Long called the most special bilateral relationship, US-Israeli ties are in fact the world’s strangest.
The weirdness, as we have witnessed in the past few weeks, comes in different forms – ranging from the cynical to the surrealistic.
Take for example Friday’s tweet by the US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, containing a video of himself and Israeli soldiers at the Israeli-Lebanese border, wishing everyone “Shabbat Shalom”.
This bizarre display of support for the Israeli military, which is de facto still at war with Lebanon, came amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
Earlier in June, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant threatened to bomb Lebanon back into the “Stone Age” if the Lebanese group Hezbollah starts a war.
Likewise, Amir Baram, the head of Israel’s northern command, declared that in the event of a war, the Israeli army would “destroy all the infrastructure … to the last stone” in Southern Lebanon – which would amount to a war crime.
On Monday, three days after the “Shabbat Shalom” clip appeared on Twitter, the Israeli army sent 1,000 troops from its elite forces along with armored vehicles, helicopters and drones into the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, killing at least eight Palestinians, including children, within the first few hours.
Nides, a banker-turned-diplomat, engaged in his publicity stunt at a time when Israel is snubbing the US, its closest and most generous ally, with increasing frequency and intensity.
Apart from launching deadly assaults on the Palestinians, Israeli officials have also repeatedly challenged the official US position in support of Palestinian statehood.
Just last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset’s foreign policy committee that Israel must “crush” the idea of a Palestinian state.
The Israeli leader has also openly disregarded warnings from the US against fostering closer ties with China.
Most recently, he announced he will be travelling to Beijing, giving the cold shoulder to US President Joe Biden’s administration, which has not yet invited him to visit Washington.
Netanyahu and his ministers have not minced their words when expressing dissatisfaction with Biden’s policies.
In March, the prime minister accused the American leader of meddling in Israeli affairs over his comments about the controversial judicial reform his government has been trying to pass and which has sparked months-long protests across Israel.
In February, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli reprimanded Nides for “interfering” in Israel’s internal affairs, telling him to “mind [his] own business”.
The US ambassador is not the only US official to engage in bizarre diplomatic stunts amid growing disparagement from the Israeli government.
Then the US Congress announced that Israeli President Isaac Herzog will address both of its houses to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Israeli statehood, an honor extended previously to Netanyahu three times.
The last time Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress was in 2015 when he tried to mobilize, if not outright incite, US lawmakers against then-President Barak Obama’s administration over its decision to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.
This came after he publicly humiliated Obama at the White House in 2011, lecturing him about Palestine and the Middle East.
This did not deter the Obama administration from committing to send Israel $38bn in military aid over 10 years, subsidizing its purchase of F-35 jet fighters.
And if that wasn’t enough, this “single largest pledge of military assistance in US history”, a pricey gift from the American taxpayer, was met “not with big love, but with mostly meh”, according to The Washington Post.
Last year, the Biden administration reaffirmed and even expanded these military commitments in a new strategic memorandum, the Jerusalem US-Israel Joint Partnership Declaration, in return for, well, nothing. Nada.
It couldn’t even get the previous, presumably more moderate Israeli government to embrace the standard rhetoric on achieving peace in Palestine.
Meanwhile, Biden has decided not to reverse any of his predecessor’s major concessions to Israel concerning its illegal annexation of Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights.
That’s not just strange, it is obscene. Even mad. And it begs the question, is there a method to this madness?
Otherwise, why would the US reward Israel despite its intransigence when such support boosts its militaristic and colonial tendencies and feeds its bellicosity? Several explanations come to mind.
First is the state of US domestic politics.
Biden is desperate not to alienate a single pro-Israel Democrat in the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the Senate, especially when the Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, are blindly following Netanyahu, come what may.
This is perhaps why Biden, the leader of the world’s foremost superpower, asked for Israeli approval to rejoin UNESCO six years after his predecessor abandoned it to appease Israel.
This was to make sure that the vote in Congress on the issue would pass.
Second is Washington’s political tactics. Biden wants to offset the temporary coolness towards the Israeli government by warming to its military, presidency and secular business elites to illustrate his bona fide “love for Israel”.
Such misplaced sentiment towards a colonial, apartheid regime has become more of an obsession in Washington, totally disconnected from the rest of the country, indeed the world.
In fact, when it comes to Israel-Palestine, Biden and many Democratic senators are not exactly aligned with the Democratic Party’s base, which has become ever more critical of the Zionist state. Dissatisfaction is growing even among the party’s Jewish members.
According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 49 percent of Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians, 38 percent sympathize more with the Israelis and 13 percent sympathize with neither.
Third is traditional US foreign policy. Conventional wisdom in Washington has long revolved around satisfying Israel’s needs and desires to encourage it to moderate its positions on peace with the Palestinians and make the necessary “compromises”, even “sacrifices”, for peace.
But in reality, unconditional US support has thus far hardened Israel’s stance, radicalized its society and driven its polity towards fascism.
Finally, there is also Washington’s strategic thinking. Historically, the US has maintained strong and consistent strategic cooperation with Israel, seeing it as its most reliable ally in the Middle East despite political and diplomatic ups and downs.
Just last year, Biden repeated this mantra, saying that if there was no Israel “we’d have to invent one.”
But treating it as a strategic asset has long proved of illusionary utility as the Zionist state has shown itself to be an utter liability, at least since the end of the Cold War.
In fact, Israel’s primary objective is to keep America stuck in the Middle East to clean up its messes.
Recently, Netanyahu was quite honest about it, telling Knesset members that China’s growing involvement in the region may not be so bad because it compels America to stay engaged. Well, on Israel’s side, of course.
But much of the Middle East’s hostility towards the US is driven by its decades-long support for what countries in the region see as a colonial warmongering state.
That’s why only by freeing itself from Israel’s paranoid influence could Washington begin to act as a responsible and respectable actor in the region.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps. But the shift in the Democratic Party in favor of justice in Palestine does provide some hope when it is needed most.
Following Russia’s announcement of Iran & Argentina’s BRICS membership bids, the alliance president reveals that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, a NATO member, have the same plans
AMLO responds to the US’s invasion threats: “Mexico must be respected. We are not a protectorate of the US nor a colony of the US. Mexico is a free, independent, sovereign country. We do not receive orders from anyone. Here, the people of Mexico rule.”pic.twitter.com/mRgiHsCRk9
The Russia-Ukraine conflict accelerated a global trend aimed at creating an economic and financial universe parallel to the existing system.
We have in the past highlighted the possibility of the GCC countries joining the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, whose population together constitute 41 per cent of the world.
These countries also account for 23 per cent of the global economy and 18 per cent of trade, which reflects their relative importance to the global economy as a whole.
Recently, Saudi Arabia applied to join the group, a move warmly welcomed by existing members.
Discussions are also being held about the prospect of the UAE and Turkey joining as well, which will lead to a fundamental change in the global power dynamics and help create a more balanced order.
The likely accession of the three countries means a huge change that will tip the balance in favor of the East.
Saudi Arabia, with its enormous potential in energy, the UAE as a global commercial and financial center, and Turkey, with its location, industrial and technological growth will add significant influence to the group and redistribute power between East and West.
More than tuned to geography
It goes without saying that a stronger BRICS means further dividing the world into two large blocs.
The first will be led by the Western camp, which currently controls the levers of the global economy.
The bloc includes Japan and Australia, while the Eastern power base is formed through the BRICS economies, despite the presence of Brazil in their midst.
This means an intensified geopolitical competition ahead.
The accession of oil-producing countries would mean the group dominates with 31 per cent of global oil production, in itself a dramatic development that will have fundamental effects on international relations.
Simply because the world will see an integration in BRICS the most important producers and consumers of energy.
Further, the presence of key commercial and logistical centers within the group means greater control over global trade.
With its capabilities closely tracked by the global defence industry, Israel has become one of the largest drone operators in the Middle East and a net exporter, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank.
The Israeli officer, not identified in line with military requirements given the sensitivity of the subject, said any sales of bomb-capable drones would be government-to-government, negating the need for publicity.
All the drone munitions are Israeli-made, the officer said, and “come down in free-fall, and can reach the speed of sound”.
Such bombs, unlike the Hellfire missiles sometimes fired by U.S. drones, would not have propulsion systems that generate the tell-tale noise and smoke of fuel afterburners.
The officer declined to give further details on the munitions, saying only that, by design, when an armed drone attacks “no one will hear it, no one will see it coming”.
An example of a drone target could be fast-moving guerrillas, spotted and attacked before they can launch a rocket, other Israeli officials have said.
Yet this would assume enough altitude so that the drones’ propeller engines cannot be clearly heard on the ground.
In winter wars, like Israel’s in Gaza in 2008-2009, the drones have to be flown below the clouds for their targeting cameras to work, meaning they might be audible.
“You lose the element of surprise,” the officer said.
Despite deploying sophisticated armed drones, the majority of Israel’s UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) inventory is unarmed given the main function of intelligence for ground forces, the RUSI think tank said in an online report.
Right Cold War mindsets
The West is attempting to hold onto its historical positions, which it greatly bolstered after World War II, and attempting to resist any change in the structure of the global economy.
At the same time making mistake after mistake by ignoring and failing to take into account the significant changes.
Consequently, it has lost significant supporters who have considerable political and economic clout.
As for the opposing pole, it acts cleverly with an open-mind and equitable interactions with other nations and embracing the dictum of shared interests.
More are likely to join BRICS in years to come if the Western bloc does not alter its antiquated ideologies and practices.
Two opposing economic and financial poles will eventually emerge.
The BRICS states announced the creation of a parallel bank with a $150 billion capital as a competitor to the IMF.
Additionally, the Ukrainian crisis has significantly strengthened economic and trade ties between group members, making them more dependent on one another.
Numerous businesses and institutions withdrew from the markets of the BRICS countries, and export restrictions were put in place on some high-tech goods to Russia and China.
Work towards an equitable global order
An expansion of BRICS may greatly contribute to the establishment of equitable relations based on the interests of many countries rather than on discord between countries in either pole.
All of which requires a thorough understanding of global events and outcomes.
The existing economic system and its components, founded 80 years ago, are no longer feasible owing to massive changes in the economic and geopolitical balance of power, the emergence of new economic powers and the downfall of other.
This truth should be properly understood if the world needs to avoid further conflicts getting in the way of an equitable global order.
THANKS TO THE ONGOING conflict in Ukraine, we indeed seem to be rushing headlong into a major war—possibly a World War Three, possibly the world’s first (and perhaps last) nuclear war.
Ukraine leadership and their Western backers seem hell-bent on fighting to the last man, and Vladimir Putin, as an old-school Cold Warrior, seems equally determined to press ahead until achieving “victory.”
The cause seems hopeless for Ukraine, who cannot reasonably expect to prevail in an extended conflict with one of the largest militaries on Earth.
At best, they may bleed Russia over a period of months or years, but only at the cost of massive blood-letting themselves.
It seems that Ukraine will be the loser in this struggle, no matter what comes.
In the Western media, we are presented with a remarkably simplified storyline: Putin is an evil warmonger who simply wants to extend Russian territory; to this end, he is exploiting events in Ukraine, deploying his military ostensibly to support the Russian-speaking districts of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.
But this is just cover, they say, for his mad quest to rebuild the Russian empire.
In pursuit of his goal, he is willing to inflict any amount of material damage and kill any number of civilians.
Fortunately, say our media, Putin has thus far been largely contained; the brave Ukrainian fighters are constantly “reclaiming” land, Russia’s advance has “stalled,” and indeed, Russia seems to be in danger of losing.
Consequently, the US and its allies must do all they can to “aid” and “support” the brave Ukrainians and their beleaguered but heroic leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.
No amount of money, no assortment of deadly weaponry, no military intelligence, is too much.
Like World War Two, this “war” is an unconditional struggle of Good versus Evil; therefore the West, as the moral paragon of the world, must step up, undergo sacrifice, and ensure that Good prevails.
And indeed, the financial support from just the United States is breathtaking: As of early May, Congress has approved $13.6 billion in aid, much of it for direct Ukrainian military support.
And yet this would only cover costs through September.
Thus, president Biden recently called for an additional package of $33 billion, which would include over $20 billion in military and security aid, and, surprisingly, $2.6 billion for “the deployment of American troops to the region,” in order to “safeguard NATO allies.”
Incredibly, Congress responded by approving $40 billion, bringing the total aid thus far to $54 billion.
For perspective, this represents over 80% of Russia’s annual defense budget of $66 billion.
(By contrast, America allocates well over $1 trillion—that is, $1,000 billion—annually in direct and indirect military expenditures.)
Notably, such unconditional support and defense of Ukraine is a virtually unanimous view across the American political spectrum, and throughout Europe.
Right and left, conservative and liberal, working class or wealthy elite, all sectors of society are apparently united in opposition to the evil Putin.
In an era when virtually no issue garners unanimous support, the Ukrainian cause stands out as an extremely rare instance of bipartisan, multi-sector agreement.
The rare dissenters—such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and a handful of alt-right renegades—are routinely attacked as “Russian assets” or “tools of Putin.”
There is no room for disagreement, no space for debate, no opposing views allowed.
In fact, though, this is yet another case of what I might call the “unanimity curse”: when all parties in American society are united on a topic, any topic, then we really need to worry.
Here, it seems that the reality is of a potent Jewish Lobby, exerting itself (again) in the direction of war, for reasons of profit and revenge against a hated enemy.
There is, indeed, a Jewish hand at work here, one that may well drive us into another world war, and even a nuclear war—one which, in the worst case, could mean the literal end of much of life on this planet.
The unanimity comes when all parties are subject, in various ways, to the demands of the Lobby, and when the public has been misled and even brainwashed by a coordinated Jewish media into believing the standard narrative.
The best cure for this catastrophic situation is unrestricted free speech.
The Lobby knows this, however, and thus takes all possible measures to inhibit free speech.
Normally, such a struggle ebbs and flows according to the issue and the times; but now, the situation is dire.
Now more than ever, a lack of free speech could be fatal to civilized society.
Context and Run-Up
To fully understand the Jewish hand in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, we need to review some relevant history.
Over the centuries, there have been constant battles over the lands of present-day Ukraine, with Poles, Austro-Hungarians, and Russians alternately dominating.
Russia took control of most of Ukraine in the late 1700s and held it more or less continuously until the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991; this is why Putin claims that the country is “part of Russia.”
For their part, Jews have experienced a particularly tumultuous relationship with Russia, one that ranged from disgust and detestation to a burning hatred.
As it happened, Jews migrated to Russia in the 19th century, eventually numbering around 5 million.
They were a disruptive and agitating force within the nation and thus earned the dislike of Czars Nicholas I (reign 1825 to 1855), Alexander II (1855 to 1881, when he was assassinated by a partly-Jewish anarchist gang), and especially Nicholas II (1894 to 1917)—the latter of whom was famously murdered, along with his family, by a gang of Jewish Bolshevists in 1918.
Already in 1871, Russian activist Mikhail Bakunin could refer to the Russian Jews as “a single exploiting sect, a sort of bloodsucker people, a collective parasite”.[1]
The assassination of Alexander initiated a series of pogroms that lasted decades, and which set the stage for a lingering Jewish hatred of all things Russian.[2]
For present purposes, though, we can jump to the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election (I note that Ukraine also has a prime minister, but unlike most European countries, he typically has limited powers).
In 2004, it came down to “the two Viktors”: the pro-Western V. Yushchenko and the pro-Russian V. Yanukovych.
The first round was nearly tied, and thus they went to a second round in which Yanukovych prevailed by around three percentage points.
But amid claims of vote-rigging, Western Ukrainians initiated an “Orange Revolution”—backed by the Ukrainian Supreme Court—that annulled those results and mandated a repeat runoff election.
The second time, the tables were turned, and the pro-West Yushchenko won by eight points.
The West was elated, and Putin naturally mad as hell.
The following years witnessed financial turmoil and, unsurprisingly, constant harassment from Russia.
By 2010, Ukrainians were ready for a change, and this time Yanukovych won handily, over a Jewish female competitor, Yulia Timoshenko—notably, she had “co-led the Orange Revolution.” Russia, for once, was satisfied with the result.
But of course, in the West, Europe and the US were mightily displeased, and they soon began efforts to reverse things yet again.
Among other strategies, they apparently decided to deploy the latest in high tech and social media.
Thus in June 2011, two of Google’s top executives—Eric Schmidt and a 30-year-old Jewish upstart named Jared Cohen—went to visit Julian Assange in the UK, then living under house arrest.
It is well-known, incidentally, that Google is a Jewish enterprise, with Jewish founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page running the ship.[3]
The nominal purpose of the trip was to conduct research for a book that Schmidt and Cohen were working on, regarding the intersection of political action and technology—in plain words, how to foment revolutions and steer events in a desired direction.
