Author: russmac0818

#144 – (part 3) Zionism  – Reason, Race, Racism, and Reality

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Reason – Zionism Hijacks Judaism

In the 19th century, the ‘Jewish Question’ was a common term used to define the social and civic status of European Jews. German, French, and other European writers, philosophers, and theologians made the Jewish question the subject of public debate. The non-assimilate, orthodox, religious, and cultural European Jewish communities were considered an unappealing appendage of the general population. The inner-city Jews lived in ghettos, and the rural Jews lived in shtetl communities.

Jewish assimilation into society meant abandoning their customs, behavior, traditions, language, and religion to fit in. For some Jews, this was giving up too much for gaining too little. European writers mistakenly reasoned that Jewish refusal to assimilate was because they were a separate race. Their behavior, traits, and character were negative and unchangeable. 

The experts missed their mark. It was in these communities that the Jewish homeland resided. The Torah is what makes the Jewish nation. An individual who willingly accepts the obligations of the Torah and the 613 mitzvot is a Jew. When this happens, the Torah states, ‘Today you have become a nation.’ The acceptance of the Torah ties the Jews together as a spiritual nation. The Jewish homeland is the Torah, and within its borders, the Jews flourish. 

Race

One such misinformed expert journalist was Theodor Herzl, a non-religious Jew who advocated for secular Jewish nationalism and the return to the biblical Jewish homeland of Palestine. His political agenda, Zionism, united secular ideas about constructing a European-style nation for European Jews with the Biblical return of the Jewish people. 

The Herzl idea resonated with both the antisemitic and secular, non-religious, and lower economic communities of Jews. He advocated for the creation of a Jewish race to return to the Biblical land that was rightfully theirs. The genius of the Zionists was to transform Judaism, a religion, into a Jewish race. Within this transformation, the Zionists re-defined the concept of ‘race.’ Orthodox Jews opposed this movement. They believed that the Jewish people were a religious community waiting for a messiah, not a nation in search of a homeland.

What is Race? 

Race is a premise created and accepted by a society based on physical traits, such as skin color, facial features, cultural identities, ancestral backgrounds, or geographic, religious, or national groups. Genetic studies conducted in the late 20th century concluded that no biologically distinct races exist.

Race is a cultural intervention that reflects the attitudes and beliefs imposed on different populations in different social and political eras. The unassimilated Jews checked the criteria for ethnic characteristics associated with race. They were a ‘group of people based on a shared culture, such as language, food, music, dress, values, and beliefs.’

Theodor Herzl called the first Zionist Congress. The Congress met in the Basel Municipal Casino in August of 1897. Herzl intended to establish and formulate Zionist goals. The Congress agreed upon two goals. 1) To establish a home for the Jewish people in Eretz-­Israel and 2) To secure under public law the creation of the Jewish homeland. The Zionists adroitly re-defined Jewish people into the Jewish race and re-purposed ‘under public law’ into an aegis of law.

Racism

The importance of citing under public law needs to be expounded. Public law indicates protection, Ensuring some laws defend the rights of a Jewish homeland. Denial of the legal right to have a Jewish homeland allows the Zionists to challenge opposition as antisemitic. ‘Under Public law’ holds governments and other public bodies accountable for their belief in a Jewish Homeland.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism takes the liberty to draw from the under public law reasoning.  Their definition happens to be the standard that the United States has used to determine hate crimes against Jews. At the Plenary in Bucharest (2016), they listed, “contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to.” An example given by the IHRA is; “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” 

Examining the verbiage of Zionists is revealing. The flat-out gaslighting is extraordinarily clever. For the IHRA to publish a definition that states, “… claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” is nefarious. It is an example of using ambiguous words to complete the dirty work involved in slanderous propaganda.

Zionists use semantics to impose censorship while bullying. Israel is the creation of a homeland for the Jewish race. My statement has nothing to do with racism. The statement is a conclusion based on my reading and research. It includes the phrase, ‘Jewish race’. I suppose my statement is racist within the definition of the grammatical adjective suffix meaning of -ist. (of, relating to, or characteristic of.)

The sheer genius of the ah-ha, ‘you are a racist’, becomes a weapon used to strip the accused of all credibility. Classified as a racist, a word that suddenly appeared in 20th-century English, inflicts social harm and vulnerability, bullying. Most people will cower to avoid this attack. Self-censorship becomes the defensive alternative.

Reality Then

The First Zionist Congress initiatives came to fruition through events, declarations, and mandates. World War I (1914-1918) the demise of the Ottoman Empire. The 1917 Balfour Declaration was a British Empire public statement supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Gaining World legitimacy under public law came to fruition when the British hegemonic empire issued the 1917 Balfour Declaration announcing,’ His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.’ 

The League of Nations, the newly formed World ruling organization, favored the Sykes-Picot Agreement, thus putting Palestine under the rule of the British Mandate (1922). By ignoring the McMahon-Hussain correspondence, which would have allowed for self-determined Arab rule of Palestine and the Middle East, the League of Nations not only added fuel to the fire but skewed the scales of justice in Palestine.

By 1922, the World Zionist Organization had achieved the goals outlined in their 1897 initiatives. Article 2 of the British Mandate (1922) states, “will secure the establishment of a Jewish national home.” The Mandate addressed the inhabitants of Palestine by stating that “irrespective of race and religion, civil and religious rights would be safeguarded.” This essentially reduced the status of Palestinians to that of mere inhabitants within the Jewish self-governing national home. The Palestinians have been stripped of their political power and left without representation.

Zionism re-purpose, re-creation, and re-definition to justify the Jewish national home, Israel. It was a secular movement to grab land the old-fashioned way, a colonial settler project. In 1948, the Zionists created Israel with no defined borders, making it easier to expand. Since 1948, Israel has claimed additional land it accumulated, acquired, or forcibly captured. They legitimize their bellicose actions as ” having a right to defend itself.”

Reality Now

Ethnically cleansing Gaza, Southern Lebanon, and now Syria for further illegal settlement must stop. Among Israel’s self-proclaimed enemies, only one country remains: Iran. Iran is powerful enough and has powerful allies, Russia and China, to have endured the diabolical actions of Israel.

The United States has directly or indirectly disposed of Israeli dictatorial nemeses like Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Bashar al-Assad. It stands to reason Iran would be next. We hear government news feeds and Washington talking heads parroting the evil Iranians. The Israeli-groomed useful idiot will bloviate to complete their overthrow spree. 

The United States is the only country in the world that might have the ability to stop Israeli homicidal campaigns. Pulling financial support and military weapons supply lines is the only way. Unfortunately, In Washington, political decisions are first vetted by the Israeli Lobby. All three branches of government are under the influence of Israel.

Gaza before October 7th was an open-air maximum security prison. Israel controlled the flow of food, water, and construction materials. Washington is similar, it’s an open-air Israeli enclave. Israel controls votes, campaign funds, and lavish perks. Controlling the livelihood of their subjects is what Israel does best.

#143 (Part 2) Zionism – The Road

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Introduction

Part 2 of Zionism explores how 19th-century European economic, religious, social, and political factors nurtured the movement. Part 2 examines how antisemitism, victimhood, and the idea of a Jewish homeland became interconnected with Zionism.

