Such a reprieve, however, may not respond to the depravity and depth of the injustice bound up in the rigging of the case in “investigation” and “law”.
10/1/2014
The only thing I want … from God, from people around the world … in any way, in any form, is I just want to bring Rayhaneh back home,” Pakravan said in Farsi, which was translated by FoxNews.com. “I wish they would come tie a rope around my neck and kill me instead, but to allow Rayhaneh to come back home.”
Is he going to wait until the news cools down over the next two weeks — and then murder Rayhaneh Jabbari?
Or will the Ayatollah count on other news overshadowing the carrying out of the kangaroo sentence?
Or might the regime issue a “Tut, tut, it was all done too much in a hurry” accompanied by exoneration?
Let the world keep a steady watch on whatever course this injustice takes and judge with heart and reason the cruelty of the trial meted to Rayhaneh Jabbari to possibly spare the reputation of a man acknowledged to have slipped her a “date rape” drug:
Jabbari, who worked as a decorator, was convicted of the 2007 fatal stabbing of Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi, a former employee of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry. Jabbari, who was 19 at the time, has long maintained Sarbandi drugged her and tried to rape her after the two met at a café and she agreed to go to his office to discuss a business deal.
Sarbandi took Jabbari to a rundown building in a remote location, according to her supporters. Once there, he offered her a fruit drink which forensic tests conducted by the police determined contained a date-rape drug, according to human rights advocates.
Integrity counts and truth matters and the two integrate with honest scholarship. “Simply put, the Jews fleeing Europe and the atrocities of Nazism, found a home in the mid-1940s in the newly-created State of Israel, while the Palestinians lost theirs.” It’s not true. It’s stated as true because it’s believed, easily comprehended, and perhaps troublesome to actually independently research. Even intending to “get into the books” may be complicated by questions like “how far back does one go?” Or “what should be taken into account and what dismissed?”
Zionism responds to centuries of European persecution, and in fact discrimination that targeted Muslims along with Jews. The leveraging of religious passion and supersessionary argument account for that (the Church has had its institutional subscription building and subscription-taxing interests too) as does ethnic minority status outside of one’s homeland.
Modern Zionism is also a 19th Century pursuit and the subsequent Jewish immigration and agricultural capitalization of what is today Israel far precedes the rise Nazi Germany.
The best scholars serve God because the attachment of mind to cultural and personal loyalties produces ephemeral research and dishonest and disingenuous findings. We should not see what we want to see but see what is to be seen, and doing that with clarity, we may then repair some things.
Source of the little bit of grit in this clam’s shell:
Proposed new approach: adopt empirical methods; adhere to good principles in ethics, morality, and scholarship; and let’s move on to get people settled without rancor in their various spaces and otherwise integrated, independent, and living as the free agents of their own destinies, not as the subjugated pawns of the destinies of piratical dictators or their mafias.
What I have been calling “The Islamic Small Wars” — the internecine competitions and interfaces within Muslim-majority political space running from Afghanistan to Yemen — have been wars about integrity — basic truth telling — requiring armies of poets and detectives for fighting and resolving.
______
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,
In this year, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Israel has chosen to make it a year of a new war of genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people.
Moreover, they may be proven untrue, the Jews being the absolute worst genocidiers on the planet: before they kill you, they afford you basic services, emergency and sophisticated specialized health services (in which all patients are treated absent of politics), Internet access, freedom of speech sufficient to sustain adverse public relations and research organizations (like B’Tsalem).
What may be true is the greater the hate encountered in anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist cant (there is no difference between those two), the greater the opportunities for Israel’s expansion.
The Abbas speech may be investigated and laid out purple phrase by phrase (“Amidst a torrent of massacres and storms of massive destruction” — not one mention of the more than 10,000 rockets launched from Gaza since 2005 and every two to few years to launched at a tempo sufficient to call the same an assault against Israel’s children).
Sins of omission are not the only sins evident in Abbas’s speech before the UN.