As Assange relates in his 2014 book When Google Met Wikileaks, he was initially unaware of the deeper intentions and motives of his interviewers.
Only later did he come to learn that Schmidt had close ties to the Obama administration, and that Cohen was actively working on political upheaval.
As Assange wrote, “Jared Cohen could be wryly named Google’s ‘director of regime change’.” Their immediate targets were Yanukovych in Ukraine and Assad in Syria.
By early 2013, the American Embassy in Kiev was training right-wing Ukrainian nationalists on how to conduct a targeted revolt against Yanukovych.
It would not be long until they had their chance.
In late 2013, Yanukovych decided to reject an EU-sponsored IMF loan, with all the usual nasty strings attached, in favor of a comparable no-strings loan from Russia.
This apparent shift away from Europe and toward Russia was the nominal trigger for the start of protest actions.
Thus began the “Maidan Uprising,” led in large part by two extreme nationalist groups: Svoboda and Right Sector.[4] Protests went on for nearly three months, gradually accelerating in intensity; in a notable riot near the end, some 100 protestors and 13 police were shot dead.
As the Uprising reached its peak, at least one American Jew was highly interested: Victoria Nuland.
As Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State (first under Hillary Clinton, and then under the half-Jew John Kerry), Nuland had direct oversight of events in eastern Europe.[5]
And for her, it was personal; her father, Sherwin Nuland (born Shepsel Nudelman), was a Ukrainian Jew.
She was anxious to drive the pro-Russian Yanukovych out of power and replace him with a West-friendly, Jew-friendly substitute.
And she had someone specific in mind: Arseniy Yatsenyuk. On 27 January 2014, as the riots were peaking, Nuland called American Ambassador to Ukraine, Jeff Pyatt, to urgently discuss the matter.
Nuland pulled no punches: “Yats” was her man. We know this because the call was apparently tapped and the dialogue later posted on Youtube. Here is a short excerpt:
Nuland: I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.
Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step? […]
Nuland: OK, good. I’m happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.
Pyatt: OK, will do. Thanks.
It was clear to both of them, though, that the EU leadership had other ideas.
The EU was much more anxious to be a neutral party and to avoid direct intervention in Ukrainian affairs so as to not unduly antagonize Russia.
But in time-tested Jewish fashion, Nuland did not give a damn.
A bit later in the same phone call, she uttered her now-famous phrase: “F___ the EU.” So much for Jewish subtlety.[6]
But there was another angle that nearly all Western media avoided: “Yats” was also Jewish.
In a rare mention, we read in a 2014 Guardian story that “Yatsenyuk has held several high-profile positions including head of the country’s central bank, the National Bank of Ukraine…
He has played down his Jewish-Ukrainian origins, possibly because of the prevalence of antisemitism in his party’s western Ukraine heartland.”
For some reason, such facts are never relevant to Western media.
As the Maidan Uprising gave way to the Maidan Revolution in February 2014, Yanukovych was forced out of office, fleeing to Russia.
Pro-Western forces then succeeded in nominating “Yats” as prime minister, effective immediately, working in conjunction with president Oleksandr Turchynov.
This provisional leadership was formalized in a snap election in May 2014 in which the pro-Western candidate Peter Poroshenko won.
(The second-place finisher was none other than Yulia Timoshenko—the same Jewess who had lost to Yanukovych in 2010.)
It was under such circumstances that Putin invaded and annexed Crimea, in February 2014.
It was also at this time that Russian separatists in Donbass launched their counter-revolution, initiating a virtual civil war in Ukraine; to date, eight years later, around 15,000 people have died in total, many civilians.
With this American-sponsored coup finished, Ukrainian Jews began to reach out to the West to increase their influence.
Thus it happened that just a few months after Maidan, the wayward son of the American vice president got in touch with a leading Ukrainian Jew, Mykola Zlochevsky, who ran a large gas company called Burisma.
In this way, Hunter Biden incredibly found himself on the board of a corporation of which he knew nothing, in an industry of which he knew nothing, and which nonetheless was able to “pay” him upwards of $500,000 per year—obviously, for access to father Joe and thus to President Obama.
Hunter carried on in this prestigious role for around five years, resigning only in 2019, as his father began his fateful run for the presidency.[7]
Despite a rocky tenure, Yatsenyuk managed to hold his PM position for over two years, eventually resigning in April 2016.
His replacement was yet another Jew, Volodymyr Groysman, who served until August 2019. The Jewish hand would not be stayed. All this set the stage for the rise of the ultimate Jewish player, Volodymyr Zelensky.
This situation is particularly remarkable given that Jews are a small minority in Ukraine.
Estimates vary widely, but the Jewish population is claimed to range from a maximum of 400,000 to as low as just 50,000.
With a total population of 41 million, Jews represent, at most, 1% of the nation, and could be as small as 0.12%.
Under normal conditions, a tiny minority like this should be almost invisible; but here, they dominate.
Such is the Jewish hand.
Enter the Jewish Oligarchs
In Ukraine, there is a “second government” that calls many of the shots.
This shadow government is an oligarchy: a system of rule by the richest men.
Of the five richest Ukrainian billionaires, four are Jews: Igor (or Ihor) Kolomoysky, Viktor Pinchuk, Rinat Akhmetov, and Gennadiy Bogolyubov.
Right behind them, in the multi-millionaire class, are Jews like Oleksandr Feldman and Hennadiy Korban.
Collectively, this group is often more effective at imposing their will than any legislator.
And unsurprisingly, this group has been constantly enmeshed in corruption and legal scandals, implicated in such crimes as kidnapping, arson and murder.[8]
Of special interest is the first named above. Kolomoysky has long been active in banking, airlines and media—and in guiding minor celebrities to political stardom.
In 2005 he became the leading shareholder of the 1+1 Media Group, which owns seven TV channels, including the highly popular 1+1 channel.
(The 1+1 Group was founded in 1995 by another Ukrainian Jew, Alexander Rodnyansky.)
Worth up to $6 billion in the past decade, Kolomoysky’s current net wealth is estimated to be around $1 billion.
Not long after acquiring 1+1, Kolomoysky latched on to an up-and-coming Jewish comedian by the name of Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky had been in media his entire adult life, and even co-founded a media group, Kvartal 95, in 2003, at the age of just 25.
Starring in feature films, he switched to television by the early 2010s, eventually coming to star in the 1+1 hit show “Servant of the People,” where he played a teacher pretending to be president of Ukraine.
Then there was the notable 2016 comedy skit in which Zelensky and friends play a piano with their penises—in other words, typical low-brow scatological Jewish humor, compliments of Zelensky and Kolomoysky.
[Zelensky also appeared in a trashy “music” video in which he simulates a grotesque homosexual “come on.” — Ed.]
By early 2018, the pair were ready to move into politics.
Zelensky registered his new political party for the upcoming 2019 election, and declared himself a presidential candidate in December 2018, just four months prior to the election.
In the end, of course, he won, with 30% of the vote in the first round, and then defeating incumbent Poroshenko in the 2nd round by a huge 50-point margin.
Relentless favorable publicity by 1+1 was credited with making a real difference.
Notably, the third-place finisher in that election was, yet again, the Jewess Yulia Timoshenko—like a bad penny, she just keeps coming back.[9]
Zelensky, incidentally, has dramatically profited from his “meteoric rise” to fame and power.
His Kvartal 95 media company earned him some $7 million per year.
He also owns a 25% share of Maltex Multicapital, a shell company based in the British Virgin Islands, as part of a “web of off-shore companies” he helped to establish back in 2012.
A Ukrainian opposition politician, Ilya Kiva, suggested recently that Zelensky is currently tapping into “hundreds of millions” in funding that flows into the country, and that Zelensky himself is personally earning “about $100 million per month.”
A Netherlands party, Forum for Democracy, recently cited estimates of Zelensky’s fortune at an astounding $850 million.
Apparently the “Churchill of Ukraine” is doing quite well for himself, even as his country burns.
In any case, it is clear that Zelensky owes much to his mentor and sponsor, Kolomoysky.
The latter even admitted as much back in late 2019, in an interview for the New York Times.
“If I put on glasses and look back at myself,” he said, “I see myself as a monster, as a puppet master, as the master of Zelensky, someone making apocalyptic plans.
I can start making this real” (Nov 13). Indeed—the Kolomoysky/Zelensky apocalypse is nearly upon us.
Between rule by Jewish oligarchs and manipulations by the global Jewish lobby, modern-day Ukraine is a mess of a nation—and it was so long before the current “war.”
Corruption there is endemic; in 2015, the Guardianheadlined a story on Ukraine, calling it “the most corrupt nation in Europe.”
An international corruption-ranking agency had recently assessed that country at 142nd in the world, worse than Nigeria and equal to Uganda.
As a result, Ukraine’s economy has suffered horribly.
Before the current conflict, their per-capita income level of $8700 put them 112th in the world, below Albania ($12,900), Jamaica ($9100), and Armenia ($9700); this is by far the poorest in Europe, and well below that of Russia ($25,700 per person).
Impoverished, corrupt, manipulated by Jews, now in a hot war—pity the poor Ukrainians.
Hail the American Empire
Enough history and context; let’s cut to the chase.
From a clear-eyed perspective, it is obvious why Zelensky and friends want to prolong a war that they have no hope of winning: They are profiting immensely from it.
As an added benefit, the actor Zelensky gets to perform on the world stage, which he will surely convert into more dollars down the road.
Every month that the conflict continues, billions of dollars are flowing into Ukraine, and Zelensky et al. are assuredly skimming their “fair share” off the top.
Seriously—who, making anywhere near $100 million per month, wouldn’t do everything conceivable to keep the gravy train running?
The fact that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are dying has no bearing at all in Zelensky’s calculus; in typical Jewish fashion, he cares not one iota for the well-being of the White Europeans.
If his soldiers die even as they kill a few hated Russians, so much the better. For Ukrainian Jews, it is a win-win proposition.
Why does no one question this matter?
Why is Zelensky’s corruption never challenged?
Why are these facts so hard to find?
We know the answer: It is because Zelensky is a Jew, and Jews are virtually never questioned and never challenged by leading Americans or Europeans.
Jews get a pass on everything (unless they are obviously guilty of something heinous—and sometimes even then!).
Jews get a pass from fellow Jews because they cover for each other.
Jews get a pass from media because the media is owned and operated by Jews.
And Jews get a pass from prominent non-Jews who are in the pay of Jewish sponsors and financiers.
Zelensky can be as corrupt as hell, funneling millions into off-shore accounts, but as long as he plays his proper role, no one will say anything.
So the “war” goes on, and Zelensky and friends get rich.
What does Europe get from all this?
Nothing.
Or rather, worse than nothing: They get a hot war in their immediate neighborhood, and they get an indignant Putin threatening to put hypersonic missiles in their capital cities in less than 200 seconds.
They get to deal with the not-so-remote threat of nuclear war.
They get to see their currency decline—by 10% versus the yuan in a year and by 12% versus the dollar.
They get a large chunk of their gas, oil, and electricity supplies diverted or shut off, driving up energy prices.
And they get to see their Covid-fragile economies put on thin ice.
But perhaps they deserve all this.
As is widely known, the European states are American vassals, which means they are Jewish vassals.
European leaders are spineless and pathetic lackeys of the Jewish Lobby.
Judenknecht like Macron, Merkel, and now Scholz, are sorry examples of humanity; they have sold out their own people to placate their overlords.
And the European public is too bamboozled and too timid to make a change; France just had a chance to elect Le Pen, but the people failed to muster the necessary will.
Thus, Europe deserves its fate: hot war, nuclear threat, cultural and economic decline, sub-Saharan and Islamic immigrants—the whole package.
If it gets bad enough, maybe enough Europeans will awaken to the Jewish danger and take action. Or so we can hope.
What about the US? We could scarcely be happier.
Dead Russians, the hated Putin in a tizzy, and the chance to play “world savior” once again.
American military suppliers are ecstatic; they don’t care that most of their weapons bound for Ukraine get lost, stolen or blown up, and that (according to some estimates) only 5% make it to the front.
For them, every item shipped is another profitable sale, whether it is used or not.
And American congressmen get to pontificate about another “good war” even as they approve billions in aid.
And perhaps best of all, we get to press for an expansion to that American Empire known as NATO.
We need to be very clear here: NATO is simply another name for the American Empire.
The two terms are interchangeable.
In no sense is NATO an “alliance among equals.”
Luxembourg, Slovakia, and Albania have absolutely nothing to offer to the US.
Do we care if they will “come to our aid” in case of a conflict?
That is a bad joke, at best.
In reality, what such nations are is more land, more people, and more economic wealth under the American thumb.
They are yet more places to station troops, build military outposts, and run “black sites.”
NATO always was, and always will be, the American Empire.
The push for Ukraine to join NATO by the West-friendly Zelensky was yet another blatant attempt at a power grab by the US, this one on Russia’s doorstep.
Putin, naturally, took action to circumvent that.
But of course, now the push moves to Sweden and Finland, both of whom are unwisely pursuing NATO membership in the illusory quest for security, when in reality they will simply be selling what remains of their national souls to the ruthless Judeo-American masters.
For their sake, I hope they are able to avoid such a future.
And all the while, American Jews and a Jewish-American media play up the “good war” theme, send more weapons, and press ever further into the danger zone.
Ukrainian-American Jews like Chuck Schumer are right out front, calling for aid, for war, for death.[10]
“Ukraine needs all the help it can get and, at the same time, we need all the assets we can put together to give Ukraine the aid it needs,” said Schumer recently, eager to approve the next $40 billion aid package.
As Jews have realized for centuries, wars are wonderful occasions for killing enemies and making a fast buck.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the present proxy war against Jewish enemies in eastern Europe began not long after the 20-year war against Jewish enemies in Afghanistan ended.
Life without war is just too damn boring, for some.
Public Outrage?
If more than a minuscule fraction of the public knew about such details, they would presumably be outraged.
But as I mentioned, the Jewish-controlled Western media does an excellent job in restricting access to such information, and in diverting attention whenever such ugly facts pop up.
The major exception is Tucker Carlson, who is able to reach some 3 million people each night; this is by far the widest reach for anything like the above analysis.
But Carlson falls woefully short—pathetically short—in defining the Jewish culprit behind all these factors.
Jews are never outed and never named by Carlson, let alone ever targeted for blame.
This crucial aspect is thus left to a literal handful of alt-right and dissident-right websites that collectively reach a few thousand people, at best.
And even if, by some miracle, all 3 million Tucker viewers were enlightened to the Jewish danger here, this still leaves some 200 million American adults ignorant and unaware.
The mass of people believe what they see on the evening news, or in their Facebook feeds, or Google news, or on CNN or MSNBC, or in the New York Times—all Jewish enterprises, incidentally.
This is why, when polled, 70% of the American public say that current aid to Ukraine is either “about right” or even “too little.”
This, despite the fact that around 50% claim to be “very concerned” about nuclear war; clearly they are unable to make the necessary connections.
And for many, it is even worse than this: around 21% would support “direct American military intervention” against Russia, which means an explicit World War Three, with all the catastrophic outcomes that this entails.
Our Jewish media have done another fine job in whipping up public incitement.
In sum, we can say that our media have cleverly constructed a “philo-Semitic trap”: Any mention or criticism of the Jewish hand in the present conflict is, first, highly censored, and then, if necessary, is dismissed as irrational anti-Semitism.
Sympathy toward the (truly) poor, suffering Ukrainians is played up to the hilt, and Putin and the Russians relentlessly demonized.
Leading American Jews, like Tony Blinken and Chuck Schumer, are constantly playing the good guys, pleading for aid, promising to help the beleaguered and outmanned Ukrainian warriors.
Who can resist this storyline?
Thus, we have no opposition, no questioning, no deeper inquiries into root causes.
Jews profit and flourish, Ukrainians and Russians suffer and die, and the world rolls along toward potential Armageddon.
The reality is vastly different.
Global Jews are, indeed, “planetary master criminals,” as Martin Heidegger long ago realized.[11]
They function today as they have for centuries: as advocates for abuse, exploitation, criminality, death and profits.
This is self-evidently true: If the potent Jewish Lobby wanted true peace, or flourishing humanity, they would be actively pushing for such things and likely succeeding.
Instead, we have endless mayhem, war, terrorism, social upheaval and death, even as Jewish pockets get ever-deeper.
And the one possible remedy for all this—true freedom of speech—recedes from our grasp.
On the one hand, I fear greatly for our future.
On the other, I feel that we get what we deserve.
When we allow malicious Jews to dominate our nations, and then they lead us into war and global catastrophe, well, what can we say?
Perhaps there is no other way than to await the inevitable conflagration, exact retribution in the ensuing chaos, and then rebuild society from scratch—older and wiser.
The United States is making a mistake in not concentrating on its own problems rather than meddling in China’s internal affairs, as a defeat against China—coming so soon after the war in Ukraine and the withdrawal from Afghanistan—would show U.S. imperialism to be just a paper tiger.
