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Category Archives: Israel

Palestinian Authority – Incitements to Murder Jews in Service to the Subjugation and Enslavement of Its Own

29 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by commart in Israel, Middle East, Politics

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Tags

anti-Semitism, civilizational narcissism, Israel, middle east conflict, Preoccupied Territories, social grammar, social language programming

Under Abbas, the PA has been waging a war of words against the Jewish state, engaging in anti-Semitic incitement of the vilest kind and using Holocaust denial, racial slurs, and Judeophobic epithets. It is a stream of hostility cultivated and implemented over the past decade under the Abbas leadership. A stream which is competing with “Der Ewige Jude”, the Eternal Jew, favored by Joseph Goebbels, in which Jews are compared to rats.

Giulio Meotti – Abbas is a War Criminal: The Evidence – Op-Eds – Israel National News, 9/27/2013.

______

A comment in The New York Times on the funding and training of Palestinian Authority Security Forces:

Much of the training supported by the United States and the European Union was conducted in Jordan, away from traditional Palestinian bases, in hopes that months away from home would cement a new professional ethos. Yet old neighborhood and clan ties continued to be used in recruitment and some of the most powerful Palestinian security organizations remained outside the reform regimen.

Kimberly Marten – The Bane of Palestinian Infighting – NYTimes.com – 6/26/2013.

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We write today because we are deeply disturbed by recent reports of large-scale political arrests being carried out by the Palestinian Authority inside the occupied West Bank. These arrests have targeted critics of the Palestinian Authority, including youth activists, human rights defenders, prisoners’ rights organizers and scholars, and journalists, including former political prisoners held by Israel and released in the October 2011 prisoner exchange agreement and subsequently.

*

This operation is currently under the command of Rear Admiral Paul Bushong.9 We are deeply disturbed by the security coordination regime and the role of the United States, highly committed to supporting the Israeli military diplomatically, economically and militarily, in maintaining this regime to the detriment of Palestinians’ freedom of association and expression.

National Lawyers Guild, Free Palestine Subcommittee.  Letter to Mr. Maen Areikat, Chief Representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States, Mr. Ali Muhanna, Minister of Justice, Palestinian National Authority, and Mr. Riyad al-Maliki, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Palestinian National Authority, October 8, 2012. PDF.

The oddness of the fracturing of the flow down from duel authoritarian modes and the simplistic ways of understanding them seems to me ever striking.  Plainly through its behavior and language over time, the Palestinian Authority remains bent on Israel’s destruction and the theft outright of the Jewish state, and in that it has no place to go, and yet it seems to cull or silence competitors either worse than itself or better.

**

Perhaps it would be well to mention here that the American freedom of speech concept was and remains intended to protect discomforting or unpopular speech — not conspiracy or incitement to commit crimes, but politically distasteful speech, and that on the basis that protecting legitimate criticism is a necessary facet of a living and progressing democracy.

As regards then the constituents governed by the Palestinian Authority, one might then take an interest in whose voices have been intimidated, restrained, or silenced by it.

______

▶ West Bank IDF soldier murder poses threat to peace talks: Israel soldier killed by sniper in Hebron – YouTube, 9/24/2013

______

It appears one state cannot bribe another — that is what western assistance seems made to look like — off its language-conveyed-and-sustained program, however destructive, evil, and deeply misguided and suffocating to its own people that program may be.

Children Taught to Hate on Palestinian Television: Where’s the Coverage? – YouTube, 7/14/2013.

▶ “Our enemy is Satan, Zion with a tail” – girl on PA TV – YouTube, 9/23/2013

______

I had the opportunity to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who expressed grave concern both for Israel’s security as well as for the prospects for peace. “How,” he asked us, “could the Palestinian leadership be a serious partner for peace if it welcomed into its ranks vicious terrorists who continue to deny the very right of the state of Israel to exist?” His concern is more than justified.

U. S. Congressman Steve Chabot speaking in the early minutes of a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee-level hearing on the middle east conflict – PROMOTING PEACE? REEXAMINING U.S. AID TO THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, July 12, 2011.

______

Gross corruption charges have for a long time been directed at the PLO, which already by 1993 was the richest terrorist organization in the world, according to the British National Criminal Intelligence Service, having assets of ten billion dollars and an annual income of approximately two billion dollars. The Daily Telegraph reported in 1999 that the PLO had secretly invested over 50 billion dollars around the world. Still, Norway has continuously broken bread with these people.