Note the demonizing of Israel, the “reflections in a mirror” — a very dark and most primitive mirror in language — in such well-known canards as “However, and as usual, the Israeli government did not miss the opportunity to undermine the chance for peace” — never mind those tunnels illegally and surreptitiously built (with child labor, 160 accidentally killed or deliberately murdered in the process) to assault Israeli communities.
Add to that demonizing simple Arab refusal of just responsibility for the Arab refugees of 1948:
Israel refuses to end its occupation of the State of Palestine since 1967, but rather seeks its continuation and entrenchment, and rejects the Palestinian state and refuses to find a just solution to the plight of the Palestine refugees.
BackChannels no longer casually employs the term “Palestinian”.
As neither Egypt nor Jordan will absorb nor take responsibility for the constituents of (Judenfrei since 2005) Gaza, I refer to the same as “Gazans”).
Given the lying going on around Gazans — allegedly on their behalf but never beyond sacrificing them (individuals, family, finances, and property) as the pawns of Hamas’s supersessionary war against Judaism, one might expect them to become independent in their own right and to insist on the development for themselves of an independent, modern, responsible, responsive, and transparent democratic government.
Judea may be more complicated with its historic flow-down from the Soviet’s brand of poison (not only the Palestinian Liberation Organization, in spirit, remains present but a simple right-click of the mouse is all one needs to reach the airliner-hijacking Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the effects of the anti-Semitic New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left lingering long on the landscape, still leveraging the language of the refugees, which comes in the Abbas speech as, ” . . . against Israel’s policies of occupation, apartheid and colonial settlement . . . .’
The lie that is self-aggrandizing speech is there in that portion: one wonders just how large the combined International and Palestinian Solidarity Movements really are.
Investigating consultant and journalist Lee Kaplan has told me about the seeding of these groups on America’s college campuses and their access to student activity funds, which is fair under the precepts of freedom of speech in a truly open democracy, but we didn’t get to how really small these movements may be despite their broad distribution and the money pumped into them for priming.
The phrase comes from the 1940’s film Gaslight, in which an abusive husband deliberately dims the gaslights in the house, but when his wife comments on it he tells her she’s imagining it, that the lights never dimmed at all.
Gaslighting is one of the most insiduous, viscious, nasty and effective forms of emotional and psychological abuse.
Transporting psychology — the study of individual mind and mentality — into politics may have inherent issues in both psychology and politics: for example, are we now going to filter or judge politicians in relation to our concept of “malignant narcissism”, which in turn would seem to inform the psychology of dictatorship? At the same time, what choice has the world suffering war between brutal and sometimes immense despotic personalities?
(Of Bashar al-Assad and opponent (in general terms) al-Nusra, I have often remarked: “Different talk — same walk”.
The two together, Assad and al-Nusra — and the advent of BadDaddy and the Islamic Hate represent where the path of the malignantly narcissistic winds up — have burned out and left scorched the middle humanity of the historic Syrian state — factually speaking, about 9 million Syrians have been displaced in the fighting between the tyrant and the zealots [about 200,000 souls have been separated from life altogether]).
What I have been calling “The Islamic Small Wars” — the internecine competitions and interfaces within Muslim-majority political space running from Afghanistan to Yemen — have been wars about integrity — basic truth telling — requiring armies of poets and detectives for fighting and resolving.
Some people lie.
That’s a sad fact of life, and criminals and politicians both often draw the pointing fingers on the basis of their affiliations, ambitions, and reputations. Less acknowledged and less stated: observations about culture-wide denial, dissimulation, false assertion, and hapless vulnerability to the beguiling and patronizing sweetness of an evil tongue.
Often, in many quarters of the world, if not most, a loyal lie may be preferred to an uncomfortable truth, for shows of loyalty may draw immediate rewards, from praise to patronage, while relaying a critical or damaging truth may be met with punishment, including that of a swift death.
“The truth is that this started as a war against Israel, but it turned into a war between the Palestinians,” Gazans tell me. “And it’s not a war between Hamas and Fatah anymore, but rather between factions within Hamas, factions within Fatah, between individuals.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4573441,00.html – “In Gaza, hatred for Hamas and resentment of West Bankers: They may be too scared to speak publicly against Hamas, but the signs are there; and they have not forgotten that protests from their compatriots during the recent fighting were conspicuous in their absence.” by Francesca Borri – Published: 09.22.14, 00:04 / Israel News
It’s just not news when a blogger creates a new category.