Embarkation

Zionists weaponize victimhood against critics of Israeli misbehavior. “Antisemite” and “holocaust denier” are the most common name-calling responses from Zionists. Both comments are based on victimhood. Victimhood carries leverage and privilege. Zionists used victimhood leverage to influence the 20th Century World powers to create Israel. Privilege creates an audacious attitude to believe that it is fair to grant the land of Palestine a special favor for suffering.

I obligatorily admit that Jewish people have suffered more than their share of expulsions, tragedy, persecution, and mass execution. It is a tragic history that generates empathy. Empathy was not the weapon of choice for the Zionists. The power of victimhood was of more value. Empathy, when transformed into victimhood, packs a political punch mighty enough to silence most critics and sell the idea of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.

Expulsions and Exodus

Expulsions and exodus of Jews are lessons in victimhood we have learned in textbooks, movies, schools, newscasts, and verbose politicians sponsored by Jewish lobbyists. Examples can be found in the Bible and on Wikipedia’s dedicated page that emphasizes this plight. Wikipedia (Expulsions and Exodus of Jews page) lists events such as the Assyrian exile, Babylonian, Roman, Muslim, England, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany, Russia, Yemen, and 70 other Worldly incidents.  

Rulers of sovereign nations grant asylum to foreigners or declare them undesirable, illegal, or personae non grata. The expulsion of groups from their territories became a means of controlling migratory flow and the growing influence of nationalism as an ideology.

In Spain, King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I, the Catholic Monarchs, established the Spanish Inquisition to uphold Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms. The 1492 Alhambra Decree mandated that Jews and Muslims residing in Spain either convert to Catholicism or leave the country within four months. The Decree resulted in thousands of Jews emigrating to other lands such as Portugal, North Africa, the Low Countries of Europe, Italy, and the Ottoman Empire. Four years after The Alhambra Decree, Portugal signed a decree of expulsion of all Muslims and Jews.

The Jews have a rich history of expulsions, but they are not alone as migratory groups. The Dutch, in 1834, expelled 7,500 Dutch Orthodox Protestants. Greek nationalists (1821 -1828) forced some 200,000 Turks to flee from Greece. After the Crimean War of 1853–1856, the Russian Emperor Alexander II (1818–1881) removed a similar number of Tatars. Muslims, by the thousands, were expelled after the Russian pacification of the Caucasus (1859–1864).  In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), 80,000 Germans were expelled from France, while 130,000 French citizens felt forced to leave Alsace-Lorraine. The Ottoman Empire removed Armenians, Kurds, Bulgarians, and Greeks from contested territories. Stalin purged and deported a multitude of ethnic groups to enhance his power over the Soviets.

The Zionists use the history of expulsions and exodus as a tool to imprint upon civilization that the Jewish people are the number one victims. The logic is simple, expulsions and exoduses of Jews contributed to a significant stream of homeless Jewish refugees wandering in Europe, in search of a homeland. It was a vital concept for selling a Jewish homeland project in Palestine.

In Adam Sutcliffe’s, Judaism and the Enlightenment, he explains, “They were an “unassimilable Other.” Many saw the Jews as particular, backward-looking, uprooted nomads, with tribal culture of outmoded customs and religious teaching.” Conclusion; Jewish victimhood suffered at the hands of antisemitic rulers, affords an entitlement to an imposed, created homeland.  

Jewish Assimilation – Western Europe

The 18th-century French Revolution began new ideas of liberty for Jews in France and Germany. It marked an increase in the number of middle‑class German Jews. Jews began to take their place in German and French society. They were able to explore the intellectual opportunities beyond the ghetto.

The Jewish Enlightenment era, the Haskalah (1770s-1880s), encouraged Jews to assimilate into European society in dress, language, manners, and loyalty to the ruling power. Haskalah marked the end of the use of Yiddish and experienced a revival of Hebrew and the adoption of European languages. 

The Haskalah emphasized more secular knowledge and practical training in the trades. Many assimilated Jews of Western Europe became successful financiers, bankers, entrepreneurs, and mechanics laborers. Most financially comfortable Jews opposed the Zionist vision. Jewish citizens of Germany, France, and the U.S.A. had comfortably assimilated into society. These assimilated Jews were unwilling to compromise their cosmopolitan life and national loyalty to move to Palestine to follow a utopian dream.

Some of the more religious Jews believed that assimilation and emancipation created doubts about the future of Judaism in Europe. To them, the indifference or neglect of Jewish law was a concern and a homogenized Jewish homeland became an option.

East Meets West

Many European Jews lived under the Russian Tsar in The Pale of Settlement. The lands of the Russian Empire in what are today Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, and Western Russia. Jews were forbidden to own land or to reside in other parts of the empire.

Russian Tsar Alexander II (1855 – 1881) reformed rules targeting Jews regarding land ownership, restricted travel, special taxes, state employment, and living outside the Pale of Settlement. The cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg became magnets for rural Jews seeking education and employment. Other Jews fled Russia, immigrating to the United States, Western Europe, and Great Britain.  

Economic factors and a rapidly westward-expanding railway network made Jewish migration to Western Europe possible. Newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe possessed few resources and little formal education. They typically competed with many in the host population for low-paying jobs. Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Ashkenazic Jews, many from ghettos with their strange customs and religious practices struck Western European non-Jews as a very different sort than the assimilated Sephardic Jews. (Exiles from the Iberian Peninsula)

This influx of Eastern European Jews appeared to have fueled the negative racial stereotypes existing within Western European culture. Still, only a few looked towards Zionism’s emigration to Palestine. Zionism was something of a pipe dream that few Jews embraced.

After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II (1881), Russian and Eastern European Jews had to deal with reinstated pogroms and restrictions to live and work in the Pale of Settlement. A growing number of Eastern European Jews found common ground with the antisemites. The common ground was a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Marxism – Another Option

Jews who stayed in Eastern Europe and Russia had another option. Jewish students in Russian cities became radicalized with the lure of communism. Their parents, neighbors, friends, and working family members saw socialism as a saving grace. The Jewish Labor Bund movement was founded in 1897 as a socialist organization of the Jewish people in Central and Eastern Europe. It was inspired by Marxist philosophy to fight for equality, religious, cultural, and the right to public education.

The Bund allied with Lenin’s Workers Party and became well-represented in the leadership of the Bolsheviks and the Communist Party. Europeans viewed Bolshevism as a threat that led to anti-Bolshevikism and fed anti-Semitic attitudes. Many accused Europe’s new Jews of being revolutionary socialists and anarchists, blaming them for labor unrest.

Antisemitism

Semitism was coined in 1879 by a Viennese journalist that distinguished Semitic language speakers as a different race than Europeans. He wrote that those who spoke the ancient languages of Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic constituted a racial group. As time passed, Semites became exclusively Jews.

The antisemites reasoned that since Jews were racially different than the European Christians, they lacked country-based loyalty. The 1800s witnessed an expansion of European nationalism. Antisemites argued that Jews did not fit into any European nationalism configuration, many referring to them as the other. For the antisemites, a solution for the other was an exile from Europe to a foreign land. 

