Prompt: mention of “Israel apartheid” (a standard trope in the anti-Semitic wings of the New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left) and “letting the refugees return”.
How about ending Arab apartheid and absorbing the Arab refugee generations whose first were abandoned between armies in 1948?
Oh, and how about giving the Palestinians their money back, considering the manners in which Arafat and Abbas became multi-millionaires and Haniyeh and Mashaal billionaires.
Sustaining the MEC supports feudalism, makes crooks wealthy, and extends for Palestinians The Preoccupation with the Jews.
Prompt: Israel is the sole cause of the refugee issue.
Arab absence of empathy and favoring of an anti-Semitic posture and related supremacist assumptions at the end of WWII led to the refusal of terms and the subsequent genocidal (river to the sea) gang-up on the new Jewish State. The “Palestinians” — Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs, migrants also to the fields of the new agricultural economy of the day — had been encouraged out of the way of battle with hopes the Jews would be gone when it was over.
It didn’t work out that way.
It takes a mighty and malign narcissism to refuse culpability for a disaster like the one dealt to the Arab refugees of 1948 (never mind the 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands that would follow in the wake of the war) and then to turn the same bereft population into a political “poker chip” for the enrichment of a criminal few unconscionable enough to spend decades manipulating hate in the cause of their own aggrandizement.
It appears that given a choice between encouraging conflict and undertaking development, the Jew-hating and once Soviet-loving portion of the Arab bloc invariably persists in poisoning the Palestinian mind, keeping the conflict alive, and handily siphoning off the world’s charity to line its own pockets in related systems of patronage, not that any should want “powerful families” to find themselves bereft of their portion of the take.
Later and latest: “Moscow” — today, a political police state, still fundamentally feudal.
Moscow-Tehran : Red-Green ; Brown-Green: all about force in power.
Mudar Zahran – Mahmoud Abbas has the KGB record, a record that represents a relationship that never disappears. It’s the KGB that set up Arafat and the PLO — and it has been the Palestinian main ranks that have been made to suffer on behalf of those who have mightily enriched themselves.
Nadiya Al-Noor – is there a “modern world” capable of opposing the persistence of the medieval mode in the lives of states?
I think the general conversation on the middle east conflict across the forums has grown way beyond the Che image and poetry of the “freedom fighter”.
We’re all freedom fighters these days.
We should take a good look around at “what was” and needs be no more.
The Soviet Union dissolved in bankruptcy officially on December 25, 1991, i.e., more than 25 years ago, and its offspring Putin strives mightily to sustain feudalism and associated motivations for conflict because his kind of narcissism loves appearing heroic amid the chaos and destruction he himself has created. He’s representative of the worlds so opposed to classical liberalism, justice, and life itself, and perhaps we may now dismiss the phantoms of earlier days.
Are we becoming public figures — are we public figures — enough for leaving the names in?
On this post, I think so.
There’s a lot alluded to in the excerpt, and I incline to leave it be but with the echo of its question:
Is there a modern world capable of opposing the persistence of the medieval mode in the lives of states?
Q: “Is it our psychology or our nature that prevents us from being peace loving people?”
A: As regards the “middle east conflict”: _malign and manipulated_ psychology.
Post-WWII, post-Nazi Germany, Soviet Era agitation-propaganda leveraging anti-Semitic sentiment –> “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation“, i.e., the myth that the Jews were out to take over the middle east —
_Reflexive Control and the Encouragement of Absolute Nationalism_
Terrorism promotes intense concern with basic security wherever, however, and for whatever reason politically-focused violence takes place. In crayon fashion here (I’m pressed for time this morning), political violence associated with the Palestinian cause, from the air hijackings of the 1970s to the latest murder by car, essentially promotes Israeli nationalist fervor and the western program. The deeper problem: it never helped the Palestinians but rather the piratical leaderships drawing income from the sustaining of the conflict. Arafat passed away a multi-millionaire; Abbas has accumulated a similar share of wealth; Haniyeh and Mashaal have developed reputations as billionaires.
Israelis and Palestinians genuinely tired of near 70 years of artificially sustained conflict — and the “information / disinformation psychology” has been a part of keeping things just as they have been — may need to bring these questions up with “Moscow”.
Historically, Moscow has been intensely anti-Semitic — https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/ — but under Putin’s guidance, somewhat opposite today. Things have changed even though Putin continues to foster or control or appreciate (choose any option) kleptocratic absolute power. This seems to me something Palestinian intelligentsia need to consider and research independently.
I often note that “the Hebrews are back in the Land of the Hebrews”, a trope that lends emphasis to authentic ethnolinguistic cultural affiliation with land. At the moment, there are fewer than 7,000 living language cultures on the planet, and each developed their language somewhere at some time. Baloch, Kurds, Hebrews, Pashtun have land claims as do others. I may grant that after 70 years of isolation and wicked disinformation, the Palestinians need not be the leading edge of “Arab pan-nationalism” which should have passed away with the Soviet Union (at the end of 1991). One may urge reconsideration for having become unique but perhaps misguided by the politics of a much earlier era and, all may hope, one passing finally into history.
End the Preoccupation With the Jews!
