/Egyptian debacle in trying to bully Qatar (please see Little Qatar has bested the GCC and Egypt. Mufaja'a!), there are two other major developments. First, Donald Trump reportedly has ordered the CIA to pull the plug on arming and training Islamic radicals bent on overthrowing Bashar Al Assad:

The program was a central plank of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to step aside, but even its backers have questioned its efficacy once Russia deployed forces in Syria two years later. Preceding the CIA program was a Pentagon-led effort which was criticized by Foreign Policy for costing $500 million without yielding tangible results.

Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia after Trump's July 7 meeting with Putin at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. It may also signal a lack of capability as well as desire in Washington to take steps to remove Assad from power in Syria. Officials told the Washington Post that Trump made the decision to scrap the CIA program nearly a month ago, after an Oval Office meeting with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

After the Trump-Putin meeting, the United States and Russia announced an agreement to back a new cease-fire in southwest Syria, along the Jordanian border and adjoining the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights, where many of the CIA-backed rebels have long operated. Trump described the limited cease-fire deal as one of the benefits of a constructive working relationship with Moscow. The ending of the CIA program was not a condition of the cease-fire negotiations according to officials.

Second, our "ally" Turkey has ratted out the location of US secret military bases in Syria and Iraq:

"Has Obama betrayed Israel?" Henry Siegman

 

"Is it not high time for Israel’s public to wake up to Netanyahu’s deceptions? The countries that voted for this Security Council resolution are not anti-Semitic outliers. They included every major democratic country that belongs to the Security Council. Not one of them voted for the Zionism is Racism resolution, to which Netanyahu so demagogically compared this resolution. Are UK Prime Minister Theresa May or German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose foreign minister warmly welcomed the Security Council’s action, anti-Semites? It was only yesterday that Netanyahu boasted of his friendship with Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, who voted for the resolution. Are they now Israel’s enemies?

If there has been a betrayal in this latest chapter of America’s relations with Israel, it is Netanyahu who has betrayed President Obama."  Henry Siegman

------------------

I used to work with Siegman in his peace mongering expeditions across the ME and NA.  I have a lot of respect for him.  He is an ordained rabbi, whatever ordained means in this context.  He was a US Army chaplain in the Korean War.  He volunteered for deployment to Korea with the Eighth Army.  He has relentlessly pursued justice for the Palestinians because as an ardent Zionist he thinks that if there is not justice Israel is doomed in the long run.  I haven't talked to him for a long time but this is vintage Siegman.

IMO there will be neither peace nor justice in the Holy Land.  IMO there is not enough good will between the sides to make a peace in which neither side can claim to have vanquished the other.  I have been saying that that for twenty years or so.  There was a Camelot moment when Ehud Barak was PM and Teddy Kolleck was mayor of Jerusalem when it seemed to be just barely possible that there might be a peace without victors, but the revisionist Zionists like Bibi and Naftali Bennett rallied and that moment passed. 

I was recently tasked by someone I trusted with the crime of "approaching anti-Semitism"  in my 2 November, 2016 post. "Marc Rich, Clinton and Israel."

"A plague o'both their houses."  pl  

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/has-obama-betrayed-israel-the-un-18872

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/11/httpnypostcom20160117after-pardoning-criminal-marc-rich-clintons-made-millions-off-friends.html

The "White Helmets" are CIA run Obama propaganda

 

" ... behind the lofty rhetoric about solidarity and the images of heroic rescuers rushing in to save lives is an agenda that aligns closely with the forces from Riyadh to Washington clamoring for regime change. Indeed, The Syria Campaign has been pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria that would require at least “70,000 American servicemen” to enforce, according to a Pentagon assessment, along with the destruction of government infrastructure and military installations. There is no record of a no-fly zone being imposed without regime change following —which seems to be exactly what The Syria Campaign and its partners want.

