Check-mate for Palestine?

Israel has been involved in psychological warfare on the people of the world for decades. They are constantly re-framing the debates in the media, both by making impassioned speeches in western legislative buildings, and by their influences on western media. They paint the picture of being victims, and will attack anyone who says otherwise.

Journalists are forbidden to talk badly about them, they risk being fired by their pro-Israel and Conservative bosses. Politicians are crucified for doing the same, they are labelled anti-Semitic, despite the fact that there are Muslim Semites as well, and there’s no backlash for oppressing them.

They’ve even co-opted the language used. You can see a perfect example of this in how they’ve managed to monopolize the word holocaust. The word holocaust was invented specifically for the widespread extermination of Jewish Europeans by the Nazis, but in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t the largest genocide, nor was it the only one. There were ethnic cleansing wars in Europe in the 90’s, and before that.

In Africa, genocide seems to be as common as the World Cup.

Much ado about Rockets

The Knesset, and all it’s pseudo-political tentacles in the media, will happily convince anyone willing to listen that Israel is under constant threat; even though more people have died in traffic accidents, than by suicide bomber. This vague generalization is usually backed up by even more vague generalizations. The Palestinians hate Israel, they don’t even recognize Israel, how terrible! Look some disgruntled Palestinians lobbed mortars at Israel! Look they threw some cheap and ineffective rockets at Israel, the horror!

For some perspective, it’s worth examining their defensive rocket system, called Iron Dome. It is everything that the Patriot anti-rocket system deployed in the Gulf War was supposed to be. Except, the Iron Dome actually works. It has an estimated 97% effectiveness, much of that 3% is due to the target rockets not being entirely destroyed.

Naturally, no one ever talks about how many Iron Dome rockets fall on Gaza after missing their targets, that would be like questioning the legitimacy of self-defense! One of the staples of Nazi propaganda, making every action synonymous with defending your home. Even the U.N. with it’s multitude of agendas, can’t seem to pass any resolutions more onerous to Israel for their violations than a stern finger wagging. Even those are merely for show. This basically encourages Israel’s leaders to continue doing what they do, knowing that the worst outcome is bad PR.

We the people of the world condemn your actions! Carry on…

Imperialism is alive and well in the Middle East

Everything the secular Jewish majority do, in Gaza and the West Bank, are reflections of this unquestionable Zionist policy. It doesn’t matter how many Palestinians are killed, or starve to death in poverty, because a handful of Jewish people died. And you aren’t allowed to question who’s authorized to be where, because Israel’s military is currently deployed on Palestinian soil. A border as declared by the United Nations, which itself already included an extra 6% of Palestinian land they weren’t entitled to at the time of declaration.

Since then, a long line of successive governments have been secretly incentivizing their citizens to move into occupied lands, build townships, and so on. Then as tensions increased, so did the military expansion into those areas. They have even built roadways that cut deep into Palestinian territory captured in the 60’s, where Palestinian people can’t even venture without a hail of bullets greeting them. But even that wasn’t enough for these aggressive Zionists, they were going to take more land regardless, and demand their government support them. Under pressure from these vocal minorities, the government reached a decision to build a wall, just like the Berlin wall; obviously not the first idea they stole from Germany. Even that wall wasn’t enough to stop expansion as some people had hoped.

Also worth noting, contrary to popular belief, the Israelis didn’t just displace Muslims, there were a lot of Christians in the mix too. People either fled, or were trapped in limbo, homeless, Stateless, jobless. Millions of people, mostly young, now depend entirely on foreign aid to survive, an amount that still pales in comparison to the $3 billion foreign aid Israel receives. Jordan receives about $700 million, primarily as a goodwill gesture for not taking sides, and to take care of those Palestinian refugees.

In order for Israel to be established, more than 500 native Palestinian villages were razed to the ground and 750,000 Palestinians (80% of the population of present-day Israel), fled to save their lives. They believed that an international, or at least a neighboring Arab army, would surely come to save them, but that army never appeared. Most of these people went into U.N. camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. They gave birth to their children and grandchildren and now we have more than seven million Palestinian refugees in those camps.