Gates of Vienna: Seduced by Palestinian Propaganda – 1/19/2013

Additional Reference

Arguably, the use of propaganda by Palestinians to gain compassion and political support has been their one great success. The Palestinian narrative of victimhood, with its falsifications of history and politics, its portrayal of themselves as not only innocent but the most compelling victims in the world, its staging of events to blame Israel for atrocities they themselves have committed, its deliberate concentration on alleged injuries or deaths of children, and its achievement in persuading much of the media to accept and advance its manipulation of language and action, have all been part of its success in the propaganda war.

Michael Curtis – American Thinker – Articles: The Palestinian Use of Propaganda – 9/29/2013

* * *

The loosely compiled list that follows may be offered more for impression than information.

As with the above material, it’s indicative of the official continuance of a surreal state of affairs, one in which Israel and the west put up effort in funding, labor, and services to bring the refugees of 1948 into a modern state and state of being while the graying post-Soviet remnant of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) continues to promote an anti-Semitic, genocidal, and totalitarian engine suited to its own combined tribal and mafioso needs.

The real story hasn’t to do with murder per se but with the complete and final enslavement and subjugation of the refugees generations by way of the control of what they may read and speak and think.

Deception: Betraying the Peace Process: Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik: Amazon.com: Books (2012)  Even the unhappy review of the book lauded its scholarship and acknowledged the true state of affairs illustrated by it.

Palestinian Authority: Pursuing Peace, or Pushing Propaganda? – The Daily Beast – 12/11/2011

Palestinian Authority blocks critical websites – Committee to Protect Journalists – 4/24/2012

Palestinian Propaganda – Wild Olive web site page, n.d.

5 Signs of Sinking Palestinian Press Freedom | HonestReporting – 4/2/2013

West Bank and Gaza Strip * | Freedom House – 2012

After a while, and if one has lied in a large way, one sees it on the World Wide Web, the “mirror, mirror” not on the wall but on the desktop.

______

Ma’an News Agency.  “Fatah, Hamas officials trade accusations in heated debate.” February 23, 2013.

Oren, Amir.  “U.S. names top Navy officer security coordinator for Israel, Palestinian Authority.”  Haaretz, June 9, 2012.

Palestinian National Security Forces – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sanders, Edmund.  “Israeli soldier lured to West Bank and killed, officials say.”  Los Angeles Times, September 21, 2013.

Sayigh, Yezid.  “Policing the People, Building the State: Authoritarian Transformation in the West Bank and Gaza.”  The Carnegie Papers, Carnegie Middle East Center, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2011.

The Washington Institute.  “Peace through Security: America’s Role in the Development of the Palestinian Authority Security Services.” Conference Keynotes, 2009 Soref Symposium, featuring comment on and linking to an address by Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton (“Michael Stein Address on U.S. Middle East Policy”).

United States security assistance to the Palestinian National Authority – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

U.S. Dept. State, United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC)

U.S. Dept. State and Broadcasting Board of Governors, Office of Inspector General, Middle East Regional Office.  “Performance Evaluation of Palestinian Authority Security Forces Infrastructure Construction Projects in the West Bank.”  Report Number MERO-I-11-03, March 2011. PDF.

U.S. General Accounting Office – “Report to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Its Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, House of Representatives: Palestinian Authority: U.S. Assistance is Training and Equipping Security Forces, but the Program Needs to Measure Progress and Faces Logistical Constraints.  (2010).

Zanotti, Jim.  “U.S. Foreign Aid to the Palestinians.”  Congressional Research Service, January 18, 2013:

Since the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the mid-1990s, the U.S. government has committed over $4 billion in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians, who are among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid.

Successive Administrations have requested aid for the Palestinians to support at least three major U.S. policy priorities of interest to Congress:

• Preventing terrorism against Israel from Hamas and other militant organizations.

• Fostering stability, prosperity, and self-governance in the West Bank that inclines Palestinians toward peaceful coexistence with Israel and a “two-state solution”.

• Meeting humanitarian needs

Zanotti, Jim.  “U.S. Security Assistance to the Palestinian Authority.”  Congressional Research Service, January 8, 2010.

