What to expect after Ukraine is defeated
I'm skeptical of analysts' expectations for Ukraine following its defeat. It seems unlikely that ceding even a modest amount of territory to NATO could permit denazification and demilitarization.
NO AGREEMENT COULD BE REACHED. THE WORD "KHARKOV" CAME FROM LAVROV'S MOUTH: NOW "FOLLOW THE NUMBERS"
There is reason to believe that the next window of opportunity to end the conflict in Ukraine peacefully will open after the November elections in the United States. Now there is no agreement. Well, big things await Russia in Ukraine. “Kharkov plays an important role here,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov previously noted. To understand everything, just “follow the numbers.”
[Kharkov is important because it is the next oblast that Russia wants to liberate. This is urgent because almost since the beginning of the war, the Ukronazis have been striking and shelling civilians in areas close to the border, notably Belgorod and Bryansk, and the Ukies have been using Kharkov as the main bridgehead for these terrorist attacks. Not only that, Kharkov is deemed Russian territory and is populated by pro-Russians yearning to be liberated. In fact, shortly after the Russians entered Ukraine, they were able to take Kharkov but were later forced to cede it back to Kiev. Thus it is a priority target]
The presidents spoke for about four hours
The numbers suggest that big politics is happening behind the scenes. As columnist Sergei Latyshev noted, there are a lot of facts, but very few that are important for understanding this or that issue. First, let's trace the chronology.
On April 11, the Verkhovna Rada [upper chamber of parliament] of Ukraine, after much delay and discussion, adopted a completely draconian law on mobilization in the second reading. It means total war in conditions when US aid to Kyiv was almost “frozen”, and the Europeans made it clear that they were able to more or less satisfactorily supply Kyiv without the Americans for only a few months. [But let’s not forget that Ukraine is almost without electrical power due to Russian air strikes]
At the same time, on April 11-12, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko unexpectedly arrived in Moscow. In the format of a working lunch, he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin for about four hours extemporaneously.
Based on a number of indirect signs, Tsargrad suggested that Moscow had received some proposals from Washington to end the Ukrainian conflict. The Russian President had to urgently discuss them with Lukashenko - with his closest ally.
There is a possibility that this was a response to some proposals from Moscow, drawn up in the spirit of the lecture by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev “Geographical and Strategic Borders” at the “Knowledge First” marathon on March 4. The results of the negotiations on the most pressing issue were not reported. [Medvedev held this lecture on the occasion of the World Youth Festival in Sirius, Russia]
But already on April 16, Zelensky signed a law that extremely tightened the mobilization procedure in the country and meant war to the last Ukrainian. There are all the signs that Ukraine has turned into a terrorist state - UGIL, this is a huge Idlib with nuclear ambitions and a very powerful army. [The author is referring to the capture of Idlib, Syria, by ISIS and Al-Nusra terrorists in Oct, 2014 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-attack-on-idlib-assad-s-army-leaders-slaughtered-as-jihadists-storm-syria-s-second-city-9822023.html] Only one conclusion can be drawn from this: we do not negotiate with terrorists - we destroy them.
Thus, Russia not only gets rid of the terrible threat created by the West at its border, but also frees Ukrainians from the terrorists who took them hostage. Both goals are worth the price. Moreover, no one else can do this except us. When the terrorists are defeated, Russia will present their terrible crimes to the world. Russophobic Idlib in Ukraine must be ended, and as quickly as possible. Otherwise, it will be bad not only for us.
"We must continue the SMO [special military operation]"
Then on April 19, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave a long interview to radio stations Sputnik, Moscow Speaks and KP [Komsomolskaya Pravda]. He said that there would be no pause in hostilities with Ukraine in the event of negotiations, that the realities of the conflict had become “significantly different.” This was not just a hint that there will be no new Istanbul. [Referring to the Istanbul negotiations in March 2022 that were successful but immediately sabotaged when Boris Johson made an unexpected trip to Kiev and talked Zelensky into rejecting the resulting agreement and continuing the massacre of Ukrainian men on the battlefield]
The Russian Foreign Minister quoted Putin's answer to the question of how to ensure the safety of our lands. And then the word “Kharkov” came from Lavrov’s lips.