“For us to control all the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia. That’s a pretty fundamental decision that certainly I’m not going to make,” said Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee this month."  Max Blumenthal

---------------

 Dunford should be careful if he wants to keep his job until retirement.  John McCain immediately and angrily denied that that a NFZ in Syria would inevitably mean war with Russia.

I agree with Dunford. 

The wall to wall R2P and Ziocon campaign to destroy the Government of Syria is in high gear.  Unfortunately for the R2Pers, Government of Israel and Ziocons the rebels are losing the war.  The Borgist press talk endlessly of air strikes in Aleppo as part of the propaganda meme, and do their best to ignore the daily disintegration of the jihadi rebels in East Aleppo. 

The SAA, Palestinian militias long resident in Syria, Hizbullah from both Lebanon and Iraq, Iranian troops and the Aleppo Kurds in the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood are systematically disassembling the jihadi pocket in East Aleppo.

The more that progresses the more the IO war for American public acquiescence ramps up.

The "White Helmets" are reputed to be in line for a Nobel Peace Prize.  pl      

http://www.alternet.org/world/inside-shadowy-pr-firm-thats-driving-western-opinion-towards-regime-change-syria

"We're proud of that!" You are?

 

In last night's verbal savagery in Brooklyn there were several striking moments.

Hillary Clinton's pandering to the supposed "toughness" of the denizens of New York City was pathetic in its demonstration of her universal appeals to any group that might ever have thought itself wronged.  Well, pilgrims, I suppose we expect that of her now.

But the very "best" was the moment frozen in time for me in which Sanders, in the sure knowledge that this would hurt him politically, told the audience that the 10,000 Palestinians wounded and 1500 Palestinian dead at Gaza in 2014 was a "disproportionate response" to the garage built rockets fired into Israel from Gaza.

A voice in the crowd then cried out "We are proud of that!"  The voice seemed to be that of a woman.  My wife thinks it was a woman.

She is proud of that?  I can understand that one might think this butchery was necessary, but how can a human, any human, be proud of something like that?

Is there anything that could be done to the Palestinians that the voice in the crowd would not be proud of?  Please tell me that we did not understand what she said.  pl  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Israel%E2%80%93Gaza_conflict

Experiencing the Nemesis of hubric exceptionalism‑Who are we now? ORIGIN

 

The [George W. Bush] aide, [Narcissus],  … said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html

           For the last few years I have been trying unsuccessfully to discern some consistent, organizing theme to American foreign policy in the supposedly post Cold War Era.  A few facts that appear to be true relating to the MENA have really bothered me because of their contradictory nature.  Recently, one of the members of this Committee posted a serious question for the Committee he had picked up somewhere else on the Internet. 

           The question is as follows:

Just trying to keep my scorecard straight. Let’s see. The Americans are using a Turkish airbase to bomb ISIS and protect our allies the Kurds.

 The Turks are bombing our allies the Kurds while we are using their airbase.  The Americans are supplying human shields for terrorist in Syria who are being bombed by the Russians.

On the Iraqi side, American air power is being used to protect and support the new Iranian puppet regime in Iraq installed by the Americans after the gulf war.  The Mahdi army that we fought in Sadr City are now advanced element of the Iraqi army we are protecting.

Officers of “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” the Iranians are standing next to Iraqi officers who are standing next to American officers all cooperating to kill ISIS soldiers who have been receiving weapons from Americans through American proxies we consider”moderate rebels”.

Meanwhile, our “enemies” the Iranians are supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen while our “allies” the people who destroyed the trade centers have involved the U.S. in yet another unauthorized war by aggressively attacking the houthis who were helping the U. S. fight Al Queda in Yemen before .

In the meanwhile “moderate rebels” are undoubtedly being furnished weapons capable of bringing down Russian war planes. So while Russia is bombing ISIS, we are encouraging our proxies to shoot down their planes.

Will someone tell me whose side we are on today?

