Category Archives: Middle East

FTAC – Moscow – Beyond Rapprochement? Not So Fast!

19 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Gaza Suzerain, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Politics, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

President Barack Obama is not the official who needs to be “outflanked” — nor is President Elect Donald J. Trump.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

http://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/

Perhaps Putin’s Moscow has promoted “anti- anti-Semitism” and good relations with Israel to continue to sustain its plundering of the middle east conflict.

Note that in recent years, Moscow’s Mikhail Bogdanov has met with PFLP in Moscow (November 2014 — an easy look-up today); that the state refuses to condemn either Hamas or Hezbollah as terrorist organizations; the state has not only cooperated fully with Tehran in supporting Bashar al-Assad’s hideous persecution of all who refuse to love him in Syria but has itself joined in the barbarism!

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/18/syria-russias-barbarism-the-hospitals/

Under President Putin’s hands, Moscow has been transformed from a once promising democracy into a revived “security state” along familiar old ultra-nationalist lines.

While Israeli conservatives and nationalists have been taking aim at Obama’s approach to managing conflict, the driver of the same — and for many years! — has practically escaped notice!

Soviet Moscow produce a long record of complicity and support for terrorism worldwide:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union

Considering how Putin has chosen to revive Russia to this date 25 years past the dissolve of the Soviet Union (December 1991), what makes Israelis think that Moscow today remains clear of the set of political elements continuing to bear down on its own destruction?

Moscow may yet leave Syria to Assad, but the string of bombings of hospitals, if not other war crimes, may have closed the door on rapprochement, either in fact or in somebody’s head or both.

Inspiration for the response:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19781 – 11/17/2016 — Dr. Martin Sherman’s weekly “Into the Fray” column, this one titled, “Obama unplugged: What to do?”

BackChannels may soon sum its observations in a list of related links involving the defunct Soviet Union and the present corrupt ultra-nationalist dictatorship that in earlier years appeared on the path toward democracy and political modernization.  Instead, and with what has been put on display in Syria — i.e., a medieval and totalitarian theater of politics and war, complete with “The Terrorists” — Russia’s leadership appears to have chosen to in some way relive the 1930s and to perhaps approach the 1940s.

BackChannels means not to allay a change in course but, naturally, to in fact suggest a course correction be made.

Related Reference

Osborne, Andrew and Simon Johnson.  “Russia beefs up Baltic Flee amid NATO tensions: reports.”  Reuters, October 26, 2016.

Peat, Charlie.  “Putin renovates Cold War MISSILE BUNKERS in Crimea as Russia prepares for global assault.”  Express UK, November 2, 2016.

Reuters.  “In Crimea, Russia signals military resolve with new and revamped bases.”  November 1, 2016.

Sputnik.  “Combat Readiness of Utes Missile Systems in Crimea Confirmed by Launches.”  November 19, 2016.  Note: the article reports a P-35 missile launch (NATO name “SS-N-3a), but BackChannels sees no major or western general media confirmation at this posting).

–33–

FTAC – Israel Not At War With the ‘Arab World’

19 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Well, the Jews are not “fighting the Arab World” — there’s a kind of defamation in that statement.

Israelis are defending themselves from those who wish to annihilate them — and considering who has been friendly toward and paying for Hamas and Hezbollah, well, gosh, it’s just not the Arab world after all.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

Moscow-Tehran as an axis appears to want to maintain a common interest in positively medieval political absolutism. Somebody has learned how to make a lot of money (for themselves, their cronies, their lackeys, and their tools) that way.

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1

http://Politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-resurrects-the-kgb-moscow-security/

Of course the Arab and Muslim worlds have within them strong anti-Semitic currents, but let’s go back to the 1920s and endemic 19th Century Russian anti-Semitism  and the echoes of other medieval anti-Semitism, the same that compelled Herschel and others to entertain the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in Israel, and come forward to three distinct aspects in the character of the 1920s: Stalin’s installment in power in Russia as the dominant state in the Soviet Union; the development in the universities of an intellectual path leading to Nazism; and the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood (1928).

All mere coincidence?