As more settlers, the most arrogant, self-righteous of Israelis, settled into the occupied lands, there was even a backlash from more level headed citizens. There were protests to try and stop this obvious land theft. It became a standoff between liberal views, and the most aggressive conservative types, the kind that had deliberately, knowingly invested into stolen property.

Guess who won that dogfight.

The struggle within

While Israel is not technically a police state, that’s only because it isn’t only the police clamping down, it’s the military. In fact, Israel the country, can hardly be separated from it’s political ideology, or it’s military, it acts in unison. In many ways, these arms of the government create a path for every Israeli, to be shaped into the ideal aggressive Zionist. The military indoctrinated legions of youth, desensitizing them to war, and giving them plenty of hate towards their political enemies, which just happen to be Arabs. This fundamental racism is later channeled into political sciences, and applied into military technology research, popping out uncompromising leaders by the dozen.

Lest anyone thinks about circumventing this indoctrination, Israel conscripts their army and naval forces. Everyone except the ultra-Orthodox Jews are required to serve, which itself causes huge tensions in the population. Perhaps this is also because the Orthodox Jews are also state subsidized, in many ways treated like the First Nations people in North America, but on lavish welfare.

This exemption dates back to the formation of Israel, when rebuilding the Jewish culture was considered paramount, and they couldn’t risk these future bastions of society dying in senseless imperialist aggression could they? Except these days, there are enough Talmudic scholars, and the political leaders would like to complete the circle. It leaves the ruling parties in a bit of a bind too. On the one hand, Israel’s very existence is justified by protecting their Orthodoxy, and have permeated the halls of power, but on the other hand, more than 90% of the Jews are secular.

Maybe everyone is just jealous?

Exporting urban terrorism

It is worth examining how the military is trained as well. All the hapless conscripts are trained in a style of aggression designed to demoralize their enemy, drilled constantly in urban warfare, and defensive practices that assume everyone is a terrorist. It’s doubtful you could even graduate from the military without a deep sense of patriotic fervor, and political brainwashing. Another one of those great ideas stolen from Germany.

The para-military Mossad, which has strongly influenced how the CIA conducts itself, also appears to actively export their radical ideals by force. Some of which are understandable, as in the case of Gerald Bull: a Canadian inventor of a giant gun, which itself was based on an implausible scheme the Nazis had, and one which Saddam Hussein was interested in developing for his anti-Israel aggression.

But the vast majority of assassinations were part of their vast political chess game, and had nothing to do with necessity. Just a blatant disregard for sovereignty, or human rights, for political gain. They’ve managed to hobble Hamas in the public relations war, convincing the world they hide amongst school children, just as they helped push the lie of Iraq’s slaughter of newborns in the Kuwait invasion to the media, just like they neutered the Yassir Arafat’s Fatah party, and their PLO counterparts by taking out key officials.

What’s worse, American police forces actively court Israeli contractors (ex-military) to help train their officers. Strictly speaking, no one is as well versed in urban pacification as the Israelis, and it makes Stateside police commissioners drool, despite the protests.

So not only are the Israelis breaking international law, they are exporting their attitudes to supposedly “free” societies. You can read numerous stories of police brutality in Israel, almost equal word for word, with recent stories in Missouri, and New York.

The anger erupted after an early morning incident Saturday in the Arab village of Kfar Kana in northern Israel. Police said officers opened fire against a knife-wielding man attempting to stab policemen. Video footage later emerged, apparently taken from a security camera, showing a man repeatedly banging on the window of a police vehicle with an object in his hand. When officers emerged to confront him, he began to backpedal and was then shot. Police took him to a hospital where he died.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the aftermath and political spin is eerily similar to events unfolding in the States. First the swell of public outcry, followed by peaceful protests, countered with even more heavy-handed police pushback.

In a separate incident, Israeli soldiers shot and wounded 10 Palestinians near the West Bank town of Ramallah during a protest over the killing of a teenager, Palestinian medics and security sources said.

