The way the world is going, she and her children might be the precursor of the dwelling habits of the future generations, those who manage to survive the coming nuclear war between the rising bloc of rising nations and decaying bloc of decaying nations, the war between the BRICS and the Pricks.

The BRICS ─ Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and five new members — have no “biggest BRIC,” each Bric nation relishes its independence and the group is cemented by their distaste for the offensive Pricks. Fortunately, for the BRICS, their entourage contains China, the new superpower that encourages cooperation rather than domination and has initiated a “Belt and Road” that facilitates free trade throughout the world.

The Pricks — United States, Great Britain, and the European Union — have the United States as their power Prick, which is led by their president, the biggest Prick. In slavish obedience to genocide Israel, the U.S. identifies itself as the Super Prick. This bloc has recently featured severe discord, lack of cooperation, and inauguration of high tariffs that impede global trade. Domination is its focus. with cooperation a temporary means to enable domination.

For one simple reason, the Pricks are finding it difficult to control and use the BRICS for their personal gain ─ the BRICS have economic dominance.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
GDP PPP, Int$: 2025

Coming into 2025, the BRICS have a greater share of the economic pie, six times the population digesting the pie, and are growing in principal categories — GDP/PPP, population, and adherents at a faster rate.

The Pricks devalue the Brics by claiming they are a loose and uncoordinated confederation, unable to agree on vital issues. Brazil is accused of harassing former President Jair Messias Bolsonaro and may be subjected to sanctions; Russia is led by an irresponsible tyrant and is heavily sanctioned; India gets a pass despite the heavy-handed tactics toward its Muslim community; China is led by a despotic dictator, and South Africa is guilty of genocide toward its white population.

The Pricks pose themselves as a model of decency and decorum. They have ballot boxes and freedom of speech, which enables their citizens to elect the biggest pricks and then freely criticize their selections by vocal erections. In the U.S. the next presidential election process — fund raising, organization, public relations, the “eye on the prize”— starts shortly after a new president takes office. Winning candidates in elections expend more time and energy in gaining victory and preparing for their next victory than performing their duties during their term in office.

The economic, social, and political advancements of their principal superpowers, China for the BRICS and the United States for the Pricks, determine the success of the BRICS and the Pricks. A brief examination of each nation’s potential to rise in the firmament or descend into chaos tells the story.

The Trump administration shows the hidden failures of the United States pluralistic democracy. The past has no continuity; just the opposite, many of the legislations from previous administrations are discarded. and the country, rather than advancing to a progressed new, returns to a rejected old. One example from Understanding AI:

…. Sen. Hawley asked Donald Trump to cancel a federal loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express, an $11 billion transmission line that is supposed to carry electricity from Kansas wind farms to homes in Illinois and Indiana. The proposed line would pass through Hawley’s state of Missouri, annoying farmers whose land would be taken by eminent domain.

According to the New York Times, Hawley “explained his concerns to the president, who has repeatedly expressed his distaste for wind power, saying he would not permit any new wind projects during his administration.” Trump then called Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who agreed to cancel a federal loan guarantee for the project, throwing its viability into question.

Impulse overrides soul searching, allegiance to leader is more important than professional education and experience; rash and subjective action replaces careful thought. The America of 2025, with its decaying infrastructure, troubled inner cities, dependence on fossil fuels, continuous problems of crime, drug addiction, health care, and immigration, closely resembles the America of 2010. One big difference ─ adversity and polarization of the population has increased, Americans are at the breaking point with one another. The country, which is rich in resources, has extensive farmland, enjoys suitable and varied climates, and contains an educated and diligent population, is not well managed; it is mismanaged.

The Xi JInping administration shows the hidden success of China’s people’s democracy. The past has continuity; legislations and plans from previous administrations are massaged and enhanced, and the country, rather than remaining stagnant, advances to a new level. Soul searching from millions of cadres provides suggestions for millions of improvements. All leaders have professional education and experience; careful thought displaces rash and subjective action.