We need to move back the line from which they can hit us. As I understand it, Kharkov plays an important role here. We are completely convinced that we must continue the SMO, Sergei Lavrov snapped. [Yes, Lavrov was referring to the “sanitary zone” – buffer zone – proposed by Putin, or in other words, a Russian-controlled zone at the border that would eliminate the Ukrainian bridgehead used to attack Russia. This would be accomplished by moving the border back toward the Lugansk People’s Republic]
The minister said the word “Kharkov” and... did not stop there. He emphasized that he “doesn’t know” what will happen to Western Ukraine, but “originally Russian Ukraine is not discussed.” Who is it not discussed with? It's clear with whom. [Like Kharkov, western Ukraine can also be used as a “sanitary zone” to keep Russian territory safely away from NATO. I refuse to believe that Russia will just naively turn over this “rump state” to the Russophobic Poland. In tomorrow’s issue I will discuss the realistic options that Russia can use to keep western Ukraine as a buffer zone while offering Poland some limited opportunity to administer it in part, possibly as an autonomous region, but in collaboration with Russia. There could be carrrots and sticks]
This position is very consonant with the theses from Medvedev’s lecture in Sirius: the geopolitical space of Russia has been indivisible since the times of the ancient Russian state. Here are its main meanings.
1. The West’s desire to shrink Russia to “within the boundaries of the Moscow Principality” is a “deliberately unattainable” goal.
2. “The territories on both banks [both east and west] of the Dnieper are an integral part of the Russian strategic historical borders.”
3. “Integral parts” of the Russian Empire “must return home.” "Ukraine is, of course, Russia." The alternative concept "must disappear forever."
Insert: If we go by the colors of the various oblasts in the map behind Medvedev, it would appear as if Russia is willing to cede much of the West to Poland, ie, Zhytomyr, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv (Lwów in Polish), Ternopol, Rivne, Lutsk and Khmelnitsky. Uzhgorod would go to Hungary and Chernovtsy to Romania. On the other hand, this could be merely a false offer to placate NATO for the time being. I am highly skeptical about the return of these oblasts to NATO countries because Putin promised denazification, and if Russia cedes control, then denazification becomes problematic. But there are alternatives.
4. The special military operation is “a forced, but quite effective response to the Russophobic policy of the Bandera regime and the collective West,” we will certainly bring it “to its logical end, to the final victory, to the surrender of the neo-Nazis.”
5. Negotiations on Ukraine are possible not with the current authorities in Kyiv, but only “with some new people... when they recognize the realities that have developed on the ground,” since “everyone understands perfectly well that we will never give up our lands." [Russia has very attractive carrots and some ugly sticks for negotiating]
"This is much better than unconditional defeat"
This [apparently referring to unconditional defeat] was probably the maximum program brought to the attention of the United States by Russia, which Washington was not happy with. For this would be a monstrous strategic defeat, the end of American hegemony, a 100 times stronger blow to the Democrats on the eve of the elections than the shameful US flight from Afghanistan. [my emphasis]
Thus, now it was not possible to reach an agreement.
The Americans said “no” and, apparently, did not even bargain much. Judging by the dates of the above facts, the exchange of views ceased on April 13-14. And it became finally clear that by the end of the year, until the presidential elections in the United States are over, the war in Ukraine will continue and gain momentum. That is, the next window of opportunity to end the war peacefully will open after the November elections in the United States.
This was to be expected, because even the “best” of Americans - former and possibly future President Donald Trump - was rumored to be ready to “cede” to Russia only... Crimea and Donbass without being “devoured” for his lack of patriotism by his own Republicans and the globalist elite.
Meanwhile, the Western press states that the return of Ukraine to the borders that existed before the outbreak of the military conflict is unrealistic. They even cite the “most profitable” scenario for Russia’s enemy.
As the New York Times writes, "the most realistic scenario for Ukraine is probably not a return to pre-war borders - the country will be smaller but able to hold on to most of its territory and then integrate economically and strategically into Europe." [This notion of Ukraine holding on to “most of its territory” is a fantasy. Russia will not likely cede enough territory to enable Ukraine to “integrate into Europe” in any way because integration would just add more territory to NATO and would block Russia’s goals of denazification and demilitarization]
“This is much better than an unconditional defeat,” the journalists sum up. [But of course, these fools are expecting that there will still be a “Ukraine” after the war]
It is also noted that many experts are skeptical about the idea of returning Donbass and Crimea, which became Russian regions following the results of the autumn referendums of 2022, under the control of Kiev, “especially after the disappointing counter-offensive last year.” Even new “help” from the West to Kyiv will not help restrain the advance of Russian troops, foreign journalists believe.
