After 70+ years of Arab apartheid — separation in camps; separate diminished treatment — deep political control and suppression (from Human Rights Watch: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/10/23/palestine-authorities-crush-dissent), this may be the beginning for the Palestinian People. No longer Jordanian; no longer Egyptian; no longer Ottoman; no longer anything that has been before but a part of everything that has crossed through the middle east, there’s definitely a population that has been in modern times isolated in time and space, i.e., A People!
Flip the baby over and let it be born and breath refreshed and new.
The Palestinian People may be so only as consequence of more than 70 years of Arab Apartheid, i.e., separation in the camps of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. They will learn that they have been duped as well by the PLO and, later, Hamas — and ultimately by Moscow.
The real revolution in the Middle East may be normalization — peaceful Palestinian democracy in Gaza and the West Bank; citizenship and inclusion with full return of state rights in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, albeit slowly to fade the Soviet Era’s poison from the system.
The Palestinians may be many people — they may be even a little bit of all of the people whose cultures and languages and lives have cross-crossed that small patch of earth for millennia.
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Inspiration: invoking of the phrase”They are my people”.
Okay.
Every person on the planet has some ethnic, family, and religious identification.
I was thinking about the Druze — I think they are their own people, not yours, Mohammad Muneer Dandan. I know the ancient Samaritans are on the land too, but . . . they’re not your people either, are they? I don’t know the ethnography of the Palestinian Territories — in Israel for its citizens, it just doesn’t matter so much as the state maintains its Jewish ethnic majority (as North American and Europe maintain their Christian majority and atmosphere).
The idea that you would find the Jews at once mixed in Israel as well as reprehensible as a group sounds awfully, well, racist these days. You seem to be promoting some version of ethnic Palestinian purity as the standard for residence on land conquered and administered by many distinct parties over . . . centuries.
Were the Canaanites your people? The Phoenicians? Romans? The Crusaders from the west?
The history of Palestine is the study of the past in the region of Palestine, generally defined as a geographic region in the Southern Levant between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (where Israel and Palestine are today), and various adjoining lands. Situated at a strategic point between Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity,[1] the region has a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The Palestine region or parts of it have been controlled by numerous different peoples and regional powers, including the Canaanites, Amorites,[2] Ancient Egyptians, Israelites, Moabites, Ammonites, Tjeker, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, ancient Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, different dynasties of the Early Muslim period (Umayads, Abbasids, Seljuqs, Fatimids), Crusaders, Late Muslim dynasties (Ayyubids, Mamluks, Ottoman Turks), the British, Jordanians (1948–1967, on the “West Bank”) and Egyptians (in Gaza), and modern Israelis and Palestinians. Other terms for approximate geographic area include Canaan, Zion, the Land of Israel, Southern Syria, Outremer and the Holy Land.
Jews are Hebrews and the Hebrews are of the Land of Israel.
Any question about that should seem to the whole world — and the entire Muslim world that relates to the Moses mentioned by the Qur’an — surreal.
As regards Palestinian purity, go over the listings. Your people — which ones from which period?
For the record, BackChannels believes the refugee generations of Gaza and the West Bank may well comprise a “Palestinian People” on the basis of more than 70 years of separation in the Arab Apartheid Palestinian camps of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. For administration, the camps — they’re built these days — need to be integrated into the states that host them, and the refugees accepted and free to learn, live, and work like any other Arab citizen. The more restive of Gaza and the West Bank are welcomed here to know their true history and their being a part of the world fought, traded, and traveled across the land from every other corner of the world. Now THAT would be something to be — multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-national.
Moscow has long had hold of two immensely manipulative levers in its often malign and narcissistic vying for the control of political circumstance and their image as perceived: anti-Semitism most of all: Okhrana | Protocols –> Germany via White Russian fleeing the Bolsheviks, especially contributing to the Holocaust: Max Erwin Von Scheubner-Richter. The other lever: socialist | nationalist totalitarianism. Revival of the Russian Orthodox Church as a sop for Russian disgruntlement, and, of course, revival of the military as a power need little explication. The effect intended, imho: weaken democracy in EU / NATO and revive what Russia has known best: a paternal and authoritarian feudalism that is itself also absolute in power.
One image which showed a schoolboy holding a rifle was captioned: “Hamas cubs, they are the next soldiers of Gaza and the next liberation army, god willing.”