The China of 2025, with its continually increasing infrastructure of roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, superhighways, high speed trains, and airline routes that link every remote place in China with central cores, with modern building complexes that replace the shanty towns and provide agreeable living space for an aging population and marginalized rural farmers, with its expanded megacities that are considered technology and planning marvels, and with a unified and obedient population ─ no adversity or polarization here ─ has only a fleeting resemblance to the China of 2010.

Dubbed an engineering marvel, the highly anticipated Raffles City Chongqing project is nearly complete. CapitaLand Group

Sheltering their deficiencies, the Western democracies shift the critical analysis to public relations stunts that highlight the supposed and exaggerated deficiencies of the Chinese system. The Westerners make no effort to learn and understand the workings of China’s political, social, and economic systems. Fabrications are added to the limited “don’t care to know” and conveyed to the public as authorized knowledge. One example is the “debt trap” verbiage, applied to Chinese lending, which began during Sri Lanka’s first debt crisis and has stuck around as an effective means to vilify the PRC.

We have the falsehood. Washington Post (WAPO), “This China has a hand in Sri Lanka’s economic calamity,” analysis by Ishaan Tharoor, July 20, 2022:

One of the major players in Sri Lanka’s calamity is China. Beijing is Sri Lanka’s lone biggest creditor, accounting for some 10 percent of the country’s foreign debt. Between 2000 and 2020, it extended close to $12 billion in loans to the Sri Lankan government, largely for a slate of major infrastructure projects that turned into white elephants — including a costly port facility in the Rajapaksas’ hometown of Hambantota, which was effectively ceded to Chinese control half a decade ago after Sri Lankan authorities recognized they could no longer pay off the loans.

Examination of the Sri Lanka debt crisis exposes the mendacity and viciousness of the WAPO report. Almost every sentence is spurious; China does not engage in “debt trap diplomacy” and has been one lender who makes financial sacrifices that rescues nations from debilitating borrowing.

We have the truth. The Atlantic, “The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth,” by Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire, February 6, 2021, had already contradicted WAPO statements.

Steep payments on international sovereign bonds, which comprised nearly 40 percent of the country’s external debt, put Sirisena’s government in dire fiscal straits almost immediately. When Sirisena took office, Sri Lanka owed more to Japan, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank than to China. Of the $4.5 billion in debt service Sri Lanka would pay in 2017, only 5 percent was because of Hambantota. The Central Bank governors under both Rajapaksa and Sirisena do not agree on much, but they both told us that Hambantota, and Chinese finance in general, was not the source of the country’s financial distress.

There was also never a default. Colombo arranged a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and decided to raise much-needed dollars by leasing out the underperforming Hambantota Port to an experienced company—just as the Canadians had recommended. There was not an open tender, and the only two bids came from China Merchants and China Harbor. Sri Lanka chose China Merchants, making it the majority shareholder with a 99-year lease, and used the $1.12 billion cash infusion to bolster its foreign reserves, not to pay off China Eximbank. The China impressed on our minds is not the China that exists.

The United States moves on fumes, on the energies of its past without renewable energies for an improved future. China moves on constantly reinforced energy, all engines operating at top speed, each day becoming a new future. The Pricks know they will not be able to compete economically with the BRICS. They have a choice of consolidating and working together and maintaining reduced economies, cooperating with the Brics in mutual agreements, or, by the usual United States method, resolving the situation by military action.

The threat of military force alarms and subdues the BRICS. They may be compelled to yield much in order to save all. China, guided by its Mandate of Heaven, “a political and religious doctrine that justifies the rule of an emperor based on virtue and ability to govern,” and which it has extended to relations between all nations, might do what it did in the fifteenth century. At that time, China was, by far, the leading commercial power in the world, and huge Chinese fleets sailed the world for markets for its surplus products. After meeting the imperial powers of France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands and observing their nefarious methods in subduing the Africa and Indian peoples, stripping them of resources, and forcing upon them the products manufactured from the resources, China scuttled its fleet and went into solitary confinement.

The reason for Xi Jinping’s self-sufficiency drive is clear. Save the world from nuclear conflagration and let the rest of the world rot. Pricks always lose and always think they have won.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

How can it be? How can an obvious genocide, perpetrated by a small country, be allowed to occur?