End translation
What will happen to Western Ukraine after Ukraine is defeated?
In tomorrow’s issue let us look at a few real options for Russia.
What Russia does with the rump state will crucially impact the future of the world!
**
Here’s your air strike update for April 23, 2014
Translation with my notes in bold and in [brackets]
April 23, 2024
DMITRY KUNTSOV
WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE EXPLOSIONS AND STRIKES ON ODESSA AND KHARKOV ON APRIL 23: WHAT ARE THE TARGETS, WHAT WAS HIT?
In Odessa [city] and the Odessa oblast, the targets were the port infrastructure, where ships with foreign weapons were supposed to arrive. In Kharkov yesterday, a TV tower with equipment from the Armed Forces of Ukraine was destroyed, and explosions were heard at night. We tell you everything that is known about the attacks on Odessa and Kharkov on April 23.
Russia launched a series of targeted attacks on the military and port infrastructure of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Odessa oblast, as confirmed by Ukrainian sources. Civilian objects were damaged as a result of incorrect operation of the air defense of the Kyiv regime.
Russian drones were aimed “at industrial and port infrastructure,” but “15 out of 16” were shot down “over the Odessa and Nikolaev oblasts,” the Ukrainian Armed Forces claim. [Probably an exaggeration] Videos of the arrival at the location of the Ukrainian air defense in the vicinity of Odessa are also published in Ukrainian public pages.
Thus, the Ukrainian armed forces themselves take responsibility for the injured people and broken houses. A video has appeared on the Internet, reportedly of a strike in the area from which the air defense was firing in Odessa.
Video of "Shahed" falling in Odessa after being shot down by machine gun fire. [The disinformation specialists in the Ukie media routinely call the Russian drones Shaheds, insinuating that Russia gets all its drones from Iran] Local publics report that residential buildings were damaged by drone debris.
More images from Odessa last night. A large fire can be seen throughout the area that was hit.
15 out of 16 UAVs were eliminated over Ukraine last night. In the Odessa oblast, industrial and port infrastructure was attacked. In Odessa itself, houses, shops, and infrastructure were damaged. Nine people were injured, including four children.
According to underground resistance in Ukraine from coordinator Sergei Lebedev:
“In Odessa, the port was struck at night - the whole city saw it, the light was so intense, and in Tairov the neighbors talk about the air defenses, which also burned until dawn, it was really pleasant; I was surprised by the start of the raid: the announcement of the alarm coincided with the arrival of the drone? Or rockets? But this is not the main thing, the main thing is the result.”
“They write that the air defense unit has left. Thus, they hit it with a Geran [Russian made drones], but it flew very low, in the private sector it flew almost over the roofs. And after the initial bang, there was also detonation, about a dozen explosions.”
A series of explosions occurred in Kharkov last night.
Local resources report arrivals in the area of the city tractor plant - a series of powerful detonations were heard in one of the hangars, and later a fire started. Apparently, at the plant there was a warehouse with ammunition from the Ukrainian army, which exploded triumphantly, notifying the entire city of the effective work of the Russian Armed Forces. It was with these shells that the Ukrainian Armed Forces had launched strikes on the Russian border. Yesterday, the television broadcast tower was destroyed.
Local authorities report that an “infrastructure facility” has been damaged. Footage from the scene shows that the television tower was destroyed. Footage of a TV tower falling in Kharkov. The telethon is disabled. Country 404. Due to problems with power supply, the metro was suspended. The city metro cannot yet say when the subway will be restored.
What remains of the TV tower in Kharkov, where problems with the TV signal persist into the night. Also in the evening there were already routine strikes on the Kharkov Tank Plant. Secondary detonations are reported, indicating damage to an ammunition depot on the premises of the enterprise. At the same time, active rumors continue about the imminent intensification of hostilities in the north of the Kharkov and Sumy oblasts. Nevertheless, the situation there has not yet gone beyond the usual cross-border shelling. But that's it for now.
Videos
Odessa
https://t.me/XU_kraine/53895?single
**
https://thecradle.co/articles/hezbollah-hits-army-hq-deep-inside-israel
Hezbollah hits army HQ deep inside Israel
The Islamic resistance used decoy and explosive drones to target the base near the coastal city of Acre
APR 23, 2024
Hezbollah attacked the headquarters of the Israeli army's Golani Brigade with drones on 23 April, in the deepest strike within Israel since the start of the war on 8 October, Al-Mayadeen reported.
