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The unity Israel showed during the Gaza conflict was deeply moving. It reminded us that in a profound existential sense we remain one people. Whether or not we share a covenant of faith, we share a covenant of fate. That is a good state to be in as we face the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe, when we stand before God not just as individuals but also as a people.

As for anti-Semitism, rarely has it been more self-evident that the hate that starts with Jews never ends with Jews. The most significant enemies of the Jews today are the enemies of freedom everywhere. Worldwide we may feel uncomfortable, anxious, but there are parts of the world where Christians are being butchered, beheaded, driven from their homes and living in terror.

http://forward.com/articles/206189/on-rosh-hashanah-a-breath-of-life/#ixzz3EF9i7b5u – 9/23/2014.

“Gaza Suzerain” Becomes BackChannels Category

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“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.


Other BackChannels notes on “suzerainty” (so far, with Gaza the only geopolitical space contemplated for the concept).

Update 9/22/2013

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:

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/App/TalkBack/CdaViewOpenTalkBack/0,11382,L-4573441,00.html

Update 9/23/2014

Since noticing the piece referenced two days ago, it appears to have been retracted by YnetNews without apology, notice, or explanation.

 

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ISIS-Held Hostages Return to Turkey – Two Observations

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Turkish broadcaster NTV said Turkey did not pay a ransom for the hostages who were held for three months by ISIS militants.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/09/20/Turkish-hostages-seized-in-northern-Iraq-are-free.html – 9/20/2014.


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.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/09/13/seeks-turkey-help-starve-islamic-state-oil-revenue/IQIx3EPqamJ4iMfwEhQ7wI/story.html – 9/14/2014.


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.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/20/isis-releases-hostages-turkish-consulate-mosul – 9/20/2014..

Additional Reference

http://www.thetower.org/1057-sale-of-smuggled-oil-to-turkey-boosting-isis-coffers/ – 9/12/2014.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/analysis/2014/08/28/Experts-ISIS-makes-up-to-3-million-daily-in-oil-sales.html – 8/28/2014.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/business/2014/06/turkey-syria-isis-selling-smuggled-oil.html – 8/13/2014.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/isis-makes-million-day-selling-oil-analysts/story?id=24814359 – 8/2/2014.

Update

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.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/21/islamic_state_turkey_hostage – 9/21/2014.

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From Shiite Islam — Should Be Famous Last Words

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Fahs emphasized that he backed the so-called Arab Spring from the very beginning: “I am human, I am Muslim, I am Lebanese and Arab, and I want reformation because our call for reformation includes liberation from tyrants, our call includes a renaissance which is free and not extremist in accordance with the framework of Islam.”

http://www.dailysabah.com/mideast/2014/09/17/shiite-scholar-claims-iran-behind-syrian-conflict – 9/17/2014.

Related:

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2014/Sep-18/271087-anti-hezbollah-shiite-scholar-hani-fahs-dies.ashx#axzz3DiWcTZ8y – 9/18/2014.

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Aside

From Correspondence – On Survival in Hostile Surrounds

In some ways, every country is as many countries as the people who live in it. If you can socially navigate away from bother or threat, that’s what you do. If not: keeping quiet may be what you have to do for a while.

The “politics of hate” are difficult everywhere because the communities that generate the same — not only in Islam: look at Russia — enable criminals to acquire power, and then they are interested in being powerful and holding on to power, not in the doing of good things. The wrong personalities get their hands on the wheels and levers of governance, and then they are hard to deal with.

It’s good to hear from you.


Some people “check in” — and they’re far more interesting than me, but it’s hard to see the same fully when they feel constrained or intimidated by their political atmosphere from sharing background, insight, or news at length.

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From Correspondence – A White House At Play With the Muslim Brotherhood?