David Engel, Professor of Holocaust and Judaic Studies at New York University, summed up the basic paradigm of Jewish nationalism: “[…] growing numbers of Jews suspected that nation-based states would soon become the norm worldwide, perhaps even replacing existing citizen-based states. They figured that in a world of nation-based states, the best way for Jews to maximize their well-being was to claim that they comprised a nation themselves. Therefore, they too have an inalienable right to constitute a state that would define serving the collective needs and interests as one of its fundamental purposes.” Zionism was Jewish nationalism and an option to counter European nationalism.  

Leon Pinsker

Some thought differently. Odessa doctor Leon Pinsker (1821–1891) attributed antisemitism to a fear of Jews. He believed a Jewish phobia existed based upon the fear that the Jews were a nation that existed as an intellectual and spiritual entity. The pogroms in the Russian Empire helped Leon Pinsker gain considerable support.

According to Pinsker legal and political equality could not be solved under these conditions. Only the self-emancipation of the Jews as a nation outside of the European continent in a single consolidated territory could.

The fact that Pinsker used phrases like; a re-nationalization of the Jews and the re-establishment of a territory for the Jews. This verbiage establishes a gaslight narrative of reclaiming land that is “rightfully ours.” This perspective allows for a hierarchical thinking that the targeted land is ours. The reality that the land is and has been inhabited by the Palestinians for centuries becomes inconsequential.

Theodor Herzl – The Official Declaration of Zionism

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) published Der Judenstaat, the Jewish State, proposing a homeland in Palestine. The pamphlet became the catalyst that ignited the Zionist project. His book, Der Judenstaat, and his work in founding the World Zionist Organization helped to earn him the title of the founder of political Zionism.

Herzl, a journalist for a Viennese paper, had been present at the Dreyfus Trial. Herzl witnessed the emotional public involvement, reaction, and outcome surrounding the Dreyfus Affair. The atmosphere he observed in Paris changed his ideology from promoting Jewish assimilation to Zionism.

Alfred Dreyfus was the son of a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer who had risen to the rank of captain in the French military. In 1894, Dreyfus was accused of selling military secrets to Germany. He was arrested, trialed, and convicted by what appeared to be strong evidence. A 12-year controversy ensued, known as the Dreyfus Affair.

The popular French novelist Émile Zola published accusations claiming a French Government cover-up. Some 3,000 supporters, many of high social status, and a host of intellectuals drafted a petition demanding a Dreyfus retrial. Riots and protests ensued and would continue until the Dreyfus retrial.

The new court martial found him guilty again. The President of the Republic would later pardon him. Herzl believed that this trial symbolized the miscarriage of justice and antisemitism that existed in France and Europe. He reasoned that if this happened in France, it could happen anywhere.

The Dreyfus Affair moved Herzl from being a supporter of Jewish assimilation into society to political Zionism. From his observations of the  Dreyfus Affair, Herzl sensed that Jews would never find a safe home in Europe. He concluded, “It has been established, that justice could be refused to a Jew for the sole reason that he was a Jew.”

Zionism – Mixed Popularity

At that time, Jewish assimilation was more popular than Zionism. Many Jews disagreed with Herzl’s assessment. Léon Blum, a Jewish Socialist and former Prime Minister of France, viewed the Dreyfus trial differently. Blum insisted that the Dreyfus affair established the emancipation of the Jews and their right to play a full role as citizens. He believed the Dreyfus Trial allowed a Jew like him to become Prime Minister. 

French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, born Jewish in Lithuania, also had a different perspective on the trial. Levinas often quoted his father: “A country that tears itself apart to defend the honor of a small Jewish captain is somewhere worth going.” Most French citizens believed the affair was a vindication of the civil rights of man and that French citizenship was open to all.

Zionism throughout the 19th Century drew a mixed bag of support. Many Jews had no interest in relocating to a Jewish homeland, while others thought it was an option. Jews from Eastern Europe and Russian Jews experienced a very different social environment than those of the Western European Jews. The former had more of a nationalist militant movement with a victimhood attitude. The latter were more idealistic and social-based.

It is important to note that both East Europe and West Europe experienced the rise of nationalism, antisemitism, and an increasingly hegemonic ideology that excluded Jews. Zionism and Bolshevism offered the European Jews the intellectual, political, and social comforts of belonging.   

Missing from the Zionist and Bolshevist schemes was a call for a unified effort and World approval. In 1917, they received their callings. The Zionist with the Sir Arthur James Balfour Declaration, the British Foreign Secretary promised Great Britain’s support to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The communist calling came with the Russian Revolution of 1917. A Revolution that overthrew the imperial government and placed the Bolsheviks in power.

Zionism – The Road – To Nowhere

#142 Zionism (part 1)- Pluralistic Ignorance

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Pluralistic ignorance is a condition more commonly known as groupthink. Critical and independent reasoning is the 180-degree opposite. The timid and cowards are not the only members tolerant of groupthink beliefs. Pluralistic ignorance has become the ticket for many social clubs. Phil Ochs describes this, “The countess of the social grace who never seems to blink, And she promises to talk to you if you promise not to think. “

Expressing an unpopular narrative may affect your membership in that club. For many, the degrading of social status is too high of a consequence for honesty. Twitter mentality, cancel culture, and wokeness have created a self-censoring environment. Intelligent discord is being stifled. Pluralistic ignorance has reached moronic level and will continue to metastasize unless unbiased education prevails.

History, vetted by the winners, is one-sided and distorts reality. We are taught half the history of the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WW1, WW2, 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Six-Day War, etc. Consequently, we adopt a perjured knowledge about the Loyalists, Confederates, German Empire, Russia, and Palestinians.   

Psychologists agree that pluralistic ignorance can be alleviated through education. I disagree; I think they have it wrong. I believe that our educational system is the leading cause of pluralistic ignorance. Alternative education is available, but it is costly and time-consuming. Time and money vs. easy and free, it’s a no-brainer that pluralistic ignorance wins out. 

The fact is that NATO, an offensive weapon of the West, and Zionism, a racist ideal, are solely responsible for the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Washington could stop both wars today by discontinuing all military support to Ukraine and Israel. Both NATO and Zionism have outlived their nemesis. NATO was created to defend against the Soviet Union. Zionism is a racist response to governmental supported and executed pogroms against Jews. Both of these villains do not exist. Why should we not abandon them?

The answer is that military supremacy and ethnic supremacy have many influential brokers in Washington. The Military Industrial Complex, the weapons supply house for NATO, and the Jewish lobbies, exhorters of Zionist allegiance, are more powerful than the President of the United States and its citizens. 

Pluralistic ignorance of these two entities needs to be unshackled. The world is at stake. Nuclear annihilation in Ukraine and genocidal annihilation in Israel are too much. The ignorance that surrounds NATO is simple. However, the ignorance that surrounds Zionism in Palestine is complex. The unethical strategy of the Zionist colonial settler projects in Palestine is a start.

#141 – Who Is In Charge?

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“We have been gaslit and deceived in the name of democracy” Wall Street Journal

Four years ago, the Democratic machine needed a a loyal and reliable figurehead to advance their version of statism, climate extremism, and wokery. In a frantically move, they mobilized the party, partnered with Covid, and colluded with swing state election officials to get Joe Biden elected. For the past four years, the passively compliant American public has been gaslit and deceived into believing Joe Biden was a capable president. 