Easier said than done?
The world’s political science scholars may be unraveling the relationship between Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany in the first half of the 20th Century, and today there’s plenty for reading as regards Moscow’s efforts to sustain a piratical feudalism even as it runs short on ready cash and the rest, less ready, appears sunk in western assets and banking institutions.
Change, so BackChannels may observe, must come slowly where it involves BIG Family, Military, and Religious Institutions. In the feudal mode, money moves along more by way of relationships than by way of merit or virtue. That’s life. Such themes will never be black and white but they may be better balanced for ethical and moral merit — greater rule of law; greater real justice — in the long run.
Whether the latest assault on innocents will be quelled by security organizations or grown into an absurd set of what should be archaic struggles based in race and religion and any number of assorted lesser discriminators — black/white; Asian/European; gay/straight; single/married; poor/rich; etc. — we together shall see.
When they’re done, what next takes place tells a lot about both sides. No other refugee of war population on earth has been so cruelly suspended in time as have the Palestinians by Arab and former Communist interests.
I don’t believe Israelis — Christian, Jewish, or Muslim — care to teach an “alternative narrative” made out of whole cloth to assuage the feelings of the then Arab world. Seventy years of Arab apartheid have contributed to this conversation that in the realpolitik of greater history masks the culturally transmitted hatred of the Jewish People.
So for how long should so hideous an anti-Semitic narrative be sustained by Arab interests at the expense of the Palestinians?
The malign narcissistic expression of power in the feudal world had always the strength to turn day into night and call darkness light.
That such dishonest and sadistic systems fail in their far out drifts into battle and bankruptcy — have a good overview of today’s Syrian Tragedy — seems seldom to bother the demented leaderships largely insulated from the dismal effects of their expression of will.
Such stories — murdering children to build tunnels through which to attack Israel; destroying a city so thoroughly that it overshadows the once unique images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for horror — have become emblems of what today’s medieval mentality continues bringing to (and doing to) the Palestinians.
BackChannels had placed Efraim Karsh’s book at the top of the comment because it so well lays bare the want of covering of what might be perceived as shame associated with the the two failures: 1) the failure of multiple Arab armies to destroy the State of Israel in its infancy; 2) the failure to defend Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs caught between armies and displaced by battle and wartime politics.
Add today to those two remarkable events the impressing of the refugees in camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt for nigh on 70 years while those clustered around Gaza City and Ramallah ingest a placating narrative focused ever on the blame and destruction of Jewry for all their woes — and as much goes down while the multi-millionaires and billionaires of the “Palestinian Resistance” (to democracy and human rights) comfortably sip coffee while continuing to make nefarious deals elsewhere that include keeping the Palestinians in political irons.
The conversational partner wished to play Atticus on behalf of the Palestinians apparently beset by Israeli nationalist — “Zionazis” in the more fervent of anti-Semitic Lost Left circles.
The analogy fails, Mohammed, because the integrity in the American lawyer who would pursue justice — the truth — before an angered and bigoted mob would not find the interlocutors for the Palestinians, i.e., the clans, organizations, and leaders who have funneled so much money away from the Palestinians, particularly honest or sympathetic.
When the Soviet Union dissolved in bankruptcy, the nascent new Federation managed amid the ensuing non-state crime and chaos to sustain certain aspects of the old architecture and relationships, including those with extremists, but the SU really is gone, and practically every one of its former satellites prefers autonomy to renewed subjugation.
What choice — or choices — have the Palestinians today between Abbas and Haniyeh?
Wiesenthal Center Urges Ukrainian Authorities to Take Action Against General Who Threatened to Murder Jews
May 17, 2017
Jerusalem-The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called upon the Ukrainian government to take legal action against retired Security Service General Vasily Vovk in the wake of a recent Facebook post of his in which he wrote that he intends to murder Jews, among them Jewish MP Vadim Rabinovych. In a letter sent to Ukrainian ambassador to Israel Hennadii Nadolenko by its Director of Eastern European Affairs, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center emphasized the severity of the general’s comments and lack hitherto of an appropriate response by the Ukrainian authorities.
According to Zuroff’s letter:
“I am aware of the fact that the embassy here in Israel responded to express your regret about the ‘highly provocative post of [an] anti-Semitic character,’ but there is no indication that any legal action of any sort has or will be taken against General Vovk. So although the embassy ‘condemns all kinds of manifestations of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance,’ the bottom line as far as the Ukrainian authorities are concerned, is absolute impunity for vicious anti-Semites.
“We urge you to convey our concerns to the authorities in Kiev with a demand that appropriate and resolute action be taken against General Vovk, to send a clear message that in democratic Ukraine there will be no tolerance whatsoever for anti-Semites and bigots of any type.”
Anti-Semitic talk and thought have been the most medieval tools for controlling, deflecting, and moving mobs and, at times, producing a little extra money for the feudal nobility by way of plunder accompanied by theft and murder.
The Soviet Union picked up a share of the pieces — relationships — after the Nazi defeat in WWII, and it exploited anti-Semitic sentiment to build a base for itself.