The police and military have total disregard for free speech, and never admit the truth. All you hear is American style anti-terrorist grandstanding, but against their own citizens:

At his weekly Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned against further violence. “Israel is a nation of law. Whoever violates the law will be punished severely. We will not tolerate disturbances and riots,” he said. “I have instructed the Interior Minister to use all means, including evaluating the possibility of revoking the citizenship of those who call for the destruction of the State of Israel.”

This all dovetails nicely with Israel’s end goal: Peace by force.

Ethnic cleansing, the slow way

The aggressive Zionist factions in Israel have been left to run amok for far too long to change. Even the moderate political leaders have ceded their place to these fanatics. The Knesset, their version of the House of Representatives, is almost entirely dominated by right-wing ideologues, xenophobes, and right-wing fascists, all of whom would have been right at home in the Nazi party. They make the conservative leaning Congressmen in the States seem like meek interns.

Seriously exclusionist laws, thought to be extreme by almost every open society, are allowed to pass, as if they had never heard of equal rights movements. Thinly veiled racism, and imperialist values are to be encouraged at the local level, by publicly declaring the minority-cum-majority Jewish population, is the only valid population. This could be a symbolic descendant to pre-WWII Germany’s scientific racism.

Interestingly, lesser issues, or lesser discrimination seems to steal the spotlight. There was a huge media barrage against Russia for passing anti-LGBT laws, basically outlawing homosexuality in the process. There were calls for boycotting the Olympic games in Sochi, there were talks about sanctions to convince them to relax their position. Yet no sanctions are ever placed on Israel, for something that affects a much larger group of people.

The Zionists have so completely re-written the rules of engagement, so completely usurped the conversations, that they are dictating the narrative. And no one dares fight them on it. At least no one who values their job as a journalist in the west.

You’re either pro-Israel, or anti-Semitic, take your pick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CKpCGjD8wg

The reshaping of property and rights

One of the strategic wins in the public mind for Israeli politics, is the marginalizing of Palestinian and Arab property rights. We know the country was founded on land that wasn’t theirs, and expanded to include more land over the years. All of which is pretty underhanded, and totally against international laws, designed to protect nations from overbearing neighbours. The lessons that the world learned from WWII, were not the lessons that Israel learned.

Before Germany conquered most of Europe, they had overrun their adjacent countries first, and the world’s strongest nations actually allowed the annexation, provided Germany stopped advancing on the rest of Europe. Obviously this didn’t happen, and eventually Germany picked a fight with pretty much everyone else, to their downfall, but you can see echoes of this in today’s Middle East tug of war.

Today there’s an acquiescence by the strong nations, they do nothing while settlements continue in Palestine, while land is being passively annexed. The same nations that would normally stand up against a ruthless despot in some isolated African region, are completely silent. They have backroom negotiating sessions, away from journalistic scrutiny instead.

Netanyahu gave a speech to the United Nations comparing “militant Islam” and indirectly Hamas, to a cancer that has metastasized, and must be removed. Very similar to the propaganda spread by the Nazis against the Jews during the lead-up to WWII. The Nazis described the Jews as filthy rats to be exterminated. Still, he asserts that these Islamist movements, are the ones like the Nazis, but instead of creating a master race, this group of militants are out to create a master faith.

More than anything, this tells you how the Zionists view the wider world, especially the Muslim world, but the danger comes from exporting their subtle fanaticism. Besides this embedding of values into American culture, they are slowly infecting the United Nations, and through the media, world at large. Netanyahu even openly insulted the UN, claiming the Human Rights Council is an oxymoron.

I’d say that’s not just Zionism, that’s arrogance too.

Who’s turn it is again?

If you think that what you’re seeing is merely a resignation that Israel is the defacto owner of the occupied lands now, you’re wrong. It’s very much deliberate. The Israelis are playing the long game, one move at a time, getting closer to their goal. They are moving much too slowly for elected officials in other countries to successfully object to, while their relentless PR campaign continues.

