No introduction needed this day for this quick opinion —
“Look how the authorities made sure to plunge the country into war and civil conflict. Is it a coincidence? Is it?” Palestinian agitation, manipulation, and propaganda account for the experiential and intellectual poisoning of the Palestinians en masse. The “Palestinian Narrative” — more or less, “The Jews stole your land and God wants you to win it back” — has never held water, but for a black-and-white thinking rabble born to capitalize on tales of its own abuse, the myth serves for truth and sustained war for peace.
No Israeli politician invited this latest boiling over, and even though all will stump about it differently, the truth is the Palestinians have been lied to and exploited for decades by their own leaders and other powers intent on enriching themselves at Palestinian expense or proving (while getting some loot for doing so) some Islamic, nationalist, or racist point that might be attributed to their theater-of-the-real “heroism”.
The 28 Palestinian families arrived at the Karm al-Jaouni area of Sheikh Jarrah as refugees in 1956. Under an agreement with the Jordanian government and the UN refugee agency UNRWA, the homes were built in exchange for a revocation of their refugee status and the promise that these families would own the homes after three years.
The promise was never fulfilled, and in 1967 Jordan lost its mandate over the West Bank and East Jerusalem after the territories were occupied by Israel.
Title issues in Sheikh Jarrah appear to go back to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War (“Six Day War”) and the redistricting that ensued. So next:
Posted to YouTube May 31, 2018.
The video makes it look like Israel just popped up on the map one day in 1948, and the Arab states were enraged by the sudden intrusion.
Well, neither Israel nor Pakistan arrived from out of nowhere in 1948. For one, a militant Islam had found itself unhappy in India, so one might suggest, and an horrific two-way mass migration formed the new state and its “frozen conflict” in Kashmir and shifting East-West alignments and related politics. As for Israel, cultural memory engraved in religion and ancient tradition, urged a return far predating 1948. A part of that history may be found here:
Should your devotion to peace (even from your desktop, laptop, or phone — no less than mine if that) have you at least look or recall the history of Jewish habitation and investment in Palestine far predating Hitler’s atrocious crime, then consider the passage that follows.
From the Awesome Conversation
I appreciate the avarice, egotism, greed, and vulgarity involved in most wars in relation to taking property by force.
Fortunately, the tides move in both directions, making everyone miserable (if not vulgar).
WHAT IF Israeli and Palestinian officials designed together final boundaries and funded resettlement — no homeless; no “kick-outs”; no further coercion, fraud, or force — and no allowance for contempt or hate — for equal or better qualities of living where placed?
Take the emotion out of arrangements, domestic and other, and just focus on the basic human right to live in peace and free of intimidation and persecution. It doesn’t matter who you are, how you got there, what you believe or don’t believe, or even where loyalties may reside, but only that families may be settled and left to live (and work) — by mutual assent — fairly and without harassment.
Kumbaya?
Not necessarily. It’s out of necessity now that emphasis shift from immediate personal alliances, ambitions, concerns, egotism, and hurt (even) to broadened responsible modern Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. It should take only one rightly handled instance to change . . . everything.
“Masking” is what takes place when events are reported with critical missing information. In this instance, the Arab and Muslim press, the modern-looking Al Jazeera perhaps especially, overlooked the 1967 Arab challenge to Jewish survival in Israel, a war that is now an historical matter, and in standard operating procedure demonized the Jews while maintaining the innocence of Arab residents who knew their homes by having taken the same for themselves when political conditions permitted. In effect, the family had done nothing wrong with the exception of taking up residence in a geopolitical space that would again be contested, and whose outcome would be their loss by way of the restoration of previous boundaries.
Who are the thieves?
The Arab family settled in 1956?
The Jewish family pressing its case for title from before that date and after another horrendous eleven years later?
Let the finger pointing end.
Drawing to a close the instability of boundaries and related animus matters as much as the carefully and legally researched answers to legal title. To get that accommodation wants for asking those with interest to open their eyes and to think further into the future than themselves, their appreciation of themselves, and their immediate perceptions.
Absolute Power x Close Associates & Family v Democracy, Open Competition, and Merit.
Would that real life were that simple, but for the Palestinians, most of them, real life remains too medieval and beset with corruption and greed. Credit the KGB for blocking the advance of western liberalism — and democracy and rule of law — over their captive or dead bodies, courtesy of a now Ageing Arab World and the habits and machinations of an equally ageing Old Kremlin.
