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Tag Archives: Yarmouk Camp

Yarmouk, Syria: Mutually Accomplished Destruction

23 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

confused battlespace, dictatorship, flag disorientation, Liwa al-Quds, medieval v modern, middle east conflict, Palestine Hospital Bombing, Phantoms of the Soviet, political chaos, Syria, Yarmouk Camp

Assad regime forces destroyed the Palestine Hospital in the Yarmouk Camp. Body parts are strewn in the streets & many civilians are trapped under the rubble – intense regime bombardment prevents their rescue https://t.co/MDJuLn25Mq

— Elizabeth Tsurkov (@Elizrael) April 22, 2018

The compressed link leads to this apparently unedited or particularly grim header:

“Human Appeal: Bodies and body parts in Yarmouk camp are alive under the rubble” (Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, April 22, 2018).

BackChannels requested additional information, and this came in:

https://twitter.com/BloodyRain111/status/988320431722688512

Most important info missing, the Yarmouk camp is under ISIS. The offensive to liberate the Palestinian Yarmouk camp is led by Palestinian militias, most notably Liwa al-Quds.

4/23/2018

Liwa al-Quds is an Assad-aligned Sunni Palestinian fighting organization.

WikLiwa-al-Quds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liwa_al-Quds

In the Soviet / post-Soviet medieval time bubble, the spectacle attending the bombing of a Palestinian hospital in the Palestinian enclave of Yarmouk in Syria appears that of a Palestinian Sunni force pitted against independent Sunni extremist forces to which, for enmity as viewed by Liwa al-Quds, the western-leaning Free Syrian Army appears appears to have been attached, although western alignment would seem also pitched against ISIS and other Sunni (and Shiite) extremists.

Among Liwa al-Quds allies, the Phantoms of the Soviet Era align: Ba’ath Brigades, Hezbollah, (Syrian) National Defence Forces, Russia, Syrian Armed Forces, Syrian Armed Forces, each defending “political absolutism”, the survival of dictatorship itself — and of dictatorships, BackChannels has long remarked, “Different talks — same walk!”

The walk seems to be that of a march toward the accumulating of wealth and power without end, without limit, and without purpose other than the experience of it (in the political psychology, the malign narcissistic process may begin with “narcissistic mortification” and end with “narcissistic supply”).

How bad can that malign narcissistic itch become: read about one man’s demons in relation to the “Moscow Apartment Bombings”.

Among Liwa al-Quds opponents: minus the Free Syrian Army, defenders of the very same thing!

Missing from the picture: family, financial, and personal relationships.  The interlocking details involving persons and personal interests would be another and more granular level down in public reporting, and such investigative work might be unwelcome where it would be gathered.


Related on BackChannels

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

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

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/29/ftac-middle-east-conflict-back-to-max-erwin-von-scheubner-richter-and-forward-to-the-plundering-of-palestinian-misery-by-palestinian-leadership-elites/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/16/excerpt-first-political-terrorist-organization-in-history/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/29/syria-the-horror-2011/


The Syrian regime bombed #Palestine hospital in #yarmoukcamp, the last service provider for the 1500 civilians in the area. The bombing killed the only ambulance driver in Yarmouk. Bombing hospitals is a war strategy for the Syrian regime. The hospital is out of service #Damascus pic.twitter.com/luAyUECKRg

— Musaab Balchi (@MusaabBalchi) April 20, 2018


–33–

 

 

Link – Palestinians Slaughtered by the Great Hate

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Political Psychology, Regions, Syria

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

feudalism, medievalism, political theater, Syria, Yarmouk Camp

The Palestinians in Yarmouk are unlucky, mainly because they are being attacked and killed by Muslims, and not by Israel. An Israeli attack on the camp would have drawn worldwide condemnation and protests, with Palestinian and Arab leaders rushing to seek the intervention of the UN Security Council and the international community.

The Palestinians in Yarmouk are unlucky because their leaders in the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are still busy fighting each other over power and money. This is a power struggle that has been going on since Hamas drove the PA out of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.

Toameh, Khaled Abu.  “Why Palestinians in Yarmouk Are Unlucky.”  Gatestone Institute, April 10, 2015.