Successive U.S. administrations have tried to make peace in the Middle East, and all have failed. This might be disheartening, until you realize why it always failed. The players in the game weren’t ready to make peace. Israel wasn’t sufficiently bolstered, and hadn’t yet achieved worldwide acceptance of their agenda. Palestine by contrast, was too united, too emboldened, too hopeful. Neither side was willing to budge. American interested also weren’t served, at least not their interest in supplying arms to the region. Neither side had any leverage, but this didn’t last.

When Palestinians were originally associated with terrorist acts, the weekly suicide bombings, the car bomb detonations at checkpoints, they still had that air of the underdog. They were fighting their well-funded oppressor (at least in many people’s eyes) however they could, with makeshift explosives. Their version of guerrilla warfare. Likewise, Israel was seen as a powerful and organized military force, being the lead negotiator in all political discussions. Not really in serious danger as a State, the only danger on an individual level, like in popular cafés.

This changed after Hamas won a popular election after Arafat died. I’m pretty sure he was assassinated, very likely as Al-Jazeera investigated, with polonium over a long period, but there was a rushed autopsy, and French toxicologists didn’t find any of the usual toxins. None of this is to say there wasn’t a coverup by the doctors, nor does it specifically point to Mossad’s history of killing Palestinian officials, but where there’s fire… and polonium is hard to come by, unless you happened to have nukes.

Now, Arafat and his cohorts were a corrupt bunch. Many were paid directly by Israel to continue a false conflict, mostly by rhetoric. So if we instead look at who benefits from his removal from politics, a good reason for his assassination would be timing, not much else. Israel wanted to advance their agenda, and while Arafat was alive, no one could topple him politically. Maybe they gave him a little push, or bribed someone in his camp to do it? We’ll never know for sure. Ariel Sharon definitely viewed Arafat as an obstacle to peace, just keep in mind what kind of peace he wanted.

Whatever the case, Israel was ready for a little chaos.

Palestinian leadership fails

The public seemed to know that Arafat’s Fatah party was dominated by sell-outs in the later years, and a lot of them were losing hope. Losing hope for a true Palestinian State, and their future as a people. Hamas in contrast, was a strong ideological movement, much like the Taliban in Afghanistan. They promised an end to corruption, and supported the needy with social programs. For perhaps the first time in 50 years, Palestine seemed to be on course for a renaissance of sorts. Certainly improved living conditions could be expected.

This rise in a popular, Muslim-Brotherhood affiliated party, certainly signaled to Israel and the U.S. that things were ramping up in intensity simultaneously. The ink was not even dry on the election ballots when Kerry and other senior politicians publicly denounced them. You’d think Americans would be proud to have spread “democracy” to the Middle East, especially when they didn’t even have to use any bombs to do it. Even Canada’s Foreign Minister joined into the party, labeling Hamas as a well known terrorist organization.

I don’t think anyone expected much good to come of it. Perhaps it’s the fact that no one seems to want peace, unless it’s on their terms. However, intentions aside, Hamas had the opportunity to show the world, firstly that they are a credible government, and secondly to prove they are responsible leaders who wish to build peace with their Zionist neighbours. They could have disavowed violent acts, they could have convinced the world that they had reformed their terrorist ways.

They blew it.

Worldwide support drops, apathy grows

With conflicts playing out in other parts of the world, and consistent reports of new waves of suicide bombings, it was not hard for the world at large to lose interest. Not only because they had heard it all before, but the remaining solidarity with the impoverished Palestinians in camps was being drowned out by rockets. And Israel’s pleas for support in it’s fight against Hamas.

American’s meddling with foreign countries was at an all time high. With the Arab Spring having ruined Egypt, the Orange Revolution having hobbled Ukraine years earlier, the overthrow (and murder) of Gaddafi in Lybia, and the burgeoning rebellion in Syria. It didn’t take much imagination to expect their attentions would turn back to their favourite ocean front property in the Middle East. They just didn’t expect how messy Syria would get.