In 1958 the Royal Institute of International Affairs (aka Chathamhouse) founded the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
Many members on the board of directors were RIIA members and members of its U.S. Sister organization the Council on Foreign Relations.
It has become the pre-eminent British think-tank peddling the “new NATO” doctrine, and pressing for the United States to accept the role of “policeman of the world.”
The Council on Foreign Relations and Royal Institute of International Affairs can trace their roots back to a secret organization founded and funded by Cecil Rhodes, who became fabulously wealthy by exploiting the people of South Africa. Rhodes is the father of Apartheid.
The Council on Foreign Relations was founded by a group of American and British imperialists and racists intent on ruling the world.
In this reprint of the February 1994 “Notes from the Editors,” former MR editors Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy ask: “The United States could not have won a more decisive victory in the Cold War. Why, then, does it continue to act as though the Cold War is still on?”
Warmongers in Washington badly want a war with Iran
Many of the British members were British Intelligence Agents.
THE INQUIRY and its members, who included such notable Americans as Col. Edward Mandel House, Walter Lippmann, Isaiah Bowman, and James Shotwell, wrote most of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points.
The CFR/RIIA method of operation is simple — they control public opinion.
They keep the identity of their group secret.
They learn the likes and dislikes of influential people.
The IISS website tells us IISS is “A registered charity headquartered in London, the IISS also has offices in Washington, Singaporeand Manama, Bahrain.
The IISS is a non-partisan organisation, independent of government and other bodies.
Its mission is to promote the adoption of sound policies to further global peace and security and maintain civilised international relations.”
This is untrue. Non-partisan is CFR/RIIA euphemism for controlling both sides of political spectrum.
The psycho-political operations are often designed to create tensions between different groups of people.
Keeping the world in a state of perpetual tension and warfare maximizes profits from CFR/RIIA munition, medicine, media, energy, and food businesses.
IISS is a CFR/RIIA psycho-political operations tool for achieving their goal of one world government under their control. Besides The Military Balance, the definitive reference source on the world’s armed forces, IISS publications include:
One of IISS’s main ways of reaching out to broader layers is through its publications, which include: Strategic Comments; Adelphi Papers; Survival; an annual report entitled The Military Balance; and the annual reference The World Directory of Strategic Studies Centers. The Strategic Survey 1997-1998, an IISS annual report, argues for the United States to accept its assigned role as global policeman. The only choice that the United States should make, the IISS survey argues, is whether to act unilaterally, to act through multilateral organizations like the United Nations or NATO, or through informal coalitions. “The U.S. is bound to find itself often in the future balancing the benefits of a more multinational approach . . . against the utility of a unilateral approach which allows the U.S. its preferredpolicywithoutthe encumbrancesofinter-alliedconsultation. The quality of U.S. leadership in the future is likely to be judged by the wisdom of the choice it makes between these mutually exclusive methods for dealing with crises.”
Conrad Black is the chairman and CEO of the Hollinger Corp. media cartel, which owns the Telegraph plc in Britain, the Jerusalem Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, and hundreds of other dailies and weeklies across the United States, and which has just launched a new nationwide daily in Canada. On July 6, 1998, Black addressed the annual meeting of the Center for PolicyStudiesinLondon,theflagshipthink-tankoftheradical free market Mont Pelerin Society. In his speech on “Britain’s Final Choice: Europe or America?” Black attacked the European Union as “the greatest engine for collectivism, illiberalism, and hyper-regulation in our national life.” He called upon Britain to abandon plans to join the European Monetary Union, and, instead, to formally press for membership in an expanded, transatlantic “super-NAFTA,” which he proposed be renamed as the “North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement.”
“None of the continental European countries has a particular affinity with the United States and Canada,” Black lied, “or anything slightly comparable to Britain’s dramatic modern historic intimacy with North America. . . . Such an expanded NAFTA would have every commercial advantage over the EU. It is based on the Anglo-American free market model of relatively restrained taxation and social spending. The United States will make no significant concessions of sovereignty and does not expect other countries to do so.” Two years earlier, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher keynoted the founding “Prague Congress” of the New Atlantic Initiative, where she initiated the call for this super-NAFTA. Lady Thatcher chairs the international advisory board of the Hollinger Corp., and Black is a founder of the NAI.
What is today the Hollinger corporate octopus, started out during World War II as a front company for Britain’s war machine. In April 1940, Edward Plunkett Taylor was recruited into British intelligence by the Minister of Munitions and Supplies, Clarence Decatur Howe. Perhaps drawing on the Taylor family’s experience as smugglers during U.S. Prohibition, Howe assigned E.P. Taylor to secure the flow of U.S. dollars into the British Empire, and to obtain war supplies that were forbidden under the U.S. Neutrality Act. Taylor and his crew—including Conrad Black’s father, George Montagu Black—made a profit working through a British government front company that they had created, called War Supplies Ltd. The New York Times described it at the time as “a virtual merging of the economies of the United States and Canada.” At the end of the war, Taylor & Co. formed the Argus Corporation with the $1.3 billion they had amassed by procuring arms for the British government. Argus proceeded to buy up a number of strategic raw material firms, and Canada’s largest farm equipment manufaturer, Massey Ferguson. Conrad Black was groomed by his father and Taylor to take over Argus. When he assumed control in the 1970s, he changed the company’s name to Hollinger Corp., and he sold off the raw material and manufacturing subsidiaries; then he began a worldwide media grab, such that, today, Hollinger is among the largest print media cartels in the English-speaking world. Using funds from liquidated assets of the Argus Corp., supplemented by contributions from Li Kai Shing, whose family has a virtually hereditary board position on the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the heroin bank for East Asia’s market, Black purchased 100% control of The Telegraph Ltd., publisher of the Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph is the largest newspaper in London—it is a favorite of the British royal family—and quickly became a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Black purchased 100% control of the Jerusalem Post, the foremost English daily in Israel, turning its policies to support for the Likudnik Greater Israel crazies, such as Foreign Minister Gen. Ariel Sharon, “the Butcher of Lebanon.” Hollinger Canadian Publishing Holdings, Inc. began buying up daily and weekly papers across Canada, through its wholly owned Sterling Newspapers Co. and Southam groups. And, in the United States, Black purchased some 240 daily and weekly papers through his Chicago Group, including the Chicago Sun-Times, the Gary, Indiana Post Tribune, and the Community Newspaper Group. The Spectator, a British establishment journal since 1828, was purchased by Hollinger shortly after the takeover of the Telegraph Group Ltd. On July 9, 1990, the Spectatorfeatured an inflammatory anti-German article Thatcher’s Minister of Industry and Trade, Nicholas Ridley. Ridley assailed Chancellor Helmut Kohl for backing reunification of his country, and equating Kohl with Adolf Hitler, and calling a reunified Germany the “Fourth Reich.” The article kicked up such controversy that he was soon thereafter forced to resign. Thatcher, in her Memoirs, the Downing Street Years, acknowledged that it was British Empire policy to do everything to block German reunification. Ridley was merely just taking orders from Thatcher, Black, and the BAC.
The boards of directors and advisory boards of Hollinger and its subsidiaries are a veritable who’s who of the British American& Canadian inner circle, from policy shapers, like Black, to field hands like Anglo-Israeli spy Richard Perle. We provide a partial listing:
Conrad M. Black, Canadian Privy Council, Queen’s Council, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Hollinger, Inc.; Hollinger International, Inc.; Hollinger Canadian Publishing Holdings Inc.; Telegraph Group, Ltd; and, Southam Inc.; 1001 Nature Trust; New Atlantic Initiative.
Barbara Amiel Black, wife of Conrad Black, and VicePresident, Editorial, London. Director, Hollinger, Inc.; and, Hollinger International, Inc. R.
Donald Fullerton, chairman of the executive committee, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Director, Hollinger, Inc.
Baroness Margaret Thatcher, LG, OM, Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1979-90).
Senior International Adviser, Hollinger International, Inc.
Vale´ry Giscard d’Estaing, President of France (1974- 81). Senior International Adviser, Hollinger International, Inc.
Lord Peter Rupert Carrington, KG, GCMG, Senior International Adviser, Hollinger International, Inc.; and, Director, Telegraph Group Ltd.
CFR member Henry A. Kissinger, KCMG, former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Adviser; former member President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Senior International Adviser, Hollinger International, Inc.; and, Director, Hollinger International, Inc.
CFR member Zbigniew Brzezinski,former U.S. National Security Adviser, former chairman, Trilaterial Commission. Senior International Adviser, Hollinger International, Inc.
Dr. Giovanni Agnelli, Honorary Chairman, Fiat S.p.A. International Advisory Board, Hollinger International, Inc.
Dwayne O. Andreas, Chairman, Archer Daniels Midland Co. Director, International Advisory Board, Hollinger International, Inc. CFR member David Brinkley, ABC News senior correspondent (1981- 97). International Advisory Board, Hollinger International, Inc.
CFR member William F. Buckley, Editor-at-Large, National Review. International Advisory Board, Hollinger International, Inc.
CFR member Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (1995-98). International Advisory Board, Hollinger International, Inc.
Lord Hanson,Chairman, Hanson PLC, London. International Advisory Board, Hollinger International, Inc.
CFR member Richard Perle, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy 1981-87; Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; International Advisory Board, Hollinger International, Inc.; Director Hollinger International, Inc.; and, Director, Jerusalem Post Publications, Ltd.; Chairman, Hollinger Digital, Inc.
Lord Jacob Rothschild, Chairman, Jacob Rothschild Holdings PLC. International Advisory Board, Hollinger International, Inc.
CFR member Paul A. Volcker, Chairman, James D. Wolfensohn Inc. (1988-96); Chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve System, 1979- 87; North American Chairman, Trilateral Commission.
CFR member Richard Burt, Chairman, International Equity Partners; Chief Negotiator in Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with U.S.S.R., 1989-91; Director, Hollinger International, Inc.
Alfred Taubman (son William is CFR member) , Chairman, Taubman Co.; Chairman, Sotheby’s Holdings, Inc.; and, Director, Hollinger International, Inc.
Lord Weidenfeld of Chelsea, Chairman, Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., London; Director, Hollinger International, Inc.; and, Director, Jerusalem Post Publications, Ltd. Viscount Cranborne, Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords; Director, Telegraph Group, Ltd.
Rupert N. Hambro; Chairman, JO Hambro & Co., Ltd.; former officer, British Special Operations Executive; and, Director, Telegraph Group Ltd.
Henry N.L. Keswick, Chairman, Matheson & Co. Ltd. and Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd., London; Director, Telegraph Group, Ltd. Lord King of Wartnaby, President, British Airways PLC and Babcock International Group, PLC, London; Director, Telegraph Group, Ltd. Lord Rawlinson of Ewell, Privy Council, Queen’s Council, U.K. Solicitor-General, 1962-64 and Attorney General, 1970-74; Director, Telegraph Group, Ltd.
CFR member Raymond G.H. Seitz, Senior Managing Director, Lehman Brothers and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom; Director, Telegraph Group, Ltd. Maj. Gen. Shlomo Gazit, Senior Researcher, Jaffe Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University; Former Chief of Israeli Military Intelligence; and, Director, Jerusalem Post Publications, Ltd
The US and Japanese militaries are increasing cooperation to prepare for a possible war with China over Taiwan or other areas in the Asia Pacific, the top US Marine Corps general in Japan told Financial Times.
Lt. Gen. James Bierman, commander of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF) and of Marine Forces Japan, said the US military was preparing for a future conflict in the region the same way it did in Ukraine in 2014 following the US-backed ouster of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
“Why have we achieved the level of success we’ve achieved in Ukraine? A big part of that has been because after Russian aggression in 2014 and 2015, we earnestly got after preparing for future conflict: training for the Ukrainians, prepositioning of supplies, identification of sites from which we could operate support, sustain operations,” Bierman said.
“We call that setting the theater. And we are setting the theater in Japan, in the Philippines, in other locations,” the general added.
Bierman’s comments came after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced a major overhaul of the Japanese armed forces that involves doubling Tokyo’s military budget. A new security strategy issued by Kishida’s government names China “the biggest strategic challenge” and includes language that can justify military action in defense of the US, breaking from Japan’s post-World War II pacifism.
The Marines Corps has been undergoing an overhaul of its own as it is shifting its focus on preparing for war in the western Pacific rather than fighting counterinsurgencies in the Middle East. Bierman’s III MEF is at the center of the revamp, which is focused on creating smaller units that can move quickly around the islands of the western Pacific as the Marines operate within the range of China’s missiles.
Bierman said that cooperation with allies in the region is vital to the new Marine Corps strategy, and the Marines have been operating more closely with Japanese forces during drills. The US and Japan are set to discuss strengthening their alliance even more during a meeting of their defense ministers this week, and Kishida is set to meet with President Biden in Washington this Friday.
The US is also planning to build five new military facilities in the Philippines as part of its buildup around China, where it will be able to preposition more weapons and equipment. Bierman said the buildup in the Asia Pacific will give the US “a leverage point, a base of operations, which allows you to have a tremendous head start in different operational plans.”
Local officials in the Philippines said the US might return to Subic Bay, which was once the site of the largest US naval base in Asia that closed 30 years ago. But Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is also looking to maintain good relations with China and may not sign off on the establishment of a major US military base.
The NATO-backed Atlantic Council has proposed apartheid Israel as a blueprint for a hyper-militarized Ukraine. The paper was authored by Obama’s former ambassador to Tel Aviv, now an Israeli spy-tech consultant.
Just forty days after Russia’s military campaign began inside Ukraine, Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky told reporters that in the future, his country would be like “a big Israel.”
The following day, one of Israel’s top promoters in the Democratic Party published an op-ed in NATO’s official think tank exploring how that could be executed.
Zelensky made his prediction while speaking to reporters on April 5, rejecting the idea that Kiev would remain neutral in future conflicts between NATO, the European Union, and Russia.
According to Zelensky, his country would never be like Switzerland (which coincidentally abandoned its Napoleon-era tradition of nonalignment by sanctioning Russia in response to its February invasion).
“We cannot talk about ‘Switzerland of the future,’” the president informed reporters.
“But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”
For those wondering what a “big Israel” would actually look like, Zelensky quickly elaborated on his disturbing prophecy.
“We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas — there will be people with weapons,” Ukraine’s president said, predicting a bleak existence for his citizens.
“I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.”
Though the web post was based on comments Zelensky made to reporters, the president’s office mysteriously excised a section of his remarks in which he declared a future Ukraine would not be “absolutely liberal, European.”
Instead, along with his vision for a heavily militarized Ukraine, the post emphasized Zelensky’s readiness to join NATO “already tomorrow.”
For NATO’s power brokers, however, Zelensky’s intimated willingness to join the military alliance was perhaps the least remarkable aspect of his statement.
Instead, within 48 hours of his comments, the Atlantic Council – NATO’s semi-official think tank in Washington – published a “road map” exploring how to transform Ukraine into “a big Israel.”
Authored by Daniel B. Shapiro, the former US Ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, the document posited that “the two embattled countries share more than you might think.”
Just as former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig presented Israel as “the largest American air craft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk,” Shapiro put forward a vision of Ukraine as a hyper-militarized NATO bastion whose national identity would be defined by its ability to project US power against Russia.
sky visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem, January 2020
Israel and Ukraine: “old, loyal friends”
Despite Israel’s reluctance to join the Western sanctions campaign against Russia, it has aided Ukraine’s militarily, sending two large shipments of defensive equipment since February of this year.
In the past, however, Israel’s support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia has been more than defensive.
Back in 2018, over 40 human rights activists petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice to stop arming Ukraine after members of the neo-nazi Azov Battalion were caught brandishing Israeli-made weapons.
As Israel’s Ha’aretz noted at the time, “The militia’s [Azov] emblems are well-known national socialist ones.
Its members use the Nazi salute and carry swastikas and SS insignias… One militia member said in an interview that he was fighting Russia since Putin was a Jew.”
Zelensky, a Ukrainian Jew, was apparently unperturbed by Israel’s alleged arming of Nazi elements in his country.
One year after his 2019 election, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to launch what he called a “prayer for peace,” and to attend an event entitled “Remember the Holocaust to fight anti-Semitism.”
Ahead of the junket, Zelensky heaped praise on Israeli society, remarking in an interview that “Jews managed to build a country, to elevate it, without anything except people and brains,” and that Israelis are a “united, strong, powerful people.
And despite being under the threat of war, they enjoy every day. I’ve seen it.”
“There are many countries in the world that can protect themselves, but Israel, such a small country, can not only protect itself, but facing external threats, can respond,” Zelensky said, adding that he had visited the country “many times.”
In a birthday message later that year to Israel’s then-Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Zelensky commented that “old loyal friends are more valuable than ever. Ukraine and Israel have a friendship such as this.”