Setting aside the fine points of Islamist rivalry that may exist between Daesh and Hamas, the absurdity and obscenity of the destruction of the Palestinian Yarmouk Camp may serve to highlight the sociopathic character of the despots who brought it about: Putin, Assad, Khamenei.

Aboud Dandachi’s observations regarding the perverting of Syria’s Arab Spring into an extremist’s civil war are borne out by the advance of the al-Qaeda spin-off that is Daesh and the more than equal measure of punishment meted to Yarmouk by the Assad (“Or Burn It”) regime.  All of the Arab accusation and handwringing on behalf of the (descendants of) refugees of 1948 have been betrayed as convenient loud mouthiness.  In the pinch, not one militant or military Arab hand stood to defend — to hold dear and keep safe — the larger population of Yarmouk.

If the reader should happen to be thinking like a healthy human being, this might be a good time to put on the mantle of any of a number of malign narcissistic sociopaths and start to think like a ringleader, a showman, a producer of conflict to be delivered, described, and framed in the cause of one’s own self-aggrandizing political theater.

Related Reference

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the mayhem has turned Yarmouk into “the deepest circle of hell.”

“A refugee camp is beginning to resemble a death camp,” Ban told reporters at the U.N., adding that the residents, including 3,500 children, are being used as human shields by armed elements inside Yarmouk and government forces outside it.

Aji, Albert.  “PLO says it won’t be drawn into battle to oust IS from embattled Palestinian camp in Syria.”  U.S. News & World Report, April 10, 2015.


You cannot understand the Islamic State’s assault on the camp or what it means unless you also consider how Bashar al-Assad, as a gift to the Palestinian people, turned a thriving neighborhood of hundreds of thousands of people into a desperate population of 18,000 waiting to die. We cannot stop what happened in Yarmouk from repeating itself elsewhere unless we save the 600,000 besieged civilians whom Assad is starving to death.

Zakarya, Qusai.  “The Starving of Yarmouk, Then the Capture: The Islamic State’s attack on the besieged Palestinian refugee camp outside Damascus is highly suspicious.  It could only have happened with Assad’s complicity.”  Foreign Policy, April 9, 2015.


At the time, the full scale of the group’s collusion with the Assad regime was not yet well known, and it was perceived as an independent Al-Qaeda group with dreams of a 21st century caliphate, which they started to impose on Raqqa.

Dandachi, Aboud.  “After Conquering Raqqa, ISIS Enters Mosul.  Are the Obamanite Isolationists Happy Now?”  From Homs to Istanbul, June 10, 2014.


In mid-2012, Hezbollah entered Syria, ostensibly to safeguard a regime that was vital in supporting its operations in the region. Once thought of as the ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel, their intervention, coupled with their ally’s brutal siege on Yarmouk, has damaged the movement’s popularity among Palestinians from Syria.

El-Shammah, Hugo.  “Inside the Middle East: Palestinians in Syria lose respect for Hezbollah.”  The Media Line in The Jerusalem Post, April 10, 2015.


Published about a year ago, this piece seems practically quaint by the standards of horror being visited today by Daesh on the beleaguered Palestinians.

Chulov, Martin.  “Besieged and terrified . . . and the food is about to run out for Damascus refugees.”  The Guardian, April 19, 2014.


Reports also say that several Palestinians including an imam have been beheaded by Isis. Grisly pictures posted on social media shows severed heads hung on spikes inside the refugee camps.

Varghese, Johnlee.  “Isis Posts Grisly Pictures of Beheaded Palestinians in Yarmouk Camp (Graphic Images).  International Business Times, April 5, 2015.

# # #

FTAC – A Comment on Yarmouk Camp and Turkish Airstrike Against ISIS

30 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ethics, humanism, morality, obligation, political, politics, Syria, Yarmouk Camp

You have asked a difficult question. The sentimental guidance offered by Hillel the Elder seems insufficient in the face of immense suffering, not only in Syria, but in Burma (genocide targeting a tribal Muslim people), in Congo (the land of child slaves and child soldiers), and a thousand other places (probably fewer, but still, it’s pretty bad): “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I?”

What is our humanity? What is our obligation as regards the humanity of others?

Gaza officialdom may bleat, hate, and whine about Zionists, but Gaza business and labor and basic service providers work every day with Israel in the interests of commerce and development.