Another picture of a toddler wearing a beret and holding a gun was captioned: “Generation after generation Hamas is increasing its enthusiasm, dignity, and power.”
When I spoke with a warlord ‘General’ about why he recruited children he said, ‘Children are abundant, stupid, they obey orders, don’t ask questions, and cost nothing. They are very cheap! They never desert, cannot go home and I can get as many as I want immediately.
Eid also criticized the education provided in UNRWA schools. “I worked in several UNRWA schools in the territories and in Jordan, and children aged 9-10 want to be killed and kill Jews and to release their people. “Who taught you that?” I asked. They said that was what they were learning in schools, and I asked teachers at UNRWA schools in Jordan if children were taught to blow themselves up and be killed. They said “of course. How else will they liberate the land from the Israeli occupation? ” UNRWA is aware of this, and the international community knows that all UNRWA studies are full of hate and incitement. The international community continues to inject funds because it is against Israel.”
According to the army, the young girl was spotted by soldiers as she approached the security fence. The troops, who were on the Israeli side, met the girl as she reached the fence, an army spokesperson said.
“When the IDF troops realized it was a girl, they picked her up and made sure that she could get back to her parents safely,” the army said. It did not say how it coordinated with girl’s parents on the Gaza side.
For some reason, we never hear any discussion of child soldiers in Palestine, but we all very clearly know they exist and that it is nothing new. The PLO, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have for decades used children as fodder to throw rocks, fireworks and explosives at soldiers, as bombers, as lookouts and couriers. Hamas has been even more brazen, publicizing its recruitment of an army of child soldiers. In the current wave of terrorism in Israel and Palestine, we have seen attackers as young as 13 years old. These child soldiers have been called to action by Abu Mazen, The PA, and Hamas who then glorify them to encourage more children to commit attacks.
The curriculum also promotes the century-old paradigm of a ceaseless effort to destroy Israel in stages. A new generation of Palestinian children is methodically being educated in the spirit of the Ten-Point Program adopted by the Palestinian National Council ([PNC] (the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], at its twelfth meeting in Cairo June 8, 1974). The plan called for the establishment of a national authority “over every part of Palestinian territory that is liberated” with the aim of “completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory”. The curriculum includes an uncompromising rejection of Israel and a combination of violence and international community pressure to accommodate Palestinian demands. What used to be the strategy of one extremist guerilla movement has now become the standard for all Palestinians students.
The Hamas campaign, entitled, “Vanguards of Liberation,” is aimed at recruiting young men whose ages range between 15 and 21.
So far, the Hamas recruitment program has attracted hundreds of youths from the Gaza Strip who, according to the movement, will form the nucleus for the new “Liberation Army.”
“Children’s Army of Hamas – short” – David Bedein, published to YouTube March 22, 2015.
“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us” — Golda Meir, n.d.
“The Guatemala government said it was adopting measures to stop the entry of more migrants from Honduras and El Salvador into its territory, although attempts by both Guatemala and Mexico to halt the flow have failed.”
Law is all fine and dandy, but the kind of migration witnessed before this point — I have never before read of a “caravan” in the western hemisphere — has been driven by the dissolving of the state’s power in place and its replacement by barbarism and desperation, i.e., the development of a beneath bottom state in financial and physical insecurity. The threats of depredation alone should have stalled the tide (here’s a related story:
South Africa was to work out an MOU with Zimbabwe for the permitting of labor spilling away from Mugabe’s disaster, but I’m sure the mechanics are the same universally).
Who wishes to be the first to shoot migrants en masse at the breach of a border?
That may be one reason they’re getting through each state.
Perhaps the UN should step in as it has elsewhere and start building refugee camps in Central and South America until one state or another develops the will to actually bend the government to service on behalf of the people and the more firm development of both basic-modest lifestyle and security needs.
“Indeed, it would appear Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, flight, or murder has become a matter most delicate, most intriguing, most opaque.”
Epistemological Khashoggi
Things we know.
Things we don’t know.
Things we don’t know we don’t know.
Things we don’t want to know.
Things we will never know.
Thing we know but don’t know that we know.
Things we don’t know but fervently believe.
Finally
Things we would like to find out.
One of the 15 suspects in the death of dissident Jamal Khashoggi dressed up in his clothes and was caught on surveillance cameras walking around Istanbul on the day Khashoggi went missing.