Etc. – Fragments and Outtakes

Those who follow the middle east conflict more closely know that beneath the sawing of vocal interlocutors in the Preoccupied Territories, legitimate economic development, and utility and trade throughput plus access to higher education and sophisticated medical services have formed arrangements that the well known vanguard of the vain may feel beneath their own considerations.

______

First, as I just said, I profoundly believe that it is in the national security interest of the United States to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Second, I am one of those who firmly believes in a two-state solution: a Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside the state of Israel is the only solution that will meet the long-term needs of Israel and the aspirations of the Palestinian people. This has long been the policy of our national leadership, and I share it.

Third, let me state very clearly my deep conviction—and I tell this to my Israeli friends all the time—that as President Obama said last year, the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, it is unbreakable tomorrow, and it is unbreakable forever. [Applause.]

Lt. General Keith Dayton, U.S. Security Coordinator, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Michael Stein Address on U.S. Middle East Policy, program of the Soref Symposium, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, May 7, 2009.

______

Before I get into the details of the program, I would like to remind you that the Government of Israel has 100% ransparency into all aspects of US support to the PA Security Forces (PASF) and that the USSC will never advocate or sponsor activities that could threaten Israeli security.

Lt. General Moeller, United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Statement for House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, July 12, 2011.  PDF.

Convincing Washington to support the security mission remains a tall order even today. Despite the undisputed progress the Palestinian security force has shown on the ground, Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives have recently put yet another hold on funds for maintaining and developing the force, as a demonstration of their displeasure with policies adopted by the Palestinian Authority.

 Nathan Guttman – Why No Love for Security Cooperation? – Forward.com – 6/19/2012.

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Syria and the Jews — Fast Online Look — When the Neighbors are Fighting

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Israel, Politics, Psychology, Syria

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delusional narcissistic reflection of motives, ethics, Israel, narcissism, Syria

Saving the Bashar al-Assad regime by getting it to junk weapons of mass destruction it doesn’t need while vastly improving Russia’s international image is a good deal for them

Syria U-Turn Sends Troubling Message of American Weakness – Forward.com, by Hillel Halkin, September 22, 2013

(Reuters) – In the photograph the two robed men stand shoulder-to-shoulder, one tall and erect, the other more heavyset. Both smile for the camera. The picture from Tehran is a rare record of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meeting Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite paramilitary group.

Special Report: Hezbollah gambles all in Syria | Reuters, by Samia Nakhoul, September 26, 2013

A family in Israel’s Arab minority is mourning the death of their son, killed fighting in the Syrian civil war.

Zaki Agbariah said he is proud of his 28-year-old son Mueid. The family told Channel 1 television Wednesday that Mueid didn’t tell anybody that he was going to Syria to fight.

Israeli Arab Killed in Syrian Civil War – ABC News, AP, September 18, 2013

Syria has deterrent weapons, more advanced than anything in its chemical arsenal, that could blindside Israel in mere moments, Syrian President Bashar Assad claimed Thursday.

“Originally, we produced chemical weapons in the 1980s as a deterrent to Israel’s nuclear capabilities,” Assad said in an interview with the Hezbollah-affiliated, Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar newspaper, adding that “today, we have weapons that are far more important and sophisticated and that can blindside Israel in the blink of an eye.”

Assad: We have weapons that could blindside Israel | The Times of Israel, September 26, 2013.

Suddenly there is a volley of fire. “Get down guys,” the soldiers say. Some dive for cover in a concrete trench.

A sergeant explains that bombs and bullets from the Syrian war regularly land inside Israeli territory. The shooting may have been warning shots, or maybe just some stray bullets from a gunfight on the outskirts of Quneitra.

Israel eyes Syria warily from border buffer zone in Golan Heights – World News, by Geraint Vincent, September 25, 2013.

______

When it’s the people in the apartment next door, one monitors the loud voices, the character of the yelling, something breaking like a plate or glass.  Then something big and heavy pounds against the wall.

Him?  Her?  The kid?  Furniture?

Time to call the police.

Even that level of involvement may not be so easy.

If the domestic combatants figure out it was you called the cops, watch your back.

If there are children involved, you have not only called the police but social services and probably initiated a separations investigation, and some suffering mama or papa may not be too happy about that — and might figure you convenient for blaming first.