The medieval history of religion gets a little complicated. Ruling Christians in Hungary in the 12th Century formed laws to discriminate against Jews and Jewish potential and accomplishment, and then upon activation applied the same laws to Muslims.
I’ve taken the stance with anti-Semitism x feudalism and tribalism that associated conflict and cruelty are really about replacing the medieval mode and worldview with what has become politically and spiritually modern — democratically checked and distributed political power; multicultural inclusion; a great measure of compassion and secular humanism in the functional aspects of law, and where beneath such law, all are treated as equal.
The thought may at first seem spotty as President Putin handily sustains possibly the most pro-Semitic Russia in Russian history, but as one visits Moscow’s relationships with Assand and Khamenei, Hezbollah and Hamas (and PFLP) plus autocrats like Erdogan and Orban (add in Le Pen but perhaps not the now well-briefed Trump), Moscow’s medieval facets would seem unmistakable. Add to that the cruelties so well demonstrated in Syria and the cloaked “hybrid warfare” in Ukraine that would seem to amount to not much more than recognizable old infiltration accompanied by massive disinformation (for the misguiding of the masses, and much more of Russians — the 93 percent of Russians who may read and speak only in Russian — than of anyone else) and the onset of conventional war.
The inspiration for the post came by way of a Muslim convert to Christianity who had expressed enthusiasm for modern Israel, calling it a “Hebrew state” and an inspiration for the world.
Addendum
Not shortly after publishing this piece, I found a well-known figure boasting of a recently attended Christian, Jewish, and Muslim colloquy and querying the presence of a “clash of civilizations”. My response:
There is a “clash of civilizations” — but it’s not the one we have been led to believe exists, i.e., some thing between the Muslim and Christian worlds. That “clash” doesn’t exist in any meaningful reality: what does exist is the struggle of the modern world to displace several worlds — Christian, Jewish, and Muslim — remaining mired in medieval outlooks, politics, and practices.
Islam orders the Muslim to be honest to himself and others. This order repeatedly comes in the Noble Qur’an and the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (SAWS). Islam orders the Muslim to tell the truth even if it is against the teller’s interest. Orders him not to cheat or deceive other people. A Muslim is ordered by Allah to be honest in his words and deeds, privately and publicly alike.
Portions of The Other Side have been considered as Holocaust denial by some critics,[8] especially the parts disputing the accepted number of deaths in the Holocaust as well as the accusations that Zionist agitation was the cause of the Holocaust,[9] a charge that Abbas denies.[10]
When Abbas was appointed the Palestinian prime minister in 2003, he wrote that the “Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind” and that he does not deny it,[11] and said that “When I wrote The Other Side … we were at war with Israel. Today I would not have made such remarks”.[12] More recently, in 2013 he reasserted that part of his thesis that “the Zionist movement had ties with the Nazis”.[13][14] In 2014, he stated the Holocaust was the “most heinous crime in the modern era”.[15]
Apparently, Mr. Abbas spreads lies when at war with Israel but shrugs through the truth when its suits him.
Or perhaps when it suits his family’s wallet.
These documents, reports from senior Fatah officials and Palestinian social media reveal extensive corruption at the highest levels — the Abbas family and a Palestinian elite manipulating the political and financial systems to benefit themselves at the expense of the people.
The architect of the Holocaust, Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann, was one of the first to deny its existence. While escaping the Nuremberg trials and evading international law, Eichmann befriended Nazi supporters in Argentina who published an anti-Semitic magazine titled “Der Weg,” or “The Way.” The magazine aimed to disprove what they called “the falsehood of the 6 million.” The magazine claimed the Holocaust was nothing but a libel, that there were never any gas chambers in Hitler’s Europe and that the Jews collaborated with the Third Reich in order to have another country for themselves after thousands of years in exile. According to Eichmann and the magazine’s publishers, the Jews were willing to sacrifice themselves to gain a national homeland.
Many Arabs were enthralled by this theory, and a young doctoral student by the name of Mahmoud Abbas, now the president of the Palestinian Authority, even wrote a dissertation on the subject titled, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and Zionism,” which opened the door for several different conspiracies on the subject of the Holocaust to develop.
The Arabs were among the first Holocaust deniers to adopt Eichmann’s theory.
In the proverbial east, so it would appear, what may not be accomplished honestly may be accomplished through guile — and if not guile, plain lying and force.
One social trope BackChannels has heard regarding lying: “Any who lie to you don’t respect you.”
Fair enough.
BackChannels wonders to what extent those who lie to others, especially Palestinians who lie to Palestinians, respect even themselves.
Posted to YouTube by Human Rights Watch, August 29, 2016.
Expect updates to this post as more material comes together on Abbas representative of the end of a long cycle of totalitarian dictatorship — perhaps more gently, “authoritarian governance” — comes into view on the world stage. Today’s political crooks get covered in global media and come to look exactly as they have painted themselves throughout the course of their careers. Mahmoud Abbas? KGB — he has the record of it, and once marked is marked forever with that organization — so whose interests, apart from his own, is he really representing?
Abbas has also made for himself a record as a Holocaust denier although he has backed away from that lunacy — still, one may wonder how many unwarranted words — assertion of fact that just aren’t true — he has still to recover.