How can a small and newly developed nation, with a slight population and few resources, artificially stitched together with foreign people from unrelated parts of the world, pulverize a large and millennium developed nation with a huge population, abundant resources, and naturally situated with native people in one unique area?

Candide searched the world and concluded, “This is the best of all possible worlds.”

Thomas More wrote of escape to Utopia, a vision that captivated many who tried to turn the vision into a practicality and always failed.

Literature, theater, and film have explored the savagery that allows violence. A simple 1961 Japanese film, When A Woman Ascends The Stairs, attempts to explain it ─ in a cruel world, we are not masters of our fate, nobody will help, and we often must accept it.

In this quiet masterpiece, a bar girl in the Tokyo Ginza district, politely serves the customers and politely refuses to compromise her moral standing. She searches for ways to escape from ascending the stairs to the bar each evening and cannot find help from anyone. Battered and bruised by betrayal, even from a mother and brother who take advantage of her, she remains resolute and struggles to find a rewarding life. After succumbing to a married man, whom she loved and who will be leaving Tokyo, and after receiving a false proposal of marriage, she returns to the bar, ascends the stairs with a firm step, and enters the bar with a smile and pronouncement, “I’m here.”

The world begs for a means to counter the oppressors and killers who have no regard for the lives of others, who lie, cheat, gain control, and use that control to elevate themselves and subdue others. A few inhabitants of the seven plus billions of the world community have spoken with their own violence.

Individual attacks on those allied with the Zionists are a clue to the feelings of ordinary people, driven to a paralyzing anguish by the continued murders of innocents from Israeli Jews and their worldwide supporters. People, who have no stairs left to climb and no lives left to live, reach out in punishing manners. There are several million who have been directly affected and been driven to madness, and several hundreds of millions who cannot comprehend the failure to prevent the genocide and have lost faith in the inhuman race. Animosity to Zionist Israel and its supporters has reached an inflection point and grows exponentially each day.

Israel’s genocidal tactics are not the sole feature that has alienated humanity from Israel and its supporting Jewish people, from all those who are identified with the genocide. There is a sense of betrayal, that Israel and the Jewish people are not constant victims who have consistently battled a hostile world composed of anti-Semites and fiendish supremacists.

People have learned that the celluloid shaped Exodus was an old and discarded tub, into which displaced Jews were unknowingly shoved and taken to a Promised Land. Many arrivals could not leave without paying the bill for the voyage and the assistance given to them. The fearless Kibbutz settler, originally a dedicated and hard-working pioneer, kept alive by public relations, became less significant after World War I. In 1920, after the Zionist population had grown to 60,000 in a Palestine composed of 585,000 Arabs, a reporter noted that earlier settlers felt uncomfortable with the later immigrants. From Zionist Aspirations in Palestine, Anstruther Mackay, originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, July 1920.

It may not be generally known, but a goodly number of the Jewish dwellers in the land are not anxious to see a large immigration into the country. This is partly due to the fear that the result of such immigration would be an overcrowding of the industrial and agricultural market; but a number of the more respectable older settlers have been disgusted by the recent arrivals in Palestine of their coreligionists, unhappy individuals from Russia and Romania brought in under the auspices of the Zionist Commission from the cities of Southeastern Europe, and neither able nor willing to work at agriculture or fruit-farming.

The so-called miracle progress of Israel would not have occurred without the financial and military support from Germany and the United States, support programs that used the financial accounts of the German and American peoples. The “progress” is not unique; many nations after World War II, without outside support, have leaped far ahead of Israel. The “blooming of the desert” is nothing more than using standard irrigation techniques and wasting precious water to satisfy public relations. Technological advancements are due to Russian and American engineers who brought their knowledge, experience, and resources to a country that needed modernization.

Hidden from public scrutiny is that Israel, together with the United States, has always had close to the highest poverty rate in OECD nations. Only Costa Rica has a higher poverty rate.

