Tag: Palestine

Demonic Israel and the Savage West

Israel has only 3 months till September to launch a new aerial attack on Iran.In September Iraqi airspace will be closed to the US and its allies, as US troops are required to leave Iraq by then. Given that Israel and the US clearly did not achieve it s objectives in this most recent attack on Iran, we can expect further surprise attacks on Iran in the near future.

Will Iran finally go nuclear? will they have learnt their lesson and build a full military alliance with Russia China and North Korea? – we shall have to wait and see…

There is clear evidence of the UK, Germany and France providing the air-refuelling tankers for Israeli F35s to reach the Iranian border, fire their missiles, and return to base. Undoubtedly Five Eyes (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK and US) have also provided the intelligence targeting data for the Israelis both for the Iran war and for the Gaza genocide.

Germany France and UK have thus been intimately involved in supporting this unprovoked war while they and the EU have continued to pretend such an attack is legal in international law.

International law is very clear-Israel had absolutely no legal grounds to attack . Its excuse was that Iran was about to possess nuclear weapons- a claim Netanyahu has been making for 40 years. Alistair Crooke (below) however claims that Palantir’s AI predictive software created a false impression of a sudden surge in Iranian enrichment, which contributed to the urgency to attack by the Americans and Israel.

80% of Israelis support Palestinian genocide- its Jewish citizens have been indoctrinated into a bizarre ideology that says they are the chosen ones and therefore they have the right to act with total impunity- sadistic brutal murder torture and starvation- any thing goes- and the US and the rest of the West have fostered and enabled that savagery to blossom and erupt into its demonic current state. Over $150 billion in mostly military aid from the US alone since 1948, has enabled Israel to continuously expand its territories.

Israel has violated at least 30 UN Security Council resolutions and over 100 resolutions from other UN bodies, totalling more than 130 violations of international consensus.

Nevertheless it is very clear- despite an Israeli security blackout, that Israel’s economy, already fragile, has been significantly impacted by Iranian missile strikes. Bloomberg estimates the economic costs alone to Israel caused by Iran’s missile strikes at $3.5 billion. Although Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a press conference the total cost of war could be as high as $12 billion. The Israeli Haifa oil refinery will take at least a month to repair and its major shipping port, Haifa, significantly damaged and a number of military facilities either destroyed or damaged.

Unlike Israel with its drone terror attacks in Iran, its assassinations of Iranian civilians and terror bombings in Iranian cities, Iran has displayed remarkable circumspection in its attacks-minimal civilian Israeli deaths (despite the repeated images from Israeli propaganda of little Israeli children unscathed and perfectly clean, being held by Israeli soldiers after being ‘rescued” from the rubble) have been very small- indicating Iranian precise targeting of military targets.

Clearly this was a regime change operation. The West expected the Islamic regime in Tehran to fold quickly and rapturous joy would break out in the streets at Iran’s ‘liberation”. In fact, most (but not all) Iranians rallied round the flag and its likely that -despite 40 years of Western sanctions , Iranian infrastructure will be quickly rebuilt -especially with Chinese assistance (Iran is a vital node in China’s Belt and Road transport network to and from the West to China with a major rail network recently completed from China).

Iranian International, with enormous funding from the US and Israel (and likely other funding sources in European governments) had been poised to insert the Shah of Iran’s son Reza Pahlavi as the new “king” of Iran once the regime capitulated. The fact that Reza Pahlavi was heir to his father’s bizarre and corrupt reign (with his brutal SAVAK secret police trained by Mossad, Mi6 and CIA in torture techniques), and is entirely in the pocket of the genocidal Israelis and corrupt Americans and British who would then steal Iranian oil, wasn’t deemed to be a problem somehow. Israel’s title for their war with Iran , ‘Rising Lion’ is both a reference to Talmud texts, but also to the flag of the late Shah.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_Israel

Like everything associated with the state of Palestine and the history of Israel since the Nakba , Zionists have attempted to revise history and pretend that Palestinians never occupied or owned the land that was stolen from them by the Zionists, starting with the Nakba of 1948 and progressing to the present day. aijac.org.au

Thankfully, Trump’s bombasity, lies and stupidity have fed into the perception of many in the South of a steady decline in American power and influence. The recent bizarre events at the NATO Summit in the Netherlands of Trump being called ‘Daddy ‘and all the NATO states kowtowing to Trump in pledging 5% military spending by 2035, a pledge which would undoubtedly bankrupt many of the EU states.

America and Israel and NATO/Five Eyes had expected an easy victory over Iran- decapitate the military leaders through assassinations, disable the Iranian neural networks for their missile defence systems and radars , blitz Tehran and then demand capitulation. The assassinations were largely successful, the hacking of the networks worked- but only for 8 hours-( the West had not anticipated how fast Iranian engineers could get the system back up and running)- and then the Iranian missile response began..

Indisputably Iran has suffered major but not irreparable losses in this war; the assassinations of some key military leadership and nuclear scientists, military facilities and missile systems destroyed.

However the genocide in Gaza by the Israeli “Defence” Forces (IDF) continues at the same brutal pace- with continued support form the US and the West. Every day Palestinians are being shot and killed by snipers , tanks and artillery as they try and negotiate the gate-pens to get some food ‘ provided’ through Israeli and US agencies for their starving families . While condemned by the UN and many in the South, Western nations are silent and complicit in this total inhumanity: a massive indictment of all that the West has pretended to stand for in the last 70 years- freedom, safety, democracy and the rule of law.

And for those who would like to believe this total absence of humanity and human rights for Palestinians is a recent phenomenon, please look at the following data below of the deaths and displacements by Israel since the Nakba of 1948. The state of Israel is an abomination, a pariah state fully supported by the West.