Pretty soon, “peace” talks were back on track. Or we could more aptly call them “subjugation” talks. Suddenly, the new Palestinian government, under Mahmoud Abbas, is notably silent. This should more or less indicate his complicity in the Israeli agenda, like Arafat’s government before him. As his influence erodes, he’s more keen to at least leave himself a legacy. It’s possible he thinks that brokering peace will earn him a Nobel Peace prize, probably jointly with his Jewish counterpart, unless of course they give it to Secretary Kerry for steering the whole process.

The key difference this time then, is that Israel has perfected playing the victim, while positioning itself to receive everything it wants, including the occupied lands. The Palestinian people have no clue what’s going on, but then most of them aren’t even old enough to vote; the average age in Gaza is around 14 years old.

It’s frightening to think just how many children are growing up in the squalor that are refugee camps.

The defense that was offensive

The Gaza incursion by Israeli Defense Forces recently, just highlights how cavalier they are with international laws. I can’t think of a single country, aside from Israel, or the United States, that can unilaterally launch military action on another democratically ruled country, without an uproar. They’ve both trampled on the Geneva Conventions so often, that it’s hard to see how they can lie with a straight face when accusing others of doing the same. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that, even if NATO and the UN are hopelessly subordinate to American interests.

Their excuse was to destroy tunnels being used to smuggle small arms, when the majority of items actually smuggled were medical supplies, and other impossible to obtain items. All because Gaza is behind a perpetual blockade. There’s no free flow of goods or wealth into the region, they are being slowly suffocated, and the world turns a blind eye. Mostly.

But Israel didn’t make any friends with the high body count of Gaza’s children. This is why in some ways the Gaza conflict was a PR win for Gaza. Although the ratio of the dead Palestinians to Israelis was still hundreds to one, for the first time these people managed to inflict enough pain on the invading army, to humiliate them. They held the siege for weeks, far longer than anyone expected. The Israeli army was totally caught off guard, even with their onslaught of tanks, and air supremacy. This was possibly Israel’s first serious misstep in a decade.

Most of Gaza is shattered. An estimated 15% of dwellings were destroyed, or rendered unsafe to live in. Their only power generating station was knocked out, again in violation Geneva Conventions, because the the overwhelming majority of collateral damage is to non-combatants. Which in Gaza’s case, is mostly children. This was not a defensive action by any stretch. Israel wanted a surgical strike, they wanted to send a message, with no unbecoming army casualties to report.

They failed on all counts.

A Zionist perspective

There’s a great irony to all this, not the least of which is that both sides are equally guilty of terrorism, or how both sides politically benefit from being terrorized. There’s a more fundamental irony, that is the “interests” of both Israel, and the U.S. are so completely inline at the moment, yet they are more effective at manipulating the dumbed-down American public, than they are at convincing their own citizens, that these actions are a fair response. You only have to look at where the protests against occupation are occurring.

In his speech to the UN, Netanyahu fires back at the international finger wagging, claiming that no other country on earth has done so much to protect innocent life in a conflict, as Israel has. Which is almost like saying, it’s OK to stab someone in the face, as long as you tell them in advance that you will. He also begs the other world leaders to accuse Hamas of war crimes for shooting rockets at his people, and a double war crime for placing those rocket batteries in residential neighbourhoods.

Let’s get this part straight, Israel chose to attack a country that has no significant military, that lives in poverty, in a very densely populated residential cluster, but blames Hamas for being there as well. Surely Hamas could leave town to find some open grassy areas to attack from right? And when Israel deliberately bombs a hospital, whether or not munitions were stored in the basement, have they not still destroyed a hospital that saves lives every day? This inhuman treatment of a captive population wouldn’t be justified anywhere else.

He then rails on about one of the most peaceful Islamic States, Iran. Preposterous considering they haven’t attacked anyone, nor do they carry out assassination campaigns to influence world politics. Probably why only about 20% of the audience clapped. But that’s not the telling part, the telling part is when he says that any peace agreement will require some territorial compromise, something the Israelis have never agreed to in the past.

There’s a master plan behind all this.