Since the escalation in fighting between Kiev and Moscow in February of this year, dozens of Israelis have traveled to Ukraine to join the country’s Foreign Legion.
In August, the Canadian government-backed Kyiv Independent published an investigation which accused Ukraine’s Foreign Legion of stealing arms and goods as well as carrying out sexual harassment and other forms of abuse.
Meanwhile, Zelensky has continually heaped praise on Tel Aviv, especially after an Israeli Supreme Court decision to lift restrictions on citizens traveling to Ukraine.
“The rule of law and respect for human rights is exactly what distinguishes a true, developed democracy!” the Ukrainian President tweeted following the July ruling.
A hyper-militarized apartheid state as a model for Ukraine
By April of 2022, Zelensky’s admiration for the Israeli state had apparently reached new heights.
Immediately following his declaration that Ukraine would soon become “a big Israel,” Washington’s former ambassador to Tel Aviv, Daniel B. Shapiro, published a blueprint for Zelensky to achieve that dream at the Washington DC-based, NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council.
“By adapting their country’s mindset to mirror aspects of Israel’s approach to chronic security challenges, Ukrainian officials can tackle critical national-security challenges with confidence and build a similarly resilient state,” Shapiro, an Atlantic Council “distinguished fellow,” wrote.
The nearly 900-word outline offered eight bullet points detailing how Ukraine can become more like Israel, a country recently described by Amnesty International as an “apartheid state.”
The points included advice such as to place “security first,” maintain “Intelligence dominance,” and remember that “technology is key.”
According to Shapiro, a central component of Israel’s security strategy is that “the whole population plays a role.”
“Civilians recognize their responsibility to follow security protocols and contribute to the cause,” Shapiro wrote of the Israeli population.
“Some even arm themselves (though under strict supervision) to do so.
The widespread mobilization of Ukrainian society in collective defense suggests that the country has this potential.”
These comments align directly with Zelensky’s prediction that in a future Ukraine, “people with weapons” will be present in nearly every aspect of civilian life.
Like the propaganda touting Israel’s “success” as a security state, Shapiro’s blueprint imagined Ukraine’s citizenry united by a “common purpose” with help from Tel Aviv’s “high-tech innovation” in the military and intelligence sectors.
His game plan portrays Israel’s advancements in security to as an almost mythical achievement owing purely to the feisty, innovative spirit of its citizens, overlooking the single greatest material factor in its success: unprecedented levels of foreign military assistance, particularly from the United States.
Indeed, without US taxpayers virtually subsidizing its military through yearly aid packages amounting to untold billions of dollars, it is difficult to see how a country the size of New Jersey would have attained the status of the world’s leading surveillance technology hub.
Even as Shapiro urged Zelensky to maintain “active defense partnerships,” he simultaneously downplayed the role foreign aid has played in preserving Israel’s settler-colonial imperatives, arguing that the “single principle” informing Tel Aviv’s security doctrine is that “Israel will defend itself, by itself—and rely on no other country to fight its battles.”
Then-Amb. Daniel Shapiro speaking at the 2016 conference of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, which would later employ him.
A US diplomat stays behind in Israel, goes to bat for its top spying firm
Shapiro would know a thing or two about the Israeli intelligence apparatus.
In mid-2017, after opting to remain with his family in Israel, rather than return to the country that had employed him as a diplomat, he joined the Israeli tech firm NSO hacking firm as an independent advisor.
There, Shapiro helped evaluate potential clients for NSO’s notoriously invasive digital spyware, known as Pegasus.
NSO’s many government clients include the Saudi Monarchy, which has used its Pegasus system to monitor and persecute human rights campaigners and journalists.
Shapiro has also enjoyed close ties with Israeli intelligence through the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) think tank in Tel Aviv.
During the better part of his four years as a “Distinguished Visiting Fellow” at the institute, its executive director was Amos Yadlin, the Israeli Defense Forces’ former chief of Military Intelligence.
Yadlin helped devise the doctrine of disproportionate force employed by the Israeli military against Gaza in which civilians were redefined as the “terrorists’ neighbor,” and thereby stripped of protections under the Geneva Conventions.
In 2018, INSS paid Shapiro more than $20,000 to testify before Congress on its behalf, despite him not registering as a foreign agent.
Like NSO Group, INSS maintains a veneer of independence from the Israeli government even though its founder, Aharon Yariv, also served as the head of Israel’s military intelligence.
In the US, Shapiro had a stint at WestExec Advisors, a consulting founded in 2017 by now-Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and described by Politico as “Biden’s Cabinet in waiting.” Prior to the election of Joe Biden, Shapiro ran cover in the media after the Democratic Party’s platform removed language opposing further annexation of land in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
War — it’s good for Atlantic Council donors
It is likely no coincidence that Shapiro published his prescription for converting Ukraine into an Israeli-style security state in his capacity as a “distinguished fellow” at the Atlantic Council.
If Ukraine is ever transformed into the permanent military fortress he and Zelensky imagine, the NATO think tank’s weapons industry donors stand to benefit immensely.
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing were all listed among the Atlantic Council’s top benefactors in 2021.
Raytheon Chairman and CEO Gregory J. Hayes also happens to sit on the think tank’s international advisory board.
As Max Blumenthal reported for The Grayzone, the Atlantic Council has also served as a de facto laundromat for money from Ukrainian interests like Burisma to members of Biden’s inner circle.
The three aforementioned arms companies, which form the heart of Washington’s military industrial complex, have already reaped massive profits from the war in Ukraine.
Boeing, which faced a public relations crisis after malfunctions in its 737 Max plane’s operating system resulted in two high profile crashes, could be on track to reclaiming its status as the world’s top aircraft manufacturer as a result of the conflict.
Though Boeing suffered two consecutive quarterly losses in 2022, by July it claimed to be “building momentum” for a recovery.
In June, the aerospace giant secured a contract to supply heavy-lift helicopters to Germany’s government after Berlin created a $107 billion fund for military investment in direct response to the Ukraine war.
Meanwhile, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin both manufacture the Javelin anti-tank missile system that have been dubbed a “symbol of Ukraine’s resistance” on the battlefield.
“They’ve been so important, there’s even a story about Ukrainian parents naming their children — not a joke — their newborn child, ‘Javelin’ or ‘Javelina,’” US President Joe Biden gushed during a May visit to a Lockheed Martin plant in Troy, Alabama, underscoring the company’s vital role in the Ukraine war with absurdity.
The US has sent more than 8,500 Javelin anti-tank systems to Ukraine since February at a cost of roughly $178,000 a pop, according to the Pentagon’s 2021 budget.
Eager to keep the gravy train flowing, Lockheed Martin is seeking to double production, aiming to manufacture 4,000 Javelin systems a year.
Lockheed’s 2022 stocks are up more than 20 percent over the previous year, reaching their height just two weeks after Russia’s military operation began.
With inspiration from Shapiro’s NATO-sponsored “road map” to success, Zelensky’s fantasy of a perpetual militarized, high-tech Sparta bolstered by a gun-toting civilian population will require a massive investment in weapons and surveillance technology on the part of the government in Kiev.
If this war is any indication, Ukraine will likely look to the Atlantic Council’s donors once again as it ventures to fulfill Zelensky’s dream of establishing a “big Israel” on Russia’s border.
The arms sent to Ukraine using the money of taxpayers in the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere are being used to line the pockets of the Ukrainian authorities.
Ukraine has received billions and billions of dollars in donated arms from the United States and its allies such as the United Kingdom and other NATO states in the past few months.
The Biden administration alone, as of July 1, has committed nearly $7 billion, the US State Department said last week.
Just last Thursday, the White House announced that the United States was sending a new batch of military supplies to Ukraine. The new batch of arms supply is worth $450 million in shipments.
Earlier that day, Ukraine received a batch of HIMARS, weapons set on top of the Ukrainian wishlist, and the Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksiy Reznikov thanked, via his Twitter account, his “colleague and friend Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III for these powerful tools!”
An initial four units of the rocket system have already been delivered, kicking off the training program required for Ukrainian soldiers to operate the sophisticated and highly accurate weaponry.
Though the United States has been taking care of providing training for the Ukrainian soldiers when it comes to arms they are not accustomed to, Kiev is still selling its arms to the black market due to “inexperience”.
Even the HIMARS are likely to be sold, according to the former defense official, Pentagon policy chief Colin Kahl said Kiev’s forces recently completed training on HIMARS delivered to Ukraine by Washington and London.
Once upon a time United States foreign policy was based on actual national interests, but that was long ago and far away before the country was beguiled into a colonial war with Spain followed by a twentieth century that was chock-a-block full of any type and intensity of warfare that one might imagine, including the use of nuclear weapons.
Some might consider that the United States has become a nation made by war, to include a presumption that all the war-making has been both just and necessary, since America is “exceptional” and by default “the leader of the Free World.”
Witness what is taking place vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia right now, pressing forward with a full-scale economic war against Moscow while arming one of the belligerents in support of no actual national interest, as if by habit.
The propensity of American politicians to resort to arms to compensate for their other failures is such that among circles in Washington and the media there has long been a joke making the rounds observing that no matter who is nominated and elected president we always wind up with John McCain.
But if one is seriously concerned about the tendency of the United States to view nearly every foreign problem as solvable if only one uses enough military force, the joke might be updated to suggest that we Americans now always wind up with the Kagans, the first family of neoconservative/neoliberal advocates for an aggressive, interventionist US foreign policy.
Victoria Nuland, the architect of the disaster in Ukraine and a Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton protege, is married to Robert Kagan and now serving as number three in the State Department.
His brother is Fred, currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Fred’s wife Kimberley is head of the aptly named Institute for the Study of War.
When Congress-critters want to justify a new war, they frequently cite judgements made by one of the various groups associated with the Kagans.
Robert is a frequent contributor to the national media both in interviews and opinion pieces calling inevitably for harsh measures against countries like Russia and Iran while Fred uses his bully pulpit to argue in favor of a large increases in military spending to counter “future threats.”
Characteristically, the Kagan brothers love war but expect someone else to do the fighting.
They are both considerably overweight and could never pass a military entrance physical if they were so inclined, which, of course they are not.
The Kagans have been closely tied to the Democratic Party on many social issues and would likely describe themselves as liberal interventionists as well as neocons, since in practice both labels mean the same thing in terms of an assertive foreign policy backed by force.
Plus, their flexibility gives them access to the foreign policy establishments of both major parties, as also does their support of Israeli interests in the Middle East, to include outspoken support of the Iraq War and for a covert war against Iran.
The Kagans are labeled by many as conservative, but they are not reliably Republican.
Donald Trump was much troubled during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns by so-called conservatives who rallied behind the #NeverTrump banner, presumably in opposition to his stated intention to end or at least diminish America’s role in wars in the Middle East and Asia.
The Kagans were foremost among those pundits.
Robert was one of the first neocons to get on the #NeverTrump band wagon back in 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and spoke at a Washington fundraiser for her, complaining about the “isolationist” tendency in the Republican Party exemplified by Trump.
Many other notable neocons also declared themselves to be #NeverTrump, including Bill Kristol, Bret Stephens, Daniel Pipes, Reuel Gerecht, Max Boot and Jonah Goldberg.
‘Axis of Evil’: Pompeo, Bolton and Abrams
To be sure, some high-profile neocons stuck with the Republicans, to include the highly controversial Elliott Abrams, who initially opposed Trump but later became the point man for dealing with both Venezuela and Iran, attracted by Trump’s hardline with both countries.
Abrams’ conversion reportedly took place when he realized that the new president genuinely embraced unrelenting hostility towards Iran in particular as exemplified by his ending of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.
John Bolton was also for a time a neocon in the White House fold, though he later became an enemy after being fired by the president and then wrote a book critical of Trump.
Even though the NeverTrumper neocons did not succeed in blocking Donald Trump in 2016, they maintained relevancy by slowly drifting back towards the Democratic Party, which is where they originated back in the 1970s in the office of the Senator from Boeing Henry “Scoop” Jackson.
A number of them started their political careers there, to include leading neocon Richard Perle.
It would not be overstating the case to suggest that the neoconservative movement together with its liberal interventionist colleagues are dominating foreign policy thinking across the board in Congress and the White House.
That development has been aided by a more aggressive shift among the Democrats themselves, with Russiagate and other “foreign interference” still to this day being blamed for the party’s failure in 2016 and for its dreary prospects in midterm elections later this year.
Given that mutual intense hostility to Trump, the doors to previously shunned liberal media outlets have now opened wide to the stream of foreign policy “experts” who want to “restore a sense of the heroic” to US national security policy.
Eliot A. Cohen and David Frum have been favored contributors to the Atlantic while Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss were together at the New York Times prior to Weiss’s resignation.
Jennifer Rubin, who wrote in 2016 that “It is time for some moral straight talk: Trump is evil incarnate,” is a frequent columnist for The Washington Post while both she and William Kristol appear regularly on MSNBC. Russian-Jewish import hardliner Max Boot is a regular feature contributor at the Post.
The unifying principle that ties many of the mostly Jewish neocons together is, of course, unconditional defense of Israel and everything it does, which leads them to support a policy of American global military dominance which they presume will inter alia serve as a security umbrella for the Jewish state.
In the post-9/11 world, the neocon media’s leading publication Bill Kristol’s The Weekly Standardvirtually invented the concept of “Islamofascism” to justify endless war in the Middle East, a development that has killed millions of Muslims, destroyed at least three nations, and cost the US taxpayer more than $5 trillion.
The Israel connection has also resulted in neocon political and media support for the currently highly aggressive and dangerous policy against Russia, due in part to its involvement in defense of Israeli target Syria.
In Eastern Europe, neocon ideologues have aggressively exploited the largely illusory policy of “democracy promotion,” which, not coincidentally, has also been a major Democratic Party foreign policy objective, both coming together nicely to justify the current chaos in Ukraine.
The neocons and liberal interventionists are involved in a number of foundations, the most prominent of which is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), that are largely funded by Jewish billionaires and defense contractors.
FDD is headed by Canadian Mark Dubowitz and it is reported that the group takes direction coming from officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
Other major neocon incubators are the American Enterprise Institute, which currently is the home of Paul Wolfowitz, and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at John Hopkins University.
Many former Barack Obama White House senior officials who believe in liberal interventionism and democracy promotion while also hating Russia and Vladimir Putin have developed comfortable working relationships with the neocons.
Foreign policy hawks including Antony Blinken, Wendy Sherman, Nicholas Burns, Susan Rice and Samantha Power are calling most of the shots given Biden’s senility but with neocon political and media support.
Unfortunately, nowhere in Biden’s foreign policy circle does one find anyone who is resistant to the idea of worldwide interventionism in support of claimed humanitarian objectives, even if it would lead to an actual shooting war with major competitor power Russia and also possibly China. In fact, Biden himself embraces a characteristically extremely bellicose view on a proper relationship with foreign nations “claiming that he is defending democracy against its enemies.” His language and authoritarian governing style leave no wiggle room for constructive dialogue with adversaries. The script being written by his Administration on how to deal with the rest of the world promises nothing but unending trouble and quite possibly sharp economic decline in the US for the foreseeable future.
A new global geopolitical game is in formation, and the Middle East, as is often the case, will be directly impacted by it in terms of possible new alliances and resulting power paradigms.
While it is too early to fully appreciate the impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on the region, it is obvious that some countries are placed in relatively comfortable positions in terms of leveraging their strong economies, strategic location and political influence.
UAE toes fine line as it navigates increasingly strong ties with Moscow amid Western fallout over Ukraine conflict, say analysts.
Others, especially non-state actors, like the Palestinians, are in an unenviable position.
Despite repeated calls on the Palestinian Authority by the US Biden Administration and some EU countries to condemn Russia following its military intervention in Ukraine on February 24, the PA has refrained from doing so.
Analyst Hani al-Masri was quoted in Axios as saying that the Palestinian leadership understands that condemning Russia “means that the Palestinians would lose a major ally and supporter of their political positions.”
Indeed, joining the anti-Russia western chorus would further isolate an already isolated Palestine, desperate for allies who are capable of balancing out the pro-Israel agenda at US-controlled international institutions, like the UN Security Council.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of its Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s, Russia was allowed to play a role, however minor, in the US political agenda in Palestine and Israel.
It participated, as a co-sponsor, in the Madrid peace talks in 1991, and in the 1993 Oslo accords.
Since then a Russian representative took part in every major agreement related to the ‘peace process,’ to the extent that Russia was one of the main parties in the so-called Middle East Quartet which, in 2016, purportedly attempted to negotiate a political breakthrough between the Israeli government and the Palestinian leadership.
Despite the permanent presence of Russia at the Palestine-Israel political table, Moscow has played a subordinate position.
It was Washington that largely determined the momentum, time, place and even the outcomes of the ‘peace talks.’