1. Displacement and Refugees

  • 1948 Arab-Israeli War (Nakba) :
    • Approximately 700,000 Palestinians were displaced or became refugees, including many women and children.
    • The UN estimates that 75% of Palestinian refugees today are women and children.
  • 1967 Six-Day War :
    • Another 300,000+ Palestinians fled or were expelled from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.
    • Women and children made up a significant portion of these refugees.
  • Total Palestinian Refugees Today :
    • Over 7 million Palestinians are registered as refugees or displaced persons globally (UNRWA and UNHCR data).
    • The majority are women and children due to generational displacement and high birth rates.

2. Casualties in Conflicts

  • Major Conflicts Since 1948 :
    • 1948–1956 : Exact numbers for women and children are unclear but likely high due to mass displacement.
    • 1967 & 1973 Wars : Limited data exists, but civilian casualties included many women and children.
    • First Intifada (1987–1993) : ~1,000 Palestinian children killed; women’s deaths unrecorded.
    • Second Intifada (2000–2005) : Over 3,000 Palestinian children killed; women also died in airstrikes and shootings.
    • Gaza Wars (2008–2009, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023–2024) :
      • 2023–2024 Gaza War : As of April 2024, over 10,000 women and 18,000 children reported killed (Palestinian Health Ministry). Independent experts warn underreporting due to chaos and blocked aid.
      • 2014 Gaza War : ~2,200 Palestinians killed, half of them children (UN OCHA).

3. Incarceration and Detention

  • Since 1967 , Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians, including:
    • Women and Children :
      • Over 10,000 Palestinian women have been imprisoned since 1967 (Addameer, a Palestinian rights group).
      • Children : Thousands detained annually for alleged “security offenses.” In 2023 alone, over 8,000 children were arrested (UNICEF and DCIP reports).

4. Demographic Impact

  • Population Growth : Despite displacement and casualties, Palestinian populations in the West Bank, Gaza, and refugee camps have grown due to high birth rates.
  • Vulnerability : Women and children face disproportionate risks in poverty, restricted movement, and limited access to healthcare/education.

CategoryApproximate Numbers (since 1948)
Refugees/displacedMillions (majority women/children)
Casualties (conflicts)Hundreds of thousands (exact numbers disputed)
IncarceratedTens of thousands of women/children

Resources

  • United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
  • Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
  • Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics
  • Israeli human rights groups (e.g., B’Tselem)
  • Reports from Al Jazeera, BBC, and Reuters

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/06/mark-sleboda-what-the-hell-just-happened-in-the-middle-east-you-may-ask.html#more

The Yemen Tragedy

Now that Trump ( as of May 2025) has made the decision not to continue U.S. air attacks on targets in Yemen (for now), the following semi-legal analysis of the strikes below is perhaps somewhat moot. However it does provide a glimpse into the legalities of the multiple aggressions by Western countries in the past 75 years since World War 2.

After an almost shootdown of an ‘invisible’ US F35 aircraft, and the loss of 2 (possibly 3) F18s (valued at $70 million each) that had ‘fallen off’ US aircraft carriers in the Gulf, along with about 10, 30 million dollar MQ9 drones shot down by Ansar-allah (what the West MSM as one voice like to call “Iran backed rebel Houthis”-all in one breath), it must have been clearly apparent, even to Trump, that the billion dollar US bombing campaign against Yemen was going nowhere.

Additionally, because the US had (and has) very little accurate information on where Ansarallah weapons and military was on the ground they were in fact predominantly (and accidentally?) hitting civilians. In addition the long-standing U.K air support for the Americans on the Arabian peninsula was entirely without targeting or strategy, but largely an attempt to try and demonstrate that Britain was still a force to be reckoned with in the Gulf.

One cannot however be so charitable about Israeli bombings of civilian Yemen targets-(civilian ports and airports), who used their traditional methods of terror and brutality to try and intimidate Ansarallah.

What follows is an analysis of the legalities of this bombing campaign, supposedly initiated by first Biden and then Trump, to stop Ansarallah closing the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea to shipping bound for the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat (top right hand section of map)

Legal Analysis of US/UK Strikes in Yemen and Potential Violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)

The US and UK military interventions in Yemen, particularly against Houthi targets, raise significant legal questions under international humanitarian law (IHL)—also known as the laws of war. Below is a deeper examination of their compliance with key legal principles.

Analysis of the Legal Framework Governing US Strikes against Yemen

A. Applicable Law

  • Geneva Conventions (1949) & Additional Protocol I (1977): Govern the conduct of hostilities, including distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack.
  • UN Charter (Article 2(4) & Article 51): Prohibits the use of force except in self-defense or with UN Security Council authorization.
  • Customary IHL: Binding on all parties, including non-state actors like the Houthis.

B. Justifications for US/UK Strikes

  • Self-Defense Argument (Article 51, UN Charter): The US and UK argue strikes are necessary to protect maritime security (Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping).
  • Legal Debate: Some scholars argue this stretches self-defense doctrine, as Houthi attacks may not constitute an “armed attack” justifying unilateral force.
  • Collective Self-Defense (Supporting Saudi Arabia & UAE): Previously invoked, but less relevant post-2022 since the Saudi-Houthi truce.

2. Key IHL Principles & Potential Violations

A. Principle of Distinction (Civilian vs. Military Targets)

  • Rule: Attacks must only target military objectives, not civilians or civilian infrastructure.
  • Concerns in Yemen:
  • Urban Warfare: Houthis embed military assets in densely populated areas, increasing civilian risk.
  • Reports of Civilian Harm: NGOs (e.g., Mwatana, Amnesty) allege US/UK strikes hit homes, farms, and markets, suggesting possible indiscriminate targeting.