This charade was unraveled in the first presidential debate when it became clear when President Biden’s mental acuity was exposed. Biden has done his best to be a loyal Democrat, pushed into service to act as presidential as possible. Now that the jig is up, the same Democratic machine culprits are mobilizing against him. 

If a cognitively impaired president is not pulling strings, then who is? The Wall Street Journal believes that; “Unelected advisers, party hacks, scheming family members, and random hangers-on make the critical daily decisions.” They call it the Washington Village. The WSJ version is short and too general for such an important topic. I will expound upon this issue by expressing my belief of who makes up the Washington Village. 

The visible side of the Village includes all the characters we learned about in school. The politicians and those appointed by politicians make up this facade. The lead actors include the presidents, senators, and representatives. Huddled around the president are cabinet members, ambassadors, and federal judges.

However, the engine that drives this Washington Village includes three groups of power brokers.  The first layer is the unelected bureaucrats, the permanent, administrative components of the federal government. The most prolific are the executive agencies in and around Washington, DC. Politicians number a couple of thousand people, but the unelected bureaucrats account for about three million. 

The second group is the political authorities and intellectuals. These are the “experts” in academia, the think tank crowd, and the selected few “journalists” at prominent media organizations. This group makes excuses and justifies the actions and ambitions of the political class. They act to affirm the state’s legitimacy in the minds of the citizenry. The narcissistic group serves as the state’s propaganda force. Lured by ego, they realize that the little people will not pay for their intellectual services. They sell their souls for official recognition, access, and tax dollars.

The third group and most influential are the plutocrats. They are the people and firms who owe their profits and wealth to the federal government and who lobby and pay to use government power and money to line their pockets. These include the CEOs of the big banks and the weapons companies that supply Washington’s war machine. A matrix of interlocking ‘clusters’ like Congressional leaders, Big Donors, Wall Street, the Treasury, the CIA, the FBI, a few cosmopolitan oligarchs, and the security-intelligence world belong to this group.

This triad of schemers sells a pretense of a liberal democracy operating in tandem with a ‘classic’ liberal economy.  They call it ‘Rules-Based Order’ and use it to expand the U.S. empire. The reality is an illiberal oligarchic leadership sitting atop a governmental-corporate financed economy that has sucked the life from citizens to create toxic inequalities the little people must navigate.

#140 – Commissioning Israel – The British Mandate

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Zionism, from its beginning, included a battle plan to reconquer Biblical land given to the Israelis according to Genesis 15 and Exodus 23. Menachem Begin called it “the restoration of the whole Land of Israel to its God-covenanted owners.” Chaim Weizmann, the president of the WZO, testified it was the fulfillment of God’s “promise to his people,” and socialist leader Ben-Gurion affirmed that “the Bible is our Mandate.”

There was never any serious thought about what to do with the usurpers living on their land. They were obstacles that needed removal. A partnership between the Zionists and the indigenous Arabs was not possible nor ever considered. The Zionists were on a mission, an exclusive pursuit of a divine right to Palestine.

Politicide

The British Mandate mentions Palestine as a place but does not refer to Palestinians as a people. It describes the triad of players as His Majesty’s Government, the Jewish people, and the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.

Politicide is a term coined by Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, describing the process as using omission and commission to destroy a people. To politicide Palestinians was the first step toward their mission. 

The omission in the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine was structured. (1918-1948) Both documents never mention the people, the Palestinians, by name. Rashid Khalidi reflects on the symbolic absence of naming the Palestinians in the Mandate, writing, “As far as Great Britain and the League of Nations are concerned, they were not a people.” 

This blog explores the commissioning aspect of how the British fulfilled the Mandate directive to relegate the Palestinians as subservient to the Zionist reconquest project. (Israel) 

If You Build It, They Will Come

By the end of the 1920s, the Jewish Agency was established and authorized by the British ruling cabinet and had become the veritable government of the Yishuv. (Jewish population in Palestine) The evolution of the agency began in 1908 as the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization, later the Zionist Commission, and then the Palestine Zionist Executive. It was always the operative branch of the World Zionist Organization. (WZO)

The Mandate encouraged cooperation between Zionist and British institutions in Palestine. The British allowed and promoted the Jewish Agency to deal with political affairs, economic affairs, immigration, settlement, and other matters. In return, the agency showed the British exactly how a Jewish state would work. They asserted their political rights over the indigenous, produced detailed maps and irrigation plans, debated the technicalities of government procedure, and exhibited a knowledge of how government functioned.

By contrast, the British denied the Palestinians political rights, making it increasingly difficult for Palestinian leaders to participate, thus negating their political existence. This structural exclusion of the Palestinians meant that the Mandate government and its subcontractor, the Zionist settler-colonial project, rolled on relentlessly without them.

Palestinians built their political structures without the support of the Mandate state. Many of those structures emerged from resistance to the British occupation of Palestine. The Peel Commission testimony would, years later, confirm a structural exclusion of the Palestinians from British decision-making was policy. No amount of paternalistic affection could counterbalance the day-to-day contact between Zionists and British colonial bureaucrats.

Wild In The Streets

Beginning in the 1920s, the Palestinian fellahin, the peasant farmers (over two-thirds of the indigenous Arab population) were being forced off the land in increasingly large numbers into urban environments of unemployment, poverty, and social marginalization. 

Fueled by a dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall, a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 escalated into deadly violence. From August 23 to August 29, there were 133 Jews killed, 339 Jews were injured, 116 Arabs killed, and 232 were wounded. 

The British government commissioned an inquiry to investigate the 1929 rioting. The report, The Passfield White Paper, concluded that the cause of rioting was the result of Arab fears of the continual Jewish immigration and land purchases, particularly resonating from a growing Arab landless class. 

The report concluded that Zionist policy had severely damaged the economic development of the Arab population and also pointed out that the Jewish-only labor policy enhanced unemployment in the Arab sector. The Passfield White Paper proposed to limit Jewish immigration to Palestine and Jewish purchase of Arab land. 

The Paper proved to be feckless. With the World Zionist Organization headquartered in London, adroit lobbying in Parliament by Chaim Weizman, and the Histadrut, Hapoel Hatzair, Ahdut HaAvoda, Poale Zion, and the Jewish Agency firmly embedded in the British Mandate political sphere would only be a matter of time before the Paper was ignored or rescinded.  

That came with the issuing of a letter from British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to Chaim Weizmann (President – Zionist World Organization) reaffirmed British support for the continuation of Jewish immigration and land purchase in Palestine. This submission letter, prompted by claims of anti-Semitism by the Zionists, was dubbed the Black Letter by the Palestinians. It was an unofficial (official) withdrawal of the Passfield White Paper. 

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

In the crowded shanty towns in Jaffa and Haifa, the young Palestinians found encouragement in the teachings of the charismatic preacher Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. His following came from the landless ex-tenant farmers drifting into Haifa from Upper Galilee. These areas were most affected by purchases of agricultural land by the Jewish National Fund and the Hebrew labor policy. These policies had dispossessed the Arabs of land and many of their traditional livelihoods. 

In April 1936, growing unrest among the Arab community of Palestine led to the outbreak of a revolt initially as an urban-led campaign of civil disobedience directed against the Zionist presence in Palestine. The British instituted financial penalties, curfews, and house demolitions upon the Palestinians. They soon followed up by militarization, as they turned schools into barracks and injected violence into everyday spaces. State violence as a retaliation tool and mass punishment ran rampant. 