The Lebanese resistance group confirmed that the air attack “targeted the headquarters of the Golani Brigade and the headquarters of Egoz Unit 621 in the Sharaga barracks, north of the occupied city of Akka, and the drones hit their targets accurately.”
Al-Mayadeen's correspondent confirmed that the attack deep on the Israeli coast involved launching a swarm of decoy and explosive drones that successfully hit their target.
More here
**
Israeli genocide continues, thanks to US weapons and money.
https://elranchorvpark.us/elra/c0a7591od30/
283 bodies recovered from Israeli-made mass grave at Nasser Hospital
POSTED ON APRIL 22, 2024 BY VASELINE
The Israeli occupation must be held accountable for the deliberate crimes it commits against Palestinians in Gaza, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent says.
283 bodies recovered from Israeli-made mass grave at Nasser Hospital
Palestinian health workers remove bodies from a mass grave on the grounds of the Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Younis (Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg)
The Gaza Civil Defense announced today that 283 bodies of martyrs have been recovered from the Israeli-made mass grave at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis since the withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from the area.
There is clear evidence of field executions carried out by the IOF at the Nasser Medical Complex, it stressed in its statement.
**
Our thanks to JS for this:
Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Is a World Historical Crime
When Jews were being slaughtered by the Nazis, the world turned away. Now, the world has awakened to Israel’s crimes. In a 1979 interview, renowned Israeli dissident, Hebrew University chemistry professor Israel Shahak pointed out that no Holocaust survivor had ever been a member of the Israeli government. Israel frequently uses the Holocaust to justify its actions in the Palestinian territories. This is a sacrilege, while one of history’s great crimes is being committed, and this member of the class of 1958 knows it.
by ELLEN CANTAROW, The Nation, 17 April2024
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-israel-genocide-philadelphia/
APRIL 17, 2024
Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Is a World Historical Crime
[link: https://www.diwaninc.com/uncategorized/israels-genocide-in-gaza-is-a-world-historical-crime/]
When Jews were being slaughtered by the Nazis, the world turned away. Now, the world has awakened to Israel’s crimes.
ELLEN CANTAROW
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com entitled Dead on Arrival: Israel’s Blowback Genocide.
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Words can’t express the horrors of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. To actually feel the nightmare, you would have to be there under the bombs, fleeing with Palestinians desperately seeking a safe place that doesn’t exist; seeing building after building destroyed; treading through blood in one of the few, only partially standing hospitals; and witnessing children and other patients sprawled on hospital floors, limbs amputated without anesthesia (Israel having blocked all medical supplies).
It has taken the Jewish state’s savagery to break decades of silence about its history of crimes against humanity. US military historian Robert Pape has called the onslaught against Gaza “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.” Former UN assistant secretary general for human rights Andrew Gilmour has said that we are witnessing “probably the highest kill rate of any military…since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.”
An Unsent Letter
Palestine is finally an international cause. Outrage surges via global demonstrations. Israel has become a pariah in the Global South. In the United States, organizations including A Jewish Voice for Peace, Code Pink, and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights have been marching against the horrors now underway.
Within this charged atmosphere, the 66th reunion of my 1958 Philadelphia High School for Girls graduating class will take place in June 2024. Girls’ High was that city’s leading academic public high school of my time, together with its brother school, Central High (attended by Noam Chomsky). It was stellar not only for its academic excellence but for its integration of Black and white students at a time of deep segregation elsewhere. My mother, who graduated from Girls’ High in 1924, sent me there because of its policy of racial inclusiveness.
I recently began preparing an open letter to my classmates about the genocide in Gaza and the ongoing settler pogroms of ethnic cleansing on the West Bank—houses burned, olive trees uprooted, Palestinians made to flee. Ours is the prototypical Zionist generation and I particularly wanted to address my former classmates, some of whom still cling stubbornly to their allegiance to Israel. I was told, however, that there wouldn’t be time to read the letter at our reunion which lasts just a few afternoon hours. What follows, then, is based on the letter I was preparing to read then, had the time been available.
Zionism and the Six-Day War
In the early 1950s, my best childhood friend collected money to plant trees in Israel. At one point, her synagogue, which sponsored that project, needed “straight pins.” Somehow, I heard “shraypins” instead, a mysterious Hebrew word my imagination concocted and that her friends would find funny indeed. Zionism, in other words, was simply foreign to me.