B. Principle of Proportionality

  • Rule: Civilian harm must not be excessive relative to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
  • Challenges:
  • “Double-Tap” Strikes: Some reports suggest follow-up strikes hit first responders, which could be a war crime if deliberate.
  • High Civilian Toll in Past Strikes: Even if targets are legitimate, large-scale civilian casualties (e.g., 2022 Saada prison strike by Saudi coalition) raise proportionality concerns.

C. Precautions in Attack

  • Rule: Parties must take all feasible measures to verify targets and minimize civilian harm.
  • US/UK Practices:
  • Use of precision-guided munitions (reduces but does not eliminate risk).
  • Lack of Transparency: Few public investigations into alleged civilian harm, unlike in Iraq/Syria.

3. Accountability & Legal Consequences

A. Mechanisms for Accountability

  1. Domestic Investigations (US/UK):
  • The US has a Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP) but rarely discloses Yemen investigations.
  • The UK has no independent Yemen strike review body, unlike its Iraq/Syria oversight.
  1. International Criminal Court (ICC):
  • Yemen is not an ICC member, but if nationals of member states commit crimes on Yemeni soil, the ICC could theoretically investigate.
  1. Universal Jurisdiction:
  • Third countries could prosecute war crimes under universal jurisdiction (e.g., Germany’s case against Syrian officials).

B. State Responsibility & Reparations

  • Under IHL, states must provide reparations for unlawful strikes, but neither the US nor UK has a compensation program for Yemeni victims.
  • Contrast with US payments for civilian harm in Afghanistan/Iraq.

4. Broader Implications & Legal Precedents

  • Escalation Risks: If strikes are seen as disproportionate, they could fuel further Houthi attacks, creating a cycle of violence.
  • Erosion of IHL Norms: Repeated civilian harm without accountability weakens global adherence to laws of war.
  • Potential for Future Cases: If evidence of systematic violations emerges, legal challenges could arise in international courts or via sanctions.

Conclusion: Are US/UK Strikes Lawful?

  • Legally Defensible? The US/UK can argue self-defense and military necessity, but civilian harm incidents raise serious IHL concerns.
  • Accountability Gap: Lack of transparent investigations and reparations undermines claims of compliance.
  • Future Risks: If civilian casualties continue unchecked, legal challenges (e.g., ICC petitions, universal jurisdiction cases) could follow.

Duplicity Unmasked -2024 and beyond..

2024 was a year when the total duplicity of the Western world and its media was exposed about the state of the world for all the world to see

2024 was a year when the total duplicity of the Western world and its media was exposed about the state of the world for all the world to see -the political machinations and the true state of the environmental crisis…

For the last 70 years and more, the West’s politicians and its media have talked about their fight for freedom justice and democracy against a corrupt and evil non-West. Israel’s genocidal war has changed all of that. The West’s unequivocal ‘moral’ and military backing of the mass-murder in Gaza has exposed the high moral talk as just that- bullshit.

And it is not as if this wasn’t evident 50 years ago with the West’s genocide in Korea, then Iraq, or Libya to name just a few- but Gaza has exposed the true horror of what the West stands for in bloodstained clarity.

And in Ukraine, the West’s portrait of the war has gone from simply being inaccurate and simplistic to downright lies. Somehow we are led to believe that Russia will accept a ceasefire and freeze the fighting because President Trump says so- despite the years of lies to the Russians from the West about signed peace agreements and non expansion of NATO etc. e.g. The BBC’s ridiculous propagandist in Moscow, Steven Rosenberg , reinterprets facts to pretend that Russia’s economy is struggling and that 80% of the Russian public don’t support the war.

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/ce327we7w7zo

But even though all the evidence points to Russia pushing the Ukrainian forces back by tens of kilometers each day -despite the many billions in Western arms Kiev has received in the past 3 years -Western politicians and military commanders are convinced that Russia is desperate to end the war on any terms. And thus Western politicians and and media continue to pretend that the Russians are somehow primitive, almost sub-human beings, quite unlike those Western sophisticates in the capital of Europe and US. Sadly Ukrainians bought into that well-manufactured European myth, which resulted in the death and injury of more than half a million Ukrainian men to date. And if the reality does not square with our beliefs, we’ll bend reality to suit our beliefs.

In Syria we are told that the ex-Al Qaeda leaders of the new ‘democratic’ Syria are now the good guys, and we can forget all about their head-chopping adventures of the past.

And of course we simply don’t hear in the West how the French brutal colonial military are being pushed out of their African ex-colonial states one by one -as new African leaders expose French exploitation of their countries.(Gabon, Senegal, Cote d,Ivoire, Niger to name a few….)

But by far the biggest brutal silence and lie is the fact that we can continue to pretend its ‘business as usual” with our hedonist consumer lifestyles as the world’s climate continues its ever more rapid descent into total unpredictability and chaos. Our century and a half of ‘normality’-of endless consumerism and abundance in the West, is on its way out-yet the world’s media and politicians continue to pretend everything is just fine– current conditions are just a minor glitch in humanity’s onward march of progress to….. somewhere.

What to me is most disturbing in all of this debacle for the West’s populations and then for the rest of humanity’s global populations, is the total lack of compassion, humanity or kindness in any of the decisions that caused both the rise of the West as brutal and exploitative colonial powers, and its inevitable fall through ideological rigidity and pure stupidity: this insane insistence on making money at any cost to one’s soul and one’s humanity and now for our very survivability on this planet.