And all you was doin’ was watchin’ tv.

* * *

In the big bad ol’ world, states don’t intervene in wars so much as get sucked into them, rather like ships trying to sail on their way past the darkest of expanding vortex.

So the Jews, who were just watchin’ the tv too, stand beside the conflict in Syria not exactly unhappy to see Hezbollah invested in the battle while Russia and the United States stand outside the bloody sandbox trying to keep to keep the flying shit from spilling out farther into their own affairs.

That’s not really neighborly, but what’s a good and highly functioning state or two very powerful ones to do?

* * *

Israel has stepped up its sensitivity to potential activity on its borders; beyond that, and some sales of gas masks, it’s busy with being.  With life.  It has its security arrangements in place; it’s people — Jewish and other Israelis — have taken steps to be helpful to those in need of help — e.g.,

Israeli raising funds to help Syrians ‘dying near us’ – Israel News, Ynetnews, Yitzhak Benhorin, May 10, 2013

Israel sets up ‘field hospital’ to treat injured Syrians – Israel News, Ynetnews, Yoav Zitun, AFP

Israeli organization delivers hundreds of tons of food, medicine to Syrian refugees | JPost | Israel News, September 9, 2013: “Nobody asks permission to kill. We do not ask permission to save lives,” says NGO’s founder.”

* * *

Delusional narcissistic reflection of motives — as with propaganda, the aggressor claims defense from what he himself has in mind for his target — would seem to have organized the Assad mentality to believe itself the target of Israeli aggression, a belief and posture abetting and motivating the state’s and state culture’s own aggression against Israel.

Give that a moment to settle.

______

Within the framework of “civilizational narcissism”, Haider Mobarak’s term, this nifty nugget that you will find only here — “Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motives” — accounts much for the form of rhetoric embraced (language) and combat pursued (behavior) throughout the Islamic Small Wars.

The social grammar — the hidden rule learned early — is probably the message that if not defended, something will be taken from the child (e.g., “If you don’t eat your supper now, I shall give it to your brother” — a common enough phrase according to Raphael Patai).

What happens with the ancient and modern House of Israel with its civilizational psychology operating quite differently is that it’s outside of and unconcerned with this mess that is of intense interest to someone else enveloped in what might be called a narcissistic trap, that is the world spun around the narcissist’s delusions in such a way that it organizes the surrounding social architecture.  In essence, the dictator at some point cannot escape his own dictatorship: he’s created too much myth, made too many corrupt deals, bargained himself right into a prison of the soul.  The flow down is to fighters who cannot refuse the fight however absurd and surreal its imagined basis.

Who needs Pharaoh, that most magnificent construct of the malignant narcissist around whom the world revolves?

The Jews, and with a mixed multitude suffering the same insight, walked.

Who needs Assad?

The Jews, and the Israelis who are not only Jews, stand to the side eager only to help the bereaved, injured, and lost and otherwise maintain their defenses.

* * *

“Two mad wasps in a bell jar” — those who go into Syria to fight other than the one dictatorship go to combat over issues irrelevant to existence, the humanity of humanity, and probably to God as well, to whom, in the ancient manner, they may serve as illustration for the ages.

Additional Reference

Syria war, refugees to cost Lebanon $7.5 billion – World Bank | Reuters, by Dominic Evans, September 19, 2013.

The Arab Mind: Raphael Patai: 9780967201559: Amazon.com: Books

# # #

Quote

Kenya – “No Negotiations with Terrorists”

24 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Kenya

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defense doctrine, Israel, Kenya, terror, terrorism

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, whose nephew and his fiancé were among the victims, maintained a policy that Israel introduced to the world in the Entebbe raid and then abandoned in recent years – no negotiations with terrorists. “We will not negotiate with terrorists,” said Colonel Cyrus Oguna, a Kenyan military spokesman.

The Jewish Press » » Kenya, Unlike Israel, ‘Does not Negotiate with Terrorists’ (Video) 9/23/2013

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The doors will close.

The noose will tighten.

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Pakistan – (Perhaps) Overshadowed – The Bombing of a Church in Peshawar

23 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Kenya, Pakistan, Psychology

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Islam, Islamist, Israeli democracy, Kenya, Pakistan, terror, terrorism

Such extreme violence against minorities tends to be perpetrated by the country’s many and various militant organisations. The group that claimed responsibility for this latest attack has links to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and said it was acting in retaliation for drone strikes. Yet the problem runs far deeper than a few rogue elements. Disturbingly, these extremist groups, which have been allowed to operate by successive governments, do have an impact on the national debate. This has contributed to increasing intolerance across society.

Peshawar church bombings show the deadly outcome of religious intolerance | Samira Shackle | Comment is free | theguardian.com 9/23/2013

In south central Pennsylvania this afternoon, the news on the television mounted in a corner beneath the ceiling of the diner where I was enjoying a late lunch hung on the tragedy playing out in Nairobi’s Westgate Mall.  This other story involving a death toll greater than Westgate — 85 as opposed to 68 — and targeting a Christian community and its sacred space may have had a different presence, less visceral, less important for having taken place in Muslim-majority Pakistan and having involved a less affluent and cosmopolitan community.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps we are more used to hearing of Islamist outrages in Pakistan — something in the realm of Islamic arm twisting and terror happens every day or every other day in Pakistan’s part of the Islamic Small Wars — and then, again, it’s a Muslim state and one with an outlook very different from Christian Kenya’s with its historic and decent relationship with Israel.

***

Their 52-year-old father had been looking forward to it, particularly the period after the service when the congregation spills out into the enclosed courtyard to chat.

“He was looking forward to seeing his friends,” said Joel.

Pakistani Christians mourn 85 killed in suicide bombings at Peshawar church | World news | theguardian.com 9/23/2013

It’s convenient, I suppose, for this old bleeding heart to bleed for everyone at the desktop: in my pseudo-solopsist online existence, all of the Islamic Small Wars (and a few others) occupy the same space, about 24-inches from eyes to screen.  In real space, are they not on just one planet?  Are they not coinciding, if not colliding, in time?

Is there anything that would make the murder of a 52-year-old father returning to church in Peshawar any less horrific and tragic than that of his doppelgänger gone shopping for a few hours in a mall in Nairobi?

Perhaps Pakistanis who now must admit the state’s declared religion has been hewed to, commandeered, perverted, or merely exploited (choose any option) by those “who would fly planes into office building” or blow up wedding processions, funerals, or parishioners gathering after services at church should lend attention to the more harmonious and tolerant values of the west and of the Christians.  And of the Jews.  And, perhaps, infidel others ever so much more at peace with the wide, wide world and themselves.

Until provoked.

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▶ Dr Qanta Ahmed – Israel TV’s Foreign News Magazine – Roim Olam – YouTube 9/23/2013

Additional Reference

Kenya Westgate mall hostage standoff continues; death toll hits 68 – CBS News 9/22/2013

Why Israel is advising Kenya in mall attack response – CSMonitor.com 9/23/2013:

Israeli interests in Kenya run deep. According to the website of Israel’s embassy in Nairobi, Israel has provided technical assistance in areas such as agriculture and medicine for decades, in some cases going back to the days before Kenyan independence in 1963.

###

“We have been taught to be people of integrity” — Esther Meshoe

08 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by commart in Africa, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, Israel, Religion, South Africa

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basic values, integrity, Israel, political language

South African leader’s daughter dispels libels of Israel as apartheid- Esther Meshoe – YouTube 8/12/2013

______

When you do something from your soul

you feel a river moving in you,

a joy….

Rumi

From Quotes on Integrity.

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Speeches (“Becoming Men and Women of Integrity” 12/6/2011: “Tad R. Callister was a member of the Presidency of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when this devotional address was given on 6 December 2011.”

_____

15 Speeches on Integrity in Business – From Creating Character in Youth to Immediacy in Business

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Syria – Chemical Warhead Launch Ascribed to 155th Brigade – 4th Armored Division – Syrian Army

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Regions, Syria

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

chemical attack, chemical weapons, intelligence, intelligence sharing, SIGINT, Syria

The 8200 unit of the Israeli Defence Forces, which specialises in electronic surveillance, intercepted a conversation between Syrian officials regarding the use of chemical weapons, an unnamed former Mossad official told Focus. The content of the conversation was relayed to the US, the ex-official said.

 The 8200 unit collects and analyses electronic data, including wiretapped telephone calls and emails. It is the largest unit in the IDF.

Sherwood, Harriet.  “Israel intelligence ‘intercepted Syrian regime talk about chemical attack’: Information passed to US by Israeli Defence Forces 8200 unit, former official tells magazine.”  The Guardian, August 28, 2013.

Funky timing: for four or five days, not one mention of specifically “who” in the where, what, how, and why of the chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs — and today the answer seems to be unavoidable in online search and dated back to August 24 (see the Debka File citation in reference).

Nonetheless, if attributed to Maher al-Assad’s command, then the world has a figure already steeped in legendary criminal malice: there’s not much he can do to cast himself into even a darker light.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, said in March 2011 that Maher’s actions during the uprising approached “savagery,” and urged Bashar to send him into exile.

Alexander, Harriet and Philip Sherwell.  “Maher al-Assad accused of orchestrating deadly chemical weapon attack.”  The Telegraph, August 25, 2013.

Additional Reference

AP.  “Report: Russia to send marines to Syria.”  The Daily Caller, June 18, 2012.  Relayed here for the photograph that tops the piece; it actually seems to cover a Russian defensive effort to secure civilian and military assets exiting Syria a little more than a year ago.

BackChannels.  “In Foreign Affairs – Putin – Analysis from March 2013.”  March 13, 2013.

DEBKA File.  “The sarin shells fired on Damascus – by Syrian 4th Division’s 155th Brigade – were followed by rockets on Israel and car bombings in Lebanon.”  August 24, 2013.

Bryen, Shoshana.  “The Incredible Shrinking US-Israel Security Cooperation.”  June 27, 2012.

Dilanian, Ken.  “Israel may have intercepted Syrian discussions about chemical attack.”  Los Angeles Times, August 27, 2013.

Drury, Ian.  “How the West could smash Assad’s arsenal: US military chiefs draw up a list of targets with UK for precision-guided bombs and missiles.”  Mail Online, August 25, 2013.

El-Khoury, Rajeh.  “Moscow Hints at Break with Assad.”  Al Monitor, February 2, 2012.

Wikipedia.  “Unit 8200”.

Williams, Amanda.  “‘Ruthless’ brother of President Assad accused of being behind chemical weapons attack which killed 1,200 Syrians.”  Mail Online, August 28, 2013.

Staff.  “Israel TV: Chemical weapons were fired by Assad’s brother’s unit.”  Time of Israel, August 24, 2013.

Staff.  “SYRIA: Is mystery gunman President Bashar Assad’s brother, Maher?”  Babylon & Beyond, Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2011.

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Two Recent Comments on the Middle East Conflict

02 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Israel, Middle East, Politics

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If it only took 11 minutes for President Truman to recognize the State of Israel, why it requires not 11 years but decades to give Palestinians their independence and to bring back the borders before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Taking the unilateral role in this conflict U.S. should also be impartial.

Margaryan, Ashot.  “How The System Really Works: American “Matryoshka.” Strategic Outlook, August 2, 2013.

In every pro-Palestinian effort, the right-of-return is always Number 1 on the agenda. You will never bear witness to a pro-Palestinian group that is divorced from this pipe-dream.

Pinto, Cliff.  “The Palestinian Wrong of Return: Demystifying the Legal Basis of the “Right of Return” and Exaggerated “Refugee” Numbers.  Blog, Times of Israel, August 2, 2013.

So virulent has been middle east peace talking that it seems only closed Facebook forums might qualify as “collegial and scholarly” in the area, an observation made when I started looking for a place to channel liberal Turkish interest in the conflict.

I didn’t want to hustle anyone into the rah-rah Zionist camp nor leave any to the wolves roaming the cyber corridors of any open proto-Nazi “hate-peace” peace groups.

As the group I found is a closed one, I won’t make mention of it here.

🙂

Still, it strikes me as remarkable how even persons of good intent may be misled into believing that Israel came into existence as compensation for the Holocaust, an event that in the twisted minds of some didn’t happen (oh yes it did) and in others for which there is no compensation although there has been that for a range of crimes — start with the theft of property — and it is good that apology, consideration, fairness, and forgiveness persist in this world and that some have yet the courage to prove it.

Of course, it may be less good that anti-Semitism provoked by ambitions related to religious succession and woven into the politics of the middle east also persist, and the poisoned politics coming of that have made the Arab refugees of 1948 first among its victims.