The first time I recall a thrill from it came right after Israel’s triumph in the 1967 Six-Day War. I was then actively involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement on my graduate school campus and, on a trip to Paris that year, didn’t want to identify as American. I spoke French quite well and not being able to tell from my slight accent that I was an American, someone asked me where I was from. Searching for a nationality I wouldn’t be ashamed of, I blurted out that I was an “Israelite.”
“Oh, your people!” he exclaimed. “Such a small people, but such a brave people!” For the first time, I felt deeply proud of being Jewish, not the sort of Jew who had (to my mind) cowered in a ghettoized Europe, but a strong, triumphant Jew with a powerful army. Soon after, my husband told me about Israel’s history—its 1948 expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs and its exploitation of the territories it illegally occupied after the 1967 war. Not long after that, I read Noam Chomsky’s first book about Israeli settler-colonialism, Peace in the Middle East?, and never looked back.
Settler Violence in the 1970s
My husband, Louis Kampf, taught in the humanities department of MIT. Chomsky was a colleague and became a good friend. It was under his influence that, in 1979, I first went to Israel and visited the occupied West Bank. I had an assignment to write about Israeli women—I was then a feminist columnist for Cambridge’s The Real Paper—and also agreed to do pieces for New York’s Village Voice and Liberation magazine. For the Voice I wrote about Gush Emunim—the Bloc of the Faithful, the ancestor of the Jewish settlers’ movement. For Liberation, I wrote about a Palestinian village, Halhul, two of whose teenagers were murdered by Israeli settlers from nearby Kiryat Arba.
I stayed in Kiryat Arba, thanks to a distant cousin of my husband’s who got me there in an undercover fashion. One of my interviewees assured me that she believed in “a great chain of being,” Jews on top, all other humans below, with Arabs at the very bottom, just before animals, vegetables, and minerals. Her husband referred to the Talmudic injunction to “rise and kill first.” Another settler assured me that the Arabs could stay on the West
Muhammad Milhem, Halhul’s mayor, led me to the highest hill in his village and, pointing toward Kiryat Arba, said, “This is a cancer in our midst.” I wonder if he realized how tragically prophetic his words would prove to be.
Genocide in the 2020s
Since October 8, I’ve been riveted by the genocide in Gaza being perpetrated by the Israeli military, which had prepared for it in a retrospectively unsettling fashion by decades of dehumanizing Palestinians. Hamas clearly committed war crimes on October 7, but international rules still govern war. A nation’s reprisal for acts against its population must still be proportional to the original crime, which Israel’s war on Gaza isn’t—not faintly! Instead, it’s been distinctly genocidal. On March 28, Reuters reported that, according to Gaza’s health ministry, at least 32,552 Palestinians had been killed and 74,980 injured in Israel’s post-October 7 military offensive in the Gaza Strip, while more than 7,000 Gazans are missing, many likely buried under the rubble.
Israel has cut off most food and water to the region. A March 18 Oxfam press release announced that Gaza hunger figures are the “worst on record.” The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that famine, a rare and catastrophic circumstance, is imminent. Usually caused by extreme natural events, the famine in Gaza is wholly human-made. Famine leaves the body prone to all sorts of horrendous diseases. Reports NPR:
In Gaza, the World Health Organization warns that illness may ultimately kill more people than Israel’s offensive. Infectious diseases are “soaring,” says the WHO. Over 100,000 cases of diarrhea have been reported, with rates among children 25 times higher than before the war.
Were I able to show my classmates scenes from the hell that is now the Gaza Strip, where would I begin? Would it be the infant whose face was partially blown off by an Israeli strike? Would it be the 12-year-old with burns over 70 percent of his body? Would it be the countless unarmed civilians, including children, shot in the head and upper body with murderous intent? Would it be a baby with both legs amputated, who will never learn to walk?
Dr. Yasser Khan, an ophthalmologist specializing in eyelid and facial plastic and reconstructive surgery, spent 10 days in Gaza and, in an interview with a reporter from The Intercept, described what he had seen in the European Gaza Hospital, now barely functioning, where 35,000 people were reportedly sheltering. People were cooking in the hallways of a building in which no sterile environment was possible because there was nothing with which to sterilize. The medical workers were still often performing 14 or 15 amputations on children daily. Khan saw patients like an eight-year-old girl, rescued from the rubble with a fractured leg, all of whose family—mother, father, aunts, uncles—was wiped out. And there are thousands more like her, suffering from trauma that coming generations will undoubtedly inherit. They have given rise to a new acronym: WCNSF, or Wounded Child No Surviving Family. Khan removed the eyes of patients whose faces had been damaged by shrapnel, leaving an appearance he dubbed “shrapnel face.”