Additional Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/140328/timmerman-disinformation – 8/7/2013.
http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/the_czars_and_the_jews/
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/protocols.html

The mercurial, paranoid seventy-four-year-old tyrant was certainly capable of ordering the mass deportations. During the Second World War, he removed Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Balkars, ethnic Germans, and Crimean Tatars from their homelands—more than two million Soviet citizens in all. He was no novice, either, when it came to purges and show trials. In the Pravda report, most of the accused “murderers in white smocks” were identified as Jewish and agents of the U.S. and Israel. There were further arrests of Soviet Jews, exemplars of “national and racist chauvinism.” Jews were dismissed from their jobs. They were insulted on the streets, in shops, and on public transportation, according to Arno Lustiger, author of “Stalin and the Jews.”

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/imagining-stalins-plot-to-exile-the-jews – 2/1/2016.

–33–

Syria – Russia’s Barbarism – The Hospitals

18 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Russia, Syria

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

The last children’s hospital in besieged Aleppo has suspended operations after a brutal “double-tap” bombing.

A wave of airstrikes targeted medics in the rebel-held eastern district as they treated dozens of children who had been hit with chemical attacks.

Doctors and patients fled to the basement as more than 20 barrel bombs pounded the centre on Wednesday morning.

But less than 48 hours later two missiles tore through the unit as staff carried-out a clean-up operation.

Video footage shows the terrifying moment nurses pulled new-born babies from their incubators and fought their way through the dust and debris in search of safety.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/last-childrens-hospital-aleppo-forced-9293119 – 11/19/2016.

The Independent Doctors Association, a medical group, said barrel bomb attacks had damaged two facilities it supports in eastern Aleppo — the children’s hospital and the only bloodbank in the area.

Medical facilities have regularly been hit, and sometimes completely destroyed, in the government’s fight against rebels, though Damascus and Moscow deny they target hospitals.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/11/17/world/syria-regime-russia-bomb-aleppo-food-runs-hospitals-believed-targeted/#.WC8VpNQrJlY – 11/17/2016.

Doctors Without Borders said the children’s hospital and a specialized surgical hospital were hit by Wednesday’s strikes.

“Hospital staff managed to move children – including prematurely born babies – from cots and incubators to the basement of the building in order to shelter them from the bombing,” said the aid group, which sponsors both hospitals.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctors-without-borders-hospitals-airstrikes-syria-aleppo/ – 11/17/2016.

https://news.vice.com/article/bombs-fall-on-aleppos-largest-hospital-as-russia-sends-more-warplanes-to-syria – 10/1/2016.

“You cannot imagine what we see every day: children who are coming to us as body parts. We collect the body parts and wrap them in shrouds and bury them,” said Bara’a, a nurse at one of the affected hospitals, who was present during the bombings.

“Tell the world to wake up, to wake their consciences. Where are you? When Palestine was being destroyed everyone got involved. Why are Syria’s children being forgotten? Nobody is doing anything to reduce this suffering.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/28/aleppo-two-hospitals-bombed-out-of-service-syria-airstrikes – 9/28/2016.

Monday saw yet another targeted strike in Syria. Not against Isis or against anyone threatening. No, the latest attack was another deplorable airstrike on a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital that was providing vital medical care to the region surrounding Maarat al-Numan.

According to a monitoring group in the area, the attack resulted in more than nine people’s deaths – including one child’s – and was carried out by Russian forces. Only two days earlier they had agreed to limit hostilities in Syria.

This was no accident. Four rockets hit the hospital: it was a targeted attack, and a cold-blooded one too.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/russias-airstrike-on-a-syrian-hospital-was-no-accident-it-was-a-cold-blooded-attack-a6877046.html – 2/16/2016.

Related Reference on the Moscow Axis Relationship with “The Terrorists” in  Syria

https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/how-russia-manipulates-islamic-terrorism/ – 9/8/2015.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/if-assad-is-not-forced-out-isis-never-will-be-a6759251.html – 12/3/2015.

Of the 470,000 Syrians who have been killed in this terrible war, the overwhelming majority have been killed by Assad and his allies, and that’s even truer of the civilian casualties. The United Nations in February concluded that the Assad regime had violated the laws of war in six distinct ways and committed systematized atrocities — crimes against humanity — in seven separate categories, including rape and extermination. There is no cruelty IS has committed, from sexual violence to immolation, that the regime has not at least matched and usually exceeded.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/we-should-not-celebrate-bashar-al-assads-victory-over-isis-palmyra-1552077 – 3/29/2016.

In relation to “Medieval Political Absolutism” and “Malignant Narcissism“, consider calling what Moscow-Damascus-Tehran have going in Syria the worst case of “Political Gaslighting” in history.

Readers who have made it this far with BackChannels KNOW that Assad incubated ISIL — to blackmail the west; to goad the west with refugees and a related terrorist threat; and to serve as a foil for demonstrating the latest and greatest out of Moscow’s updated military boom-boom: with Moscow central to the project, Syria has been made a win-win-win for each dictator’s ambitions and image.

BackChannels asks (along with Ukrainians) whether greater American cooperation (appeasement) with “Moscow-Tehran” will not herald the end of meaningful democracy and freedom worldwide.

Occasional Updates

–33–

FTAC – Why the Middle East Conflict Will Be Drawn Down (If It Is ‘Drawn Down’)

11 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Politics, Russia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

Why things haven’t changed and may not until the root of the conflict has been made clear.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/

The Russian state’s history of political criminality — that which has driven the upending of its governments twice in the past 100 years  — has sat at the base of the middle east conflict and helped kept it collecting money for those it blessed: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, Ismail Haniyeh, and Khaled Mashaal.

I don’t know if the state of affairs will straighten out with Donald J. Trump in office, but the more word gets around, the more likely it will.

Two other notes of which to be aware:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union

Once you know — and perhaps once Moscow knows the popular west knows — and once the Palestinians know — this game with the refugees should be over.

Noting the KGB history may not change Arab culpability for sustaining the refugees as an apartheid population in relation to their own states, but two legs of the old table have been removed by time — Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, both state sponsors of terrorism.

If the 1920s may be noted as the launch period for the Muslim Brotherhood, the umbrella organization beneath which al-Qaeda and others have developed, then this new way of looking at the old conflict also starts to put away an entire era of warfare that needs finally to be consigned more largely to the 20th Century.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928, which places that development in the same region in time as the full blown expression of Stalinism and in Germany the final fermentation of what would then soon become Nazism.

Addendum – December 26, 2016

SECURITY COUNCIL
7853RD MEETING (PM)
SC/12657
23 DECEMBER 2016
Israel’s Settlements Have No Legal Validity, Constitute Flagrant Violation of International Law, Security Council Reaffirms
14 Delegations in Favour of Resolution 2334 (2016) as United States Abstains.

Both the creation of the document, commentary on it, and the voting that ensued refused to acknowledge Moscow’s old hand in the creation of the Middle East Conflict.

–33–

Also in Media: “Atlantic Council Blames the West’s “Islamophobia” – November 1, 2016

07 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Russia, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Echoing Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal scandalous post-September 11, 2001, remarks, global jihad by groups like Al Qaeda also elicited Western guilt from School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Dean Vali Nasr.  After 9/11, “Islamophobia, in a way, was a policy deliberately pushed from the very top of the U.S. administration” as indicated by President George W. Bush’s use of “Islamo-fascism,” Nasr stated.  “Islamophobia was a way of passing the blame back to the Muslims, put Islam itself on trial for its responsibility in promoting terrorism rather than put U.S. foreign policy on trial for creating some of the problems.”

Read the whole thing — Atlantic Council Blames the West’s “Islamophobia” — and then fill in the gaps: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/07/15/ftac-its-not-islam-its-moscow/ & “The KGB’s Middle East Files: Palestinians in the service of Mother Russia” by Ronen Bergman in YNet News, November 4, 2016.

UAE Sentences Hezbollah Cell – Moscow-Tehran Promote Hezbollah

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Journalism, Lebanon, Middle East, Politics, Russia, United Arab Emirates

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

The State Security Circuit of the Federal Supreme Court on Monday handed out varying jail terms to seven people for setting up a UAE cell of the banned Hezbollah group.

Three defendants were sentenced to life in jail, two got 15-year jail terms and two others were sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The court chaired by Judge Falah Al Hajiri also sentenced leader of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood group Esam Al Din Al Erian to five years in jail, in absentia.

Al Zarooni, Mustafa.  “Group jailed for setting up Hezbollah branch in UAE.”  Khaleej Times, November 1, 2016.

According to political commentator with Russia’s Kommersant publishing house Sergei Strokan, there now exists a “Russia, Iran, Hezbollah military triangle” in Syria.

In a telephone interview with Al-Monitor, Strokan said, “Hezbollah can do some things that Russia can’t afford to do itself,” as putting “Russian boots on the ground [in Syria] is a subject of heated debate [within Russia].”

Rizk, Ali.  “The Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah military triangle.”  November 2, 2015.