Considering Washington’s strong support for Tel Aviv, Palestinians remained occupied and oppressed, while Israel’s colonial settlement enterprises grew exponentially in terms of size, population and economic power.
Palestinians, however, continued to see Moscow as an ally.
Within the largely defunct Quartet – which, aside from Russia, includes the US, the European Union and the United Nations – Russia is the only party that, from a Palestinian viewpoint, was trustworthy.
However, considering the US near complete hegemony on international decision-making, through its UN vetoes, massive funding of the Israeli military and relentless pressure on the Palestinians, Russia’s role proved ultimately immaterial, if not symbolic.
There were exceptions to this rule.
In recent years, Russia has attempted to challenge its traditional role in the peace process as a supporting political actor, by offering to mediate, not just between Israel and the PA, but also between Palestinian political groups, Hamas and Fatah.
Using the political space that presented itself following the Trump Administration’s cutting of funds to the PA in February 2019, Moscow drew even closer to the Palestinian leadership.
A more independent Russian position in Palestine and Israel has been taking shape for years.
In February 2017, for example, Russia hosted a national dialogue conference between Palestinian rivals.
Though the Moscow conference did not lead to anything substantive, it allowed Russia to challenge its old position in Palestine, and the US’ proclaimed role as an ‘honest peace broker.’
Wary of Russia’s infringement on its political territory in the Middle East, US President Joe Biden was quick to restore his government’s funding of the PA in April 2021.
The American President, however, did not reverse some of the major US concessions to Israel made by the Trump Administration, including the recognition of Jerusalem, contrary to international law, as Israel’s capital.
Moreover, under Israeli pressure, the US is yet to restore its Consulate in East Jerusalem, which was shut down by Trump in 2019. The Consulate served the role of Washington’s diplomatic mission in Palestine.
Washington’s significance to Palestinians, at present, is confined to financial support. Concurrently, the US continues to serve the role of Israel’s main benefactor financially, militarily, politically and diplomatically.
While Palestinian groups, whether Islamists or socialists, have repeatedly called on the PA to liberate itself from its near-total dependency on Washington, the Palestinian leadership refused.
For the PA, defying the US in the current geopolitical order is a form of political suicide.
But the Middle East has been rapidly changing.
The US political divestment from the region in recent years has allowed other political actors, like China and Russia, to slowly immerse themselves as political, military and economic alternatives and partners.
Putin, left, poses with Palestinian children in traditional clothes during a welcoming ceremony in Bethlehem, in 2012. Nasser Shiyoukhi | AP
The Russian and Chinese influence can now be felt across the Middle East.
However, their impact on the balances of power in the Palestine-Israel issue, in particular, remains largely minimal.
Despite its strategic ‘pivot to Asia’ in 2012, Washington remained entrenched behind Israel, because American support for Israel is no longer a matter of foreign policy priorities, but an internal American issue involving both parties, powerful pro-Israel lobby and pressure groups, and a massive rightwing, Christian constituency across the US.
Palestinians – people, leadership and political parties – have little trust or faith in Washington.
In fact, much of the political discord among Palestinians is directly linked to this very issue. Alas, walking away from the US camp requires a strong political will that the PA does not possess.
Since the rise of the US as the world’s only superpower over three decades ago, the Palestinian leadership reoriented itself entirely to be part of the ‘new world order’. The Palestinian people, however, gained little from their leadership’s strategic choice.
To the contrary, since then the Palestinian cause suffered numerous losses – factionalism and disunity at home, and a confused regional and international political outlook, thus the hemorrhaging of Palestine’s historic allies, including many African, Asian and South American countries.
The Russia-Ukraine war, however, is placing the Palestinians before one of their greatest foreign policy challenges since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
For Palestinians, neutrality is not an option since the latter is a privilege that can only be obtained by those who can navigate global polarization using their own political leverage.
The Palestinian leadership, thanks to its selfish choices and lack of a collective strategy, has no such leverage.
Common sense dictates that Palestinians must develop a unified front to cope with the massive changes underway in the world, changes that will eventually yield a whole new geopolitical reality.
The Palestinians cannot afford to stand aside and pretend that they will magically be able to weather the storm.
Feature photo | Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas talk to each other during their meeting in the Bocharov Ruchei residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, Nov. 23, 2021. Yevgeny Biyatov | Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybarou
While Russia has been virtually cut off from the world, Israel continues to enjoy impunity as it occupies and colonizes Palestinians’ land and imposes a brutal regime of apartheid on them. “We are like you”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine late last month, there has been no shortage of comparisons with the situation in Palestine.
For many who support Palestinian rights, there is an instinctive identification with Ukraine as a country under attack, defending itself against a much more powerful force.
No one can be indifferent to scenes of civilians experiencing the horror of war and to the lives of millions upended as they become refugees.
Campaigners for Palestinian rights have also noted the parallels – and the vastly different and hypocritical responses – to calls for boycotts of Russia and Israel, as well as the selective application of international law.
While Russia has been virtually cut off from the world, Israel continues to enjoy impunity as it occupies and colonizes Palestinians’ land and imposes a brutal regime of apartheid on them. “We are like you”
Of course, the identification of Ukraine with the plight of the Palestinians is one Ukrainian leaders insistently reject.
They see themselves as Israel and their Russian enemies, presumably, as the Palestinians.
In December, for example, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Israel is “often an example for Ukraine” and asserted that “both Ukrainians and Jews value freedom.”
“We know what it’s like not to have [one’s] own state,” Zelensky added.
“We know what it means to defend one’s own state and land with weapons in hand, at the cost of [their] own lives.”
According to The Jerusalem Post, Zelensky has also urged that “we should be like Israel in defending our homeland.”
The Ukrainian leader, notoriously, portrayed Israel as the victim last May when its warplanes were bombarding Gaza, massacring entire Palestinian families in their homes.
In February, before the Russian invasion, Ukrainian officials even complained that Israel was treating their country “like Gaza” by not giving them enough support – implying that such perceived mistreatment should be reserved for Palestinians, not Ukrainians.
Ukrainian officials have pressed home this identification with Israel ever since the Russian invasion began.
“I think that our army is one of the best in the world. Maybe after the Israeli army,” Markiyan Lubkivskyi, an advisor to Ukraine’s defense minister told The Jerusalem Post.
“The army is very strong, because of experience and morale is very high, motivation is very high. We are like you.”
The same newspaper reported that Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, “says his models for how to win against all odds are Israel – a country he has visited and admires – and the IDF [Israeli army].”
“We have to learn from Israel how to defend our country, with every citizen,” Klitschko said. “Entangled”
Wherever one falls on these matters, there are deeper connections with the question of Palestine, according to Columbia University professor Joseph Massad.
“Russia and Ukraine both have relations and histories that are very much part of the history of the region which the West came to call the Middle East,” Massad told Rania Khalek on her BreakThrough News show Dispatches this week.
Massad noted that southern Ukraine and the Crimea were former Ottoman regions conquered by Russia’s tsars in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
“Ukraine’s settler-colonial city of Odessa on the Black Sea, formerly the Ottoman city of Haci Bey, was the place where Greek anti-Muslim nationalism was born at the beginning of the 19th century and where colonial Jewish Zionism was born at the end of the 19th century,” Massad said.
“In fact, the first Jewish colonists who came to colonize Palestine in the 1880s were Ukrainian Jews from the settler-colony of Odessa.”
Crimea was even identified during the Soviet period as a potential site for an autonomous Jewish republic – a plan that was abandoned due to strong resistance from the Crimean Tatar population.
More recently, “Both Ukraine and Russia have policies that are entangled with the Middle East,” Massad observed.
Ukraine, for instance, provided the third largest military contingent to take part in the illegal US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.
“As far as Russia is concerned, of course [President Vladimir] Putin has also had excellent relations with Israel, at the same time he did intervene in Syria against the regime’s jihadist and American and Gulf-supported enemies,” Massad said.
“However his intervention in Syria continued to allow the Israelis to bomb Syria, but not the jihadists.”
Massad also raised the issue of Ukrainian Jews, which Israel is calling upon “to emigrate to Israel so that it can transform them into colonists of the land of the Palestinians.”
Massad’s discussion with Khalek provides a great deal of context and insight on the situation in Ukraine and Western responses, including an intense surge of Russophobia that mirrors the previous bouts of xenophobia that regularly accompany American wars and interventions abroad.
They also touch on conformity of thought and censorship in Western liberal democracies – and other themes that Massad recently addressed in an article for Middle East Eye.
The efforts to relocate Ukrainian Jews have been funded and led by several arms of the Israeli government and partner institutions, including the semi-governmental Jewish Agency for Israel of the World Zionist Organization, as well as the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ).
Occupied East Jerusalem – Israel is keen on bringing in Ukrainian Jewish refugees for the purpose of maintaining Jewish demographic “supremacy” over the Palestinian population, academics and analysts say.
Since the outbreak of the war with Russia on February 24, the Israeli government has called on Ukrainian Jewish refugees to immigrate to Israel and removed bureaucratic hurdles to secure their arrival as quickly as possible.
“We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel – your home,” Israel’s Ministry of Immigration and Absorption said in a statement on February 26.
So far, at least 100 Ukrainian Jews arrived on two flights, one from Kyiv and another from Odesa. Some 300 others will arrive on three flights on Sunday.
Government officials said some 10,000 are expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
On Sunday, the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division – which is funded by the Israeli government and falls under its direct control – announced the building of 1,000 housing structures for Ukrainian Jewish families in both Israel and settlements in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.
“Israel is seeing in the Ukraine crisis a real opportunity to bring Jewish people to increase the number of Jews in Israel,” Lana Tatour, professor of settler-colonialism and human rights at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, told Al Jazeera.
“While it is important to recognise that there is a real refugee crisis in Ukraine,” which “everyone has a duty to care for”, Tatour said it must be noted that “Israel is not opening its borders for Ukrainian refugees – it is opening its borders for Jewish Ukrainian refugees.”
Officials originally said some 200,000 Ukrainian Jews are eligible to immigrate under Israel’s 1950 Law of Return and gain Israeli citizenship under 1952 legislation.
However, new restrictions on who will be considered Jewish were announced on March 1, making it unclear how many will be allowed in.
Six stations for processing immigration applications for Jewish refugees along the Ukraine border in four countries have been set up – in Poland, Moldova, Romania and Hungary. Immigrants are provided with meals and temporary housing in neighboring countries before being flown to Israel, where they are also afforded temporary housing, including in hotels.
“This is not a humanitarian act that Israel is carrying out. Israel is a settler-colonial state. It is a state that is obsessed with demography and ensuring demographic superiority by Jewish people over Palestinians,” said Tatour.
In reports released recently by international rights groups, Israel’s laws and policies surrounding demography were documented as part crimes against humanity in a system of apartheid, under which Israeli officials can be held criminally liable.
“Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and maximizing its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis while minimizing the number of Palestinians and restricting their rights and obstructing their ability to challenge this dispossession,” rights group Amnesty International said in a report last month.
Demographic superiority
Israel was established as a “Jewish State” in 1948 on what was then-British occupied Palestine.
It came into existence following decades of mass European Jewish immigration from the 1880s onwards facilitated by the Zionist movement and Western governments, with the public aim of creating a Jewish state.
Prior to the British occupation of Palestine in 1918, the Jewish population stood at three percent.
Between 1922 and 1935, the figure rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent, and by 1947 – because of facilitated immigration and Nazi persecution – it increased tenfold, up to 33 percent.
In 1948, the state was established by force, in a violent process of ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias, in which 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes, also known as the Nakba, or “catastrophe”.
Today, Israel’s laws allow any Jewish person from any country in the world the ability to move to and gain Israeli citizenship in historic Palestine – even if they or their ancestors never stepped foot there or have no connections to it.
For the past 72 years, Palestinian refugees have lived in difficult conditions in 58 refugee camps located in Palestine and neighbouring Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon.
‘Essence of Zionism’
Political analyst Awad Abdelfattah said Israel considers the Palestinian population a “threat” and a “danger” to its political project of maintaining a Jewish state.
“Demography is the central aspect of Zionism. The whole idea of Zionism is to bring together all the Jews of the world and transfer them to Palestine,” Abdelfattah told Al Jazeera from the northern village of Kokab in the Galilee.
“Any Jewish person is given what is called the ‘right of return’ while the original, rightful owners of the land are forbidden from returning and living in their homeland Palestine,” he continued.
“Any Jewish immigrants that come – whether Ukrainians or others – they come at the expense of the Palestinian people – taking their lands and strengthening the colonial regime.”
Awad noted there has been no significant Jewish immigration to Israel since the resettlement of some one million Russian Jews following the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, making the Ukraine crisis beneficial to Israel.
The efforts to relocate Ukrainian Jews have been funded and led by several arms of the Israeli government and partner institutions, including the semi-governmental Jewish Agency for Israel of the World Zionist Organization, as well as the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ).
“We and our partners continue the joint effort of bringing immigrants at all times.
The arrival of olim [Jewish immigrants] to Israel is the essence of Zionism,” the IFCJ said.
Jonathan Pollak, a Jaffa-based anti-apartheid activist, said “Israel’s only concern has always been maintaining Jewish supremacy in Palestine.
“There should be no doubt that at times of war, refugees should be offered a safe haven, but Israel’s first and foremost obligation and responsibility is to allow Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Using the Ukrainian crisis to further Jewish supremacy in Palestine at the expense of Palestinians is immoral and cynical.”
Privileged status
International law created by the United Nations defines settlers as Jews who live in illegal settlements in the 1967-occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
But many Palestinians criticise this differentiation, saying it overlooks Israel’s reality as a settler-colonial regime in all of historic Palestine.
“They are leaving Ukraine as refugees and escaping the crisis, but they will arrive on the land of Palestine as settlers,” said Tatour.
“They will assume the role of settlers, enjoying all the privileges that Jews enjoy in Israel and immediately becoming superior in terms of access to rights to land to resources, over the Palestinian natives,” she continued.
On the question of international law, Tatour described the distinction made between 1948 and 1967 occupied Palestine as “liberal discourse” that “Palestinians do not need to subscribe to”.
Abdelfattah agreed. “Israel was erected through international law. The UN will not condemn colonialism because it is the one that gave Israel legitimacy and protection.
“It is the only remaining colonial regime in the 21st century,” he said. “Whether these Ukrainians settle in the occupied West Bank or in the Jewish settlements built on land seized from my village of Kokab, they are settlers.
“We require a long struggle against international law – a popular struggle to change this system, which is unjust for us as Palestinians.”
The people didn’t vote for neocons who in fact are either Zionist Jews or Christian Zionists. Which in both cases is a non sequitur either way.
The Neocons serve as agents for Israel.They keep the president in check.
by Finian Cunningham
By sending massive shipments of offensive weapons to a rabidly Russophobic regime Washington is demonstrating its witting culpability.
Ukraine is today a veritable den of russophobic Israelis.
On the one hand, Israel’s interests coincide with those of the West in the sense that they both wish to limit the Russian sphere influence, whereas on the other Israel is advocating the agenda of oligarchs with dual or multiple citizenships jealously clinging on to assets stolen from the people of Russia.
Following his set-piece video call with Vladimir Putin this week, U.S. President Joe Biden said there would be no American military forces sent to Ukraine to defend against alleged Russian invasion. Israel’s Role In Ukraine
Zionism, and, more precisely: Jewish fascism, which, in its secrecy and power, is super-fascism.
Answering media questions at the White House, Biden categorically dismissed any possibility of U.S. troops being deployed to Ukraine.
The president pointedly noted that Ukraine is not a member of the NATO military alliance and therefore there was no legal obligation to defend that country.
“The idea the United States is going to unilaterally use force to confront Russia invading Ukraine is not in the cards right now,” said Biden.
“We have a moral obligation and a legal obligation to our NATO allies under Article 5 [a collective defense provision].
It’s a sacred obligation. That obligation does not extend to Ukraine,” he added.
That restraint expressed by Biden is a rather curious anomaly.
The Kagans: Seeking War to the End of the World Much of this “strategy” is personified by a single Washington power couple: arch-neocon Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and an early advocate of the Iraq War, and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who engineered last year’s coup in Ukraine that started a nasty civil war and created a confrontation between nuclear-armed United States and Russia.
For several weeks, the Biden administration and U.S. intelligence have been broadcasting grave concerns that Russia was planning an imminent invasion of Ukraine.
An incursion with up to 175,000 troops, armored divisions and aircraft might happen next month, according to American intelligence and dutiful media outlets.
Ukrainian military officials have been echoing the dire warnings.
Defense minister Oleksii Reznikov has declared that Ukraine is “committed to defending Europe against Russian aggression”.
After all, the simmering tensions were the reason for the hastily organized video conference between Biden and Putin on Tuesday.
Both leaders were engaged to reduce the danger of confrontation. Biden, according to the White House, warned the Russian president to de-escalate military threats towards Ukraine.