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From correspondence:

Yours Truly: Obama has given MB plenty of room for operating and for being observed. As he is not a President for Life, the stronger elements that comprise our government will survive him and probably be able to use the knowledge gained during his tenure. I would fear as much a flip toward the extreme Right in America. We really need a central, progressive, and prudent politics, and the zealots in politics have really skewed the conversation away from the middle ranks. That needs fixing, so I am becoming a Passionate Moderate Liberal.

Correspondent: Unfortunately, your fears aren’t baseless. After the communist revolution in Russia in 1917 and many other countries 1919, 1920 where it failed, extreme right came to power, including Nazis in most devastated Germany. That’s why from the very beginning the idea of European Union was not to go separate ways, to keep together, thereby not allowing a fascist regime to surface in a singly taken country. Still, fascists raise their head in Hungary, Greece… I think drastic economic changes bring drastic political changes and false expectations… Only the ability to realistically analyze them, or rather inability, can bring extreme regimes into power. Once installed they cannot be peacefully removed, that has to be remembered. The main lesson of WWII perhaps should be that many countries that could do something to prevent the appetites of the Nazi Germany did simply nothing for wanting to be left in peace. Want to be left in peace, from many lazy western countries, isn’t that what helps bring all sort of criminals to power nowadays? If the progressive world media would together denounce Hamas and ISIS, what chance of survival would they have? Close to none, I think.


My correspondent had started here:

http://conservativetribune.com/hillary-obama-terrorists/

The Muslim Brotherhood, who took power in Egypt following the Arab Spring, were recently ousted by the Egyptian military and declared a terrorist organization.

Even still, they have been embraced by President Obama, invited into his administration, placed on a “hands off” list protecting them, and are even setting up their own official political party here in the United States.

I leave room for the Obama Administration to have been adventurous, curious, experimental, observing in attempting to integrate into the democratic process such as Mohamed Elibiary, who has been enjoying this week his share of “right-side” press for tweeting remarks about the inevitability of the global Islamic caliphate, for example:

Mohamed Elibiary was until last week a senior member of DHS’ Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC). After years of controversy about his status at DHS, Elibiary announced his final day with the department on Twitter earlier this month and said he would remain close to the agency.

Media outlets have raised questions about the circumstances surrounding his departure, speculating that his provocative comments about the “inevitable” return of the Muslim “caliphate” may have played a role.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/controversial-dhs-adviser-let-go-amid-allegations-of-cover-up/ – 9/15/2014.

Although organizing Arab support in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria may amount to showbiz with an Administration and within an international political environment deeply invested in image — the wars for detectives and poets may turn out one day to have been wars for psychologists too, lol — the institutional memory Elibiary will leave behind will also inform this and successive governments in regard to the al-Qaeda-type assortment of Islamist challengers bent on acquiring power beneath the banners of Islam and with themselves conflated — by themselves — with God Almighty.

Related Reference

http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_36189.php – “OBAMA’S RADICAL MUSLIM AND PRO-MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISOR RESIGNS – 9/9/2014.

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FTAC – MEC in Five ‘Graphs

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From recent correspondence, a brief explanation:

Pakistan is a Muslim-majority state that may need to protect its minority populations and accept the same — Christians and Jews (I know of one) — as citizens with equal rights, not dhimmi status.

Israel is a Jewish-majority state that has enfranchised its Arab Christian and Muslim citizens fully.

Surrounding Arab rejection of Israel / a Jewish-majority state / of Jews, in general, has kept trapped the remaining refugees of 1948. Egypt will not absorb Gaza. Refugees in now built camps in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan indeed remain barred from citizenship in those states.

In the stateless preoccupied territories intended in part for independent statehood, the two key power brokers, Fatah and Hamas, have not been able to negotiate peace between themselves. As their anti-Semitic beliefs and postures remain genocidal, Israel have had to work with both in a perfunctory manner as regards the delivery of basic services, including their security against crime (Washington writes the paychecks for Abbas’s security force, which is trained in Jordan by Israel instructors).

Here’s where I sympathize, however, in departure from more conservative elements: I think it’s time to get Fatah and Hamas thugs out of the way and enable the residents of Gaza and the West Bank to take control of their own lives. On that, however, the realpolitik continues to work opposite, and Hamas, which has made everyone in Gaza unhappy, has been gaining popularity in the West Bank, which is a headache for Abbas.


http://www.reuters.com/investigates/iran/#article/part1 – 11/11/2013.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/28/gazas-millionaires-and-billionaires-how-hamass-leaders-got-rich-quick/ – 7/28/2014.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/18454 – “Israeli minister: Abbas is world’s “most anti-Semitic leader” – 1/30/2014.


One now may easily and rapidly compile data on piratical leaders and their organizations, but the three pieces noted above might suffice to underscore what has happened to the hapless refugees of 1948 and their generations: Arabs have contained them in camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt; Israel, despite the claims of The Preoccupation (with the Jews), have provided and promoted a palette of basic services while leaving the Arab politics to the meddling “gentle character of Arab leaders and Arab-wannabee Muslim potentates with their own versions of brown shirts and jack boots on the ground.  In the way of Arab suffering at Arab hands, the results loom clear in Hamas, which has spirited now billions of dollars out of the Gaza trough (while sacrificing the lives of somebody’s children as tunnel diggers and sundry others — to about 2,000 recently — by pushing the same in harms’ way as human shields), and in Fatah, which hasn’t yet produced a convincing self-governance replete with human rights, freedom of speech, and general political freedom.

Anyone in for another sixty-six years of the same rigmarole?

One would hope the old Jew-hating and Jew-killing enthusiasm just a little bit aged, brittle, reduced by the criminality of those most responsible for those who have driven it a too long time.

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FTAC – On the Ideas of Genocide and War

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“X” appears here careful to avoid the misappropriation of the term “genocide”, which really refers to a categorical cultural-racial basis for the elimination of an entire people. In such a frame, the Tutsi of Rwanda were the target of genocidal Hutu mania. Similarly, the white Arab onslaughts brought against the black animists of Darfur similarly constitutes “genocide” —

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0714/p09s02-coop.html.

The perception of “war crime” cannot hinge on carnage alone, nor some whacked out ideas about fairness in the parity of death counts. The war against war entails the destruction of one party’s will to war, or, if failing that, ability to make war. If one were to suggest that WWII was excessive in every aspect by every party in every respect, one would have difficulty arguing against that and the necessity of having in place, at least, a United Nations and an International Criminal Court. Of course, neither have proven of much use in Syria or against ISIS in Iraq, but at least we have them, and in time, we may have each other in such a way as to forestall the empowerment of personalities who lead themselves, their nations, and all surrounding into immense destruction.

Notably, the forces massed against Berlin (at the end of WWII) — and with an immense Russian force doing the honors — may suggest what it has taken in the past to eliminate the grandiose messianic will driving such war. That will, fear, drive, motivation, etc. exceeds limits, does not reason, would seem to fight to and perhaps even beyond death — and then it may work against an energy equal to its challenge and, eventually, greater than itself.


If hate were shit, and it is, a lot of people would seem to be walking around with a load in their pants.

A part of the psychology addressed in the generation of bigoted rhetoric lays out within the “paranoid delusional narcissistic reflection of motivation“.  How that becomes pattern in behavior and indicative of habits of mind, I wouldn’t hazard to guess but would suggest the language process associated with the same resides in childhood and a natural cowardice and imagination inclined to package fear borne by objects in such a way to push them away from the personal atmosphere.

I barely understand adults.

🙂

I don’t understand children.

However, to understand adults — to “get” an anti-Semite or other form of vociferous bigot — it might help to delve into the formation of language-sustained beliefs and attitudes adopted in childhood, and the coming into existence of some socially grammatical, rule-deriving, and later rule-based response to natural fears and emotional needs.

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