When did humanity lose its way? I suspect it arose when man decided he was above all other living things-that those ‘others’ were simply to be exploited for his benefit, rather than co-inhabitants on this planet with equal rights and deserving of equal respect and kindness. Rather than relying on our inate ‘knowledge’ that we must respect all living things to be fully human, we have fabricated ideologies (thought-games) that constructed, and continue to construct, mythologies and rationales for our brutality and savagery against other humans and other species. Those who descend into those mind-games, have indeed lost their souls

___________________________________________

Links

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/12/a-year-to-soon-be-forgotten-.html#comments

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/74/12/812/7808595?login=false

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/01/ukraine-sitrep.html#more

http://www.defenddemocracy.press/the-scientific-pain-of-climate-change-shifting-narratives-of-acceptance-and-avoidance-in-climatology/

New Zealand Supports Gazans to Die Faster

The New Zealand government , unsurprisingly, has, along with 11 other Western countries, decided to withhold funding to UNRWA because of allegations by the Israeli apartheid regime in Tel Aviv that 12 of its thousands of staff in Gaza and the West Bank had been involved in the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israelis.

As Amnesty International makes exceptionally clear-‘At a time when Israel, the occupying power, continues to flagrantly violate its obligations vis-à-vis Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, UNRWA has long served as a sole lifeline, offering indispensable humanitarian aid, education and shelter. The agency also provides desperately needed aid for millions of other Palestinian refugees living in neighbouring Arab countries.”

As is made clear in the video below of an Israeli Knesset representative calling for the destruction of UNRWA several months ago-the elimination of aid to Gazans has long been a strategic goal of Israel as it continues to demolish and kill everything in its path in Gaza.

Please note that Noga Orbel’s statements are not the ravings of a lone psychopath, they are what passes for normal and acceptable in Israel’s parliament.

The United States, United Kingdom , Germany, France, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Netherlands, Italy, Australia and Finland –and now New Zealand have all agreed that, despite the fact that they know Israel has been consistently lying for its 75 years of existence, to justify its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, that they should ‘suspend’ funding to the UNRWA which has been the literally sole lifeline of food and water to Gazans trapped in Gazan while Israel bombards them into oblivion and blockades and destroys all essential services to Gazans.

What additionally needs to be said about the pyschopaths coordinating this genocide?

What these 12 ‘white’ countries (Japan is an honorary obedient white country in their eyes) are doing is directly aiding and abetting the psychopaths in Tel Aviv, in the mass murder of Palestinians. Without UNRWA aid to Gazans, many many more Palestinians will die.

The Zionist’s bizarre ideology insists that only Jewish people can live in the land of Palestine, and anyone else who has lived there who is not Jewish must be removed one way or another- through murder, imprisonment in Israeli jails or the open air concetration camps of the West Bank and Gaza , or expelled to refugee camps in another country.

This 75 years old strategy, begun in 1948 by Israel’s military with the Nakba (the Palestinian ‘Catastrophe’), is apparently all kosher and ok with those 12 white countries.

That 2 million Gazans will now either starve to death, die by disease from polluted water, freeze to death from lack of shelter or lack of health services destroyed by Israel, is of course of no concern to these ‘civilised’ countries.

Purely coincidentally of course, the Israeli allegations and the very prompt response from Western nations to halt aid, comes just days after the interim ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which (despite the subsequent denials of Israel, its Zionist supporters and many of these same white nations) established a prima facie case of genocide by Israel against Gazans.

The so fondly quoted US “rule based international order”(which Scott Burchell  has aptly described as ” Washington’s confected alternative to international law, the so-called “rules-based international order”, is now exposed as nothing more than a hypocritical protection racket in free fall’.) and the western governments and their politicians and bureaucrats who so slavishly support it, has now been brutally exposed for what it is – the ghoulish face of racist psychopaths perfectly content to let millions die, in that so honorable cause of propping up their careers and profits.

Postscript

https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/02/02/nz-eyes-aukus-pillar-two-what-is-it-and-how-could-it-impact-us/

One might have thought that NZ politicians were not quite so stupid as their Aussie colleagues in signing up to the U.S. inspired AUKUS protection racket-confronting non-existent threats from Russia & China & wasting millions in taxpayers money.

Perhaps they might have been better to consult with the new Argentinian president’s dead dog?

____________________________

Links

Parliament debates NZDF Red Sea deployment | RNZ News

https://www.indcatholicnews.com/news/49030

Has International Law Survived, or Has the Western Political Class Killed It?

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israels-allies-accelerate-genocide-freezing-unrwa-funds

The Western club- with its own morals, rules and rewards

https://amnesty.org.nz/reverse-cruel-decision-to-withdraw-unrwa-funding

Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia
Gaza 2023 -Wikimedia

Fmr. UNRWA Spox Refutes Israeli Smears (usefulidiotspodcast.com)

New Zealand’s Media Complicity in Israeli War Crimes

The following is my letter of complaint to Television New Zealand 1, who published the following report on the context of the Palestine/Israel situation on 16th October.(at 23 minutes into the news)

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/one-news-at-6pm/episodes/s2023-e289

‘Dear Sir/Madam,

Your news reporter, Simon Mercer undertook what was supposedly intended as an historical outline of the issues for Israelis and Palestinians on TVNZ1 news last night in relation to the current hostilities in Palestine/Israel.


Simon talked about the lead up to 1948 when Israel militants took control of Palestine (the Nakba), but for some strange reason neglected to mention the 700,000 Palestinians who were forcibly removed from their homes in Palestine and moved at gunpoint to refugee camps by the Israelis and later the two prison camps in Gaza and the West Bank. Simon also failed to mention the thousands of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in 1948 .

Simon also failed to mention the subsequent massacres of thousands of Palestinians in refugee camps by Israelis and their enablers since 1948 and the fact that every day since then (for 75 years) Israelis have been murdering, torturing , imprisoning and dispossessing Palestinians of their homes.

Western governments, particularly the US and UK and their media, have played a key part in colluding with these Israeli war crimes so that their populations are largely unaware of these events, and clearly TVNZ as an ‘independent’ news media outlet, also considers it important to omit these facts as well.

By doing so, TVNZ is colluding in the immensity of Israel’s war crimes over 75 years and allows that brutality to continue.

I would request that in the interests of no longer continuing to
collude in war crimes, as well as the safety of the Palestinian people, let alone compassion for their constant suffering, that you publish a fair and balanced historical outline of what has really happened in Israel/Palestine since 1947, as well as the current situation

Please note I will be publishing this complaint on my blog, as well as your response.”

TVNZ Response to Come…..

_________________________

Links

Western media’s parroting of official lies is paving way to genocide in Gaza (jonathan-cook.net)

The Palestinian ‘Terrorists’

Since 1948, (over 70 years) Israel and its vanguard army- the “settlers”, have brutalised, killed, tortured, intimidated and stolen the land of the Palestinian people. For over 70 years Western media have assisted the Israeli regime in portraying Palestinians as terrorists and that every Israeli action against Palestinians is a ‘response’ to some terrorist act by the Arabs.

In this latest round of the Israeli attempt to destroy Palestinian resistance to 70 years of brutality and theft, we are told that Israeli military action is a ‘response’ to Hamas in Gaza firing rockets into Israel. In reality this latest round of hostilities is inextricably connected to the Nakba – the catastrophe of 1948 when Israeli settlers and an Israeli military , murdered thousands of Palestinians and displaced many more to refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and beyond, simply to steal their land.

Palestinians expelled from their homes at gunpoint during the Nakba; from bsdsmovement.net

As the Discourse Blog notes: “This is not a ‘clash’ between two equal sides. This is a straightforward attack by Israel on Palestinians. For days, the Israeli government has been systematically assaulting Palestinians worshipping at one of the holiest sites in Islam, during Ramadan, all while enforcing a move to ethnically cleanse a Jerusalem neighborhood of its Palestinian residents. Israeli forces have fired rubber bullets and stun grenades, injuring hundreds of people. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem has been filmed lamenting that Palestinian activists weren’t shot in the head“.

Ramzy Baroud of Common Dreams has a more detailed analysis of the attempted Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Sheik Jarrah community which sparked this latest response from Hamas. This ‘legalised theft’ of Palestinian property is beautifully outlined in this paragraph from Ramzy Baroud:

‘Last February, the Israeli Supreme Court awarded Jewish settlers the right to many Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Following a Palestinian and international backlash, it offered Palestinians a ‘compromise’, whereby Palestinian families relinquished ownership rights to their homes and agreed to continue to live there as tenants, paying rents to the very illegal Jewish settlers who have stolen their homes in the first place, but who are now armed with a court decision.‘

Human Rights Watch have finally decided in the past few weeks that only now is Israel guilty of crimes against humanity, of persecution of Palestinians and is an apartheid state – something that has been indisputable for 70 years!

Is this how people should be treated? How can you, how can we, accept this day to day 70 year humiliation of a people simply because others want their lands?

Ironically, Israeli settlers’ and the Israeli regime’s constant ‘acquisition’ of Palestinian land over the past 70 years means that an Israeli/Palestinian two state solution is no longer a viable solution.

The United States has for much of those 70 years since the Nakba, pretended to act as the independent arbiter between Palestine and Israel in various peace agreements- peace agreements that all sides knew were a farce and had no possibility of ever happening because Israel had overwhelming force and had no intention of stopping its acquisition of Palestinian land. Perhaps President Biden will in reality finally show some moral backbone and force the Israelis to agree to a full and fair settlement with its Palestinian population and the Palestinian enclaves it controls. However, given Biden’s latest response to Israeli atrocities is to say ‘the ‘Israeli bombardment of Gaza is not significant’, we can get a clear sense of Biden’s moral and ethical framework. (Note that the U.K., Germany and Austria have now (15/5/21), once again, also acknowledged their ongoing support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people)

The only solution now for Israel and Palestine is a single state where all its residents have equal rights and where dispossessed Palestinians have the inalienable right of return and compensation for the lives, properties and olive groves confiscated or destroyed by the Israeli state. This apartheid nuclear-armed regime will hopefully depart peacefully.

Rachel Aliene Corrie (April 10, 1979 – March 16, 2003) was an American activist and diarist. A member of the pro-Palestinian group International Solidarity Movement (ISM), she was crushed to death by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) armored bulldozer in southern Gaza in 2003 as she tried to block it from destroying Palestinian homes in Gaza .

You can read the weekly list of casual mindless brutal war-crimes committed by the Israeli regime and its settler groups here at the International Middle East Media Center.

Postscript

With the Israeli ‘Defence’ Forces now (as of 14/5/21) using their $3.8 billion dollars worth of gifted latest military hardware from the United States to bomb and shell Gaza, it is time to acknowledge that this rogue state must be controlled. An extensive United Nations neutral peace force must be put in place across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank to ensure safety for all of its populations, and Hamas and Israeli armed forces and settler terrorists must be immediately disarmed. Where I wonder is the West’s much vaunted “Responsibility to Protect” now?

The West’s ongoing support for the Israeli regime, and its slow genocide of the Palestinian people (that Israel has a responsibility to protect as the occupier of those territories), puts the lie to the West’s vaunted statements about supporting democracy freedom and human rights across the world.

There is no justification for Israel and its Western backers to use the horrors of the Holocaust to justify and legalise its horrific 70 year abuse of Palestinians.

Thankfully an Egyptian brokered ceasefire was declared between Israeli forces and Hamas and Islamic Jihad on 20th May. The message from Biden to Netanyahu in Israel was undoubtedly -‘stop the blitzgrieg, you’re damaging our and your international reputation’. Biden’s pledge to help restore Gaza but ensure no money went to Hamas, who are the legitimately elected government of the West Bank and Gaza, was assuredly a hollow one. The money will instead go to “President” Abbas from the Palestinian Authority, a venal entity who illegitimately govern the West Bank with the full support of the West and the Israeli regime.

Those in Gaza are thankful for this temporary ceasefire, but they know the Israeli war against them will continue regardless; the humanitarian blockades, the limiting of access to essential health services, clean water and sewage services, and the ongoing harrassment, murder and humiliation of Palestinians by the Israeli entity.

___________________________________________

Links

Western Media Slammed for Coverage of Deadly IDF Attacks on Gaza

https://imeu.org/article/quick-facts-the-palestinian-nakba

https://discourseblog.com/white-house-israel-attacks-gaza-psaki/

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/11/israel-condemned-unambiguous-war-crime-after-destroying-gaza-apartment-tower

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/04/27/abusive-israeli-policies-constitute-crimes-apartheid-persecution

https://bdsmovement.net/news/palestinians-say-%E2%80%9Ctheir-independence-our-nakba%E2%80%9D

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/11/human-rights-experts-denounce-israeli-violence-confiscation-homes-east-jerusalem

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-aqsa-sheikh-jarrah-media-coverage-problematic-glossary?

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/05/12/muna-palestine-yakub-israel-untold-story-sheikh-jarrah

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Only-the-US-Can-Resolve-Israeli-Palestinian-Tension-EU-Says-20210513-0011.html?

https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid

Chris Hedges: Israel, the Big Lie

https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/biden-gives-netanyahu-free-rein?

PATRICK LAWRENCE: 1948 — No Longer Shrouded in the Mists

original.antiwar.com/…/refusing-erasure-palestinian-resistance-israels-hopeless-fury-and-a-coming-cataclysm

https://original.antiwar.com/Danny_Sjursen/2021/05/17/refusing-erasure-palestinian-resistance-israels-hopeless-fury-and-a-coming-cataclysm/

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/05/19/israel-wiping-out-entire-palestinian-families-purpose

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/ceasefire-ends-israeli-terror-gaza-now

That ‘Deal of the Century’

Jared Kushner,  Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who  has read 25 books on the Palestinian issue, has just released the Trump regime’s  bizarre ‘Deal of the Century’, or in U.S. doublespeak, ‘Peace to Prosperity: a Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian  and Israeli  people’.

As Craig Murray   notes in his summary  of the proposal, the Kushner plan, and the responses to  it from Western  governments, underscore the  long-term hypocrisy  of Western  nations and particularly the United States ( as the ‘honest’  broker)  in pretending to  support the much  brutalized Palestinian people into  believing there could ever be such  a thing as a  viable ‘two  state  solution”.

Mountains & Cliffs
Mountains & Cliffs

If it were not for the fact  that  successive Israeli governments since 1948, have terrorized, stolen, destroyed houses, lands and property,  tortured and imprisoned many thousands of  Palestinians  (including many children)  for the crime of wanting to  retain  their own  homes and lands, then  this could almost be some stupid farce;  a joke by  puerile amateurs who  know nothing of history,  and certainly nothing about human  rights or even compassion.

If you have the stomach  for it,  read the daily litany of extreme abuse, racism  and terror inflicted by  Israeli  army soldiers and “settlers”  on  the Palestinian  people  at  https://imemc.org/

The news outlet  IPSNews, notes: The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has described the much-ballyhooed US Middle East peace plan as “more like Swiss cheese– with the cheese being offered to the Israelis and the holes to the Palestinians”.

https://www.palestinecampaign.org/
The Ever Shrinking “Palestine” https://www.palestinecampaign.org/

As we, and increasing members of the  politic have  demonstrated with  facts over the years, a two  state solution was never going to  be a viable option for Palestinians whilst  the Israeli  regime continued to  steal  lands from  an  embattled Palestinian people .

There is now only one solution;  and that  is a single state entity which  recognizes all  peoples in  the lands of what  is now Israel/Gaza and the West  Bank  as having equal  rights:  which  recognises the right of return of   those millions of Palestinians  dispossessed of their lands  and liberty since 1948 by  the Israeli  machine, and which  provides appropriate compensation for those losses….

 

Links

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Peace-to-Prosperity-0120.pdf

Non-Condemnatory International Reaction to Trump’s Bantustan Lite Palestine Plan Shows the “Two State” Solution Was Always a Lie

Who Made the Palestinian Authority a ‘Police State?’

THE ANGRY ARAB: Trump ‘Solves’ the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Relevant NewAntarctica Links

Christmas 2017 & The Dishonest Broker

 

The Sick Men of Washington

President Trump,  has now  officially pulled the United States out of the Iran  nuclear deal , officially known  as the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA) 

Negotiated via U.N.  auspices, the Iran deal limited Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium and thus limit any potential  for Iran to develop  nuclear weapons;  something it has always said is has not intended  nor planned to  do. UN inspections prove that  Iran has indeed complied with  the JCPOA in  full  since its inception in 2015. The deal  in no way  prohibits Iran’s develop  of missile technology,  which would be seen by  any state as a   sovereign  right to protect  itself from  aggressors.

And Iran has many threatening states  to protect  itself from. These include Israel, who  sees Iran  as its major  spoiler to the  ongoing expansion of Israeli  territory  in  the Middle East;  particularly  because of Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, who  roundly  defeated  Israel in its last  attempt to  occupy Lebanon in   2006 . Then  there is Saudi Arabia,  the despotic regime which  pretends to be a ‘monarchy” who  actively supports protects and funds the Salafist terrorists  across the Middle East  and beyond.  Salafists believe that  all  other Islamic and other religious  beliefs   other than  their own  are ‘heretical”, and therefore those people who  hold such beliefs need to be either forcibly converted or disposed of. Hence the  millions of Shiite peoples of Iran   and its Shi-ite theocracy are anathema to  the Saudi  ‘princes’. Iran is a  large country of over 80  million people,  and while its economy has been made vulnerable by  years of U.S. and other Western countries sanctions, it has managed to develop a wide range of responses to those sanctions,  and particularly  a  home grown defence industry.

Iran is therefore not  significantly vulnerable to  attack  by  Saudi Arabia ,  despite S.A.s huge defence spending ($76 billion in 2017 – third  highest in  the world after the U.S.  and China) ,  as opposed to Iran’s approximately $14 billion), largely because of its very  effective home grown  ballistic missile systems. (it is always amusing to note that U.S. military ‘specialists  always attribute this or that countries’  home grown  military capabilities to some other country – implying in some way  that the specific  country does not have the  technology ,  research  capability and technical know-how that  only  the great and exceptional  U.S.  has!)

And finally,   Iran’s perhaps most significant threat  comes from  the United States,  who has desperately tried to destabilize Iran’s theocracy  in  every  way  possible way since its inception in  1979, after overthrowing the U.S.  and and U.K. installed  despot, the ‘Shah’  of Iran .

The U.K.  has also  played a supporting role to the U.S.  since 1953 in supporting the salafist regimes in the Persian Gulf  and encouraging the export of  Saudi  and Qatari  jihadist  terrorists to  Middle East  states  which  are not active supporters of Western colonialism or Israeli  expansionism.

Thus the latest  move by  the Trump administration to  undermine the U.N.  JCPOA agreement  and threaten sanctions against  countries  and companies that do  not comply with its renewed sanctions against  Iran, is simply part of the ongoing war  by the United States against  Iran that had its inception in  the overthrow of its  brutal dictator ,  the Shah.

The drivers for this  ongoing  war against  Iran are  largely economic:  primarily  re-acquisition of the huge Iranian  oil  market  by  American oil  companies  will  buffer the U.S.  against  the imminent collapse of the local  shale oil  market, whilst  ensuring that Iranian owned oil  and gas is not pipe-lined through to  Europe and Turkey.

However the other major U.S.   impetus for Iranian destabilisation and overthrow of its  independent theocracy is the role of Israel  and its Zionist  lobbyists in  Washington.  Now that Saudi Arabia has been bought into  the Zionist  fold and accepts  the Israeli   theft of Palestinian  lands since 1948 as legitimate, there is only Iran  as a significant power player in  the Middle East  who is  able to  confront Israeli  expansionism.  A tame Iranian regime that supported both  Israel  and  U.S.  colonial policy in  the Middle East  would mean Chinese and Russian commercial and strategic   ambitions  there could be thwarted, and  U.S.  and U.K.  (and to  a smaller degree, French) companies could make billions exploiting the region. With  the truly psychopathic John Bolton now  as Trumps defence advisor, drooling for war  with Iran, and Israel’s Netanyahu frothing at  the mouth for the U.S.  to bomb Iran, all  options are truly on  the table.

While Iran does not have an  effective airforce, due to the  long-standing sanctions against it; it’s ballistic missile  capacity is  indeed formidable,  although largely deprecated by  U.S.  defence analysts . Should the U.S. launch  an attack on  Iran’s infrastructure, as it has continually threatened to do  over the years, the U.S.  would undoubtedly be able to , over time,  obliterate much of Tehran  and  its  key urban  centres as it has done in North Korea,  Vietnam Libya and Iraq in  the past, along  with the consequent  huge suffering and civilian casualties  that  entails. However in  the first  days and weeks of such  a war, Iran’s  widely  dispersed military units, and particularly its missile and anti-ship  units, will  be able to  inflict  massive damage on  U.S.  military bases and aircraft  carriers in  the Gulf because of their close proximity to Iran. An ongoing guerilla war against  U.S.   economic and military  interests in  the Middle East   could well  last  for years. In  comparison  to  the U.S.  war against  Iraq,  Iran’s military capabilities cannot be under-rated as American  defence  analysts  are wont to do  in  their arrogance. This would not be the  “cake-walk” that  the neocons pretended the Iraqi  invasion would be!

Should Israel  also enter the war,  as it has often promised to,  then Tel Aviv is now  well  within  missile striking distance by  Iran’s  Lebanese allies.  Hezbollah.

One would hope that  the crazies like Netanyahu  and John Bolton will  finally be locked away  somewhere safe for the rest of humanity’s sake ,  and the fools like Donald Trump  fade into  quiet  oblivion,  but sadly it seems , that may not be the case…

Links

The Deep State First – Madness On Both Ends of the Acela Corridor

How Hezbollah Defeated Israel

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/05/countdown-to-war-on-iran.html

“There is no safe place, and we cannot leave”: the barbarity of Israel’s occupation of Palestine

A small  quote from a 2014 United Nations report from  UNICEF on  the systematic brutality of Israeli  forces against  children in  the occupied territories..

Nine-year-old Mohammed Jaber remembers how he took his pocket money and went out with his 5-year-old sister Ghina, as the long summer day of fasting came to an end, in the month of Ramadan. “My parents try to keep me indoors, but I was bored, so we went to buy jellybeans and chips,” he says. Once on the street, in the densely populated al-Bureij refugee camp, he heard that the neighbours had received a call warning of an air strike. Mohammed rushed back home. There are no shelters in Gaza, so his parents and their six children took cover in a bedroom.

“Mohammed remembers the last war two years ago. He knew what was going to happen,” his mother Mariam explains, recalling how the child, white with fear, ran and picked up a pillow to cover his face and ears. “I thought he was going to suffocate himself,” she says. Suddenly, the deafening explosion sent pieces of shrapnel and glass flying through the room. “All my children started screaming. I managed to calm them down, but after that they were in shock; they would not speak.

“Since then, Mohammed has started bedwetting again, and my 5-year-old daughter Ghina keeps saying, ‘Mama, people will bomb our house.’ Whenever her father goes out, she clings to him. She thinks he will not come back if she lets him go.” Mariam does not know what to tell her young children. “I cannot tell them the truth, that there is no safe place, and we cannot leave.”

Jonathan Cook  in  his article  about the recent arrest  by  Israeli  soldiers of the 16 year Palestinian  girl, Ahed Tamimi,  outlines in detail how  Palestinian  children  are systematically targeted  and brutalised by  Israeli  authorities.

With  specific  demeaning  laws for ‘Arabs” as opposed to  Jewish  settlers. With  walls  constructed to  keep  out the rightful  Arab  occupiers of their own lands in Palestine. With  the evil  brutality of Israeli  settlers against  the people and children  they  have stolen their lands from ( and Israeli  laws which  allow that brutality to  be wiped away) – with  the ongoing imprisonment of children  without trial (or a “Military” ( read show-trial) trial  for those  Arab  adult and children  captured  or killed or  tortured for their ‘misbehaviour’ against  Israeli  troops on  their own  lands  -it is small  wonder  Palestinians remain  angry  against their oppressors.

One day  soon perhaps,  the  Israeli  population will begin  to  understand that  their continued oppression of the rightful  owners of Palestinian lands can only lead to the destruction of Israel. Continued fictional  presentations of Arabs as  lesser beings  by  a bigoted society only exacerbate the inevitability of that  end.

Only  negotiation with  real  truth  and honesty  by  the Israeli  entity with Palestinians, and and an  acknowledgment and compensation for   the dreadful  wrongs committed by  that  entity over the last 70 years ,  will  allow a one state solution to  occur ( the only viable solution) , where Jews and Arabs can once more live harmoniously together  in  Palestine/Israel.

Why prolong this agony?

 

Links

https://pchrgaza.org/en/?p=10321 Israeli forces continue systematic crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory

https://www.unicef.ca/en/children-bear-the-brunt-of-renewed-fighting-in-gaza

https://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/oPt_74266.html

https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/gaza-1-million-children-suffering-unlivable-conditions

Unicef ” State of Palestine 2018-2022 https://www.unicef.org/about/execboard/files/State_of_Palestine_undaf_2018-2022.pdf

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2018-01-08/ahed-tamimi-children-targeted-israel/

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2018-01-21/israeli-army-concerned-gaza/

Slapping an Israeli Soldier More Newsworthy Than Shooting a Palestinian Child in the Face

http://www.hsj.gr/medicine/the-relationship-between-war-trauma-ptsd-depression-and-anxiety-among-palestinian-children-in-the-gaza-strip.php?aid=11302

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/palestinian-ahed-tamimi-remain-jail-trial-180117132422405.html

Christmas 2017 & The Dishonest Broker

In the last few months we have seen the Trump administration reeling from one extraordinarily stupid move in foreign policy, to another.

Firstly  we have the tragedy and farce of the declaration that the US will ‘accept’ Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; somewhere that all Western nations have been loathe to go (officially) whilst fully accepting and unconditionally supporting the reality of the triumphalism of the apartheid racist Israeli entity.  A two state solution has, since 1948, been known to  all  parties  as a totally non-viable option, and will never happen.

It is of course possible that the Israelis finally realise that the nation of Israel has no future in the long term , unless it grants full right of return to all Palestinian and full compensation for lands stolen since 1948 and lives destroyed… The alternative for Israel does not bear thinking about.

It is not that Trump’s declaration changes anything;  what is upsetting for the West and for China and Russia, is that it makes plain that there never was a two state option- and that the United States has always been the Dishonest Broker in the ‘peace process’ .

Now we can start to face reality in Palestine- and it is not a pretty picture for the Israelis.

The ludicrous aspect of this, is that for those modern day Israelis whose ancestors came from the Levant; they are of exactly the same ethnic Semitic lineage as the ‘dirty Arabs’ they despise . We have seen more than 60 years of completely farcical “peace’ negotiations; the Israelis have never had any intention of returning any of the lands stolen by war or genocide, and both the ‘disinterested” broker and the Palestinian negotiators have always known that.

Then  we have the  ongoing playground bully tactics to North Korea by  the United States president and his policy  advisors and chiefs of staff.  A country that knows full well the epic scale of barbarity the American nation is capable of;  having endured American genocide in the Korean War and the continuous threats from various U.S. presidents and US generals since that time to blast them back into the stone-age. With its back against the wall, North Korea has only one option- to continue to develop enough nuclear ICBMs to substantially debilitate the American economy ( Given that of course from the American side, there will be no negotiations with North Korea until they ‘behave’ )

And then we have dear Nikki Haley the United States ambassador to the United Nations displaying bits of what are supposedly Iranian made missiles launched by the Yemenese Houthis against their Saudi aggressors ,who are currently killing thousands of Yemen citizens with cholera and millions through starvation…

But hey Nikki!- what ‘s more important? -the lives of a few million Yemenese? Or the need to destroy Iran to serve the interests of the Israeli supporters and Saudis who pay Congress and the Washington ‘think-tanks’ ? One hopes that karma is not for real:- Nikki’s future lives are not going to be exactly pretty…nor will it be in this life should true international justice be finally served.

It is not that Trump has really changed anything;- the brutality, cynicism, duplicitiousness and lack of humanity of United States foreign policy has remained largely unchanged since the Second World War. Trump has simply made it very clear what it  has always been about for the United States:- money!

The facade has been removed…We have  seen  a dramatic transition from  a President able to so  plausibly lie through his teeth  (and win  a Nobel peace prize for it), to  one who  seems  to  say  (or tweet) whatever  fleeting thought is on  his mind at  the time ,  but whose sole  immediate directive for decision-making is money  and power, rather than  a longer term strategy of deceit  to reach  the desired same end.

It is disturbing to think that these great leaders of the ‘Free World’ are supposedly the best of humankind- a sad indictment on us all

Links

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/world-will-not-mourn-decline-u-s-hegemony/