However, I think the last Hamas war with Israel amply illustrates all of the issues with the Muslim Brotherhood, its behavior in language, and its soul-deadening program.
Billionaire Khaled Mashaal seems at the moment somewhere between stays in Qatar and Tunisia or Turkey.
“Gaza Fortress” lies in ruins.
And if Gazans have not figured out anything else, they’ve got to be figuring out this: they’re on their own.
I have made “Gaza Suzerain” a category here because . . . it’s a theme I believe the realpolitik within Gaza will make clear.
Let the residents of Gaza — Gazans — become their better selves with the human rights afforded others in the world, and let them do that for themselves with greater security provided by Egypt and Israel both.
Welcome to modernity.
Gazans may come up with something better than Israel: i.e., their own internally autonomous, democratic, and tolerant culture and state.
The concept of suzerainty (and protectorates) has a life longer in history than any given YNet News article, but checking back on this piece, I was surprised to find the referenced key link broken.
What sent me to look?
Last week’s Gaza “boat people” drowning, which is being spun as having been motivated by (that tired old canard) “the occupation”, which anti-Semitic truth I refer to as “The Preoccuation”. Francesca Bourri’s article focused the spotlight where it needed to be focused: Hamas’s dismal record in governance and in war and the quite probably truth about the despair Gazans deal in their isolation between large forces: Israel, Egypt, the Arab world, the modern world.
That deadlock is not eternal.
Gazans themselves need strengthening with reference to their unfortunate relationship with Hamas, which looks to me like showbiz — good script: it just hasn’t anything to do with humanity and its real aspirations, beliefs, needs, and wants — covering kleptocracy.
I’ve tweeted Borri and Ynet News. I want to hear how a story disappears from major Israeli media.
The talkbacks for the article still appear online:
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is struggling to cut off the millions of dollars in oil revenue that has made the Islamic State one of the wealthiest terror groups in history but has been unable to persuade Turkey, the NATO ally where much of the oil is traded on the black market, to crack down on an extensive sales network.
In relation to “hoping the crocodile eats you last”, the definite-maybe “crocodiles” of the Islamic Small Wars may be ambivalent about whether their role is to be crocodile or the prey of one.
We’ll have to imagine the degree of leverage or rollover, either, involved in securing the 49 hostages taken by ISIS in their sweep into Mosul, Iraq.
Davutoglu said their release was the result of the Turkish intelligence agency’s “own methods”, and not a “point operation” involving special forces. He gave no further details.
While the details of the hostage deal are still unclear, Ankara has had interlocutors with IS — from Arab tribes to former Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, who sought refuge in Turkey — who could have been instrumental in reaching it. Such a deal, however, may include a promise of continued non-involvement in the campaign against the jihadist group, with the soldiers stationed at Suleyman Shah serving as an insurance policy for the jihadists.
The foundations of the invisible wall surrounding Assad start about here:
“In a gloomy interrogation room the children were beaten and bloodied, burned and had their fingernails pulled out by grown men working for a regime whose unchecked brutality appears increasingly to be sowing the seeds of its undoing.”
“But there is something legitimately scary about the weapon’s do-it-yourself ethos and its new systematic deployment against the neighborhoods of Aleppo. It speaks to the regime’s single-minded focus on finding new ways to kill, its narrow and obsessive pursuit of mayhem and destruction as seemingly official strategy in the conflict that has run for nearly three years now.”
Being a merely “bloody dictator” in a conflict cauldron that has in it argument over despotism, democracy, egotism, goodness, God, morality, and narcissism (finally) is not merely a bad position.
The condemnation backed by astounding imagery and numbers to match may not be overcome with exigent maneuvering.
I know: faced with Hitler, one might be eager to bargain with Stalin.
Call that yesterday.
This day with Assad having produced a war that has brought al-Qaeda affiliates and such to his doorstep and that has incubated and loosed ISIS on the world, may be different.
How happy should one be to be led by Assad today?
That’s not my question to answer. It’s a question for Syrians to answer for themselves in whatever condition and place the war now finds them.
If “Assad or Burn It” was the slogan, it has been working a long time, and once burned — in whatever portion — what then?
“In the end you are left with 1.7 million people in Gaza, and you don’t really want that.”
Responsibility.
Ehud Yaari‘s remark at The Washington Institute’s two-person panel “Sept. 11 – Gaza and Beyond: The Arab-Israeli Arena in the Wake of the Hamas War,” may tell how Israel’s latest response to Gaza rocket fire (and assault tunnel building) reached completion without changing much.
Indeed, Robert Satloff, the second speaker, would go on to characterize the incursion as “urgent, not very important.”
When asked in the Q&A that followed, “What does Israel want?” Yaari suggested that what Israel wants is to “let Hamas rot in the Gaza Strip.”
Noting that Hamas had seen fail it’s “Gaza Fortress” approach to assaulting Israel, the journalist said the Hamas would “try to make a leap to the West Bank . . . a whole new opera” with the contemplation of its terrorism reaching everywhere in Israel.
*
Not only Hamas may rot in Gaza, for no powerful or key element seems to want even to approach taking responsibility for 1.7 million Gazans.
Egypt, having with decision made the Muslim Brotherhood its problem, certainly does not want Gaza’s most egregious problem, except to keep the same exactly where it is.
Israel and Israelis: ditto, Egypt.
If there’s a transition plan for Gaza from Hamas sanctuary to, say, protectorate or suzerain in enthused and lasting peace (with the Jews and the Jewish State), I should like to hear of it.
The highly experienced and now octogenarian Mahmoud Abbas, who, anti-Semite that he may be, has been promoted as representing the Next Best Government, has looked over the nest and, so suggests Yaari, hasn’t the wish to run Gaza while Hamas, aspiring to ape Hezbollah, maintains its own army. While Hamas planners in Turkey pass thoughts to the West Bank Committee in Gaza, with interest in unseating Abbas, Abbas would have to address the massive screening of old staff, the mustering of troops sufficient to overwhelm Hamas, and that’s not happening.
Gaza appears to be stuck with Hamas.
Even worse for Hamas, Hamas appears to be stuck with Gaza.
While Hamas stews over Gaza as well as in it, Israel and the Arab World, so suggests Satloff, may be experiencing some convergence of perception of regional states of affairs.
Perhaps such as ISIS helps with that.
While Hamas may be isolated in Gaza — imho, it sure looks that way — and both Egypt and Israel control the boundaries and crossings containing the same and the Global Jew-Hate Commune emphasizes hate over help (most often) and the UNRWA remains deeply compromised (as a Hamas helper), Gaza may have one partner for peace after all: Gazans.
It’s what we all have, isn’t it?
Ourselves when it’s us.
Themselves when it’s them.
Some friends convince me that Gazans love Hamas, vote for Hamas, die for Hamas.
Happily.
Proudly.
And some friends convince me otherwise.
Except through the Hamas filter — media controlling, politically intimidating, image obsessed — one cannot “see” Gazans (politically) otherwise, or, perhaps simply not yet.
It’s true I may now scribble notes at a desktop two hours away from the event location — but can I read them afterward? 🙂 And did I get words down right in the first place? And can I do a better job of differentiating between what someone else said and what I happen to think? Of course. With practice.
Every day online brings with it a slightly updated dawn that changes even the most remote soul’s intellectual ecology.
Yesterday’s live event, which I watched, is now a recorded event at the URL noted in reference. I may give it another listen, and if I must update here, I will. Internally, there’s an art in play — listen, notate, reflect, report, opine — and each step is its own dimension.
Using the UK as a case study, Ms. Phillips addressed the prejudiced attitudes towards Israel from both Muslims and left-wingers and so-called liberals before criticizing the UK Jewish community for failing to respond adequately and preferring to keep their heads down.
She also criticized Israel’s failure “to grasp that information is a strategy of war on the battleground of the mind, and a strategy that has been used to enormous effect against Israel, and against which it doesn’t even seem to know that it is fighting.”
BackChannels 