Aid Workers Targeted
I would have wanted to remind my classmates that Israel has frequently targeted aid workers, killing seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) employees in early April. The Israelis claimed that it was an accident and fired the officers it held responsible. But chef José Andrés, WCK founder, insisted that the attack was purposeful, that Israel had targeted the aid convoy “car by car.”
“This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place,” Andrés said. “This was over 1.5, 1.8 kilometers, with a very defined humanitarian convoy that had signs in the top, in the roof, a very colorful logo that we are obviously very proud of. It’s very clear who we are and what we do.”
“WCK is not just any relief organization,” wrote Jack Mirkinson in The Nation magazine. “Andrés is a global celebrity with ties to the international political establishment. WCK had been working closely with the Israeli government both in Gaza and in Israel proper. It would be difficult to think of a more mainstream, well-connected group.” It was as if Israel were showing off, Mirkinson added, “flaunting its ability to cross every known line of international humanitarian law and get away with it.”
International Court of Justice Ruling
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on January 26 that Israel’s slaughter in Gaza is a plausible case of genocide and additional testimony from Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Palestine, “Anatomy of a Genocide,” only emphasized that point, given how little is left but rubble in so much of Gaza. The majority of its homes no longer exist, nor do its schools, universities, libraries, or music conservatories.
Violating the 49th Geneva Convention, Israel has fired on ambulances and killed more than 685 health workers, while wounding about 900 of them. It has destroyed all but a few of Gaza’s 36 formerly flourishing hospitals, claiming that Hamas fighters are hiding in tunnels under the buildings. Against the civilian population Israel has used weapons like white phosphorous, which burns to the bone and cannot be easily extinguished. In the past, the Israeli military has been known for using Gaza as a laboratory for weapons experiments and the same is true of the current round of fighting.
Israel’s “war” against Gaza did not, of course, start on October 7. In 2006, after Gazans elected Hamas to govern them, Israel imposed a siege on the Strip. As lawyer Dov Weisglass, then an aide to the prime minister, said at the time, he wanted to keep Gazans just below starvation level—not enough to kill them, but not enough to fill them either. The present siege has turned Gaza into what’s been called the largest open-air prison on earth, a virtual concentration camp. A UN commentator described this as “possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times.” Such conditions helped produce the October attack.
Occupying the West Bank since 1967, Israel has distinctly contravened international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention stipulates that “the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.” Israel, however, has settled about 700,000 Israeli Jews in the West Bank. Once upon a time, there was indeed room for a separate Palestinian state. No more.
Arabs to the Gas Chambers
When I visited the West Bank city of Hebron in the 1980s, I saw graffiti on walls that proclaimed: “ARABS TO THE GAS CHAMBERS.” Back then, the renowned Israeli public intellectual Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned that Israel was turning its soldiers into Judeonazis. Recent YouTube videos of soldiers mocking their victims bear out his prophecy. Fascism is now pervasive in Israel. There are courageous exceptions, like journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, who write for the newspaper Haaretz, and the group Combatants for Peace. But all too many Israelis have supported their country’s assault on Gaza, or even wanted something worse. I wish I could have told my classmates that, should they care about Israel, it’s their responsibility to speak out now.
The genocide in Gaza has been enabled, of course, by President Biden, who continues to send billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry, including devastating 2,000-pound bombs, to Israel. Without those arms, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu couldn’t be acting as it is. While it purports to be searching for and killing Hamas perpetrators of the October 7 atrocities, it’s actually gone to war against the entire population of Gaza. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe sees it as “a massive operation of killing, of ethnic cleansing of depopulation.”
When Jews were being slaughtered by the Nazis, the world turned away. Now, the world has awakened to Israel’s crimes. Many American Jews, like those in A Jewish Voice for Peace (whose demonstrations I’ve attended) are indeed speaking out.
It’s often asked how a people who suffered so much could cause such suffering. In fact, almost all the survivors of the Holocaust are dead. Obviously, none of the perpetrators of the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank were in European concentration camps. In a 1979 interview, renowned Israeli dissident, Hebrew University chemistry professor Israel Shahak pointed out that no Holocaust survivor had ever been a member of the Israeli government. Israel frequently uses the Holocaust to justify its actions in the Palestinian territories. This is a sacrilege, while one of history’s great crimes is being committed, and this member of the class of 1958 knows it.
Ellen Cantarow
Ellen Cantarow, musician and writer, reported from the West Bank and Israel during the 1980s for the Village Voice, Mother Jones, Grand Street and other publications. She has visited and written about the region periodically since 2000.
**
Translation with my notes in bold and in [brackets]
الأردن في خدمة الأجندة الأميركية! (alkhanadeq.org.lb)
Tuesday 23 April 2024 02:29
Jordan is in the service of the American agenda!
We cannot talk about the role played by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan at this particular stage in isolation from what is happening in Palestine, especially the official role represented by King Abdullah II and the Jordanian government, knowing that the Speaker of the Jordanian People’s Assembly, Ahmed Al-Safadi, had stated on the 17th of Last November, ten days after the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, that the Zionists are the killers of innocents, and they are the ones who should be described as ISIS, and he said that they are misleading world opinion with fabricated pictures, videos, and narratives. A weak statement that is not at the level of the event, and includes a lot of caution, especially since he ended it by glorifying the role of the king, who repeatedly warned of the necessity of giving the Palestinians their rights. [King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein is a two-faced scumbag, traitor to the Palestinian cause. In other words, pro-genocide]
But the real position was expressed by the Jordanian people when they announced their anger at the House of Representatives, especially since Parliament was late in responding to the street. There were individual objections from within Parliament to the way the government worked, and this was expressed by MP Khalil Attiya, who wondered about the benefit of the peace agreements and treaties concluded between Jordan and the occupying entity, if they were not effective in such circumstances. He actually called it the occupying entity, and asked: “Why has Jordanian aid not entered Gaza yet? And why is the Jordanian military hospital in Gaza being targeted?”
The questions that Attiya asked still remain today, and after more than six months of aggression and genocidal massacres against the Palestinians in Gaza as well as in the West Bank, the Zionist attacks on the Palestinian camps in the West Bank have doubled, and from this point we can truly ask about the future role that Jordan will play in this field, especially since it extends a helping hand and assistance to the Israelis through the Emirati-Jordanian-Israeli land line, and also openly participated in striking Iranian missiles and drones heading towards Israel in the service of the Americans and the Zionists.
After a historical review of the emergence of the Emirate of Transjordan and its role, which was blessed by Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister after and during World War II, and in his glorification of Prince Abdullah, who became king in 1949 after playing the suspicious role alongside the Egyptian King Farouk, in understanding the true role of the Emirate, in forming a protection barrier for the new entity “Israel”. Here we cannot resist the temptation to repeat the scandals committed by Prince Abdullah bin Al Hussein by receiving the sum of one billion dollars at the time as a reward for the sale of Palestine, in addition to giving Jordan the right to manage Islamic endowments in Palestine, and abandoning support for the revolutionaries and fighters even with ammunition during the liberation war from the Zionist gangs, and this is what Mufti Sheikh Amin Al-Husseini exposed him at the time, and Prince Abdullah was not killed during his prayers or his visit to Al-Aqsa. Four days before the declaration of the State of “Israel”, he was having dinner with Golda Meir in Raghadan Palace, and less than a month after Stern and the Haganah committed the terrible Deir Yassin massacre, and it happened on the day the encounter occurred when the Palmach gang occupied Safed on May 11, 1948.
The Kingdom has a hideous history of enabling the Zionists to seize not only historical Palestine, but even the Jordanian Wadi Araba, over which the Zionists have complete authority after the 1994 Wadi Araba Agreement. The agreement shackled Jordan and made it a protective wall for the entity [Israel] along a 335 km border with Palestine, while Lebanon’s borders, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Information, with northern Palestine are only about 100 km. Can we imagine what these borders could do if they were opened to the resistance and to smuggle medicine, food and weapons to the steadfast and resistant Palestinians in their lands? But instead, Jordan brags about the role of Salma bint Abdullah, the current king, and the Palestinian mother, Queen Rania, in that she brought down four or five marches. In fact, the apple cannot fall far from the tree, according to the English proverb, if the intent of the speech is reached, especially since the mother of the current king is British and he was raised by her.