Last train to peace

Let’s say that everyone is serious this time though. Let’s assume they really do see a light at the end of the tunnel. President Obama certainly needs another victory on the world stage to assure his place in history, and to a lesser extent, to make the Democrats look good for the next election. So Kerry is stuck in marathon negotiations, behind closed doors, wrangling concessions from all sides. This is where Israel does it’s best work, in secret.

It should be pretty obvious even to the lay observer, American foreign policy has a fundamental need for Israel to exist, and for them to be a strong ally. So we would naturally assume, not having listened to any rhetoric, that any attempts by America to negotiate peace in the Middle East, will by necessity favour Israel. Which is exactly what is happening. Obama’s term is almost up, and you can smell the pungent urgency. The people left out of the conversation are the ordinary folks who live in the region. There’s high level politics going on, and none of the voters are privy to any of it.

Consequently, the Israeli leadership is more arrogant than ever, knowing that peace is just around the corner, and Kerry must believe it to. They know the Palestinian leadership is a wet noodle, and has no leverage, they barely have any meaningful friends. Jordan has given up on them, they’ve decided to support the American-led peace process fully, which is another way of saying, they no longer have an opinion. Egypt’s Muslim-Brotherhood friendly President was ousted, probably under false charges, but a country in turmoil is hardly going to advocate for another country is it? Iran actually wants a forced settlement, if only to create stability, but I don’t believe they expect it to stick.

A "framework agreement" will shortly be reached, and a final settlement will probably be signed in the last six months or so of President Obama’s term in office. When the Kerry process was first announced I was virtually alone in predicting that it would actually go somewhere; now, it’s widely assumed. Many respected Israeli commentators now take for granted that an agreement is just a matter of time.

So what we have is an American-style railroading. According to an acclaimed author anyway.

In recent weeks the Kerry talks have apparently focused on Israel’s demands for (i) an enduring military presence in the Jordan Valley and (ii) Palestinian recognition of it as a “Jewish state.” The Palestinians will negotiate some face-saving deal on the Jordan Valley involving a US-Israeli joint presence for a period of time. The Jordan Valley was already essentially resolved at the Annapolis negotiations in 2008. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is raising it now only so he can later claim to be making a “heart-wrenching concession”—Israel is adept at “conceding” things to which it has no title in the first place—by allowing for only a temporary US-Israeli presence along the border. It’s been received wisdom for years—even pro-Israel hack Dennis Ross concedes it in The Missing Peace—that the Jordan Valley has no strategic value.

They’ve either lined up their ducks, or strangled them.

One possibility is that the Palestinian Authority is playing a silly game of threatening the United States and Israel, “If you aren’t more forthcoming, we’re going to reconcile with Hamas and won’t deal with you anymore.” The second possibility is that Hamas wants a piece of the pie, and so will form a National Unity government that will guarantee it something in the final agreement. The third and, according to Mouin, most plausible possibility is that Abbas wants to neutralize Hamas by bringing it on board, thereby also reviving his claims to represent all Palestinians, while Hamas supports a reconciliation to bring it out of the cold after the disastrous developments in Egypt.

The Palestinians are too corrupt at the top, too inept at the middle, and too ignorant at the bottom to do anything about it.

What can the Palestinians do? Israel just wants the refugee question excised from the international agenda; it wants a document stipulating, “That’s no longer Israel’s responsibility.” If Kerry succeeds, they’ll get it. Especially if they get “Israel as a Jewish state plus its citizens” in the framework agreement, which nullifies the refugee question. How can the Palestinians stop it? They’re totally in thrall to European and American money right now. Yasser Arafat signed the 1993 Oslo agreement because the PLO was financially strapped after he aligned with Saddam Hussein during the First Gulf War. (The Gulf states retaliated by cutting off their subsidies to the PLO.) It was either agreeing to Oslo or—as it was put back then—”bye, bye PLO.” History is now repeating itself.

Which was really Israel’s subversive plan all along, they just had to wait for the right time to pull it off.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Quite.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2LNyZ6NNeE