Hidden from public scrutiny are the continuous atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers against innocent populations in Israel, West Bank, Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon, which can be found in A history stained with innocent blood at Ahram Online. One function of the Israeli army in the West Bank ─ protect the settlers from retribution as they daily murder Palestinians.

The most disquieting revelation is that anti-Semitism is not a careless invective against Jews but an originated word that serves to turn legitimate arguments against Jewish practices into elements of hate. “Kill the Arabs,” expressed by many Israelis, is perceived as anxious rhetoric. Arguing against genocidal maniacs is termed anti-Semitic. In the Molotov cocktail throwing incident in Boulder, Colorado, Americans, who never highlighted the captivity of Americans in foreign nations, highlighted the captivity of foreign people who betrayed humanity by joining the genocidal nation of Israel. Stefanie Clarke, co‑executive director of Stop Antisemitism Colorado disguised the truth behind the happenings, and used the hostility to Zionist Jews to further Zionist interests. Ms. Clarke said, “The reason things like this are happening is because we have allowed this climate of hate to fester. And today it boiled over and this doesn’t come out of nowhere. This is part of a deeply disturbing trend of hate that has been normalized and allowed to spread.”

The attack in Boulder, Colorado came from a person driven into mental anguish by observing people lacking sympathy for the desperate Palestinians registering concern with those who contributed to the genocide. The mental anguish boiled over and arrived from a need to confront the disturbing expressions of hatred exhibited by Israel’s Zionist Jews for others. This hatred has been normalized, and those unnerved by the genocide are striking out at those who contribute to the genocide.

Reconciliation, compromise, and mutual consideration have failed. The deadly is all that is left. And with it, the realization that reconciliation, compromise, and mutual consideration never existed for the Zionists and has been made impossible by them. From the day of its recognition, Israel has been a criminal state. Too little, and maybe too late, the world realizes a misrepresentation of what is called the Middle East conflict. The misrepresentation has led to a fallacious approach for rectification, and an obstacle for obtaining peace with justice. Criminal gangs, once they achieve superiority in firepower, make no compromises. They don’t divide or share their stolen largesse with the original owners.

One word summarizes the taking of another person’s property, livelihood, and dignity – theft! In this case, we have a specific type of theft, Raubwirtschaft, German for “plunder economy.” In Raubwirtschaft, the state economy is partially based on robbery, looting and plundering conquered territories. States that engage in Raubwirtschaft are in continuous warfare with their neighbors and usurp the resources of their conquered subjects, while claiming security objectives and defensive actions against defenseless people.

Israel has gone further than Raubwirtschaft, using it as a springboard for transnational corruption and having its citizens extend the illicit activities to global networks of money laundering, human trafficking, drug smuggling, and general crime.

A Broad Brush of Israeli Involvement in Transnational Corruption in the 21st Century Blacklisted 16 years ago, Israel has gained entry to the Financial Action Task Force, yet new immigrants can bring in unreported income for 10 years and vast scams go unprosecuted. Complaints from law enforcement in France and the United States that Israel is not cooperating sufficiently on international financial crimes continue unheeded.

Ariel Marom, a Belorussian-born former banker who lives in Israel and frequently travels throughout Russia and Eastern Europe for work, told The Times of Israel he believes that hundreds of millions of dollars of dirty money from the former Soviet Union is being smuggled into Israel, including by new immigrants. There are certain branches of large Israeli banks, he said, that have developed a reputation among newcomers for looking the other way. “A small percentage of this money is used to corrupt Israeli politicians,” he charged. “Russians – and this is no secret – fund the campaigns of a number of politicians, not just one party.”

Two Israelis shot dead in Mexico City were involved in money laundering and had links to local mafia.

Fourteen Israelis are suspected by Colombian authorities of running a child sex trafficking ring, which marketed tour packages from Israel to the Latin American country aimed at businessmen and recently discharged soldiers.

New report sheds light on disturbing human trafficking phenomenon in Israel.
The Justice Ministry published a report Thursday morning revealing alarming data about human trafficking in Israel over the past five years.