To further the pain of the Palestinian quest to maintain their country, the British released The Peel Commission (1936–37) report. It was the first British commission of inquiry to recommend the partition of Palestine into two states. The division of British-occupied Palestine into physically segregated Arab and Jewish territories was a foreshadowing of the removal and relocation of Palestinians from their homes to designated Palestinian land.

This revelation thus began the second phase of the Arab rebellion. The rebellion proved more violent, and the peasant-led resistance movement increasingly targeted British forces. The colonial state responded with more interventions in Arab daily life. The Mandate security forces hoped that the increased force, the infliction of more economic losses, and the damage to Palestinian property would break the rebel movement. 

The British targeted the Palestinians, routines of work, school, worship, and travel. They intensified curfews, instituted mass incarceration and forced labor, and the revocation of free movement. The military took their campaign of collective punishments ever further, constricting and diminishing the life of the colonized and ruthlessly exploiting the damage they did to the substance and fabric of Palestinian lives. 

The retooled British counterinsurgency brought economic instability and physical insecurity. Socioeconomic foundations of society and cracking the institutional bases of the revolutionary movement. The onslaught of collective punishments destroyed the daily life of Arab Palestinians, forcing sacrifice and suffering onto households far and wide and making the quest for freedom and self-determination ever more costly and untenable. 

The Israelis learned well from their British mentors. It remains in Israel today, in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and The West Bank. The Arab Revolt was a forecast for Palestinian viability to develop and maintain a resilient popular movement. Without any support, the Great Revolt was soon in tatters.

The Palestine Rebellion of 1936–39 was the most defiant of British imperial authority in the first half of the twentieth century. It had a price. The brutal crushing of the rebellion by the British army, the killing and hanging and collective punishment, the dismantling of Palestinian political organizations, the arrest and exile of Palestinian leaders, and the systematic disarmament of the Palestinian population shifted the balance of power in favor of the Zionists. 

The Palestinian national movement came to a tragic end. The brutal crushing of the rebellion by the British army, the killing, hanging, collective punishment, the dismantling of Palestinian political organizations, the arrest and exile of Palestinian leaders, and the systematic disarmament of the Palestinian population massively and irreversibly shifted the balance of power in favor of the Yishuv. 

Palestinians were demoralized and disorganized. “Palestinians began a disorienting period of transition during which they lost control over their fate.” An independent Palestinian government was not palatable to regional Arab nations and had strong opposition from those with power, including the British, Transjordan, and the Zionists.

Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste

As early as 1920, Ben-Gurion and his Labor colleagues had decided on the need for a secret underground army, the Haganah, on the realistic assumption that to convert a country whose vast majority was Arab into a Jewish national home required direct military force that the British government might not always be willing to provide. The word Haganah in Hebrew characteristically means self-defense.

At war’s end, Britain had created a Jewish auxiliary colonial army twenty thousand strong, which it armed, trained, and officered. This military force became the official Jewish army, the Jewish Settlement Police. (JSP) Once the Haganah army of thirty thousand men merged into the JSP, with a population of less than a half million, it became one of the most militarized communities in the world. 

With the United Nations Resolution 181 (Partitioning of Palestine) and the Israeli independence proclamation on the horizon, the challenges for the Zionists were twofold. 1) How to get rid of the British, now that they served their purpose, and 2) How to market “The Nakba”, the catastrophe. 

#139 – Balfour, The Camel, and Zionism

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“There is a British proverb about the camel and the tent, At first the camel sticks one leg in the tent, and eventually it slips into it. This must be our policy.” Chaim Weizmann

The Tent

Sometime between the Old Testament and the latest ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, Israel came into existence. The 1947 United Nations Resolution 181, the Partition Plan of Palestine, was the culmination of an international Zionist political campaign officially launched after the publication of the Theodore Hurzl 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State ). Herzl offered Zionism as the “final solution of the Jewish question.”

The First World Zionist Organization meeting held in Basel, Switzerland (August 1897) adopted the Basel Program. It implemented Zionist goals for establishing a home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Included in the manifesto were two tenants that would have a lasting impact on Palestine, its people, and the Middle East.  

The first of those tenets was the promotion of Jewish settlements in Palestine, accomplished by purchasing land for “Jewish Only” settlers. Aided by the catastrophic Ottoman Land Code of 1858, creating an absentee landlord system of Palestinian peasant-farmer land, and the financial backing of agencies like the Jewish Colonization Association (1891) and the Jewish National Fund (1901) to acquire land in Palestine for “any Jews upon any term” forcibly dispossessed unsuspecting Palestinian peasant farmers of the land. 

The second part of the scheme was obtaining governmental approval to achieve the Zionist purpose. This legitimacy would come to fruition twenty years later when the British hegemonic empire issued the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The British Government announced its support for the establishment of “a National Home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

Balfour – One Leg

It appears ironic that Prime Minister Arthur Balfour sponsored the anti-semitic Aliens Act of 1905 to prevent East European Jews fleeing pogroms from immigrating to England. Then, a dozen years later, as United Kingdom Foreign Secretary, issued the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Irony has been absorbed into many political decisions throughout history. 

Balfour wrote privately about his decision, ”Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far more profound import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”

When exploring those profound age-long traditions, present needs, and future hopes, it becomes clear that the Balfour verbiage is “Political language designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ” (George Orwell)

The reality for the Balfour Declaration on Palestine: 

  1. it was strategically important to keep Egypt and the Suez Canal in its sphere of influence (passage to India, British Navy access, transporting of merchant goods)
  2. to rally support among Jews in the United States and Russia; 
  3. to satisfy the British Zionist Lobbyist community;
  4. sympathy towards Jews persecuted in Europe;
  5. to keep the Allied governments in the World War.

Despite appearing as a bold declaration by Great Britain in favor of Zionism, it served as a strategic tool to support the Allied war effort. Married to a fear that Germany might preempt the Allies by issuing its own pro-Zionist statement, the Balfour Declaration stole any pro-Zionist move Germany could make.

No one doubted that the Allied Countries stood beside Britain when Balfour issued it. The Jewish Chronicle of London affirmed that the British government had acted “in accord—it is without doubt to be assumed—with the rest of the Allies.” At a Zionist conference in May 1917, Chaim Weizmann (1st President of Israel) announced, “The support of the British government, when given, will be in conjunction and agreement with the Allied powers.”

The French, the Americans, and the Italians were pliable passengers aboard the Zionist train conducted by a coalition of Nahum Sokolow, Chaim Weizmann, and Louis Brandeis. During the spring of 1917, Nahum Sokolow secured the support of France, (Cambon letter) Italy, and even the Catholic pope. Weizmann and Brandeis adroitly secured Great Britain’s and the United States’ support. A Jewish “national home” under British auspices had gained international credit.

A decree was issued by the most powerful country of that age, the empire that conquered Palestine. (World War l) announced to the world that they supported the creation of a Jewish state was iconic. The British knew that Palestine was then an overwhelmingly Arab country, populated by 722,143 inhabitants with only 38,754 Jewish. ( 5.3 percent) It did not matter what the inhabitants wanted because the political expedience was of more benefit. Inevitably, the Balfour decision, until this day, has rendered a conflict-riven land.