* * *

Yet despite the uproar, Fox is already a popular brand in the Palestinian territories. Store owners stock Fox products even in Hamas-controlled Gaza, where the government is far more hostile to Israel.

‘‘People in Gaza know that these items are made in Israel, but they buy them because they’re good quality,’’ said shopkeeper Raji Isaac, who has offered Fox products in his Gaza City store for the past four years. ‘‘Customers always look for good products and reasonable prices, and Fox is offering that.’’

Daraghmeh, Mohammed and Max J. Rosenthal.  “Israeli store opening focuses West Bank anger.”  Boston.com, July 26, 2013.

As conflicts go, problems with the one known as the “middle east conflict” — today, probably the most peaceful conflict extant in the region — include the intransigent anti-Zionist / anti-Semitic ambitions of those in political power in the West Bank and in Gaza and the fact that The Preoccupation with Israel includes Israeli services in such municipal basics as electricity and water, significant contributions in the transport of goods, encouragement of trade and employment,  and provisions for refugees in the areas of advanced education and health.

You would think that living and working in close proximity would encourage peace but never so much so if one party or the other believes itself mistreated or robbed, and that even if through nothing more than repeated libels.

Additional Reference

Karsh, Efraim.  Palestine Betrayed.  New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.

Kassam, Raheem.  “Palestinian negotiator’s Facebook page betrays true anti-Israel aspirations.”  Trending Central, July 29, 2013.

Meir-levi, David.  History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression.  New York: Brief Encounters, 2007.

Morris, Benny.  1948: The First Arab-Israeli War.  New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008.

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A Glimpse of Qatar’s Generational Transition and Portent for The Middle East Conflict

27 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by commart in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Qatar, Regions, Religion

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Tags

ethics, humanism, Israel, middle east conflict, philosophy, political, politics, Qatar, religion

These days, the term “middle east conflict” would seem to refer to conflict and unrest in every state in the region but Israel.

Nonetheless, while Egypt roils and Syria burns and the King of Jordan fends off the seeding of perhaps a new class of secular Palestinian politico*, Qatar’s new head of state, Sheikh Tamim has this to say of the refugees of numerous Arab-led wars since 1948:

One day when our “Blue Dot” of a planet is a little more gathered together — that as opposed to riven with war — we may find common ground in five language principles:

Compassion

Humility

Integrity

Justice

Security

Of the four, the most difficult term and the one most relevant to autocracies seems to me to be “integrity” — just the power to be honest about ourselves and with others.

This is not as easy as it may sound.  If it were, we would not have the fairy tale that is “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, which is in essence and for the ages a story about lying and power.

*****

It may be noted that God placed two trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  When the snake entices Eve to eat of the forbidden tree, only mention is made of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, effectively hiding the other tree through omission.

You know the rest of the story: Eve eats the apple, becomes conscious or comprehending, also self-conscious, and, with Adam joining her, possessed of conscience, out of which reaction, perhaps, come the fig leaves, a courtesy, each to the other, and practical too (God, a few sentences later, provides clothing made of skins — one imagines chamois — lending perhaps dignity and protection to their introduction to life as men and women would experience it forever after).

The “Middle East Conflict” — which is never about conflicts in the middle east but only about the creation of the Jews and Israel (or, lost in the Pharaohnic dawn, the gathering together beneath the unrestrained ego and violence of a tyrant)l — seems to me to be always about two things not at ease with one another: 1) the possession of good conscience in light of the knowledge of good and evil; 2) the testing of God for favor when the relationship needs to be the other way around.

*****

Where kings are concerned, I suspect there may be more to the story than meets either eyes or ears.

When God, being God, and with Torah received as divine message, hides the second tree — the Tree of Life that we are told is there but when it counts is not mentioned by the snake and, later, will be barred from access (by cherubim and an eternally revolving sword guarding the Garden left behind) — the sin of omission becomes a virtue: to have eaten of the Tree of Life also would have been too much, for God forbids it, and so protects His children.

*****

To be as gods, lower case that term, with nuclear capabilities, among other extraordinary but still human capacities, one might counsel also a prudent humility.

Carl Sagan’s clip about the “Pale Blue Dot” that is our planet viewed from space, has many renditions on the web — and there’s an entire film available too (somewhere — I’m going to be lazy here) — but this may do for essence.

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Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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