In its annual report for 2012, the International Narcotics Control Board lists Brazil and Israel among the “countries that are major manufacturers, exporters, importers, and users of narcotic drugs.”

Drugs trafficking arrest leads police to Israeli underworld.

Oded Tuito was alleged to be a global pill-pusher, whose Israeli mafia group was the biggest operator in a booming international trade in the lucrative “hug drug.” The profits were ploughed into Israeli real estate, being sent there from the US or Barcelona,” a police spokesman said. Police forces in various parts of the world said Mr. Tuito’s arrest confirmed the alleged growing global influence of Israel’s loose-knit, but expanding, crime organisations.

Israel is at the center of international trade in the drug ecstasy, according to a document published last week by the U.S. State Department. A seriously embarrassing record for a nation that was created to be “a light among all nations,” and claims to represent world Jewry.

The most deceptive propaganda mechanism in history — AIPAC, ADL, CAMERA, and a multitude of acronym named Israel support organizations in western nations — extend Israel’s reach and influence western governments and peoples.

Global influencers perpetuate the myth of Israel as a responsible and peace seeking Jewish state.

In France, Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) gathers an assortment of groups dedicated to Israel. Examples of their thrust and how they operate.

French Jewish group CRIF was fined for defaming pro-Palestinian charity, April 8, 2014.

(JTA) – France’s largest Jewish organization defamed a pro-Palestinian charity by accusing it of financing Hamas, a French court ruled. CRIF staff were ordered to pay the equivalent of $4,140 to the Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians, or CBSP – a group that CRIF researcher Marc Knobel in 2010 wrote “collects funds for Hamas.”

Former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar (why him?) leads The Friends of Israel Initiative (FII), which defines its thrust as “countering the growing efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel and its right to live in peace within safe and defensible borders.” A July 2014 working paper, Understanding the Issue of Israeli Settlements and Borders claims that

…settlements have become an exaggerated issue in the diplomatic discourse over Israel. Settlement activity, like the construction of homes and schools, does not constitute a violation of Israel’s signed agreements with the Palestinians. Indeed, as was pointed out, the Oslo Agreements were signed without a settlement freeze. Those agreements allowed Israel to build in the areas under its jurisdiction as these allowed the Palestinians to build in the areas under their jurisdiction. The assertion that settlement activity is a violation of international law is not universally accepted, though it is frequently stated in UN debates and in the declarations of the European Union.

A July 2017 FII event featured this statement:

As goes Israel – so goes the United States of America and so goes Western civilization. And so many of our adversaries and enemies know that. That’s what we’re facing all across the Middle East and, truthfully, all across the world.

United Kingdom has almost as many pro-Israel organizations as there are Israelis. Three of them are:

(1) Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a parliamentary group affiliated with the Labor Party, which promotes support for a strong bilateral relationship between Britain and Israel. They “run and promote campaigns to help create a lasting peace in the Middle East with Israel safe, secure and recognised within its borders; living alongside a democratic, independent Palestinian state.”

(2) Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a parliamentary group affiliated with the Conservative Party and dedicated to strengthening business, cultural and political ties between the United Kingdom and Israel. CFI has given £377,994 to the Conservative party since 2004, mostly in the form of fully-funded trips to Israel for MPs, according to the Electoral Commission website. Directors of CFI have also given money directly to the Tory party.

(3) Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), which “seeks to present Israel’s case to journalists.” Their “Strategic Assessments provide expert analysis of the ever changing challenges to Israeli security. From sub-state actors and foreign states to domestic concerns, the strategic threats to Israel and the Middle East are explored in depth.”

Russia, yes Russia, has formation of a new lobby. From Jerusalem Post, Pro-Israel caucus forming in Russian parliament, By Gil Hoffman, 05/25/2013

A select group of Russian parliament members will soon be urging their colleagues to say “da” to Israel after a delegation of Israelis took steps to initiate the formation of a pro-Israel caucus in the Duma in meetings last week in Moscow.