What is most laughable about the positions of the Jordanian government, which is trying to absorb the anger of the street away from the royal family and the king in Jordan every time it betrays Palestine and its resistance, is what was stated by the Jordanian Foreign Minister, Ayman Al-Safadi, when he said after the Iranian strike on the entity’s sites and airports that the most important thing is that : “Jordan will not be a battlefield for any regional conflict,” and “We will not allow anyone to turn Jordan into a war zone”! Statements that ignited social media sites, especially among Syrians, and everyone wondered about the suspicious role played by decision-makers in Jordan in the war on Syria since 2011, and the hosting of the joint British-American-Saudi-Israeli intelligence MOQ room and in passing ISIS from Iraq across the southern border to Daraa, and Jordan's role in transporting ISIS wounded to Palestine to be treated in occupation field hospitals on the border. Where was Jordan's independence and sovereignty for more than 13 years, and to this day Jordan is still part of the war on Syria, passing money and weapons to the separatists of Suwayda and the Al-Sahja Army [Free Syrian Army — a terrorist organization falsely portrayed in the West as liberators] in the east of the Euphrates, the pride of American industry! Safadi's Jordan can open its airspace, according to the agreements, to the planes and missiles of the American bases there, but not to the missiles of the enemies of America and the entity, specifically the missiles of Ahrar al-Yemen, the Iraqi resistance, Iranian missiles and marches, and everyone who stands against the entity in support of Gaza.
Although Abdullah bin Al-Hussein, King of Jordan, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, President of Egypt, and Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, had an important meeting between them in April of last year, and the most important content of the meeting, according to what was leaked to the press, was that there was a premeditated Zionist plan, i.e. An Israeli-American plan to displace the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, news of which was leaked to the two meetings, and therefore the content of the meeting was about what could be done, and the events in Gaza since the day following the Al-Aqsa flood proved the veracity of the leaks. Today, it seems that the Zionist plan has been put on track for implementation, and therefore there is no real American or even Western opposition to the crimes committed by the entity in order to advance this plan, and Jordan’s role is not really clear about accepting the displacement of Palestinians to it, even though they publicly reject that. What is required by the Americans and “Israelis” is to displace the people of Gaza to Egypt, and as for the people of the West Bank, to Jordan, or at least to camps set up within the borders of the two states, far from the borders with Palestine, until God decides what was already in effect, either through naturalization or immigration to different parts of the world. But it is certain that both Egypt and Jordan are playing the same role they played in 1948. [Displacement of a people, a form of ethnic cleansing, is illegal under UN law]
Jordan follows a "ventilatory" policy by allowing citizens to demonstrate against the Zionist massacres in Gaza, but the leadership represented by the government and the monarchy has followed the same policy since the beginning of the war on Gaza. The masses denounce and demand an end to the massacres and the passage of aid, and the government does the same, and Queen Rania goes out to the Western media for talk about Palestinian rights and the point is over. [But it is all for show because at bottom, the Jordan regime is ON BOARD with the genocide] As for the Jordanian government, during its denunciations, it meets with the Americans and the results are the same as if it were implementing the Zionist demands and needs. The last of them was not and will not be support for the Zionists by passing goods trucks coming from Dubai to the entity state through the Abu Salem crossing, while it stands idly by when the issue comes to passing food. The medicine is for the Palestinians, and therefore it was not surprising that the Iranian and, before that, the Yemeni missiles and marches were confronted. Here the most important question arises: Jordan’s commitment to the American agenda, to serve whom?
This is happening because Jordan is restricted: by the Wadi Araba Agreement, by the possible nature of the Kingdom and the origin of its existence as a state supporting the entity, by awaiting the forced displacement of the people of the West Bank and other Palestinian areas as a possible alternative country, by its dependence on American bases and on sending military aid from Turkey, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, or ...Azerbaijan if the Palestinians revolt and try to repeat the history of Black September 1970 is also possible. We must take into account that the population of Jordan is 42% of its total number, and that the naturalized Palestinians constitute 42% of its total number, and that the hatred between the naturalized Palestinians and the Jordanians, most of whom are from the tribes, was fueled by the monarchy from the moment the Emirate of Transjordan was formed until today.
Writer:
Abeer Bassam
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Medvedev’s caricatures of European leaders
https://t.me/medvedev_telegram/360
In the USA, the paranoid search for aliens is here again. They claim hidden “remains with non-human biology.”
Ha, look at those faces!
These biosubstances are alive!
They are among us!
And these reptilians are clearly not human!
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Bakeries finally reopen in N Gaza as Palestinians continue to fight
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