I’ve been dulled by the sheer stupidity of repeated political cant and conversation, but this time with the Middle East Conflict (MEC) have at least both background (“Palestinian KGB”) and perhaps insight to offer in the cause not only of quelling medieval and tribal misery but also for cheerleading the arrival of a different and modern New World. Take as signal — and convenient juxtaposition — Russian KGB/FSB President Vladimir Putin’s apparent decision to draw back Russian forces brought to Ukraine’s border after having turned military “exercise” into an ambiguous and deadly enough threat not only to Ukraine but to an ordered world that has been working in the region of history after WWII. Putin’s will and ample leverage well demonstrated the power of the medieval outlook, but it may have run into a kind of thug’s “so what?” had invasion and war ensued (and quite cautious here, I’m following the retreat as observed in the Open Source).
Symbolically, Russia’s election to retrieve its forces following its “demonstration” may and should be it — the beginning of the end of the end 🙂 — for the more obvious play of the once barbaric, brutal, and feudal world, at least as regards the leadership and trajectory of states.
One hopes that with Israel’s most recent separation of deluded and violent parties — the “eternally” fist-shaking Israeli (“Nationalist”) and Palestinian (“Revolutionary”) forces will have reached their nadir in shared stupidity as the Palestinians prove captive to and exploited by their own leaders. As for those Israeli Nationalists, not only God but State Planners as well have set their boundaries, and all that is wanted should be just a little bit of insight by both into the causes of “East-West Conflict” where both have been made to stand in place while going nowhere in time.
I harp on this point with the hope that it will lead to insight into the Palestinian role in more general and profound “east-west relations” — https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4874089,00.html As Moscow has remained “politically absolute” in relation to power, so it has supported corrupt dictatorships around the world and blocked the spread of western liberalism and democratic self-determination and inclusion. The Middle East Conflict remains but one of many now post-Soviet frozen conflicts energized by its defunct Soviet Era framing and covered by the “liberation movement” banner.
From Arafat to Abbas to whoever comes next, Palestinian leaders have been puppets with their string attached to the Russia’s political police services.
“The claim that a Palestinian was wounded by live ammunition is known and the incident is being investigated,” the IDF said.
Channel 12 reported on Friday night that an initial investigation indicated that Abu Aram was shot unintentionally when the weapon of one of the soldiers at the scene discharged accidentally.
Screen capture at 0:31 seconds on January 3, 2021.
The generator and its owner had been separated, albeit not entirely in the IDF’s direction. Still, what would have been the point?
I’m inclined to leave the original header in place on this post even while changing its course, a reminder to myself to have the hard independent look first and shill neither Left nor Right.
While “Palestinian Resistance” picks up with its habitual protests — and those are certain to draw others toward injury — the facade covering Iranian involvement (backed by Moscow) will slip mightily as Sunni Arab states further cement their both new and strategic relationship with Israel. Those that have done that are no fans of Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood. They’re not behind the Red-Green Far Out Left either. That pack of howling hyenas has worked as hard as the Palestinian “leadership” to encourage and sustain Palestinian self-destruction via abuse and corruption, disingenuous (the fix is always in!) speech, old Soviet communist (KGB) alliance, and deep exploitation (from use as “Pallywood” actors to child tunnel diggers to human shields).
In the Middle East as well as elsewhere across the world’s conflicted regions, appearances may be deceiving. Here, however, I would be surprised if IDF investigation were to refuse IDF fault in the injuring of Harun Abu Aram. The case now seems other — at least at this desktop — than a my-side-your-side thing. Still, states and territories have their agreements and understandings for the everyday working of their respective societies, and the suspended Palestinian semi-state and its residents should know better than to build where Israel has refused permit.
If there’s another fact irrefutable on the Palestinian side, it is just exactly that.
The Breitbart article featured up top on a Facebook page: “Joe Biden Delivered Egyptian Disinformation to Israel Ahead of Yom Kippur War and Later Lied About It” (Dec. 13, 2020). The slanted header, an appeal to emotion without examination, was in the same piece — and shortly — debunked: “However, Biden himself paints a very different picture of the meeting with Meir, one that puts into question the depiction of him as an unwitting tool who unknowingly passed on disinformation to Israel.”
Well, gosh golly — watch plumes of dust rising into the air over the neighboring state’s military exercises, report it, and make a decision about the enemies true near intentions.
Can’t do that?
Not enough to go on?
Intelligence people use terms like “estimate” and “mosaic” to describe both the uncertainty of perception and the many pieces needed to venture a guess — a good one, so one hopes — about what’s happening in the world as they see it displayed before their own eyes.
From the Awesome Conversation
This editor’s response to the continuing partisan presentation of political history and present states of affairs –>
Our politicians need to be working issues rather than demonizing one another.
The Brietbart piece makes clear that the conveyance of “intelligence” is often ambiguous and subject to broader analysis. Biden was apparently not happy with what he saw, and the Egyptian effort at deception would have in those years been taken as par for the Arab course in its enmity with Israel.
Times have changed. Moscow backing Tehran (and Damascus) has helped pushed the Sunni Arab world westward for modernization as well as security.
Americans and Israelis should know who their enemies are as well as persons or states neither positioned for nor temperamentally fit for enmity. Overall, Israel has some complicated trade relationships, including with China who purchases oil from Tehran in support of both its belligerence and existence (China has been notoriously insensitive to the character of many of its trading partners). Here’s a part of the deal going between China and Iran — https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/05/chinas-great-game-in-iran/ (9/5/2020).
President Trump, now in his lame duck phase, has most definitely lost his bid for a second term. More or less, he lost his race on character, essentially driving voters out of the Republican ranks to ensure his losing.
In the United States, we have experienced a period of brutal polarization driven by the absence of critical research and reasoning skills in much of the population, disinformation from foreign interlopers (look up “Internet Research Agency” as an example), and plain old hyped up Party-invented agitation and propaganda. With Trump’s now unquestionable loss of a second term, it may be time to pack away the kit of passionate but largely errant assumptions and beliefs about American and, in general, western conservatives and liberals and have a fresh look instead (and again together) at real issues stemming from the illiberal character and greed of the enemies of the west.
The energies and numbers of Israelis and Palestinians engaged in cross-cultural activities (like this one with Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi), in trade, even in commiseration, have been stable and strong for years.
Do the extremists the west calls “terrorists” authentically represent Islam?
Do yesterday’s rockets from Gaza represent today’s Palestinians?
The PLO/PA and Hamas have ways of making the news look bad.
Other Palestinians, however, have ways of getting things done despite the efforts of the Phantoms of the Soviet to repeat their declarations — year after year for 72 years — while handily lifting some money from Palestinian pockets and skimming more from UNCHR revenues intended for Palestinian development. While the war that exists in the minds of Palestinian “Leaders” — and ticks off the IDF most of all — goes on and on and on and on, Palestinians have long been working.
Here are a few references that BackChannels regards as positive indicators for the region. The URL titles provide the story headers:
Inspiration: the claim that Palestinians are struggling to end the occupation and establish peace and democracy.
From the (Still) Awesome Conversation
Fatah and Hamas should then establish peace and democracy where they live and govern by holding fair and free elections with regularity; by eliminating political repression for ordinary Palestinians who question policy; by addressing widespread corruption and related thuggery; by policing and neutralizing invasive terrorist organizations with agendas of their own; by working as hard for Christian and other faith communities as has been done for Muslim ones; by investing in Palestinian entrepreneurship — I, of all people, have been approached for that (Rx. given: international “crowd funding”, and it worked); and perhaps by encouraging an open public discussion about image, power, and wealth and what it means to look powerful while leveraging others and what it means to be powerful by being authentically good, noble, and virtuous; and, finally, by keeping earmarked Palestinian funding at home in the Palestinian Territories, Principalities, or Unified State rather than parked abroad.
The litany of keyword searches seems seldom good: “Palestinian Corruption”; “Palestinian Human Rights”; Palestinian Political Repression”; etc. Is it so strange to think that all of that might be reversed by Palestinian popular insistence on democratic governance, free and fair elections, human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, Palestinian internal investment and development?
Further on in the conversation, and from BC’s side of it:
Israel in no way bars Palestinians in the Preoccupied Territories from enjoying the benefits of democracy, rule of law, and responsible and responsive governance. Palestinian “leaders” — or related personalities and organizations — do.
The conversation moves along, and I am fully standing on my boards in this part of the world’s virtual open mall —
Then let US address the “Eastern” side of the “East-West Conflict” to which any nascent Palestinian polity has to refuse further power to be itself authentically liberated — and from what? A) the Palestinian role in serving as a block and goad to the West, its faith in mankind, and its consequent and related civilizational liberalism; B) some propensity in Arab and other feudal realms to dominate and plunder the politically weak by evading law (all but one’s own) and aggrandizing one’s self — the leader’s self – at the expense of all.
I’ve been able to visit a certain surface in history — the Roman anchorage and expansion far into Europe from the south of the continent x the Norse — the Viking — push from the north bearing south and raiding and trading east at least to Baghdad. It’s a helluva story even in outline — but fast-forward to this day, and it turns out the Palestinians that have borne the weight and press of the same / similar civilizational tectonics.
The truth is the “Middle East Conflict” has been engineered and milked for all it has been worth, and the base of the Palestinian Community has paid the price for being on the border between the FOUR distinctly different worlds — the Medieval and the Modern; the Arab and the Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian West — but with the exception of some who have gotten a good deal of money (plus ersatz political family and cachet) out of it.
Note: I hit enter inadvertently, but it’s about right. The Big Picture bears down on the small one. 😦 IMHO, the Palestinians should pursue a course independent of the concerns of so many powerful global players. Eject old polemic and everyone might ask, what would be cautious, prudent, and good today for peace, for work with dignity, for trade, and most of all a modern, responsive, and responsible governing culture?
BackChannels 