Across the Pond – The Second Leg

The American mind romanticized the Bible stories and crusader adventure. For the majority of Western Christians and Jews, Zionists or anti-Zionists, newspaper reporters, missionaries, government officials, the United States president, and ordinary American citizens, the history and culture of the Arab Muslims of Palestine were irrelevant. Colonialist and religious ideology combined to triumph over history.

Zionism had also taken hold in the press. In December 1917, a pro-Jewish nation op-ed appeared in the New York Times. It encouraged the U.S. government “to recognize the Jewish nation as one of those oppressed smaller nationalities which must have an opportunity to assert themselves after the war.” Later in that month wrote, “thousands of New York Zionists packed Carnegie Hall” to celebrate ”the British promise to restore Jerusalem and the Holy Land to the Jewish people.”

President Woodrow Wilson had recently reached international stardom. In his January 8, 1918, address to Congress, President Woodrow Wilson proposed a 14-point program for world peace. It would later be a reference at the Paris Peace talks and a precursor to his Noble Peace Prize and the formation of the League of Nations. 

The Fifth point of the 14-Point Plan was “A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty, the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.”

The Wilson administration, Secretary of State Robert Lansing, his staff, and Colonel House, his personal adviser, were better informed about the demographic realities of Palestine. Both men expressed misgivings about Zionism. By the time of the Paris Peace Conference, both argued against it because “a Jewish homeland implied the rejection of Wilsonian self-determination concerning Arabs.”

One would conclude that Wilson would oppose a colonial settler project in Palestine. However, Wilson was indebted to a cabal of Jewish Zionists that helped him get elected. The prestigious list included financier Jacob H. Schiff, philanthropist Nathan Straus, Bernard Baruch, Samuel Untermeyer, Rabbi Stephen Wise, and Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, a former U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. (1913-1916) 

Woodrow Wilson – It’s Slipping In

Wilson frequently consulted with attorney and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. In a letter to Wilson, Brandeis urged expanding boundaries for a new state of Israel. Brandeis persuaded, “Less than this would produce mutilation of the promised homeland. Neither in this country nor in Paris has there been any opposition to the Zionist program? The Balfour Declaration, which you made possible, was a public promise. I venture to suggest that it may be given to you, at this time, to move the statesman of Christian nations to keep this solemn promise to Israel. Your word to Millerand (France) and Lloyd George (Great Britain) at this hour may be decisive.”

Irony again confronts the reality of politics. Wilson bypassed Lansing and the State Department when it came to a decision on the Balfour Declaration, and the president ignored the cautionary advice of Colonel House. The contradiction between Zionist goals and the Wilson rule of self-determination was ignored. Wilson would turn to religious idealism to justify granting the Zionists an exemption from the rule. Wilson saw a European-born movement claiming validity from Old Testament history as a higher priority than twelve centuries of Arab culture and history.

Henry Morgenthau summed up the prevailing attitude in America, “Christians everywhere will rejoice that the Holy Land, so well-known to them through both the Old and New Testaments, has been restored to the civilized world.”

The Camel Is In The Tent

The seduction of Woodrow Wilson was the final conquest needed by the Zionists. Thus, the borders of Israel became a reality. The politicizing and empowering of a statement in an official British Government letter in support of “a National Home for the Jewish people” to the creation of the State of Israel was quite a jump. How the truth becomes mutated is essential to understanding the power that the Zionist Camel holds.

This Zionist Camel formula has proven successful over the years. It is a blend of half-truths mixed with claims of anti-semitism (actual or created) garnished of lobbying, bullying, and financial rewards. Then victimhood is sprinkled over this formula to enable the chosen State of Israel to be levitated to a height above the law. 

Balfour was a victim of the Zionist Camel, followed by Wilson and US citizens. At the 1919 Paris Peace talks, Zionism was a powerful force that established a stranglehold on world history. What followed was a series of tragic setbacks to Palestinian sovereignty. Including the formation of the League of Nations, the British Mandate of Palestine, the United Nations Resolution 181, the 1967 Six-Day War, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the 2023 Genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Will it end?

The Camel is well entrenched in the Washington big top. Are there any camel herders capable of removing it? I fear not!

#138 – The Birth Of Israel – Induced?

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Colonial-Settlers

During the colonialism heyday, groups of immigrants could migrate to lands not internationally recognized as independent states, claim parcels of land, overpower the inhabitants, ethnically cleanse the indigenous people, and declare themselves an independent nation. The United States, Canada, and Australia followed this colonial-settler formula to become independent nations.

The Zionist project in Palestine was a colonial-settler quest for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Besides using a successful formula, the Zionist project had an additional cache. They had international diplomatic decrees, land purchasing institutes, wealthy benefactors, and the British military might to guarantee a Jewish State in Palestine. 

The 1917 Balfour Declaration

British Foreign Secretary Sir Arthur James Balfour Declared: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” His declaration is the oxytocin that started it all. 

The British government, with no regard for the indigenous population, committed to establishing a “national home for the Jewish people” on land inhabited by Palestinians. For centuries before the Balfour Declaration, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other religious and ethnic groups lived peacefully in Palestine. The Zionist ideology and settler-colonialism destabilized Palestinian life.

Pre-Balfour Declaration, Zionists were a minority of about 1% of the Jews of the world. The idea of setting up an exclusive theocratic Jewish society was a radical idea. The vast majority of Jews were non-Zionists who sought a different solution to the pogroms and antisemitism of 19th-century Russia and Europe. Their solution was assimilation, not self-segregation in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration set in motion Israel’s 75-year war against the Palestinians. 

1922 British Mandate of Palestine

This League of Nations issued a document provided for the administration of Palestine by the British to establish the Jewish national home. It acted as a guarantee for the implementation of the Balfour Declaration. The mandate made it clear that the only people in Palestine recognized with national rights were the Jewish people. In the 28 articles, there is no reference to the Palestinians as having national or political rights.

The 1937 Peel Commission

The 1937 Peel Commission was the first official British paper to propose dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. With hints of ethnic cleansing, the Peel Commission concluded that the feasibility of partition required the transfer of Palestinian Arabs outside the Jewish state. 

The Zionist Congress accepted the plan as a first step to secure a base from where Jewish dominance could expand. Palestinian-Arab opposition was immediately expressed by the escalation of the Palestinian revolt launched in 1936. 

1938 British Woodhead Commission

In November of 1938, Britain formed the Woodhead Commission to study the feasibility of the Peel Plan. The Commission reported no plan for the partition of Palestine could successfully meet the terms of the Peel Commission. The Commission believed there was little hope of success in establishing self-supporting Arab and Jewish states. The Commission concluded that the partitioning plans were “impracticable”.

Britain continued to manage the Palestine situation politically and militarily. By 1947, after suffering several deadly terrorist attacks from the Zionist extremist, they realized their incapability of maintaining peace. In April 1947, the British referred the future of Palestine to the UN. 