An abundant number of pro-Israel lobbies, too numerous to describe, operate at all levels in the United States — political, social, media, economic, educational, “think tanks,” fund-raising, recruiting, and institutional. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli supporters intrude, infiltrate, and mold the minds of everyday Americans. One description can be found at The Israel Lobbies: A Survey of the Pro-Israel Community in the United States, Dov Waxman, June 2010.

Digest all of this. Why the existence of this plethora of helpful groups for one small country that has a strong military and is economically well-off? Do any equivalent assemblies of forces that promote a specific nation exist in the world?

Overlooking all of this is Mossad.

Mossad, an illegal intelligence gathering and terrorist organization, operates within a multitude of counties, gathers information on military, social, political, and economic activities, assassinates adversaries, terrorizes populations and assures the criminal activities continue unimpeded.

A paralyzed world asks how can it happen.

The answers to why a small nation can commit genocide, develop a superior military, and brutally attack a larger and more resourceful nation have been provided.

Israel is a criminal nation and not brought to justice for its criminal actions.

Raubwirtschaft, its state economy is partially based on robbery, looting and plundering conquered territories. Raubwirtschaft states are in continuous warfare with their neighbors and usurp the resources of their conquered subjects, while claiming security objectives and defensive actions against defenseless people. The U.S. and other nations assist and enable the Raubwirtschaft.

Criminal gangs, once they achieve superiority in firepower, make no compromises.

Israel would not have achieved superiority in firepower without the financial and military support from Germany and the United States, programs that used the financial accounts of the German and American peoples.

Israel has gone further than Raubwirtschaft, using it as a springboard for transnational corruption — extending illicit activities to global networks of money laundering, human trafficking, drug smuggling, and general crime. Local authorities take action but do not engage the central source in Tel Aviv.
Global influencers perpetuate the myth of Israel as a responsible and peace seeking Jewish state. No attempt is made to register these organizations as lobbies for a foreign government or investigate the legality of their operations.

Mossad, an illegal intelligence gathering and terrorist organization, operates within a multitude of counties and assures the criminal activities continue unimpeded. The U.S. refuses to include Mossad in its war on terrorism and permits the intelligence gathering and terrorism on its soil and in other lands.

Is it ignorance, is it bribery, is it graft, is it betrayal, is it lack of concern? It is all of that.

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

China’s mixed and managed economy is designed to match its stage of development and is well managed. The U.S. non-managed economy has no design and does not match its advanced stage of economic development. China uses exports to grow its economy and limit debt. The U.S. runs severe deficits in its trade balance and needs a growing debt to finance the trade deficit and to increase the GDP. The rapidly growing debt portends economic decline, and there is no certified way to escape the predicament. U.S. hegemony and world leadership appears doomed. The sooner the U.S. leaders recognize the dangers and readjust the economy, the less will be the slide. More on this later. Facts and statistics supply the proof that the PRC has successfully met the challenges.

Overly contentious USA

Using sanctions from legislative directives, rather than pursuing cooperative efforts to combat China’s rise to the world’s number one industrial power, the U.S motivates China to become self-sufficient in technological applications, temporarily interrupts China’s advances, and eventually causes havoc to American companies

Citing security concerns, the U.S. Congress, in 2019, passed the National Defense Authorization Act and essentially banned use of telecommunication equipment from 5G network pioneer Huawei and smartphone manufacturer ZTE. In June 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) designated ZTE a national security threat. The security concerns proceeded from a possibility that the Chinese government could demand the habits of American citizens, similar to the information that Google and a host of advertising firms gather from internet searchers.

Huawei is of more major significance, but ZTE’s shrugging off the sanctions deserves mention. Its steady revenue growth until facing competition from other companies, relates its success.

This telecom company entered the smartphone market in 2010 and now has the 12th spot in the listing of the Largest Smartphone Manufacturers & Brands in the World. ZTE is also the 6th largest supplier in the Global 5G Infrastructure Market.

Huawei, global leader in development of 5G networks and China’s technology powerhouse, reeled from U.S. sanctions and stumbled as a boxer from an unaware punch. Predictions had Huawei barely surviving. Labelled as a company the U.S. could not do with, Huawei is now the company the world cannot do without. Refuting U.S. attempts to restrict its advances, Huawei expanded into new markets, into new industries, and developed unique alternatives to the denied technologies.