Hezbollah can and has done more than put “boots on the ground” for Bashar al-Assad in Syria with the blessing of Moscow and Tehran.

Read the headlines (along with BackChannels):

USA Today – “Lebanon chooses a president supported by Hezbollah” – November 1, 2016.

The National Interest – “Lebanon’s New Hezbollah-Led Political Order” – October 31, 2016.

“Hezbollah-Led Political Order”?

Try again: Moscow-Tehran.

BackChannels knows the public, generally speaking, “sees” ISIL, not “Assad OR The Terrorists” AKA “Assad vs The Terrorist“.

And the public may read about Hezbollah in Lebanon with the shadow of the Ayatollah moving about in the background, but it may take more work to grasp how Moscow works with Tehran to elevate Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon while channeling its fighters into action in Syria.

Again, on general terms, the KGB Era catch-all “Active Measures” may preoccupy wonks — enthused amateurs and professionals in intelligence and foreign affairs — while barely signaling up through the background clamor set by the entertainment and sports industries.  As much — specifically, public ignorance of the mechanisms involved in the KGB-style sustaining of “political absolutism” (try using that one down at the bar) by way of a totalitarian approach to a political theater of realpolitik —  moves this chatter into more specialized but also open circles.

Related Reference

Fadel, Leith.  “Syrian Army, Hezbollah begin counter-attack in west Aleppo”.  AMN News, November 2, 2016.

–33–

Sixteen Women – The Kingdom’s Most Powerful

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, International Development, Middle East, Saudi Arabia

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Arab Leader.  Banker. Chair.  CEO.  Economist.  Editor in Chief. Educator. Engineer.  Entrepreneur.  Executive.  ‘First To’ in Multiple Fields.   Journalist.  Inventor.  Media Personality.  Member of the Board.  Novelist.  Philanthropist.  Physician.  Scholar.  Scientist.  Women’s Rights Activist.

BackChannels will let the browser figure out which title belongs to which personality.

Or simply graze the list.

Haifaa al Mansour

Lubna Olayan

Bayan Mahmoud al Zahran

Mona Al Munajjed

Hayat Sindi

Khaula Al Khuraya

Somayya Jabarti

Manal al-Sharif

Nahed Taher

Samira Islam

Samia Al-Amoudi

Nermin Saad

Badreya El-Bishr

Thoraya Ahmeud Obaid

Munea AbuSulayman

Lama al-Sulaiman

An article in Arabian Business provided for the extraction of names from a greater listing of “100 Most Powerful Arab Women”; Wikipedia has served both as first reference and first authority for transliterated nouns.

BackChannels, sigh, may have reached the point where passing along articles (as with the content of the “Also in Media” category) and looking things up for regurgitation may not suffice for noble or worthy effort.  Political analysis — or for the editor, verbal art — may be more the thing.  On this note for social progressives, the women listed are each their own persons who carry within themselves broad and cosmopolitan educations as well as their respective talents, and they have done so in relation to a national culture slow to welcome them but today invested in their support and the support of others like them.

The Kingdom has changed.

Reference

Arabian Business.  “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Arab Women.” March 3, 2014.

Arabian Business.  “Sheikha Lubna tops female power list for fourth year running.”  March 3, 2014.

–33–

FTAC – Oh Jerusalem -‘Cold History’ – Fast Reference – Touch Points

31 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Israel, Palestinia, Philology, Philosophy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Clinically speaking, the Hebrews appear to have produced legends in fact enshrined in scripture.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/The_Temple.html

More faithfully and sentimentally, whence comes the urge to delegitimize Hebrew / Jewish history and spirituality?

Of course, time being time and measurable and describable thousands of years in reverse, there is what might be called the “cold story” of the region — the story told in the earth.

With just a few minutes of looking, I’ll list what curiosity has dredged off the web:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jerusalemhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jerusalem

http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/amarnaletters.htm

http://biblehub.com/topical/a/adonizedec.htm

https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?qs_version=KJV&quicksearch=Jerusalem&begin=1&end=46&limit=25

http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/16498/jewish/Chapter-1.htm (if the finger must be pointed, point it at King Cyrus of Persia, which today, of course, would make a rather ironic point about the evil of undoing a decision made by he who composed the famous cylinder).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_in_Judaism

BackChannels appreciates the general import of the observation that when Cleopatra was young, Egypt had already an ancient history.  So it goes for Jerusalem and both the poetic and scholarly histories of its existence far back into the Bronze Age at least.

–33–