The 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine, UN Resolution 181 

Ignoring the Woodhead Commission, the British leaving, increasing violence, and indicators of civil war did not deter the UN from issuing Resolution 181. The UN plan recommended the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The partition plan proposed a Jewish state of more than half (56%) of Mandated Palestine territory. At that time, Jews comprised less than a third of the population and owned less than 7 percent of the land. 

The plan disregarded both the land and population injustice of the proposal. About one-half of the population in the UN-proposed Jewish state were Arabs: nine of the sixteen districts were part of the Jewish state, and only one of nine had a Jewish majority. The Zionists accepted the partition plan. The Arabs rejected it. 

Since 1947, Israel has propagandized this disagreement over UN Resolution 181. They convinced the West that since they had the backing of the UN, removing Palestinians from their land was justifiable, and the Palestinians were the trespassing outlaws who wanted to destroy Israel. The Zionists used this disguise as a reason for their conquest and cleansing of Palestinians. It fits nicely into a victimhood narrative. 

The 1948 Arab-Israeli War

The civil war between the Palestinian Arabs and Britain training Zionist armed groups was lopsided. The Palestinians, recovering from their 1936-39 Arab Uprising that annihilated their military capabilities, were no match. The Zionists proceeded on the belief that one-half of the population in the UN-proposed Jewish state had to be killed or relocated. 

Emboldened by the international imprimatur given by the UN decision, the Zionist military organizations attacked Arab villages and residential quarters before launching the highly organized Plan Dalet. Devised to control and conquer areas of the UN-partitioned Jewish state as well as areas of Jewish settlements outside its borders. 

Relying on the diplomatic and political assets provided by the UN Partition Resolution and U.S. support, the Zionists embarked on an offensive to conquer as much land as possible beyond the recommended boundaries defined in the partition, to destroy and empty whole Palestinian villages and towns.  

What proceeded (1947-49) was the expulsion of over seven hundred fifty thousand from a 1.9 million population, made refugees. Estimates indicate that 530 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed and removed from the map, 5,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of atrocities, and more than 70 massacres. Palestinians refer to this period as Nakba – the catastrophe. 

On May 15, 1948, the last of the British military left Palestine. The same day, David Ben-Gurion, the Israeli first prime minister, declared independence for Israel. The Zionist movement had carefully prepared for independence and had created a network of institutions ready to begin the process of governing. The scheme to establish a national home for the Jewish people was almost complete. However, Israel had some unfinished business.

By early 1949, the proposed UN partition boundaries had become irrelevant. Israeli forces controlled 77 percent of pre-1948 Palestine, including large areas the UN planned to designate as part of the Arab state. Egyptian forces controlled Gaza while Jordanian and Iraqi troops held onto the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The 1967 Six-Day War

In 1967, Israel launched a pre-empted attack against Egypt, unleashing the Six-Day War. The airstrike destroyed 90 percent of the Egyptian air force. Israel then followed suit against the Syrian Air Force. On that evening, Yigal Allon, an Israeli minister, wrote: “must not cease fighting until we achieve total victory, the territorial fulfillment of the Land of Israel”. 

All Egyptian, Iraqi, and Jordanian control ended in 1967 after the Israeli forces removed them during the Six-Day War. As a result, Israel was able to absorb the whole of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. In addition, they conquered the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. By the end of the war, Israel had expelled another 300,000 Palestinians from their homes, including 130,000 refugees displaced in 1948, and increased its territory by three and a half times. 

Moshe Dayan, an Israeli military leader, and politician, bragged, “We came to this country, which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish, state here… Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of the Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist [but] the Arab villages are not there either.”

The 1967 war was the culmination of the Zionist colonial-settler project that began with Jewish journalist Theodor Herzl and his 1896 publication, Der Judenstaat. Herzl offered a solution to the antisemitism that plagued Europe. His work encouraged Jews to purchase land in Palestine to create an independent Jewish state. Anyway, after the 1967 war, the Israeli purchasing of Palestine was complete.

“The surest way to eradicate a people’s right to their land is to deny their historical connection to it.” Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian author

The Palestinians have never succumbed. Israel has used ethnic cleansing and racial separation of an apartheid society as strategic themes to eliminate Palestinian history. Settler colonial projects eventually reach a point when patience wanes. The final solution becomes slaughter and genocide to cleanse a native population that refuses to capitulate. Ask Native Americans, Armenians, Aborigines of Australia, Bengalis, Bosnians, Congolese, and Rwandans. Will Palestinians be added to that list?

#137 – al-Aqsa – The Furthest Mosque

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Operation al-Aqsa Flood

The corporate-state media alliance provides an unfair and lazy assessment of news. They spin misinformation like the Russian invasion of Ukraine began the Uranian-Russian War, the 9/11 attack marked the beginning of the War on Terrorist (Islamic), the Gulf of Tonkin started the Vietnam War, Pearl Harbor began WW2, and Operation Al-Aqsa Flood started the most recent Israeli-Palistinian conflict. 

The truth is discovered by examining the antecedents leading up to events. Reporting events like the 2014 Maidan Coup, 1991 U.S. No-fly zones (NFZs) enforcement in Iraq, the 1956 cancellation of the Geneva Accords mandated Vietnam national elections, the 1941 U.S. freeze on Japanese assets and embargo on oil and gasoline, and events at al-Aqsa might be beneficial. Corporate-state media does a horrible job of reporting the historical background that would shed a different light on their historical spin. 

The corporate-state media consumer becomes entangled in a propaganda web void of pertinent historical facts, an entrapped passenger on a pop history train. Narratives like Israeli good, Palestinian bad, Russia, and China bad have been developed by cherry-picking history and omitting pertinent antecedents.

The Hamas October 7th operation will begin a new death count, with no analysis of the deaths leading up to this attack. Washington and the compliant media may condemn the Hamas retaliatory action as the beginning of the latest war in Israel, but it is not the beginning. Hamas spokesperson Khaled Qadomi lists a series of antecedents they considered before leveling the October 7th attack. 

Qadomi declares, “We want the international community to stop atrocities in Gaza against Palestinian people, our holy sites like al-Aqsa. All these things are the reason behind starting this battle.” Maybe someone should explain the al-Aqsa situation.

al-Aqsa

al-Aqsa is the silver-domed mosque inside a 35-acre al-Haram al-Sharif compound in Jerusalem. It is the third holiest site in Islam and the most important Muslim place in Palestine. Al-Aqsa, the Noble Sanctuary, is in the Quran. It is meaning is the furthest mosque. In early Islamic history, Muslims prayed towards this holy Jerusalem site as the qibla until Muhammad and the Muslims in Medina changed the qibla direction from Jerusalem to Mecca.

Al-Aqsa is an intricate setting for the holy day called Lailat al Miraj or Night Journey, a celebration of the Prophet’s nighttime journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. The day signifies a physical and spiritual journey. At al-Aqsa, He met with the previous prophets of Islam and His ascension into heaven and met God. God instructed Prophet Muhammad on the importance of reciting salat, or prayer, five times daily. 

The importance of the security to al-Aqsa, in Islam, is paramount. In 2017, a former legal adviser to the Palestinian minister of foreign affairs told Al Jazeera, “The issue of al-Haram al-Sharif (al-Aqsa) stands as a symbolic, but very strong catalyzer of the routine of injustice and oppression that Palestinians in Jerusalem are facing, and that causes a continuous eruption of popular anger and uprisings.” 