Jews go everywhere — even to the other side, lol — where need exists.

With everyone else, we / Jews / Israel are helping Syrians with emergency medicine and supplies — not leading the pack (I don’t know who is) but there even with a minimum of recognition.

The remaining residents of the Yarmouk Camp, kept separated from Syrian, used as tools for some future Arab war of annihilation to erase Jewry and Judaism (the better to claim originality for Islam, I guess), are starving — being made to starve — between armies. What did they — now women, children, and old men — do to deserve or bring on that fate?

No one has intervened militarily in Yarmouk Camp because no one outside of the Syrian conflict knows how to play a rescue operation, much less coordinate one with so many parties ringside.

In 2007, Lebanese Defense Forces managed to evacuate Nahr al-Bared, another refugee “camp”, by checking through residents at one gate and busing them away to another camp. By agreement with other Arab states, they were forbidden to enter Nahr al-Bared, so they got the residents out, left the foreign fighters in, and using tanks razed the entire city, once of 30,000 souls, to the ground — and then they bombed what was left of resistance in tunnels.

Yarmouk? It’s like watching people drown and no one can get through the sharks surrounding them to save them.

Since day one of live fire, Syrians on the receiving end — now millions either dead, maimed, displaced, or refugee — have begged the world for help, and the great politicians surrounding have played like gamblers at a felt table: one wants things to be as they were, primarily because the money was very good with the way things were — and it’s still very good with the way things are; another wants a moderate messianic miracle, i.e., an Arab democracy, capitalist, open, and in love with Israel.

Some 130,000 casualties later plus six million souls robbed of their former lives and their businesses, jobs, and homes, business seems to be booming around the care of the victims of war, not that it’s making money, but it seems easier delivering tents, clothing, food, and water, and some medicine to those bereft than it does producing sufficient international cooperation to remove Assad, shut down the al-Qaeda affiliates, and freeze Syria (no pun intended) into a state (of existence) approachable for constitutional and physical reconstruction.

* * *

In an unprecedented incident yesterday, Wednesday, Turkish jets attacked a Jihadist convoy on Syrian soil after 2 of their own military vehicles had been fired upon near the Turkish/Syrian border.

The incident happened near the Cobanbey border crossing in the south of Turkey. The jets reportedly destroyed a pick-up, a truck and a bus all belonging to the extreme Jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL or ISIS). There were no casualties on the Turkish side.

IN UNPRECEDENTED MOVE TURKISH JETS DESTROY ISIS CONVOY IN SYRIA AFTER ITS MILITARY COMES UNDER FIRE | altahrir, news of Islam, Muslims, Arab Spring and special Palestine; SYRIA NEWS | Peter Clifford Online – 1/30/2014.

I don’t know whose using money to sew so much chaos in the middle east, but now pressured by an immense refugee challenge, the want to get at its sources all around may be quite high.

It appears yesterday’s strike by Turkey involved a clear tit-for-tat exchange of fire, but the Turkish military, which has traded with Israel for its hardware, more a while ago, I’m sure less today, and has NATO cooperation in the region, is the more formidable power.

Perhaps the Turks have also had enough of “spillover” from Syria’s civil war.

Additional Reference

Israel ‘cuts arms sales to Turkey’ – UPI.com – 4/26/2010.

Israel supplies Turkey with military equipment for first time since Gaza flotilla – Diplomacy & Defense Israel News | Haaretz – 2/18/2013.

# # #

Yarmouk Camp – Played for Human Shields and Siege

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Politics, Syria

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ethics, morality, political, political psychology, politics, refugees, starvation, war crimes, Yarmouk Camp

‫ weeping parents, and anger. Yarmouk refugee camp in the funeral of the martyrs of hunger. 11-1-2014 ‬ – YouTube

On YouTube, “TeachESL” noted (two days ago), “the man at 0:53 says: “We do not want Palestine or something. We want them to get us out here. We ask for Israeli citizenship, we do not want the right of return, we have sold Palestine. We do not even know anything about Palestine! We do not want Mahmoud Abbas. There are 1 billion and 300 million Muslims and they can do nothing! If there were even a single Israeli child in the Yarmuk camp, the problem would have been solved a long time ago.”

______

So what may the Jews do, whether of Israel or the Diaspora?