Footage being used as part of the Turkish government’s investigation into Khashoggi’s death was shared with CNN, and shows the man, identified as Mustafa al-Madani, leaving Saudi Arabia’s consulate through the back door wearing Khashoggi’s clothes, a fake beard, and glasses, a senior Turkish official told CNN.
Even so, what has happened to other potential evidence of murder?
Above all: where is the body?
A man in a foreign land leaves his fiancee (of another nationalist) parked by the curb, walks into his nation’s embassy to obtain a permit for marriage and fails to walk back out to drive off into the sunset with his presumed beloved.
Missing: the body.
Also missing: blood spatter; the odor of disinfectant; the appearance of discarded . . . anything: clothing; a table or parts of one involved in a murder; not even a shoelace, much less a pair of shoes, has been shown to the public.
Also for public notice: embassies are considered a part of the sovereign territory of the state represented: what have the Turks been doing (directly) in the Saudi’s building?
Everyone knows the answer to that question — one good reason for the invention of the “Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF)” within buildings intent on defending the most private and sensitive of conversations.
Bold added:
Erdogan called on the perpetrators to be brought to justice in Istanbul and questioned whether the Vienna Conventions, which give immunity to diplomatic staff, applied in this case.
It was the first time that any official in Turkey has publicly outlined the Turkish contention that Khashoggi was killed by a hit squad sent from Saudi Arabia. But while Erdogan had promised the “naked truth,” he offered few details beyond those revealed by Turkish officials speaking privately.
But officials are skeptical of Saudi’s explanation for the Khashoggi’s death. Turkish officials have repeatedly touted claims that Khashoggi was brutally tortured and dismembered by what appeared to be a 15-person kill squad flown in from Saudi Arabia.
Where are the bones? The clothes? The “body bag”? Was there a sink? A plastic or porcelain tub? Where are the clothes of the killers? Where was the fire and smoke needed to burn things that burn? Where are his shoelaces and their plastic tips (if of common construction)? No nails? No hair follicles?
After his transforming Turkey into a family enterprise, what motive has anyone from the post-Enlightenment west for believing the presentations of President Erdogan?
In Sum
Where is the body?
Where, in fact, is the story?
BackChannels may suggest that the Saudi confession to murder should have been accompanied immediately by its evidence. Today, the lag in time between the confession and the turning up of evidence — so late as to make fabrication possible — may make the confession suspect.
The time may be running out for even the telling of an untimely untruth.
Indeed, it would appear Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance, flight, or murder has become a matter most delicate, most intriguing, most opaque.
Multiple sources suggested Khashoggi had been cut up and his face “disfigured,” Sky News reported.
Sources in the Istanbul Prosecutor’s office denied that Khashoggi’s remains were found at the consul general’s home, adding that a picture on social media purportedly showing the corpse is fake.
BackChannels will try to stop at this point: where is the body? Is a body found really the body? If a man wished to leave his body, loosely speaking, would he also not leave behind his old clothes?
There is no way to address such questions from an armchair or by watching television.
That may not be the problem — so the man is dead or, perhaps, on his way to early skiing vacation in the Swiss Alps (never let it be said the editor of this blog has not been a foolish romantic); what is the problem is that “the public” — or respective national publics or statistical clumps of national or party identity — may lose its basis for believing anything from any source.
Gruesome, brazen and barbaric were some of the terms that were thrown around in response to learning his fingers were cut off first, then his head and finally his body was chopped into small pieces in order to “disappear” it from the crime scene.
Images of such a sadistic act were the linchpin in inciting the political debacle. Yet, since the remains of Khashoggi’s body had not been found yet, it also served to precipitate a war over who controlled the narrative. With this “memory” destroyed, who owned the truth?
Not all information is or needs to be stridently partisan or political. Even where “objectivity” may be impossible to achieve, having multiple sources represent multiple angles of a story lets all of us as readers compare reports, sift, and deduce what fits best together, impartially so, into a coherent whole. That is the soul of empiricism.
The New York Post has been turning out pretty good for being “on it” as regards some of these international stories.
“The assessment by the Saudi attorney general was broadcast on state television.
The broadcast also reported that five top officials have been fired and 18 Saudi nationals detained as suspects in the death.”
The west, Left and Right, hippie liberal and knotted tie conservative, seem to have become more interesting in “framing” observation their own way than in cool-headed and, frankly, human-oriented analysis. That’s a bad habit to get into for any democratic and modern soul trying to temper medieval enthusiasms for absolute, capricious, and tyrannous power.