Linda Lau on the state of Palestinian affairs

October 1, 2015

 

 Yesterday Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas gave his annual speech before the UN General Assembly. It was rumored in advance that he would have a big announcement to make.  What he said was that the Palestinians would no longer abide by the 1993 Oslo Accords since Israel was not living up to the agreement. It was ostensibly a major announcement since the agreement involved security cooperation, collection of taxes and other areas. However, he did not present any sort of plan to back up his statement. Immediately after his speech, the Palestinians saw their flag raised at the UN rose garden alongside the 193 other countries of the world. Since the PA was granted observer status by a UN resolution, it was entitled to have its flag flown. Also, since 2012 the PA had been working diligently to gain membership in various UN organizations such as the International Criminal Court. The Vatican has recognized a Palestinian state and several European parliaments have passed resolutions just short of this.

 

The reality, though, is different. The world has turned its attention to other conflicts in the Middle East such as Syria and Yemen and has pretty much forgotten the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  Some analysts even argue that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu  for example, has still come out of the Iranian nuclear deal with half of what he wanted – he is no longer under any pressure to resume negotiations with the Palestinians since he has created Iran as a huge threat for the world to concentrate on.

 

US Secretary of State said weakly yesterday that he still believes a two state solution was possible. An Israeli scholar Meron Benvenisti, back in the 1970’s and early 1980’s had an imaginary clock that he set to reflect the possibility of a two state solution. I don’t recall that he moved it to exactly midnight but certainly very close. This was at a time when Jerusalem was governed as a united city, admittedly by an Israeli mayor. Palestinians still held most of their land in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank although the settlements were expanding. Israel largely governed through Palestinian mayors of the various municipalities. Conditions were far from perfect and Israeli governance was onerous. But, in 1993 came the Oslo Accords. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and PLO leader Yasir Arafat shook hands in the Rose Garden of the White House with a beaming President Clinton looking on. The Accords would have made a viable, though not ideal, solution for a Palestinian state. Shortly thereafter, Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated. No other Israeli prime minister since that time has had the will or the power to carry out the accords. Some steps have been taken in terms of security cooperation, but the Israelis have ignored even this whenever they chose to.

 

The Palestinians for their part have never gotten past the Arafat generation. Abbas learned his skills at the side of Arafat and those skills did not involve being the president of something like the PA which is supposed to become a country.  His main focus is ensuring the continuation of his leadership regardless of the numerous ministries and organizations that have been created.  Since he is 80 years old, there is talk of a successor. However, there is little hope of one emerging under current circumstances. There is a critical need for fresh ideas and new ways of governing, but without a chance to develop whether from civil society or charitable organizations (like the one founded by Salam Fayyad that Abbas shut down) or some other venue, there will be serious infighting and a continuation of the same style of leadership.

 

 I believe that the clock is well past midnight in terms of allowing for a two state solution. The settlements are too large and too numerous. Infrastructure has been built that benefits only the settlers and the Palestinians are not even allowed to have access. Much Palestinian land in East Jerusalem has been confiscated and Israeli apartment buildings erected. The economy in the West Bank and Gaza has been nearly destroyed by the lack of ability to move goods and people across borders. Israel uses the tax revenues it collects to parcel out slowly, often for what it sees as good behavior and holds the PA responsible. The economy is seriously damaged.

 

So, the talk of negotiations for a two state solution simply allows Israel to  create more “facts on the ground and the world stands by and doesn’t watch.   

 

"1913 - Seeds of Conflict" NEH

"Government documents, newspaper accounts, and personal letters in five languages from the Turkish state archives provide new and fascinating insights into dramatic events that took place in Palestine just before the outbreak of World War I.

1913 Palestine is a multi-lingual, multi-cultural society. Muslims, Jews and Christians coexist in relative harmony and often gather together in the coffeehouses of Jerusalem. It is a time before Jerusalem’s Old City is segregated into separate ‘quarters’ for various groups. But after European Jewish migrants arrive, Ruhi al-Khalidi, Jerusalem’s representative to the Ottoman Parliament in

Istanbul, voices growing concerns about what he sees as their secret agenda to build a state. So does Albert Antebi, an Arab-speaking Sephardic Jew known as the Jewish “pasha,” who embraces economic and cultural Zionism, but fears the consequences of a Zionist land grab.

Meanwhile, Arthur Ruppin arrives from Germany to be the Zionist’s land agent and Khalil Sakakini returns from a trip to America filled with pride and optimism of a new Palestinian Arab identity. In 1913, growing tensions erupt into violence in the vineyard just outside Rehovot, leaving an Arab and Jew dead, and sowing the seeds for a century of conflict."  NEH

------------------

I watched this last night and recommend it.  It makes a nice companion piece for the book "A Peace To End All Peace" by David Fromkin.  pl  

http://1913seedsofconflict.com/

No Will to fight.

(The police fort at Latrun where the tiny Arab Legion stopped the Palmach in 1948)

"Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Iraqi forces "showed no will to fight" as the Islamic State militant group captured the city of Ramadi, and he rejected calls by Republican lawmakers to commit ground troops to the conflict.

"What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight," Carter said in a CNN interview that aired Sunday. "They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight. They withdrew from the site, and that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves.""  Washpost

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It is unfortunate that one must mention the ongoing debacle in Syria and Iraq on this day in which we remember the brave.

Secretary Carter correctly rebuked the Iraqis for their lack of determination at Ramadi.  As he says the Iraqi military and police forces outnumbered the attacking IS forces by 10 to 1 and were much more heavily armed and yet they still ran away as fast as their US provided ground vehicles and aircraft would carry them.  How many Iraqi citizens have since been killed at Ramadi by IS as a consequence of this cowardice?

The excuse provided by apologists for this Iraqi behavior is that the US did not bring down a ring of fire from the air so that the IS nasties would not have to be fought on the ground.

This is the Great Arabian Dream Machine at its best.  The GADM has been around a long time.  I remember that in the Israeli War of Independence it was widely said that John Glubb had betrayed the Arab cause and that this is why Israel came into being.  In fact, if it had not been for the small Jordanian Army of that time, the Arabs would have lost ALL of Palestine.  I have been repeatedly told by Arabs that America supplies the Israelis with equipment that is invulnerable to hostile fire and that this is why Arab armies have repeatedly been defeated by the Izzies.  I have been told that in 1967 it was American tank crews who defeated the Egyptian Army.  The number and baleful effect of such self deceptions seems endless.

In this case, the Iraq forces did not have as much air support as they would have wanted.  I think it is fair to point to the total lack of air support available to the much smaller IS force.

Carter is not "free lancing" in making critical statements about the Iraq forces.  He is not, in Ollie North's memorable phrase, "a loose cannon on the gun deck of the ship of state."  The Obama Administration is considering its options about Iraq.

Those who pay attention to such things in the US know that the plaintive appeals of the neocons (McCain, Graham, Pletka, Keane, AEI, the ISofW, etc.) for just a few thousand more advisers, etc., are really a ploy to seek full re-engagement in the anti-jihadi war, a re-engagement of hundreds of thousands of our soldiers and trillions more of our money.

This will not happen.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/05/24/defense-secretary-carter-iraqs-forces-showed-no-will-to-fight-islamic-state/?hpid=z1

Israel's New Justice Minister

 "On Monday she quoted this on her Facebook page:  “Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”

A week earlier, just before 17-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair was snatched and burned alive, Shaked wrote: “This is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. The reality is that this is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started it.”

So even before the boy died horribly she declared him to be the enemy, and afterwards, without any apparent hint of guilt or remorse, she was calling for the deaths of innocent women and their unborn babies."  The Independent

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So, this is what the Justice Ministry will be like in Natanyahu's  continuing government of Israel?  Well, she is honest.  No sniveling about two state solutions for her, she makes it clear that the Palestinians taken as  a whole are the enemy. 

This fits in nicely with the evident Israeli national intention of creating chaos and disruption in the rest of the ME while they shelter behind The Great Wall.  Now, it must be said that the rate of terrorist infiltration has dropped to next to nothing behind the shelter of The Great Wall.

Shaked was an "infantry instructor in the Golani Brigade."  I don't know what kind of class that would have been but I will wager that it was a popular event for the troops.  pl  

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-im-on-the-brink-of-burning-my-israeli-passport-9600165.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayelet_Shaked 

Francis the Good

Perhaps a tiny pebble in the ocean of international troubles: The Vatican has announced a treaty to recognize a Palestinian State. Details are sparse. Vatican statement.

If Pope Francis accomplished nothing else this would be a feather in his wings. 

It would be even better if the U.S. Catholic bishops got on the case and helped to shift the U.S. position. NYTimes Story

UPDATE: The view from Ramallah and Jerusalem: NYTimes

Margaret Steinfels

Today's Roundup

Adam L Silverman

I thought I'd start today's roundup with some Baltimore related news, since I posted on it last night and got so many thoughtful comments.

• Last September The Baltimore Sun published an in depth piece of reporting on how Baltimore's Police Department interacts with Baltimore's citizenry, especially its African American, Hispanic, and ethnic minority citizenry. Months before the death of Freddie Gray, the Sun's reported had dug out and made public what is the real drivers of the discontent, protests, demonstrations, and, unfortunately, riots we are witnessing now. It will also likely go down the memory hole as the attempt is made to make what is going on in Baltimore all about the violence and not about the root causes of the discontent.
• You may also want to take a look at a discussion of the Law Enforcement Officer's Bill of Rights as detailed in The Washington Post. I used to teach criminal and criminal justice - to cops! - and I had no idea this was a thing. I'm a big fan of civil servant protections to protect the civil servant from the politicians, but these seem to exist to just protect law enforcement from accountability.
• Since we're on policing, and its current discontents, one of the problems we've seen which came to light in Ferguson, MO is that the police were basically turned into tax collectors for the city. As we all know this has not worked out well... The original piece of long form investigative reporting on this was Radley Balko's article, also from last September. A new article in The Atlantic goes into just why Ferguson decided that the best use of its police force was to generate revenue. (h/t to Zandar)

Middle East/Middle East related:

• Last week Spiegel Online published an interesting piece about the creation of al Qaeda in Iraq, which is now doing business as ISIS. While I'm pretty sure it got mentioned here at SST somewhere, I missed it here, so figured I'd put it back up just to be thorough. The BLUF is that former Iraqi military intelligence officers decided to set up AQI/ISIS using religion as a front and motivator. That shouldn't be too surprising, but its well worth a read as it reinforces that the fight in Iraq, like Syria, and everywhere else is really about control of resources overlaid with religion.
• The UN's inquiry into the 2014 Israeli war in Gaza has begun to turn up some interesting findings. The Israelis are trying to get ahead of the UN on this. 
• And in case you missed it the second part of the Sheldon Adelson Primary for GOP nominees interested in becoming Israel's Deputy Prime Minister for American Administration was last weekend. Good times...

The ICC, Palestine and Israel

"Judge Kuniko Ozaki, a vice president of the ICC, said acceding to the treaty was just the first step for the Palestinians.

"As the Rome Statute today enters into force for the State of Palestine, Palestine acquires all the rights as well as responsibilities that come with being a State Party to the Statute. These are substantive commitments, which cannot be taken lightly," she said.

Rights group Human Rights Watch welcomed the development.

"Governments seeking to penalize Palestine for joining the ICC should immediately end their pressure, and countries that support universal acceptance of the court's treaty should speak out to welcome its membership," said Balkees Jarrah, international justice counsel for the group.

"What's objectionable is the attempts to undermine international justice, not Palestine's decision to join a treaty to which over 100 countries around the world are members.""  CNN

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The US has announced that it will oppose any war crimes actions against Israel at the ICC.  The US is not a signatory to the Rome Statute so such action will have to take the form of indirect pressure on states that have staff and judges on the ICC.  Israel can be expected to take similar action.