The Jewish Monsters who run Ukraine are carrying out genocide and killings throughout the country. They are turning Ukraine into a “Jewish Homeland” for the Khazars. This is what the Jews, Lenin and Trotsky, did to Russia in 1917.
For its part, Russia has dismissed all Western media reports claiming it has a plan to invade its neighbor.
Moscow says all such talk is baseless hysteria and actually a cynical distraction from the real danger of aggression from the buildup of Ukrainian and NATO forces in the region.
President Putin told Biden not to shift responsibility from NATO to Russia for the mounting tensions.
The Kremlin leader also adamantly reiterated that Ukraine joining NATO or the installation of U.S. missiles is a red line that would necessitate a Russian military response to safeguard its existential security.
“If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensible nation.” U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (1998)
The following day, Biden then tells reporters that U.S. troops in Ukraine are “not an option on the table”. That suggests Biden got the stern message from Putin.
Biden’s legalistic argument about Ukraine not being presently a member of NATO and therefore not qualifying for military support sounds like the president is hiding behind a veneer. It doesn’t sound convincing as a stated reason for not sending American troops.
Ukraine is an official “partner” of NATO since 2008 – albeit not yet a full member. Ukrainian troops have joined NATO combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
For Biden to make a big deal about the propriety of the alliance’s Article 5 collective defense obligations and it not being applicable to Ukraine sounds excessively pedantic and prissy.
It also sounds jarring against the background of dire predictions of a Russian invasion. Think about it.
Alex, 34, was invited by Boris Filatov, the vice governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, and has trained more than three thousand Ukrainian soldiers in Israel Defense Force techniques.
On one hand, the Biden administration was only days ago rallying European allies with warnings about Russian tanks rolling across Ukraine.
Then, on the other hand, Biden abruptly says the U.S. will not be sending troops to help its Ukrainian ally in its purported desperate hour of need. It doesn’t add up.
In other words, what we can conclude is the “Russian invasion” warnings are all hyped-up propaganda, as Moscow has been saying.
If they had any substance, would Biden so easily and blithely rule out defending Ukraine?
But let’s dwell on that for a while.
The American authorities and their corporate news media have for several weeks been peddling stories – psychological operations in the guise of “news reports” – that have ratcheted up explosive tensions with Russia that could have ignited a war if they had led to miscalculations.
That in itself is a form of aggression that qualifies as a war crime.
In any case, while Biden is now saying there will be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine there are plenty of arms – tonnes of them – and more on the way.
This week the U.S. Congress passed a new annual military budget that includes $300 million in weaponry and other support to the Ukrainian armed forces.
Since the Kiev regime was installed in 2014 by a CIA-backed coup d’état, Washington has already supplied it with $2.5 billion of military aid. That’s close to $3 billion total in less than eight years.
Alex, 34, was invited by Boris Filatov, the vice governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, and has trained more than three thousand Ukrainian soldiers in Israel Defense Force techniques.
The new weaponry includes helicopters, warplanes, warships, artillery and Javelin anti-tank missiles.
As Russia’s top commander General Valery Gerasimov noted this week this funneling of war material to Ukraine by the United States and other NATO allies is the driving force behind the Kiev regime’s repudiation of the 2015 Minsk peace accord.
Washington has emboldened the Ukrainian authorities to believe they can resolve the civil war against the Donbas region through force.
If the Kiev regime launches a new offensive against the ethnic Russian people of the Donbas, Russia will be under pressure to intervene.
It seems that the United States is trying its best to lure Russia into a quagmire conflict as commented on in a previous column.
So, Biden is not sending troops to defend Ukraine.
Another Ukrainian by origin, who played a significant role in the establishment of the State of Israel is Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (Shymshelevych) (1886-1963), the second president of Israel, Knesset deputy of the 1st and 2nd convocations, leader of the “Avoda” movement and researcher in the field of history.
He knows or his latest CIA briefers have told him that there is no such Russian threat.
Biden knows too from Putin’s call that Russia is deadly serious about a red line in Ukraine.
That’s why the U.S. president is suddenly coming over all proper about NATO’s legal limitations. It’s a handy get-out.
Nevertheless, simultaneously the U.S. weapons flow to Ukraine is being stepped up.
NATO is already on the ground with trainers and special forces from the U.S., Britain and Canada, as well as in the air with aerial attack and surveillance drones from Turkey.
Biden appears to have taken onboard Putin’s security concerns for Russia stemming from NATO’s eastward expansion.
The American president has said he will consult with other NATO allies on how to allay Russian apprehensions.
However, if he were genuinely reciprocating with Russia, Biden would be calling off the dogs of war barking and snarling in Ukraine.
The Kiev regime is not the proverbial tail wagging the dog. Washington is whistling Ukraine into a proxy war against Russia.
Ultimately, by sending massive shipments of offensive weapons to a rabidly Russophobic regime Washington is demonstrating its witting culpability.
Most U.S. states still have excuses when asked to make voter registration automatic, but in various states — including here in Virginia — draft registration is automatic even for 15-year-olds who want a learner’s permit to drive a car.
(This is still only for males, as Congress did not, in the end, extend draft registration to females, at least until next year — once in a while Democrats’ obeisance to Republicans works out well.)
The application for the learner’s permit in Virginia, for which you must be 15-and-a-half-years-old, says:
“Generally males under age 26 must register with the Selective Service.
If you are required by federal law to register with the Selective Service, you must authorize DMV to forward your personal information to the Selective Service unless you have already registered.
If you are under age 18, your parent or guardian must sign your application authorizing the Selective Service to register you when you turn age 18.
Law prohibits DMV from issuing any type of driver’s license or ID card to an applicant who is required by federal law to register with the Selective Service but who refuses to authorize DMV to send his information to the Selective Service.
If you have questions about Selective Service registration, visit the Selective Service website at www.sss.gov or call 847-688-6888 (TTY: 847-688-2567).”
So, you’re registered to be registered, because you are required by federal law to be registered, except that you are not so required, because you are not 18 years old, so you’re not really registered, you’re just, you know, registered.
At 15 YEARS OLD. To kill people. For the profits of weapons companies and whatever else you believe it’s for — killing people.
So, what can a 15-year-old do who wants to drive a car but not sign up for the unselective nonservice?
Some advise this approach: Don’t register online!
Instead, go to the DMV or post office and properly complete two Selective Service registration forms.
Write, “I am conscientiously opposed to war” clearly on the front of both forms.
Address envelopes to the Selective Service System and to yourself.
Both will be postmarked on the same date.
The Selective Service won’t pay attention to what you’ve written and you’ll be registered.
When you receive the envelope through the mail, don’t open it.
Instead keep it with your important things.
If there’s a draft that you are unable to ignore or avoid, you will need to claim an opportunity to plead your case in front of your local draft board.
Bring the sealed envelope; photograph it and then open it in front of them.
Explain that your opposition to war didn’t suddenly materialize when the draft was reinstituted.
The global black market for terrorism: Who requests these tenders? The EU establishes a terrorist organization, but the US and Israel are its true masters. UAE’s MBZ and Saudi Arabia’s MBS, the two crown princes who are ‘brokers of terror’; it’s game over, your turn will come.
Daesh, the PKK and its Syrian affiliate, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), are the property of U.S./Israeli military and intelligence organizations.
Thank you to the 14 🇺🇸 Members of Congress, from both parties, and 🇨🇦 MPs who joined AJC’s Transatlantic Friends of Israel (TFI) this year.
We look forward to working with you in 2022 to strengthen Israel’s critical bond with the the U.S., Canada, and Europe. pic.twitter.com/M9Jk3n1eIK
There is an extremely large black market for terror across the world. Along with the drug sector, the terror market is one of the most effective weapons in wealth and power struggles. It has the characteristics of a nuclear bomb.
The biggest tenders– from geopolitical showdowns to ethnic conflicts, from religious priorities to billions of dollars in dirty money, from trade wars to resources– are distributed across this market.
EU countries establishing terrorist organizations
A significant portion of EU countries, which always talk the talk on democracy and human rights, carry out their global business with terrorist organizations.
They establish terrorist organizations, finance them, train them, deploy them to countries, and specify clear-cut targets.
Europe, France and the U.K. take the lead in this regard. Countries such as Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands work as terror bosses in the field of intelligence, while the others, as well as northern countries, breed them under the cover of “soft power.”
US, Israel: Global masters of terrorism
U.S. and Israel are the big bosses of global terrorism.
These countries, which have turned “fighting terrorism” into a global political doctrine, actually invented that term to veil their terrorist organizations.
They used to establish ethnic and ideological organizations back in the Cold War era.
Whereas this time, they established ethnic and “Islamist” terrorist organizations, particularly aimed at our region.
The U.S. and Israel, together with the U.K., and with the support of some EU countries, have been striking our countries, our region, our people through terrorism, under the very pretext of “terrorism.”
They destroyed countries under the pretext of “terrorism”
All terrorist organizations are unleashed on the ground for the U.S. and its partners’ plans to invade, start civil wars and plunder resources.
The atmosphere was prepared for this.
Afghanistan was invaded based on the grounds that al-Qaida and the Taliban had a presence in the country.
Syria was invaded based on the grounds that Daesh was there.
Libya and Iraq were invaded and destroyed based on the grounds that there were dictators there, or other excuses.
The covert reason was different; terms such as terrorism, dictator, freedom and democracy were constantly thrown in our faces.
Yet, every one of these organizations was affiliated with intelligence agencies.
For the first time a country declared a terrorist organization as a partner. The world witnessed this
PKK terrorist with USA patch
The U.S. administration was able to openly declare a terrorist organization, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as its “partner.”
And against a NATO ally too. The ethnic terrorism that has been used against our country for the last four decades was actually these countries’ covert war against Turkey.
The buildup in north Syria is the most open and most reckless support ever given to a terrorist organization in world history.
The deal struck in Ankara, which ensures the PKK and U.S.’s withdrawal from the area, certified that the U.S. really is a terror boss.
They made a deal with our country for a terrorist organization. Through this deal, we declared to the world their role as a “terror boss.” There is no other greater shame than this for the U.S.
Daesh, the PKK and its Syrian affiliate, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), are the property of U.S./Israeli military and intelligence organizations.
Those two deals: Who retreated? Who lost? The picture is clear.
Let’s consider the results of the deals made with the U.S. and Russia: The PKK is going to withdraw completely from all the areas we determine in Syria.
Who else is withdrawing with the PKK? U.S. troops, French troops, Israeli military presence.
Who is losing? European countries, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain.
All of those that lost and are withdrawing are countries that support terrorism, act as their terror bosses and finance terrorism.
As the US sent them thousands of trucks loaded with weapons, the UAE and Saudi Arabia sent truckloads of money
They discovered new terror supporters against Turkey in the recent period.
Through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain, with their organizations and funds, they started attacking Turkey through terrorism.
While the U.S. was sending the PKK/YPG thousands of trucks loaded with weapons, they were transferring hundreds of millions of dollars to this organization.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia have very bad records in this respect, and Turkey will never forget it.
The UAE has been an open enemy: Terrorism, a coup, assassination attempts on Erdoğan
An open enemy: The UAE in particular is fighting Turkey in every field across the entire region, from Syria to Libya, from the Mediterranean.
It is building a partnership with Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETÖ) members and striking Turkey.
All known and unknown anti-Turkey organizations are being abundantly supplied with weapons and funds.
For us, the UAE’s open enmity, enormity has become a primary threat that must be prevented.
It was involved in the July 15 invasion and coup attempt in 2016; they were the ones that provided the funding, they held joint meetings and demonstration plans with FETÖ in Dubai.
The UAE was involved in all plans and attempts to oust, assassinate and kill President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
It attempted assassinations even in Turkey with hired hitman Mohammed Dahlan.
Turkey’s two enemies: Mohammed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman. They should be charged with supporting terror
Nowadays, the UAE is recruiting Israeli intelligence members through the companies it established in Southern Cyprus, and from here, it carries out its intelligence and terror operations against Turkey.
In all its anti-Turkey operations and attacks in the region, it receives instructions from Israel and uses Saudi Arabia’s power.
Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) should be openly held accountable of and charged for being a global terror financier, for assassination and dirty, covert operations.
The slaughter of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is not the only murder committed by Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), whom he has wrapped around his finger.
They are both responsible for the war crimes in Yemen.
Mohammed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman are the leading enemies of Turkey in our region.
The puppet master of these two figures, who have directed all their evil towards Turkey, is the Israeli intelligence.
Whose game was spoiled after the deals made in Ankara, Sochi?
These two names are also among those whose games were spoiled after the deal made with the U.S. in Ankara and with Russia’s Putin in Sochi.
The latest victory Turkey won against terrorism and the forces supporting them struck a blow to these two as well.
But it should not stop here; the fight against them should continue using the most effective methods.
Turkey struck the heaviest blow on the terror market after the Cold War.
It is the country that turned the tides in the global terror market.
They had destroyed all the countries in our region through terrorist organizations.
They were doing the same to Turkey.
But this time they could not succeed.
For the first time they had to step back.
The ‘two brokers of terror.’ Their turn is coming
It will continue. It will not end here.
Following the PKK and Daesh, the fight is going to turn to – it must turn to – their terror barons in our region, to Mohammed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman.
First to terrorist organizations, then their middlemen, and then their bosses.
A very detailed investigation must be launched against these two, with respect to funding terrorism, founding and managing terrorist organizations, threatening countries, assassination attempts and terrorist attacks, with international courts taking action.
Why is the Arab League that condemned Turkey so quiet?
How were the EU countries that used terrorist organizations caught red-handed and sidelined?
The “game” against Turkey is over for them. It will take some time for them to set up a new one.
We are going to be faster. Turkey will defeat the “terror brokers” as well.
Blinken’s remarks to the senators were one of a series of recent signs that the United States—which has been supporting coups and dictators in Venezuela for over a century—would stay the imperialist course under Biden.
Head of the Venezuelan ‘Israelite’ Association and a Zionist who has been heavily lobbying the Maduro government to reinstate its diplomatic relations with ‘Israel’ for several years now, the Venezuelan Jewish community has recognized neocon-puppet Juan Guaido as the new ruling authority in Venezuela because the usurping Jewish entity has approved of him.
Silly me, I thought he went home! But no, not these guys. Evil doesn’t just sit home.
Why is the Israeli flag hoisted centre stage at anti Maduro rally? Just asking🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/lagdX8PaxW
In a perpetuation of Trump administration policy and nearly two centuries of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, told senators Tuesday that the United States will continue to recognize the coup leader Juan Guaidó as legitimate president of Venezuela.
Reutersreports Blinken told senators during his confirmation hearing that Venezuela needs “an effective policy that can restore… democracy” to the nation of 28 million people.
Although Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has alienated allies and adversaries alike with his government’s numerous and serious human rights violations, he was democratically elected in 2013, and reelected in 2018.
Blinken also told the senators that the Biden administration would seek to “more effectively target” Venezuela with economic sanctions, which have been described as a form of “economic terrorism.”
The sanctions are largely responsible for the crippling of Venezuela’s once-thriving economy and have caused tremendous suffering for the poor and working-class people whose dramatic uplift was once hailed as the great success of the Bolivarian Revolution launched under the late President Hugo Chávez.
They are pro Palestine, “Israel” can’t have it. Maduro top, Chavez bottom
According to a 2019 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C., as many as 40,000 Venezuelans have died due to sanctions, which have made it much more difficult for everyday people to obtain food, medicine, and other necessities.
Common Dreamsreported Wednesday that the global left-wing activist group Progressive International called on the Biden administration to end sanctions on countries including Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela, which the group said are targeted because “they don’t fall in line” with Washington’s “global political and economic agenda.”
Blinken’s remarks to the senators were one of a series of recent signs that the United States—which has been supporting coups and dictators in Venezuela for over a century—would stay the imperialist course under Biden.
During the contentious and sometimes calamitous transition between administrations, Republicans and Democrats alike took comfort in a policy meeting between Elliott Abrams, former
President Donald Trump’s special representative for Venezuelan affairs, and members of the Biden transition team.
Abrams, whose history in the region includes involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal and covering up massacres committed by U.S.-backed death squads in Central America, called the meeting “pleasant” and left assured that he did not foresee any “major changes” in American policy toward Venezuela under Biden.
The inter-administration continuity was also on display in the person of Carlos Vecchio, Guaidó’s ambassador to the United States, who was feted by Trump and who was Biden’s inaugural guest on Wednesday.
In 2014, Vecchio—one of the masterminds of the Guaidó coup—was charged in Caracas with public incitement, property damage, arson, and conspiracy for an attack on the Venezuelan attorney general’s office.
His appearance at the U.S. Capitol two weeks after Biden condemned the deadly Trump-inspired mob attack on the building did not go unnoticed.
“Vecchio’s presence at the presidential swearing-in ceremony was filled with irony,” wrote journalist Anya Parampil.