The Waqf – Administrative Control?

Since the Muslim reconquest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187, the al-Aqsa Mosque compound has been under the administration of a waqf, or Islamic trust, properties dedicated to the Muslim religion. The Waqf of Jerusalem is known as the Waqf.

Throughout history, entrance into al-Haram al-Sharif has changed. During the Ottoman rule of Palestine, the non-Muslims were denied entry to Haram al-Sharif. It changed in 1839. Non-Muslims were permitted to enter Temple Mount but had to obtain a special permit from the governor.

The 1948 war, after the Israeli conquest and occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, brought about another change. The Waqf would be under the control of the Kingdom of Jordan. In 1967, the protocol changed again. Jordan and Israel agreed that the Waqf would control matters inside the compound while Israel would control external security. 

Since 1967, non-Muslims would be allowed onto the site during visiting hours but would not be allowed to pray there. Praying at al-Aqsa was reserved for Muslims only. The status quo has eroded in recent years. Israeli forces have imposed severe restrictions on Muslim worshippers. 

Examples include: October 2009 – Entry restricted to Muslim men over 45 and Muslim women over 35; July 2011 – Entry restricted to Muslim men over 45; November 2014 – Entry restricted to Muslim men over 35; October 2015 – Entry restricted to Muslim men over 50 for two days; July 2017 – Entry restricted to Muslim men over 50.

The increased Israeli entrance restrictions are a change in the status quo of the Mount. The entry restrictions have been most severe on Gazans and residents of the West Bank. The Israeli government justifies these restrictions as measures taken for security reasons.

Al-Aqsa Under Attack?

Since 1920, when the father of religious Zionism, rabbi Avraham Yitzhak ha-Kohen Kook, stated that the Temple Mount would eventually be in Jewish control, many Muslims believe there is a political plot to wrestle control of the Haram itself.

Today, Israeli government-backed Temple movements, such as the Temple Mount Faithful and the Temple Institute, have challenged the Israeli ban on allowing Jews to enter the compound. Israeli forces routinely allow groups, some in the hundreds, of Jewish settlers who live in occupied Palestinian territories to descend on the al-Aqsa compound under police and army protection, stirring Palestinian fears of an Israeli takeover of al-Haram al-Sharif.

On October 2nd, nearly 1,500 Israeli fanatical settlers entered the al-Aqsa Mosque. Then, on Thursday, October 5th, more than 800 Israeli settlers stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque both times under the protection of Israeli forces. With harsher Israeli-imposed restrictions on Muslim worshippers entering al-Aqsa, Palestinians fear losing access to the compound. 

Bibi – The New-Old Sheriff Is Back In Town 

Many of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontations have coincided with the most recent prime ministership tenure of Benjamin Netanyahu. Raids against Palestinian worshippers at the mosque have increased significantly. The Israeli army and West Bank settlers inflict violence and oppression against Palestinians with no arrests. Deadly settler raids have become increasingly more regular. 

The first nine months of the Netanyahu regime have been a showcase of Israeli violence inflicted upon Palestinian civilians in Israeli-occupied lands. This year, Israeli forces have killed over 224 Palestinians (38 children), 187 in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The death count for 2023 has surpassed the record high of 178 killings in 2022. 

Currently, 1,264 Palestinians are in administrative detention without charge or trial, a two-decade high, and reports indicate 170 children incarcerated in Israeli prisons. Operation al-Aqsa Flood is a retaliatory strike. People pushed into a corner will fight back. 

Ofer Cassif of the Israeli Knesset said he warned the situation would erupt if the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not change its policies towards Palestinians. It erupted!

#136 – Next Stop, Beijing?

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Americans are masters of amnesia, memory management, and historical ignorance. Amnesia, enabled by knowledge-free minds and a license for the highest officials to treat the truth as a potter would treat clay. Amnesia restricts the opportunity to learn from the lessons history offers.

In the wake of the Korean War (49,000 United States soldiers killed), Washington pledged no war on the mainland of Asia ever again. A decade later, we were knee-deep in Vietnam rice paddies. (59,000 American Soldiers killed)

Our country has forgotten how ugly the Vietnam War was. Textbooks in American history gave it little space; teachers downplayed it; television soon disregarded it as retro. Vietnam experience was the honing of methods to photoshop history. Vietnam was a warm-up for the post-9/11 era.

The post-9/11 memory management program has cleansed us of Presidential deceit, incompetence, systemic torture, censorship, the shredding of the Bill of Rights, and the perverting of national public discourse. The War on Terror is now an insignificant speck in our rearview mirror.

The fiasco in Iraq and the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan did not dissuade us from intervening in Syria. All three projects failed to turn an alien society into a Western democracy using the gun as a tool of choice.

In Syria, Washington partnered with the local al-Qaeda subsidiary, the same group responsible for the 9/11 attack. The Kabul evacuation showed that we learned nothing from the Saigon finale. A simple lesson, how not to evacuate, was erased from the Washington memory.

The next stop along the line was Ukraine. Washington’s ignorance of Russian security provoked its invasion of Ukraine. They mistook Putin’s anger for bluster and believed the Russian armed forces to be a paper lion. Both assumptions proved to be fatal miscalculations.

Washington’s latest failed endeavor will be ending soon. Washington eventually will stumble upon an acceptable Ukrainian off-ramp. But will they take any solace from a ruined Ukraine?

No, the foreign policy establishment will not allow remorse or thoughtful debriefing. Nobody of significance will denounce the next humanitarian or politically correct war. Eventually, the unhinged Washington cabal will propel us into an avoidable, catastrophic conflict.

Next stop, Beijing?

#135 – Liar, Liar, Ukraine Is On Fire

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Liar, Liar
Blogger Caitlin Johnstone claims, “The single most egregious display of war propaganda in the 21st century occurred last year when the entire Western political/media class began uniformly bleating the word unprovoked in reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

We have heard that Putin was power-hungry and unwilling to tolerate an independent, pro-Western Ukraine on its border. Putin wants to conquer Ukraine, and NATO is needed to cover his colonial venture.

Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Steven Pifer says, “For the Kremlin, a democratic, Western-oriented, economically successful Ukraine poses a nightmare. Ukraine would cause Russians to question why they cannot have the same political voice and democratic rights that Ukrainians do.”

The Truth
Russian leaders regard Ukraine in Moscow’s sphere of influence and a vital Russian security buffer zone. George Kennan, the father of the American Cold War containment policy, warned about the 1998 US Senate ratification of NATO expansion. “Is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, extensive arms shipments began. Kyiv, the U.S., and NATO conducted joint military exercises, and the CIA initiated secret paramilitary training programs. In essence, the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations began to treat Ukraine as a NATO member in all but name.

Catching the Liars
September 6, 2023, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg inadvertently let the truth be known. “President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021 and sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And as a pre-condition for not invading (sic) Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that.” Consequently, “he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”

In 1996, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when asked, “We have heard that half a million children have died [because of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And–you know, is the price worth it?” she replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

Ukraine Is On Fire
President Joe Biden, is it worth it? 9,614 Ukrainian civilian deaths, 17,535 injured, 120,000 Ukrainian soldier deaths, 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops, 70,000 Russian soldiers killed, and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded.