Tag Archives: middle east conflict

On President Trump’s ‘Jerusalem Declaration’

12 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Europe, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, North America, Palestinia, Politics, Regions, Russia, Ukraine, United States of America

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The prompt: opprobrium for much of President Trump’s other actions and utterances with glowing exception for announcing the moving of the American Embassy to Jerusalem.

Trump has to respond to internal personal as well as external political pressures. He has to make decisions with those two universes somewhat in balance.

The “Jerusalem Declaration” sense a message to (you know what I’m going to say 　 — fill it in), and the timing is right as Israel is somewhat surrounded by PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Russia (which has military stationed about eight miles from the Golan).

The West has symbolically re-planted its flag at the Israeli bridgehead with what used to be more predictable despotic “eastern” dictatorships or “politically absolute” governments (some of them, of course, plainly hideous).

Russo-Iranian imperial aggression in the middle east has pushed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia westward, and the same has focused the remaining liberal states of EU / NATO (so perhaps not Turkey or Hungary or Poland) on resistance to extremist and tyrannous politics). The President’s move in Jerusalem nudges the other side to back off or up its game. We hope that Moscow axis will “hold” where it is and reconsider its ambitions and the means now applied — including election meddling and real fake news — toward achieving them.

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Political Spychology DeLITEful: Pavel Stroilov’s 2011 Pastiche

08 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Gaza, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Palestinia, Political Spychology

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In the same conversation, Arafat confided:

There are 250,000 Palestinians living in the US. 8,000 of them are university lecturers. Palestinians are highly educated people. Our level of education is higher than the Israelis’.22

May I be so bold as to suggest: the high proportion of American university lecturers among the long-suffering Palestinian people is a factor which needs much more attention from analysts of the Middle East. It may explain a lot.

Under the Soviet and Arab pressure, the PLO was internationally recognized as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” (imagine al-Qaeda being recognized today as the sole legitimate representative of the world’s Muslims).

Stroilov, Pavel. Behind the Desert Storm: A Secret Archive Stolen From the Kremlin that Sheds New Light on the Arab Revolutions in the Middle East (p. 45). Price World Publishing. Kindle Edition, 2011,

If a secret gets out but no one hears it or reads about it, does it count?

🙂

The key is in the “if no one”.

In fact, the professional politico in or around Russian studies knows of, say, the Mitrokhin Archive, Ion Mihai Pacepa, the volumes listed in the “Russian Section” of this blog, and doubtless Russian as well plus an enormous “much else”.

The public at large?

Perhaps not so much.

For that, Pavel Stroilov proves easily read, delightfully illuminating, and reliably provocative.

Here’s where he begins:

 This book, I am proud to say, proceeds from a grand theft aggravated by high treason.

To be more precise, it concludes a whole series of crimes—and puts a stop to it.

I have stolen these secrets from Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet dictator, a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I covertly copied thousands of secret Politburo documents from the Gorbachev Foundation Archive, and then smuggled them out of Russia.

Who among the enthused for liberal democracy would not be charmed?

And here within the virtual pages of the Kindle edition, the past catches up with the present:

Chapter 3:
Comrades and Ayatollahs

…The movement continues in the right direction: the resistance to imperialist forces. Very important roles belong to Syria and even to Iran. In this sense, Iran is our ally, even though we are very different.

Mikhail Gorbachev to Hafez Assad, 28 April 1990

BackChannels joyously recommends reading “Pavel” to Cold War beginners, and, as may be glimpsed from more critical reviews cited, as a way on to the bridge between Cold War history and today Middle East conflicts.

Additional Reference

BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/23/moscows-rules-a-module/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

General Reading Online

Berlinski, Claire.  “The Cold War’s Arab Spring: How the Soviets Created Today’s Middle East.”  Tablet, June 20, 2012.

Kalinovsky, Artemy.  “On the (supposedly) sensational documents from the Gorbachev Foundation Archives.”  Critical review.  LSE Ideas, May 17, 2010.

National Security Archive, George Washington University (portal).

Radchenko, Sergey.  “Behind the Desert Storm: A Secret Archive Stolen from the Kremlin That Sheds New Light on the Arab Revolutions in the Middle East by Pavel Stroilov (review).  Journal of Cold War Studies, pp. 266-268, 14:4, Fall 2012:

Devoid of any scholarly analysis, the book is full of nonsense, some of it derived from far-fetched interpretations of Stroilov’s source material and some borrowed from popular conspiracy theories. Fortunately, Stroilov is relatively brief with his own comments. Most of the book is made up of verbatim transcripts of documents, including memoranda of Gorbachev’s conversations with foreign leaders, Politburo transcripts, and various enlightening notes penned by Gorbachev’s chief foreign policy aide, Anatolii Chernyaev, and by other officials. Although excerpted and often cited out of context, these documents offer an interesting glimpse into the dynamic of Gorbachev’s policymaking and disclose hitherto unknown aspects of Soviet diplomacy during the first Gulf War.

Wilson Center.  Cold War International History Project (portal).

Wikipedia

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

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

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

Stroilov-bio

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FTAC: “Oh, Jerusalem” and Islam’s New Divide

07 Thursday Dec 2017

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

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The prompt was the familiar — too familiar — and now cliche threat: the whole Muslims world will now unify against the “Little” and “Great” Satan that would be Israel and the United States were it not that Moscow, Damascus, and Tehran have consistently and with enthusiasm proven themselves cruel and evil to the Believers fervent or moderate:

Unless directed by Moscow — the PLO was once its projects; Hezbollah and Hamas remain its clients; Assad and Khamenei remain its fellows in dictatorship — the “Jerusalem Move” may well divide Islam.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/islam-supports-israels-right-of-existence/

The “Palestinian Cause” isn’t what it was when cobbled together by the Soviet Union and pressed into the minds of the unknowing or leaders venal enough to inspire jealousy and leverage it into greater power for themselves — and what sadistic and tyrannical selves they proved to be.

The Palestinian popular charges of corruption leveled at Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas leadership as well — and their reputations for growing wealthy off funding intended for Palestinian development — may also turn support away from old Soviet Moscow’s pernicious designs. (Note: the Soviet Union will have been dissolved 26 years this coming December 25).

Referenced

Dahri, Noor.  “Islam Supports Israel’s Right of Existence.”  Times of Israel, October 16, 2016.

For Noor Dahri and other devout Muslims knowledgeable in the interpretation of the Qur’an, the “Jerusalem Decision” may call for choosing between Moscow’s tired incitements and manipulations of the Muslim community and a renewed message in scripture.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/23/ftac-these-too-are-palestinians/ 

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

 

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/

On Palestinian Corruption

Eldar, Shlomi.  “Palestinian journalists frustrated with inability to cover PA corruption.”  Al-Monitor, January 12, 2017:

No journalists in Gaza — no matter how senior — would even think of criticizing the leaders of Hamas, and in the Palestinian Authority (PA), criticism of any kind against President Mahmoud Abbas, or exposure of corruption in the PA, could result in the journalist’s arrest.

“We all known there’s terrible corruption in the PA,” a senior veteran journalist from Ramallah, the seat of the PA in the West Bank, told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “We know hundreds of stories about senior PA officials and about Abbas’ sons, but we can’t publish them or even talk openly about them.”

 

Laub, Karin and Mohammed Daraghmeh.  “In tough times, most Palestinians view government as corrupt.”  AP, May 24, 2016:

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A gated community of villas with well-tended flower gardens near the West Bank town of Ramallah may help explain why Palestinians almost universally believe there is corruption in the government of President Mahmoud Abbas.

The secluded “Diplomatic Compound,” built for senior Palestinian Authority officials on subsidized land, is one of the symbols of what many Palestinians think is wrong with their leaders — that they are cut off from the people and award themselves special privileges.

Menenberg, Aaron.  “Terrorists & Kleptocrats: How Corruption is Eating the Palestinians Alive.”  The Tower, June 2014.

The Tower.  “New Survey: 96% of Palestinians Believe Palestinian Authority is Corrupt.”  May 24, 2016.

Toameh, Khaled Abu.  “Palestinians: ‘The Mafia of Destruction’.”  Gatestone Institute, September 21, 2016.

FTAC Addendum

I think there’s more to the story as Moscow and Tehran crowd Israel with military presence beyond Hezbollah alone.   In essence, te Cold War’s tension is back in place, and this time — and at this time — it appears the United States has chosen to assert western power with a move certain to be opposed but with uncertain cohesion in the Russo-Arab and Russo-Iranian spheres of control and influence. What Washington may have just done with Jerusalem stands counter to Moscow’s assertions of power in Syria and Ukraine. We have more or less planted a flag forward and now will see some return from the Russo-Iranian axis.

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FTAC: The PLO Remembered

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

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

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Source of inspiration:

Younis, Rami.  “Looted from Beirut 35 years ago, now on display in Tel Aviv.”  +972 Magazine, December 4, 2017.

“Similar to the destruction of Palestinian urbanization in 1948, the theft of Palestinian visual culture is another attempt by Israel to control the historical narrative and erase Palestinian history. “

And yet the authors of both the documentary and the gushing +972 promotion launch their criticisms from Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University with the help, frankly, of the IDF that could as well have kept its information out of the public sphere.

Palestinians may wish to revisit the real history behind Yasser Arafat —
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/ — who survived his repeatedly defeated troops and impoverished people to die himself with upwards of $100 million in loot (and about the same may be said of the living Abbas who has also built a remarkable system of patronage on the suffering of the Palestinian main base).

A few reminders about the PLO and perhaps the principle of evil.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/asia-and-africa/middle-eastern-history/black-september-group

http://www.merip.org/mer/mer119/dilemma-plo

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=795&x_context=7

For more on the Soviet role in the weaponizing of the Palestinian mind:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/103576/the-cold-wars-arab-spring

Referenced

Berlinski, Claire.  “The Cold War’s Arab Spring: How the Soviet’s Created Today’s Middle East.”  Tablet, June 20, 2012:

Two of Bukovsky’s documents appear in English for the first time in Behind the Desert Storm. The first is Yuri Andropov’s memo to Leonid Brezhnev in 1974 detailing a KGB meeting with Palestinian terrorist Wadie Haddad. It recommends that the Soviet government provide material support to Haddad’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The second is the transcript of a 1984 Politburo meeting approving the shipment of 15 million rubles’ worth of weapons and ammunition to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in exchange for a collection of ancient art. The invention of modern terrorism: All credit is due to the Kremlin.

Borden, Sam.  “Long-Hidden Details Reveal Cruelty of 1972 Munich Attackers.”  The New York Times, December 1, 2015.

CAMERA.  “Yasir Arafat’s Timeline of Terror.”  November 13, 2004.

Cobban, Helena.  “The Dilemma of the PLO”.  Middle East Research and Information Project, Winter 2016.

Encyclopedia.com. “Black September”.

Link Modules Related on BackChannels

On the Disingenuous Cruelty of the BDS Movement

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/03/08/bds-cult-modules/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/23/ftac-these-too-are-palestinians/

On the KGB’s Manipulation of Palestinian Politics and Mind

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2015/10/12/ftac-tip-to-the-kgbs-amplification-of-middle-eastern-anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/

On Russia’s Endemic Medieval Anti-Semitic Habits and Related Defamation and the Development of Other Political Disinformation

https://conflict-backchannels.com/category/anti-semitism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/28/a-short-page-referencing-works-by-or-associated-with-ion-mihai-pacepa/

 

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FTAC: Once More One Comment for the Palestinians

12 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza Suzerain

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The illegitimacy of two deeply authoritarian, corrupt, and kleptocratic governments may need acknowledgment along with the continued meddling if not discernible presence of two “greater” others as well. Distill down so many issues, all that would seem wanted is integrity — honest, responsible, reliable, responsive governance — in Palestinian territorial-to-state rule. What makes that autonomy and self-respect so difficult to attain? After 70 years of Arab Apartheid and related political abuse, one might think a People might wish to be truly their own People.

Related on BackChannels

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/07/29/ftac-antidote-to-what-poisoned-the-palestinians/

Related on the Web

JCPA.  “Luxury Alongside Poverty in the Palestinian Authority.”  November 5, 2015.

Abdel-Hadi-Home

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FTAC: Middle East Conflict (MEC): On the Facing of Uncomfortable Truths . . . Together

18 Monday Sep 2017

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

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Affect –> Negative or Positive Emotion x Intensity

Attitude = Belief x Affect

Is a thing true or false, and if true, is it a good thing or a bad thing?

So

Belief +/- contributes to Attitude.

Beliefs have also two properties: early or late establishment (primacy) and importance – degree of relevance (to survival).

The really evil thing about a misguided belief (via disinformation or the manipulation of perception) is that if set in early (e.g., childhood indoctrination), all that follows may be made to set atop what have become basic principles.

George Orwell’s _Animal Farm_ uses “Two legs good, four legs bad” to make about the same point.

In social psychology, the term for look-up would be “Attitude-Behavior Correspondence”.

It has been a rich field for the narrowed.

Atheist Christopher Hitchens has in his decease on offer a marvelous volume about adherence to basic principles and related observation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Orwell_Matters

Kind words — actually: civil conversation — makes possible reconciliation by allowing discomfiting discoveries to be shared with one’s adversary, and later, former adversary, without fear of disaster or punishment. While its true that in much of the world, the “loyal lie” may account for one’s lifestyle and very life itself, the principle of facing an uncomfortable truth proves stronger than lies over time.

On many of these posts, the conversational partner has been Mohammed Dajani Daoudi who has been exploring a middle way in Islam beneath the banner of his Wasatia Movement.

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FTAC: Middle East Conflict – Moscow’s Project – Abbas’s End

24 Thursday Aug 2017

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

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Abba — Arafat’s known and others may be suspect — bend to Moscow (the KGB record never goes away), and as Moscow has nowhere to go that wouldn’t be trapped in a century-and-one-half old imperial time bubble, neither has Abbas, who has not been able to do more for the Palestinians than enrich his own network through corruption.

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

Imho (who else’s?), the Middle East Conflict was Moscow’s post-WWII Cold War Era project, and here perhaps comes the beginning of the end with Abbas bottled up and — for having no place to go — floating backward into history.

It should be all over but the fighting, and on that surreal “Animal Farm” political habitat referred to as Moscow has lost for itself through its displays of barbarism in Syria and Ukraine all moral and noble authority.  Neither the “Mafia State” nor Mahmoud Abbas’s need much effort for tarring as regards their corrupted systems.

The prompt for these remarks: http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Palestinian-leadership-considers-dissolving-PA-says-Abbas-insider-503268 (8/23/2017).

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FTAC: Antidote to What Poisoned the Palestinians

29 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Gaza Suzerain, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics

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. . . the Palestinian street doesn’t learn because they’re disinformed and misdirected by leaders who have been “handled” by Moscow / and, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran, by Moscow-Tehran in their bid to sustain our world in their politically feudal mode.

Do those in the “middle east peace industry” really want to sustain the conflict by limiting the scope of observation to the Palestinian masses?

For the _earlier_ Arab world, post-WWII, latched previously to Hitler, and afterward courted by the Soviets who used anti-Semitism as a lever with which to seduce a few powerful leaders and their followers, the refugees as refugees conventionally managed would have been a lasting reminder of a lost war — a shame, in other words. The creation of a People’s Liberation Movement with a history to match handily solved that issue and “weaponized” the minds of the dislocated population.

Instead of continuing to reinforce negative Palestinian self-concept through condemnation, which is what write-offs do, perhaps moving better information into the main base of the community would undermine the sources of the kind of energy it puts on display when it “chest bumps” Israel on flimsy pretexts and outright lies.

We should be dismantling the political culture informed by the Nazis and later the Soviets. It’s the phantoms of those vicious political movements — plus the fascist or supremacist element in Islam — that may be keeping the Palestinians locked into too small a worldview and boiling with anger.

Almost an aside: a lot of these movements associated with dictators or dictatorship won’t concede their absurd positions until force or freedom alters their political perception.

I would prefer that it was freedom that reached the Palestinians.

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