“In the days following the Capitol riot, Biden and his allies have denounced the violent takeover of Congress as an assault on democracy, with the incoming president himself declaring the rioters to be domestic terrorists.'”
“Yet,” she added, “Carlos Vecchio, the Guaidó ally with a fresh ticket to Biden’s inauguration, is responsible for leading his own assault on his home country’s democracy.”
Headquartered at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., the DoD’s stated mission is to provide “the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security”
Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby provided the following readout:
Defense Lloyd J. Austin III congratulates Benjamin “Benny” Gantz on his appointment as the Minister of Defense in Israel’s 36th government today.
Secretary Austin looks forward to continuing the important cooperation and dialogue with Minister Gantz to deepen the U.S.-Israel strategic partnership.
The U.S. commitment to Israel’s security remains ironclad.*
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met today with Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin “Benny” Gantz during a closed meeting at the Pentagon.
A top priority for both defense leaders was a shared concern regarding the aggressive actions of the Iranian government.
“We share Israel’s deep concerns about the Iranian government’s destabilizing actions, including its support for terrorism and its missile program, and its alarming nuclear advances,” Austin said in advance of the meeting.
“We are completely aligned in our commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon — this is a national security interest of the United States and Israel and the world.”
While Austin said diplomacy is the first tool that should be used to address threats posed by Iran, he said it is not the only tool the U.S. has at its disposal.“The president has made clear that if the policy fails, we are prepared to turn to other options,” Austin said.
“The Department of Defense will continue to work closely with all of our partners throughout the region, including Israel, first and foremost, to ensure that we’re working together to address Iranian threats.
The Promise
We will defend ourselves, we will defend our friends, and we will defend our interests.”
Austin also told the Israeli defense minister that the U.S. remains committed to Israel’s ability to continue to defend itself.
“As you know, the United States remains unwavering in its commitment to Israel’s security, including maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge,” Austin said.
Included in that commitment, Austin said, is a strengthening of U.S./Israel bilateral defense cooperation, with an emphasis on air and missile defense.
Gantz reminded Austin that it is the government of Iran that Israel is at odds with — not the Iranian people.
“They are being held hostage by a tyrannical regime which violates their human rights,” Gantz said.
“Iran is not just a threat to our physical security.
Iran possesses a concrete threat to our way of life, and our shared values.
In its aspirations to become a hegemon, Iran seeks to destroy all traces of freedom, human dignity, and peace in the Middle East and beyond.”
Iran’s nuclear program, Gantz said, is its means to achieving its goals both regionally and globally, and he counts on the United States to ensure it doesn’t advance.
“I am totally confident in the commitment of the administration of the United States as a global power to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” he said.
“The international community, with the United States’ leadership, has an opportunity to act against Iran’s hegemonic aspirations, restore stability, and prevent the oppression of nations across the region.”
They view the American military as feeder pigs who can be slaughtered on a whim in order to promote the agenda of Jewish globalism.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs “Toria” Nuland was the “mastermind” behind the Feb. 22, 2014 “regime change” in Ukraine, plotting the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych while convincing the ever-gullible U.S. mainstream media that the coup wasn’t really a coup but a victory for “democracy.”
Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson experienced a bizarre interview with Ohio Congressman Mike Turner, who is calling for a war with Russia to protect anal-oriented democracy in the Ukraine.
It was really a staggering thing, what this guy was saying. Tucker kept asking him why Americans should go fight and die for democracy in the Ukraine, and he just kept saying that it’s our duty to defend democracy.
He also said that Joe Biden isn’t doing global democracy hard enough, and that the failure to establish democracy in Afghanistan is proof that we need to go to war with Russia.
He further said that he is not actually talking about going to war with Russia, he just wants to send troops to the Ukraine to stop a war with Russia.
It’s all just such bullshit. As any long-time reader of this site is aware, the democratically-elected president of the Ukraine was overthrown in a coup organized by the US State Department and the EU in 2014.
These people were literally paying Ukrainian thugs and neo-Nazis 50 euros a day to riot and attack the cops.
Then there was a conspiracy involving the shooting of ZOG-backed rioters by a secret assassin who was never arrested.
The people organizing the protests said that the government had ordered the assassinations, and the rioters rushed the government buildings and overthrew the elected government.
Then a new entirely Jewish government was established by the West.
Everyone knows this happened. Everyone knows that the current government of the Ukraine was not put in power by elections. But they just lie about it.
But even if it was true, and it’s a real democracy – so what? Who cares? Do you care?
Tucker went off in a different direction saying Russia should help the US fight China, which is a strange take.
But before that he said that Russia is the country with the natural resources who could be a good trading partner, and we should care more about that than how much democracy the Ukraine has.
Turner must have said the word “democracy” 50 times in 7 minutes.
I just don’t know who this is supposed to appeal to. Have you ever in your life met someone who said “the US needs to fight more wars in order to spread democracy across the planet”?
These government people live inside an echo chamber, and the mass bannings of everyone, and the attacks on protests by Antifa, have ensured that nothing can ever get inside of that vacuum-sealed chamber.
Russia is indeed massing troops on the border – but they’re doing that in response to constant threats from the Ukraine and from the US military.
The media is covering up how aggressive the US military has become under Joe Biden. These people are threatening every country, and menacing them with war machines.
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador said Thursday that Moscow will never invade Ukraine unless it is first provoked by its neighbor or someone else, then cited what he called many threats from Ukraine and provocative actions by U.S. warships in the Black Sea.
Dmitry Polyansky was responding to a question about the buildup of troops along Russia’s frontier with Ukraine, which has led to stepped up U.S. pressure and an assurance Wednesday from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Ukrainian foreign minister that the American commitment to Ukraine’s security and territorial integrity is “ironclad” and will not change.
Polyansky was asked if Russia planned to invade Ukraine.
“Never planned, never did, and never going to do it unless we’re provoked by Ukraine, or by somebody else” and Russia’s national sovereignty is threatened, he replied.
“There are a lot of threats coming from Ukraine,” Polyansky quickly added. “And don’t forget that the American warships around the Black Sea acting very close.”
“So, every day is a very difficult day to avoid direct clash in the Black Sea. We warned our American colleagues that this is a real provocation,” he told reporters at U.N. headquarters.
Mike Turner signed a letter urging Joe Biden to send troops in to combat this threat from Russia.
But who cares if Russia does invade the Ukraine? Frankly, they should invade the Ukraine, in order to give the people back the freedoms that were stolen from them by the coup in 2014.
Why would anyone care about that?
The reason, of course, is that these people like Mike Turner are paid shills who get money to promote an anti-American agenda.
They view the American military as feeder pigs who can be slaughtered on a whim in order to promote the agenda of Jewish globalism.
So, this is just an absurd and borderline farcical type of corruption.
He literally gets paid to promote wars, and you can easily confirm in five seconds that he gets paid to promote wars, and yet you’re supposed to turn on the TV and see him promoting wars and believe that he is doing that because he just really thinks that it’s very important to have democracy in the Ukraine.
By the way, those are obviously small dollar amounts.
But the way this works is that these people put someone into office, then based on their performance in office, give them very serious sums (millions of dollars) when they leave Congress.
Campaign contributions are just down-payments. The big money comes from speaking engagements and executive positions in companies after they serve their term.
But even if we were just talking about low six figures – he is still being directly paid that money by defense companies to promote wars. It’s ridiculous and stupid.
Note that Turner is exactly on the same page as the Democrats.
This is like if I was elected president of America and started putting Jews in camps and the Democrats came out and said “Anglin isn’t doing enough about the Jewish problem.”
The agenda is also supported by Republican poop-eater Richard Grenell.
I go back and forth on whether the Jews are planning to attack Russia, China or Iran first. In my own defense, they themselves seem confused about which they want to target.
In fact, I don’t think they have the spine to target any of them, so they are just driving these warships around the globe hoping someone cracks.
Investigative journalist, author, and Iraq veteran Jack Murphy sat down with the Quincy Institute’s Adam Weinstein to talk about U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan, and how loosened rules of engagement led to an accelerated number of strikes, unacknowledged civilian deaths, and moral injury among soldiers and veterans.
Murphy, who served as a Sniper and Team Leader in 3rd Ranger Battalion and as a Senior Weapons Sergeant on a Military Free Fall team in 5th Special Forces Group, recalled to Weinstein, an Afghanistan War veteran, how by 2018 the rules of engagement were loosened to the point where anyone on the ground who fit the “criteria” were vulnerable to a strike. Watch here:
The Taliban had been dismantling cell phone towers for years, so insurgents and civilians used walkie-talkies to communicate, he noted.
“The ROE (rules of engagement) could be met by seeing someone speaking on a radio, carrying a radio, just touching a radio at some point.”
There was no human intelligence or friendly forces on the ground, everything was communicated by surveillance drones monitoring potential targets via cameras.
Once these “eagle scans” identified targets, they would call in the armed drones for the strike itself.
At this point in 2018 “you’re going back to Vietnam-era body counts…the metric for success is the number of strikes you’re doing, the number of people you are killing every day.
And if commanders on the ground know that, they’re going to do things to make themselves look as good as possible.
That means, at least in this case, striking people whether they are armed combatants or not.”
“It’s a very Orwellian, dystopian kind of way to think about it,” he continues.
“You have this sort of unblinking eye, this surveillance eye hovering over population in Afghanistan, waiting for them to ‘fuck up.’
I think that a lot of the animosity that the people had for us.”
He and Weinstein talk about the trauma among drone operators.
Following targets on the ground, close enough to see whether they are wearing eyeglasses, for hours and days on time, then striking them, watching their bodies get picked up, and the family grieving — it takes a toll.
“There’s a significant moral injury that these people incur, especially when they are part of lethal strikes that they feel are immoral or unethical,” Murphy contends.
A lot of these feelings, he said, have been resurrected with the withdrawal and the war in Afghanistan now in the rearview mirror.
Many veterans are now asking “what did it all mean? What was it for?”
Back in 2001, the UK prime minister’s wife, Cherie Blair, called for moves to “give back a voice” to Afghan women.
In 2010, then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton vowed to defend Afghan women’s rights.
This was a huge part of her so-called feminism—vowing to save the Afghan women, while bombing them.
Now, in 2021, we’re hearing something not too dissimilar: dangerous militarism cloaked in humanitarian and women’s rights language, recycling the same arguments made by Clinton.
“Western intervention is something million[s] are praying for right now,” tweeted anti-FGM campaigner Nimco Ali over the weekend.
“It is not too late for [the] US and UK to send troops to help hold Kabul,” tweeted Justin Forsyth, a former aide to Gordon Brown, who has also served as CEO at both UNICEF and Save the Children.
He linked to a BBC article headlined ‘Kabul’s young women plead for help as Taliban advance.’
The piece reads: “For 20 years the West has inspired, financed and sheltered this new generation of Afghans. They have grown up with freedoms and opportunities that they fully embraced.”
Journalists across the media are pursuing a similar narrative. Reporting the story of an Afghan woman, who two decades ago, at the age of 12, was forced to get engaged to her cousin, the Financial Times yesterday wrote: “After the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, the teenager discovered a freedom that would have been unimaginable”.
That’s exactly the problem: all these statements seem to rest on the assumption that the occupation of Afghanistan was a good thing for women and girls—something Hilary Clinton herself claims.
But it absolutely wasn’t. Nearly 70,000 civilians were killed and injured in the US’s longest-running war—many of whom were women.
But the violence has been entirely legitimized or brushed over by claims that women and girls in Afghanistan once again need Western rescue efforts—as if the people being murdered are just collateral damage.
What have the US and UK been doing in Afghanistan for the past 20 years?
How could you possibly believe in this liberal interventionist narrative when Afghan women’s empowerment apparently fell apart in a matter of days?
Haven’t we learnt anything from intervention in Iraq—or Libya?
If they really cared, Western leaders could offer immediate asylum to people fleeing Afghanistan
In 2011, liberals including human rights groups actively called for intervention through the backdoor, via a no-fly zone (a euphemism for bombing that meant NATO’s were the only planes flying.)
And what was one of NATO’s justifications at the time?
Sure, I get the desire to want the UK government to do ‘something’ to support those fleeing the Taliban and I don’t think any of us have all the answers—but sending troops is never the solution.
And when warmongerers and imperialists claim to care for women’s rights—don’t believe them.
If they really cared, Western leaders could offer immediate asylum to people fleeing Afghanistan.
The Stop the War coalition, which was set up ahead of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, said in a statement yesterday: “The British government should take a lead in offering a refugee programme and reparations to rebuild Afghanistan, an act which would go a great deal further in advancing the rights of the Afghan people, women in particular, than continued military or economic intervention in the fate of Afghanistan.”
This would be a start. And while the UK has announced that it is “looking at bespoke arrangements”, suggestions that the scheme “will be similar to that used to help Syrian refugees” tell a more accurate story: in reality, only tiny numbers of those fleeing will be allowed in—the UK government doesn’t care.
It’s already emerged from senior military sources that the Home Office is reluctant to give many people asylum because of the message it will send to other refugees.
Regardless, offering asylum alone isn’t enough. The hard truth is that governments around the world will have to negotiate with the Taliban like they would with any other state, whether they agree with it or not.
Women in Afghanistan are not a monolithic group and many have long resisted both the Taliban and Western intervention, and they don’t need your rescuing now.
After two decades of failed Western intervention, don’t be fooled again.
As was the case with Tony Blair’s illegal invasion of Iraq and David Cameron’s catastrophic intervention in Libya, when the UK sends troops, it spells destruction for women and girls—and today would be no exception.
The world is reeling in horror at the latest Israeli massacre of hundreds of men, women and children in Gaza.
Much of the world is also shocked by the role of the United States in this crisis, as it keeps providing Israel with weapons to kill Palestinian civilians, in violation of U.S. and international law, and has repeatedly blocked action by the UN Security Council to impose a ceasefire or hold Israel accountable for its war crimes.
In contrast to U.S. actions, in nearly every speech or interview, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps promising to uphold and defend the “rules-based order.”
But he has never clarified whether he means the universal rules of the United Nations Charter and international law, or some other set of rules he has yet to define.
What rules could possibly legitimize the kind of destruction we just witnessed in Gaza, and who would want to live in a world ruled by them?
The UN Human Rights Council has agreed to launch an open-ended international investigation into violations during Israel’s 11-day aggression on Gaza, and into “systematic” abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories and inside Israel. #SavePalestine#ICC4Israelpic.twitter.com/Z6qMUdzdn3
— Palestinian Return Centre (@prclondon) May 28, 2021
We have both spent many years protesting the violence and chaos the United States and its allies inflict on millions of people around the world by violating the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force, and we have always insisted that the U.S. government should comply with the rules-based order of international law.
But even as the United States’ illegal wars and support for allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia have reduced cities to rubble and left country after country mired in intractable violence and chaos, U.S. leaders have refused to even acknowledge that aggressive and destructive U.S. and allied military operations violate the rules-based order of the United Nations Charter and international law.
President Trump was clear that he was not interested in following any “global rules,” only supporting U.S. national interests.
His National Security Advisor John Bolton explicitly prohibited National Security Council staff attending the 2018 G20 Summit in Argentina from even uttering the words “rules-based order.”
So you might expect us to welcome Blinken’s stated commitment to the “rules-based order” as a long-overdue reversal in U.S. policy.
But when it comes to a vital principle like this, it is actions that count, and the Biden administration has yet to take any decisive action to bring U.S. foreign policy into compliance with the UN Charter or international law.
For Secretary Blinken, the concept of a “rules-based order” seems to serve mainly as a cudgel with which to attack China and Russia.
At a May 7 UN Security Council meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that instead of accepting the already existing rules of international law, the United States and its allies are trying to come up with “other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else.”
The UN Charter and the rules of international law were developed in the 20th century precisely to codify the unwritten and endlessly contested rules of customary international law with explicit, written rules that would be binding on all nations.
The United States played a leading role in this legalist movement in international relations, from the Hague Peace Conferences at the turn of the 20th century to the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco in 1945 and the revised Geneva Conventions in 1949, including the new Fourth Geneva Convention to protect civilians, like the countless numbers killed by American weapons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.
As President Franklin Roosevelt described the plan for the United Nations to a joint session of Congress on his return from Yalta in 1945:
“It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries – and have always failed.
We propose to substitute for all these a universal organization in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to join.
I am confident that the Congress and the American people will accept the results of this conference as the beginning of a permanent structure of peace.”
But America’s post-Cold War triumphalism eroded U.S. leaders’ already half-hearted commitment to those rules.
The neocons argued that they were no longer relevant and that the United States must be ready to impose order on the world by the unilateral threat and use of military force, exactly what the UN Charter prohibits.
America’s “endless wars,” its revived Cold War on Russia and China, its blank check for the Israeli occupation and the political obstacles to crafting a more peaceful and sustainable future are some of the fruits of these bipartisan efforts to challenge and weaken the rules-based order.
Today, far from being a leader of the international rules-based system, the United States is an outlier.
It has failed to sign or ratify about fifty important and widely accepted multilateral treaties on everything from children’s rights to arms control.
Its unilateral sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and other countries are themselves violations of international law, and the new Biden administration has shamefully failed to lift these illegal sanctions, ignoring UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ request to suspend such unilateral coercive measures during the pandemic.
So is Blinken’s “rules-based order” a recommitment to President Roosevelt’s “permanent structure of peace,” or is it in fact a renunciation of the United Nations Charter and its purpose, which is peace and security for all of humanity?
In the light of Biden’s first few months in power, it appears to be the latter.
Instead of designing a foreign policy based on the principles and rules of the UN Charter and the goal of a peaceful world, Biden’s policy seems to start from the premises of a $753 billion U.S. military budget, 800 overseas military bases, endless U.S. and allied wars and massacres, and massive weapons sales to repressive regimes.
Then it works backward to formulate a policy framework to somehow justify all that.
Once a “war on terror” that only fuels terrorism, violence and chaos was no longer politically viable, hawkish U.S. leaders—both Republicans and Democrats—seem to have concluded that a return to the Cold War was the only plausible way to perpetuate America’s militarist foreign policy and multi-trillion-dollar war machine.
But that raised a new set of contradictions.
For 40 years, the Cold War was justified by the ideological struggle between the capitalist and communist economic systems.
But the U.S.S.R. disintegrated and Russia is now a capitalist country. China is still governed by its Communist Party, but has a managed, mixed economy similar to that of Western Europe in the years after the Second World War – an efficient and dynamic economic system that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in both cases.
So how can these U.S. leaders justify their renewed Cold War? They have floated the notion of a struggle between “democracy and authoritarianism.”
But the United States supports too many horrific dictatorships around the world, especially in the Middle East, to make that a convincing pretext for a Cold War against Russia and China.
A U.S. “global war on authoritarianism” would require confronting repressive U.S. allies like Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, not arming them to the teeth and shielding them from international accountability as the United States is doing.
So, just as American and British leaders settled on non-existent “WMD”s as the pretext they could all agree on to justify their war on Iraq, the U.S. and its allies have settled on defending a vague, undefined “rules-based order” as the justification for their revived Cold War on Russia and China.
But like the emperor’s new clothes in the fable and the WMDs in Iraq, the United States’ new rules don’t really exist.
They are just its latest smokescreen for a foreign policy based on illegal threats and uses of force and a doctrine of “might makes right.”
We challenge President Biden and Secretary Blinken to prove us wrong by actually joining the rules-based order of the UN Charter and international law.
That would require a genuine commitment to a very different and more peaceful future, with appropriate contrition and accountability for the United States’ and its allies’ systematic violations of the UN Charter and international law, and the countless violent deaths, ruined societies and widespread chaos they have caused.
Zionist troops are there indulging in atrocities so horrible that the entire liberal opinion of the world stands aghast and raises the query once more whether ‘israel’ can really be trusted with the powers of self-government
Featuring Dr. Mads Gilbert Dr. Gilbert will address the US role in Israel’s ‘Operation Cast Lead,’ the use of illegal weapons on a civilian population; the ethics of weapons’ sales to countries that have used or tested weapons illegally; the aftermath of Cast Lead and the continuing siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip 3 years on.
It will include details of Dr. Gilbert’s January 2012 visit to Gaza 3 this past January, and information on the recent International Criminal Court’s (ICC’s) decision not to prosecute the Israeli government or military for war crimes carried out against thousands of Gazans, their homes, businesses and land during the three week illegal assault on the Gaza Strip.
Dr. Mads Gilbert will also look at the broader, regional context of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle within the ‘Arab Spring’.
Mads Gilbert is a renowned Norwegian Physician long known for his studies on children and infants in time of war.
He received his PhD at the University of Iowa, is a specialist in anesthesiology and a leader of the Emergency Medicine Department at the University of Tromso in Norway since 1995.
In addition to his research and practice at Tromso hospital in Norway, Dr. Gilbert co-founded NORWAC, a Norwegian-Palestinian humanitarian aid organization.
He worked in an underground Palestinian refugee camp hospital in Beirut during the 1982 Israeli invasion and bombardment of Lebanon and again in Beirut during the Summer 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon.
He and his colleague, Dr. Erik Fosse, were two of only a small handful of westerners in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead from Dec. 27th 2008 to January 18th, 2009. Both testified as expert witnesses at subsequent Human Rights Committee Sessions held at the United Nations in Geneva after the attack.
An in depth description of the WMDs injuries and deaths, condition of Gaza hospital etc.
While Joe Biden the candidate wanted to quickly normalize relations with Iran and re-enter the JCPOA, Joe Biden the president has, as the developments that have happened so far, deviated from his stated course of action.
To a large extent, Biden has appropriated Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy and has refused to lift sanctions on Iran and simply make the US a part of the Iran nuclear deal.
To a significant extent, this dramatic change in policy, while not completely surprising for the Iranians, is a result of the way Israel is pushing the Biden administration away from reconciliation and normalisation.
In fact, a crucial reason for Biden’s appropriation of Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy is the way the Israelis have very quickly implanted their own discourse vis-à-vis Iran in the mindset of the Biden administration.
Echoing what the Israelis have been saying for years, Anthony Blinken recently remarked that Iran was only “weeks” or “months” away from making a bomb.
Blinken and constituents
Although there is a huge difference between having the capacity to build a bomb and actually building and using a bomb, the US sees this [doubtful] proximity to building a bomb as a crucial factor that has made the Biden administration change its plans from re-joining the JCPOA to emphasising renegotiations. It has led it to refuse to lift sanctions.
The hard-line position that the Biden administration has taken feeds directly into the Israeli narrative.
What Blinken said matches perfectly with what Israeli officials have also recently claimed.
According to a recent assessment issued by Israel’s Militray Intelligence Directorate, “Iran may be up to two years away from making a nuclear weapon if it chooses to do so.”
The report further says that Iran’s current enrichment level brings it closer to various “breakout” estimates about how quickly it could enrich uranium to 90%, and also begin to build better missiles and a weapons system that might lead to a nuclear weapon.
For Israel, therefore, it is of utmost importance that the US remains focused on the “violations” that Iran has committed by enriching uranium beyond the limits imposed by the JCPOA.
It says, “What is important for Israel is that the brinkmanship continue, and that Iran’s violations and Israel’s concerns continue to be recognized.
For that to happen, it is also important for close US-Israel cooperation and discussion in order to prevent nuclear proliferation by the Tehran regime.”
The report refers to an IDF intelligence officer Maj.-Gen. Tamir Heiman who said in a briefing on the IDF assessment that Iran is at an unprecedented low point and is “battered, but on its feet,” following actions carried out by Israel and the US.
Tehran is banking on the Biden administration for some breathing room. It is incumbent on the US – and Israel – to make sure that is not allowed to happen for nothing.”
Now, the fact that the Biden administration has refused to take a step back and lift its sanctions to pave the way for the US’ re-entry shows how closely the US and Israel are already coordinating their policies vis-à-vis Iran.
The Biden administration’s announcement that the US would not re-join the agreement or even lift sanctions unless Iran halts enrichment dovetails perfectly with what Netanyahu had said just before the US elections.
To quote him, “There can be no going back to the previous nuclear agreement. We must stick to an uncompromising policy of ensuring that Iran will not develop nuclear weapons.”
The Biden’s administration’s capitulation to Israel’s uncompromising policy vis-à-vis Iran has led Iran to stick to its own path. An official Iranian statement released on February 28 said that:
“the way forward is quite clear. The US must end its illegal and unilateral sanctions and return to its JCPOA commitments.
This issue neither needs negotiation, nor a resolution by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Islamic Republic of Iran will respond to actions with action and just in the same way that it will return to its JCPOA commitments as sanctions are removed…”
The hardening of US and Iranian position serves Israeli interests in the best possible way. An unresolved nuclear power tussle in the Middle East would keep Israel at the centre stage of regional politics.
Given Israel’s recent rapprochement with the UAE and other Gulf states, tensions in the Gulf would not only reinforce Israel’s direct security ties with these Gulf states, but the scenario could very well make other Gulf states join The Abraham Accords.
Tensions with Iran, therefore, could allow Israel to establish itself as the new regional hegemon.
Israel has already got supporters in the form of not only the UAE but Saudi Arabia as well.
They have both stated that they would be open to a deal only if it went well beyond the previous one. According to them, any deal, in addition to putting limits on Iran’s nuclear program, must include provisions aimed at reversing Iran’s ballistic missile program, ending its “meddling” in other countries and the militias it supports in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
Israel, as it stands, is already leading the Gulf states in lobbying the US for an agreement that not only limits Iran’s nuclear program, but also curtails its national power potential in many other ways.
As some reports in the US mainstream media show, the Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, and a team of experts will soon travel to Washington to brief senior American officials about what they see as the threats still posed by Iran, hoping to persuade the US to hold out for harsher restrictions on Iran in any deal.
Iran, on the other hand, is unlikely to change its position vis-à-vis any new deal, especially the one that tends to force it into a virtual capitulation.
China and Russia continue to support an unconditional US return to the JCPOA in exchange for Iran’s return to full compliance with the deal.
An unconditional return “is the key to breaking the deadlock,” said Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, in a recent news conference.
But “breaking the deadlock” is not what Israel and its allies in the Gulf are seeking to achieve.
They are pushing the US to adopt a policy that keeps the deadlock alive unless Iran’s power and regional influence can be fully and permanently curtailed.
For the Israelis, the path to Iran’s capitulation demands a US capitulation to Israel first so that they can shape the US policy in a way that best serves their interests. So far, the Israelis have been successful.
Two weeks ago, while the House of Representatives was finalizing its 700-page legislation authorizing the Treasury to borrow and spend $1.9 trillion in the next six months, and the Senate was attempting to confirm more of President Joseph R. Biden’s cabinet nominees, Biden secretly ordered the Pentagon to bomb militias in Syria.
The United States is not at war with Syria. It is not at war with the militias that were bombed, and it didn’t seek or have the permission of the Syrian government to enter its air space and engage in deadly military activities.
Biden later claimed that the bombing was conducted as “a lesson to Iran,” another country with which the U.S. is not war.
His campaign promises to the contrary notwithstanding, Biden has followed in the footsteps of his immediate predecessors.
They bombed civilians in an aspirin factory in Kosovo (Clinton), bombed civilians in Iraq (G.W. Bush), bombed military targets and government buildings in Libya and bombed a cafe in the Yemen desert targeting an American who was having tea (Obama), bombed the same location as Biden in Syria, and bombed a convoy of trucks in Iraq targeting an Iranian general who was on his way to lunch with an Iraqi counterpart (Trump).
All of these bombings and targeted killings violated the US Constitution, the U.N. Charter – which is a treaty largely written by the US, and to which the US is a signatory – and international law.
What is going on with American presidents and war?
The Constitution specifically separates the power to make war from the power to wage war.
The delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 spent more time debating this than any other topic – beside the makeup of Congress. In the end, they were adamant and unanimous that only Congress can declare war and only the president can wage war.
Congress cannot tell the president how to deploy the military, and the president cannot use the military against foreign targets without a congressional declaration of war.
James Madison – the scrivener at the Convention – famously offered that if a president could declare war and wage war, or even use the military to target any foreign entity he wished, then he would be a king, not a president.
He argued that war exacerbates the president’s “strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses.”
And when he drafted the Bill of Rights, Madison had the presidency in mind when he wrote in the Fifth Amendment that the government may not take life, liberty or property without due process of law.
Taken together, the exclusive constitutional delegation of war-making to Congress and the Due Process Clause absolutely restrain the legal ability of the president to use violence in another country without a declaration of war from Congress; and in the case of violence against an American, without a conviction by a jury and all the constitutional protections attendant upon that. And, against civilians – never.
When President George W. Bush decided to invade Afghanistan in retaliation for what he argued was providing haven and resources for those who planned, paid for and carried out the attacks on 9/11, he first went to Congress. Congress did not declare war on Afghanistan.
Instead, it enacted a resolution called the Authorization to Use Military Force of 2001.
That authorized Bush and his successors to use the military to target the perpetrators of 9/11 wherever and whenever they found them.
Unlike traditional declarations of war, the AUMF of 2001 did not have an endpoint, and that is its fatal flaw.
Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Biden disingenuously cited it as their legal authority to bomb Middle Eastern targets that had no conceivable relationship to the perpetrators of 9/11.
When Bush sought to invade Iraq to locate and destroy what he claimed were weapons of mass destruction, Congress enacted another AUMF in 2002. It, too, has no endpoint.
Last week, a bipartisan group of senators offered legislation to repeal both AUMFs and Biden has indicated that he will sign the repeal. That is a good start toward taming the executive appetite for military violence, but it is not enough.
Under international law and the natural law, the US may only use force defensively.
That means it may attack the military of a foreign country or group that has attacked the US or an ally, and it may attack the military of a foreign country or group that is imminently about to attack the US or an ally.
Those are the only instances in which the president may deploy US forces for violent purposes without a congressional declaration of war.
Congress must do more than just repeal the two AUMFs if it believes that the Constitution means what it says.
Congress needs to repeal the War Powers Resolution of 1973 – which purports to permit presidents, upon notification to Congress, to wage 90-day offensive wars, in violation of the Constitution and international law.
Congress needs to prohibit absolutely the unauthorized presidential expenditure of money and deployment of armed personnel on any nondefensive violent actions.
I say “personnel” rather than “military” because modern presidents have often used the CIA to fight wars and argued that because those wars did not involve the military, no congressional approval or notification was needed.
Congress should criminalize such presidential violence and the expenditures of resources to support it, as it is a crime to kill without lawful authority. And Congress should call nondefensive killings – by the government or anyone – by their legal name: Murder.
Another headline for the same story: World War 3: Israel military chief orders plans to attack Iran – Biden given ultimatum ISRAEL is ready to launch an attack on Iran and has warned the US against a return to the Iran nuclear deal. Historically, the israel regime will bait the US regime into war. This Zionist imperialist outpost is like NATO: all the allies must come to it’s aid and support anything israel does. That’s the rule. israel doesn’t ask us.
Israel’s top military chief has said the army is preparing to combat the threat posed by Iran and has ordered US President Joe Biden not to return to the Iran nuclear deal – even if the accord is strengthened.
United States is only superpower in the world and it gives billions of aids to Israel every year. it is easy to believe U.S. is the boss of Israel. However, israel is doing what ever they want in the middle east. We are trapped in Iraq and now there is Iran. And they opens a new front in Lebannon and bomb that little country to hell.
Gantz falsely portrayed Iran’s recent steps to advance its civilian nuclear program as the Islamic Republic racing to develop a bomb, something he said Israel would stop.
“If the world stops them before, it’s very much good.
But if not, we must stand independently and we must defend ourselves by ourselves,” he said.
Gantz cited nuclear activity that Iran is willing to quickly reverse if the US lifts sanctions and returns to the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.
But Gantz, like most Israeli officials, is opposed to a revival of the agreement.
Israeli officials have been making veiled threats about attacking Iran if President Biden rejoins the JCPOA.
Other incidents in the region that are being blamed on Iran are causing some to fear that Israel might be preparing an attack sooner rather than later.
Surprisingly, Israeli military and intelligence officials doubted Gamliel’s claim, as did other officials in the Environmental Protection Ministry.
Regardless of whether Iran was responsible or not, Israel could be planning a strike against the Islamic Republic over the two incidents.
Sources told Business Insider that the Biden administration and its European allies are fearing that Israel is planning a “substantial” attack on Iran.
Since the days of the Tower of Babel, there has been no defilement in the world like the defilement of Zionism. ~Rabbi Yehuda Greenwald
Terrorist acts, economic sabotage and the nuclear threat all violate the Charter of the United Nations, but Israel is the only member state of that organization that does not to abide by its rules, and has not done so for three quarters of a century.
The designation of regular Americans, who exercised their right to protest on Capitol Hill, as “Domestic Terrorists”, along with Biden’s plan to introduce a “Domestic Terrorism” bill or Patriot Act 2.0, seems to be in preparation prior to bombing Iran and thereby cowering the opposition and preventing “right-wingers” (aka the millions upon millions who voted for Trump and are against such a war) from protesting in mass.
“And as the inevitable companion to Patriot Act 2.0, there will be war overseas,” predicts Pepe Escobar.
So prepare for a possible war with Iran under Biden. A war that could start by hitting Syria first. And since Syria and Iran have a mutual defense pact, Iran would be dragged in, followed by Hezbollah in Lebanon.
All in all, the ultimate target is Iran, the head of the axis of resistance against Apartheid Israel’s destructive expansion in the Middle East.