If there actually are investigations concerning Israeli and Palestinian actions then there might be international indictments and arrest warrants issued which would be a major nuisance for individuals and organizations indicted.  The problems involved in travel would be severe because the indicted parties might be arrested and held for trial in any state where the Rome Statute is in effect.

In Israel's case it might be necessary to fly non-stop from Tel Aviv to the US.  pl  

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/01/middleeast/palestinians-icc-membership/

One State: A Challenge to American Foreign Policy in the Middle East

*

Adam L. Silverman

COL Lang covered Prime Minister Netanyahu's Monday announcement that if he was reelected there would not be a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. What I found interesting in the NY Times and other news media coverage was that everyone seemed to be surprised by PM Netanyahu's announcement. Several reports even compared this to his 2009 announcement of support for a two state solution. What is surprising is that this is surprising. Netanyahu stated that there would not be a two state solution back in July 2014 - an announcement that the news media largely ignored. Moreover, Netanyahu's announcement was itself not surprising given the statements of a number of current and former members of the Israeli center-right coalition. These statements from Netanyahu's allies, as well as leaders in the other movements and parties that comprise his coalition or seek to pull it even further right, have provided candid examples of how this could be accomplished. One of the most nuanced is from PM Netanyahu’s former speechwriter Uri Elitzer, as well as Members of Knesset (MK) Tzipi Hotolevi and Rubi Rivlin. The latter is also a former Speaker of the Knesset. All three have indicated that Israel should annex the Palestinian territories and begin a long, slow, deliberate process of providing citizenship to the Palestinians. This would be accomplished after a thorough vetting process for security purposes and constitutional revision that would clarify and lock in that Israel is a Jewish state. Elitzer, Hotolevi, and Rivlin are basing their plan on a favorable interpretation of demographic trends - that Israelis, specifically Jewish Israelis, will out reproduce Israel's Arab minority and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. This may simply not be the case. What these projections ignore is that more and more Israelis are choosing to move out of Israel, especially younger Israelis. They are reclaiming their citizenship in the European countries that their grandparents and great-grandparents fled before the Holocaust and WW II or were refugees from after WW II. In a note of historic irony, the largest reclamation of citizenship in this reverse migration is German citizenship! 

 

Palestine, Israel and the ICC (by CP)

vs.

vs.

Basic facts and events so far

• On January 2, 2015 Palestine deposited its “instrument of accession” with the ICC pursuant to Article 12, recognising the court’s jurisdiction to investigate war crimes committed since June 13, 2014, in Gaza and the West Bank.
• Palestinian Accession becomes final on April 1, 2015. Nothing is going to happen before that date.
  
• Israel is not member to the ICC statute.
• The ICC’s chief prosecutor will open a “preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine.”
• A preliminary investigation is not a prosecution. Yet. It is in essence fact finding, to determine whether a prosecution is warranted or not.
  
• The preliminary investigation will investigate crimes committed by both sides, including Hamas.
• The chief prosecutor stated that jurisdiction could reach back to Nov. 29, 2012, the date that the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 67/19

Prospects

• If it comes to an investigation, since Palestinian war crimes are probably factually and legally among the easiest to prove, they actually may stand the greatest chance of ICC prosecution.
  
• The ICC is intended to complement existing national judicial systems and it may therefore only exercise its jurisdiction when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals.
• Israel arguably does have a working justice system. Palestine, and more particularly Hamas, arguably does not.
• States requesting ICC investigations are required to cooperate fully with any probes of their citizens. That will apply to Palestine. It will not apply for Israel, which is not a party to the ICC Statute.
  
• Israeli has initiated a number of investigations into alleged misconduct and promised more. While such investigation in Israel may end up being the usual whitewash^*, this will make it more difficult for the ICC to establish its surrogate jurisdiction, since they will have to show that Israel is unwilling to prosecute^**.