I know: these are the sworn enemies of Israel, determined to overlook the defeat of Arab armies in a war of annihilation (of the Jews, period) in 1948; brainwashed to believe the Land of Israel magically, innately Arab when the ground itself tells of the continuance presence of Jewry on the land for more than 3,000 years and beyond; and trained by anti-Semitic image, lies (like “The Protocols”), by bombastic and narcissistic and manipulative power to hate Jews and erase Judaism, which is more a world to discover than extinguish, and a good and great world at that.  And yet there they are, the residents of Yarmouk Camp, trapped between a tyrant and his equally tyrannical opponents.

Neither Bashar al-Assad nor al-Nusra could give a flying crap about what they — no one else, not Israelis, not Russians, not Americans, God forbid — are doing to the humanity they have overrun and subjugated for the amusement of their own immense and unbridled egos.

Jews have stood against that kind of tyranny since the Exodus from Egypt, and whether in fact or in our heads makes no difference.

Jewish ethical universalism, whether joined by hand-wringing Christians or forward-looking Islamic Humanists, cannot today — and as too many among the powerful may do — look away from Yarmouk Camp.

The twisted rhetoric of The Palestine Chronicle (the fulcrum for that in language behavior splits loyalty away from integrity) notes the following:

There is no doubt that the Yarmoukian Palestinians are in Syria because of a historic injustice imposed upon them by a settler-colonial enemy that does not spare any effort to exacerbate their suffering and prolong their exile. However, this indisputable historic occurrence should not blind us from the fact that independent of what Israel has planned to increase Palestinian suffering, the party responsible for the current crisis (and here I must reiterate my emphasis on the word ‘current’) is the brutal and inhuman Syrian regime and its leader Bashar El-Assad.

How Not to Be in Solidarity with Palestinian Refugees in Yarmouk? | Palestine Chronicle – 1/17/2014.

It’s good to see someone wising up.

It’s late in the day but welcomed, if with a grain of salt, nonetheless.

* * *

In the Yarmouk camp, more than 55 people have died from hunger and the majority of children are suffering from malnutrition, according to Abdullah al-Khatib, a Palestinian activist living there. Most people are consuming soup made from water and spices, Khatib said, and some are reportedly eating grass for survival.

Starving to death in Syria’s Yarmouk camp – Features – Al Jazeera English – 1/29/2014.

Reminder: Russian President Vladimir Putin means to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in business (possibly unless or until he runs out of money or his sponsor in Tehran, that kindly smiling white bearded sower of sorrows, does — and that’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future).

* * *

I have long believed that that I’d engage Gideon Levy’s discourse in its disingenuous Israel-bashing facet, and so I might do so here with suggestion that the IDF — who else? — magically and miraculously transport the Yarmouk Camp to someplace peaceful like Judea and Samaria.

Bar’el was restrained as he referred to Yarmouk as resembling a World War II ghetto, and even this description fell on deaf ears. Only 20,000 people remain in the camp, where 150,000 lived before the civil war. Only the weak and helpless remain – to live in destruction under siege. The rest have suffered their second expulsion . . . . After the terror of Yarmouk, Israel should show a measure of humanity. It should try to save the 20,000 besieged residents – natives of this land, remember – and declare that its gates are open to them to reunite with their families.

Israel, save the Palestinians in Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp – Opinion Israel News | Haaretz – 1/22/2014.

Nonetheless, disagree though we may — and as may the Yarmouk Camp resident quoted — we are all standing by watching a war crime in the making.

* * *

What is remarkable is that the save Yarmouk initiative has infiltrated all fields and has been adopted and picked up by political groups that have not seen eye to eye.

Crisis in Yarmouk camp in Syria unites Palestinians – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East – 1/27/2014.

I’ll say!

Although the Al-Monitor article confines itself to telling of the in-solidarity feelings inspired between Fatah and Hamas and pro-Palestinian groups, that I’ve played up this story tells that our barriers may not be as strong as we believe.

Crime is crime.

Yarmouk surviving off stray animals: resident | Al Akhbar English – 1/29/2014.

20,000 people in Yarmouk camp face starvation | GulfNews.com – 1/29/2014.

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

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Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
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Thucydides
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Milan Kundera
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What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

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In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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