Category Archives: Middle East

FTAC: On Israeli Nationalist and Palestinian Violence in Jerusalem

23 Friday Apr 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Political Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Reference —

Syndicated Content. “Police arrest dozens in Jerusalem clashes; Israeli nationalists chant ‘Death to Arabs'”. WHTC, April 23, 2021.

From the Awesome Conversation

Related to previous post: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/02/06/set-palestinian-kgb-and-other-backchannels-observations-related-to-the-middle-east-conflict/

Medieval v Modern.

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.

v

Note: Khashoggi, Spy, The Kingdom, 9/11, and the Taliban

17 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Political Spychology, Saudi Arabia

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

What I believed –>

Jamal Khashoggi, almost royal family given his access, provided as a journalist intelligence for Mohammed Bin Salman. When he departed from the royal line by being positive about the Muslim Brotherhood and progressive about human right in the The Kingdom, the King chose to retrieve him a manner probably impressive even to Putin who forgives no KGB turncoat.

Witnessed: “Political Absolutism”. Unquestionable authority. Capricious, unyielding, sadistic, tyrannical. Add for some: black and white in judgment; inflexible in execution.

More True?

At the time of my brief discussions with him, Khashoggi happened to work for a man at the heart of some of the issues I had been investigating: he was a media aide to Prince Turki al-Faisal, then Saudi ambassador to London, and later Washington, and previously Saudi intelligence chief for 25 years before he abruptly left the post just prior to the 9/11 attacks.

It was Prince Turki as former head of intelligence who brokered the Saudis’ fateful deal with al-Qaida, according to documents and testimony from Taliban insiders cited by Vanity Fair journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. In their book Eleventh Day (2012), they report that under al-Faisal’s deal, as early as 1995 the Saudi royal family paid ‘protection money’ to Osama bin Laden on condition that he avoided targeting the kingdom.

The NSA was closely monitoring the operation, which saw hundreds of millions of dollars channelled to bin Laden through philanthropic activity.

Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. “Who really was Jamal Khashoggi?” Le Monde diplomatique, November 20, 2018.

Regarding 9/11, one may wish to keep in mind Moscow’s enshadowed role with Ayman al-Zawahiri — reference: Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014:

That Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s right-hand man and the leader of the global jihad movement since bin Laden’s death in May 2011, spent almost a half-year in the mid-1990s in the custody of Russian intelligence is admitted by both sides and is a matter of public record.[3] 

Just as significant, Zawahiri’s Russian sojourn occurred at a pivotal point in the development of al-Qaeda; the shift in strategy, resulting in attacks on the “far enemy” (i.e. the United States), the road leading to 9/11, occurred after Zawahiri’s imprisonment by the Russians.

Spies, of course, both uncover and keep secrets, and there seems no question regarding Khashoggi’s service to the Kingdom as a journalist with extraordinary access to power as well as, apparently (as suggested by Nafeez Ahmed’s coverage) admiration for it. As “dead men tell no tales”, the public may never know the full extent of motivations for Khashoggi’s torture, death, and dismemberment.

In the shadows: every intelligence agency on the planet with eyes keenly fixed on the course of international affairs and hands on levers responding to immense political power in the figures of dictators, kings, and presidents. So The Kingdom may have paid protection for al-Qaeda’s promotion of Islamic inflexibility and viciously anomic inhumanity elsewhere in the world — and Russia may have “handled” Zawahiri as an anti-western force with which to be reckoned as so well demonstrated on 9/11.

So ensues the west’s global war on Islamic terrorism.

Has it been “The West’s” war only?

Talibanicide

For the Ancestors
For the Martyrs
Keep Fighting!

With poppy
With Russian arms and materiel
Keep fighting!

For war crippled children
For war-killed dead
Keep fighting!

For Allah
For Prophet Muhammad
For dogma
For whatever authority says
Keep fighting!

For Russia
For America
For God’s sake
Keep fighting!

Reference

I didn’t know how to treat “Le Monde diplomatique” whose typeset name featured a reversed italic for “diplomatique”, so I bolded the publication’s name — and then what papa does for one . . . . 🙂 No more games. I won’t do it again. I believe italics just fine for book and other whole publication titles.

Ahmed, Nafeez. “Saudi’s new king of terror.” Middle East Eye, June 6, 2016.

Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. “Who really was Jamal Khashoggi?” Le Monde diplomatique, November 20, 2018.

Al Arabiya English. “Washington Post reveals how Qatar Foundation shaped their pieces by Khashoggi.” December 23, 2018; updated May 20, 2020.

Hearst, David. “Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi criticised the regime — and paid with his life.” Op-ed. The Guardian, October 8, 2018.

Mekhennet, Souad and Greg Miller. “Jamal Khashoggi’s final months as an exile in the long shadow of Saudi Arabia.” The Washington Post, December 22, 2018.

Myre, Greg. “Jamal Khashoggi’s Complicated History With the Saudi Royal Family.” NPR, October 19, 2018.

Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014

Wikipedia. “Ayman al-Zawahiri”.

Wikipedia. “Mohammed bin Salman”.

Wikipedia. “Nafeez Ahmed”.

As the world has waited for further answers about Khashoggi’s death, more details about his background are coming to light. They paint an interesting picture of a man known today in the U.S. as a Washington Post columnist but whose family has deep ties to the Saudi monarchy that go back generations.

“They were a rich family, educated,” said Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident who runs the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C. He knew Jamal Khashoggi for many years and saw him until recently as more a loyalist than a critic of the royal family.

Myre, Greg. “Jamal Khashoggi’s Complicated History With the Saudi Royal Family.” NPR, October 19, 2018.

–33–

Bolton on Biden and Renewal of the JCPOA

19 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Iran, Philosophy, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Bolton, John. “Boris Johnson holds the future of the fatally flawed Iran deal in his hands.” The Telegraph, February 18, 2021.

Political deja vu — The United States has been here before with its “arch conservatives” and cowardly isolationist and possibly related anti-Semitic and paranoid tendencies. For reference without much ado: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Party_(1943) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_L._K._Smith | https://www.nytimes.com/1976/04/16/archives/gerald-lk-smith-dead-anticommunist-crusader.html |

Among the slashed and burnt of The Great Liar’s One-Term Presidency, John Bolton stands out for greater backbone, discretion, experience, and integrity.

I believe Bolton when he suggests he leveraged his experience in national security to participate in the Trump Administration in order to produce his — not Trump’s — brand of guidance. As Trump required greater sycophancy, Bolton would also leave the malignant narcissist’s den.

The Republican Party, once the Party of the visionary Abraham Lincoln, has in the 20th Century seen equally embarrassing and shamefully self-centered days. That has become something for critically reasoning and independent Americans to take into consideration as the West with its ideas about compassion, freedom, goodness, and real human productivity faces an anachronistic, feudal, and implacable enemy in Moscow and, in post-Cold War association with it, Beijing and Tehran as well.

Tehran, worn by its own conflict-promoting behaviors over time and by sanctions, has shown no signs of retreat in relation to its nuclear missile and warhead programs nor its will, repeated with dulling frequency, to see Israel and the west destroyed for its own marauding and politically absolute ends. Where has the Republican Party (with its increasingly familiar white supremacist attachments) really stood on the Moscow-Tehran relationship? Where has it stood with regard to the rise of the proto-fascist New Nationalism in the United States as well as within NATO (have a look into authoritarian and feudal urges in Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Turkey)?

Here is a junction in time in which the United States, once leader of the free world — the modern open democratic world, either stands firm against politically retrograde but technologically sophisticated states or slips backward itself into some system of immense power and wealth lording over a hapless constituency whose political voice becomes so much noise to those working the levers for their own enrichment according to class and degrees of ruthlessness.

–33–

FTAC: Palestinian KGB: Another Remark

11 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Russia

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

From the Awesome Conversation

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.

–33–

FTAC: Endemic Russian Anti-Semitism — A Note

01 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Middle East, Northern Europe, Politics, Religion, Russia, Saudi Arabia

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Nazism inflicted history’s most horrendous crimes against Jews. But Germany has by no means been history’s top purveyor of global antisemitism.

That distinction goes to Russia, which spread antisemitism more widely and durably.

Heinze, Eric. “Russia is the global leader in Jew-hate.” The JC. February 24, 2017.

Emphasis added to the above quotation from Eric Heinze’s analysis in The JC.

“Rise of the Rus” — and the End of the Khazar Kingdom: Excerpt with Reference

Rise of Rus

Originally the Khazars were probably allied with various Norse factions who controlled the region around Novgorod. The Rus’ Khaganate, an early Rus polity in northwestern Russia, was probably heavily influenced by the Khazars. The Rus’ regularly travelled through Khazar-held territory to attack territories around the Black and Caspian Seas; in one such raid, the Khagan is said to have given his assent on the condition that the Rus’ give him half of the booty. In addition, the Khazars allowed the Rus to use the trade route along the Volga River. This alliance was apparently fostered by the hostility between the Khazars and Arabs. At a certain point, however, the Khazar connivance to the sacking of the Muslim lands by the Varangians led to a backlash against the Norsemen from the Muslim population of the Khaganate. The Khazar rulers closed the passage down the Volga for the Rus’, sparking a war. In the early 960s, Khazar ruler Joseph wrote to Hasdai ibn Shaprut about the deterioration of Khazar relations with the Rus: “I have to wage war with them, for if I would give them any chance at all they would lay waste the whole land of the Muslims as far as Baghdad.”

The Rus warlords Oleg of Novgorod and Sviatoslav I of Kiev launched several wars against the Khazar khaganate, often with Byzantine connivance. The Schechter Letter relates the story of a campaign against Khazaria by HLGW (Oleg) around 941 (in which Oleg was defeated by the Khazar general Pesakh; this calls into question the timeline of the Primary Chronicle and other related works on the history of the Eastern Slavs.

Sviatoslav finally succeeded in destroying Khazar imperial power in the 960s. The Khazar fortresses of Sarkel and Tamatarkha fell to the Rus in 965, with the capital city of Atil following circa 967 or 969. A visitor to Atil wrote soon after the sacking of the city: “The Rus attacked, and no grape or raisin remained, not a leaf on a branch.”

“Khazars”. Wikispeedia.

The Roman Empire had never been Europe’s only organizing power.

The Germanic tribes, the Norse, the Mongols, and many others had been crossing that landscape for political community, trade, and war for centuries. However, it appears to have been the Varangians — descendants of the Vikings — who corrupted the Turkic Jewish Khazar, and when the protective kingdom thought better of looting some of its own villages (Muslim) in concert with the Varangians (and sharing the loot), the Varangians made war on the Khazar and destroyed the kingdom. Legends about that warfare — and the Jews — MAY have floated across northern, central, and eastern Europe for generations. Combined with Christian supersessionary ambitions for subscription and the elimination of Judaism as a contemporary religion, the seeds for Russian (and Greek Orthodox) anti-Semitism may have flourished.

Related Reading

Encyclopedia Britannica. “Khazar People”.

Kellogg, Michael. The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Emigres and the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Nicholls, William. Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate. Northvale, New Jersey, London: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1995.

When asked about admitting Jews into the Empire, Peter the Great stated “I prefer to see in our midst nations professing Mohammedanism and paganism rather than Jews. They are rogues and cheats. It is my endeavor to eradicate evil, not to multiply it.”

Wikipedia. “Antisemitism in the Russian Empire”.

Addendum, June 19, 2023 and Forward

From time to time, cogent reference crosses my desktop, and I may add the same to reference.

Motyl, Alexander J. “Why Russophobia Has Become a Moral Obligation.” The Messenger, June 19, 2023.

Orton, Kyle. “Jews and the Russian Orthodox Church: History of a Relationship.” It Can Always Get Worse, October 10, 2024.

Addendum to Addendum, September 28, 2023; Updated November 12, 2023

Link rot appears to have masked off references in the main body of this post. It looks like I’ll be building this fill-and-correct section for a short while. Note: I’ve removed out-of-service URLs, so this page and post now serves as a portal the Jewish presence in Byzantine Era Ukraine, the availability of Judaism as a choice for the Turkic Khazar tribes in their drive for independence and security against Constantinople, Mecca, and Rome. If Kyiv were not at the time Jewish, it had certainly the influence and presence of the Jews and Judaism within it. The period in history: approximately 6th to 10th Centuries.

The McGill University “Wikispedia” article “Khazars” has shown up on a mirror at this address: http://mirror2.polsri.ac.id/wiki/wp/k/Khazars.htm . Whether the “memory hole” was created by politics or technology remains to be found out (and I so don’t wish to pursue the matter down the proverbial rabbit hole), but as of the evening of this addendum’s date, it’s available online.

Related online->

ADL. “Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories Abound Around Russian Assault on Ukraine.” March 9, 2022.

American Jewish Committee. “Khazars”.

Brook, Kevin Alan. “The Jews of Khazaria.” Northvale, New Jersey, 2003.

Brook, Kevin Alan. “The Khazar Fortress of Sarkel.” Last updated June 22, 2022.

Facts and Details (web site). “Vikings in Russia” and related sections, including “Rus and Varangians”.

Gerster, Lea. “An Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory is Being Shared on Telegram to Justify Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.” Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Ludmer, Tara (AKA Tara Bognar). “Khazar Self-Perception: A Study of the Schechter Text.” December 9, 1998.

The Histories. “The Khazars – Jewish Turkic Nomads of The Eurasian Steppe.” YouTube Video, July 10, 2022.

The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. “Khazaria”.

Wikipedia. “Khazars”.

Addendum, October 11, 2023

The Turkic Khazar tribes and their protectorate have been framed as colonialists in Israel and wholly without relationship to “real Jews” as well as being denied historic existence by being dismissed as mythical. The first and antisemitic position belies the question of how the Khazar came to identify with Judaism sufficiently to call themselves Jews. For that, there must have already been Jews within the region they came to control. The dismissal as myth begs the origin of names, “Khazar” itself and “Jewish names” like Kagan. Here’s another video on the matter:

HUJI. “Shaul Stampfer: Khazar Myth and Jews of Eastern Europe.” YouTube Video, May 31, 2022. Note: According to the McGill Wikispedia entry, neither the Vikings nor the Varangians organized the region associated with the Khazar between the 6th and 10th Centuries.

If swayed by the dismissive simplicity of the above explanation, feel welcome to revisit the matter and have a look at the coin of the realm:

Mayim Achronim (blog). “The Surprising Story of Russia, Ukraine, and the Jews.” March 9, 2022.

For independent research, start with the “Schechter Letter” and “Khazar Coinage”. For another launch from this page:

Wikipedia. “Khazar coinage”.

*

In the 830s, coins were minted in Khazaria bearing the Arabic text “There is no God but Allah, and Musa (Moses) is His messenger.” These coins can be seen as evidence that the Khazars—or some of them—had converted to Judaism. However, we should recall, that the first Polish coins, from the time of Mieszko I had Jewish references, too—they had Mieszko Krul Polski written in Hebrew characters. Still, these Polish coins tell nothing about the religious adherence of Mieszko or Polish peasantry or gentry. The same can be true for the Khazar coins with a Jewish-like text—in both cases, the coins were minted by Jews for their purposes, and that’s all we know.

Shapira, Dan. “So, Who Were the Khazars.” Tablet, January 29, 2021.

*

The Cleveland Museum of Art. “Solidus with Leo IV the Khazar and His Father Constantine V Copronymus.”

While Dan Shapira dismisses Khazar Jewish identification as impossible to confirm on a racial basis, there being no genetic material from the past with which to compare with some present sample, one may remind that Judaism is an idea shared with a religious cohort that spans language cultures and races worldwide. In the near past, the 20th Century, Germany and Russia could boast the presence of millions of Jews worthy of defaming, corralling, harassing, herding, and murdering in similar numbers.

The Jews have been referred to as “a people apart” (and there is today a title, Vital, David. A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews in Europe 1789-1939. Oxford University Press, 2001) and perhaps the Jewish Diaspora of the Byzantine Era simply lived with power amicable or terrorizing by turns.

Judging by today’s Jews, however, I believe the Jewish communities and families of the Byzantine would have wielded an influence on Power in the region similar to today’s myriad halls of state, and that would make the same a rival to other power bent on expansion or greater and perhaps unquestionable authority. Perhaps the Khazar were lucky to have them aboard for so long.

Click Here to Contact BackChannels

###

FTAC: JCPOA & Tehran – Morning Note to Joe Biden

30 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iran, Middle East, North America, United States of America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

The Right x American-Israeli Right appears to be threatening the Left x American-Israeli Left with claims of a nuclear peace accord revival — return to Kerry’s pink tie escapade and a massive drug deal of a bribe — when, in BackChannels estimation, those days are gone forever. Russia has mumbled through its bullying in Crimea and destruction in Syria; Tehran has never done other than despoil its environment and disappoint its politically suffocated (and once modern) constituency.

From the Awesome Conversation

Given the Moscow-Tehran post-Soviet nexus and Tehran’s aggression via IRGC directly (Syria) and proxies (e.g., Houthi insurgents, Yemen; Hezbollah, worldwide), I’d suggest not doing the $1B drug deal again. Hold the west’s position in the ME; repair the Atlantic Alliance (!); and leverage China — Tehran’s oil buyer — off the extremist-supporting tack.

As if I ruled the world . . . .

The post’s a feel-good made possible by Biden’s page on FB – why not send a note across the virtual hall now that all has been reduced to plain text e- communications? So done although one may ask where such a “missive” really lands — is there a virtual cookie jar for FB or other e-notes to the President? 🙂

###

Hebron, Where the Mouths Go Off Before Investigation Begins

03 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Israel, Palestinia, Palestinian Territories, Political Psychology, Syndicate Red Brown Green

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Where are the gun and shooter?

https://twitter.com/Shepherds4Good/status/1345025762269810688?s=20

How convenient for the camera to have followed the tug-of-war over the generator and not the assault (by whom) on Harun Abu Aram.

The unholy choir or practiced propagandists have weighed in with their headers – Middle East Eye: “Israeli forces shoot Palestinian in neck as they attempt to confiscate generator”; +972: “He grabbed his generator. They shot him in the neck” (note: the generator was far out of the victim’s hands when shots were fired); Al Jazeera: “Palestinian man left quadriplegic by Israeli shooting: Ministry” (at least the publication attributes the call — “A Palestinian man was paralysed from the neck down after being shot by the Israeli army on Friday in the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said”).

Of course, The Jerusalem Post hedges —

“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.

https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/eu-demands-probe-into-idf-shooting-of-palestinian-during-generator-brawl-654074
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.

Posted to YouTube by polka23dot, March 22, 2012.

What kind of person would want to see Palestinian misery sustained in service to his own aggrandizement?

Have a look at the Middle East’s chief sponsor of extraordinary Palestinian discontent —

Stecklow, Steve, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Yeganeh Torbati. “Assets of the Ayatollah: The economic empire behind Iran’s supreme leader — Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures.” Reuters Investigates, November 11, 2013.

No one understands self-serving impositions of injustice and theft quite like Ali Khamenei.

###

FTAC: On the Habit of Partisan Demonizations

15 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Egypt, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Political Psychology, Political Spychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

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.

###