After years of “barely surviving,” Huawei is a leading network company on the globe, having constructed approximately 30% of worldwide 5G base stations, and is fourth in global smartphone manufacturing. After losing access to Google’s Android and Oracle’s software, Huawei developed its own operating system, Harmony OS, which has become the second most popular mobile operating system in China and, by 2025, was installed in over 900 million devices.

In 2022, the Commerce Department informed NVidia and AMD to restrict exports of AI-related chips to China, and informed chip equipment makers — Lam Research, Applied Materials and KLA — to restrict sending tools to the PRC for manufacturing advanced chips. China’s tech giant responded by challenging NVidia artificial intelligence dominance with its Ascend 910D AI processor chip, which “reflects China’s strategic push to develop indigenous semiconductor capabilities.” The U.S. did not respond to Huawei’s advance with its own technology advancements and again responded with threats. On May 15, 2025, the Trump administration warned that using Huawei’s AI chips might violate US export laws.

Ignoring U.S. threats, Huawei expanded use of its chips into the automotive industry and set a new standard for smart driving and self-driving technology.

Huawei’s ambitious undertaking includes the introduction of cutting-edge smart vehicles equipped with advanced autonomous driving technologies. The company is leveraging its prowess in artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to enhance vehicle performance and safety features. With a focus on seamless connectivity and user experience, Huawei is positioning itself as a significant player in the highly sought-after smart driving space, previously dominated by traditional automotive giants and tech firms like Tesla.

In August 2023, President Biden issued an Executive Order “Addressing United States Investments in Certain National Security Technologies and Products in Countries of Concern.” The order prohibited U.S. investments in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence technologies in China. In November 2024, “The U.S. reportedly ordered TSMC to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers that are often used in artificial intelligence applications.”

As a result, Xiaomi, a leading smartphone manufacturer, which has expanded into electric SUV car production, developed its 3-nanometre XRing O1 system-on-a-chip (SoC). Following Apple, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, Xiaomi became the fourth tech company in the world to design a 3-nanometer mobile SoC for mass production. A Chinese company can now compete with American companies in selling the unique chips, and Qualcomm, which has been a long-standing supplier of mobile chips to Xiaomi, might have its sales disrupted.

Statistics tell the story

What have all these underhanded means to stifle the Chinese economy accomplished? Statistics in the following table tell the story. The Chinese economy surpassed the U.S. economy in 2022 and is leaving Uncle Sam far behind.

The U.S. has a higher GDP than China. China has a higher GDP/PPP. Unlike nominal GDP, which uses current exchange rates, GDP/PPP adjusts for differences in price levels between countries and provides a more realistic measure of the value of goods and services produced. Another consideration is the value given to components of the GDP. Capital, hard goods, and agriculture supply the most needed wants to a community, and their purchases play a more significant role in the economy. The service economy, a paramount feature of the U.S. economy, exaggerates its GDP. One dollar of purchase in goods production requires time for feedback to the manufacturer before other goods are replenished and additional purchases augment the GDP. Purchases in the service economy quickly pass the same money from one service provider to another and elevate the GDP. Industrial output, whether for domestic or foreign use, more appropriately demonstrates the robustness of an economy. China leads the United States in industrial output and demonstrated robustness by becoming the leading manufacturer and exporter of automobiles.

A comparison between two dynamos of each nation, U.S. Tesla and China BYD, automobile manufacturers and innovators that rose rapidly against established competitors, complete the story. BYD, which started at about the same time as Tesla, has surpassed Tesla in automobile sales.

BYD Revenue

Tesla Revenue

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More than that, BYD has accomplished what was never considered possible; with a fully charged battery and a full tank of gas, unbiased testing of its new hybrid auto technology showed a driving range of 1,305 miles before charge or fill up. Its fully electric models use advanced sodium ion batteries and, in 5 minutes, can be charged to obtain a 250 mile range. A vertically integrated company, which manufactures its parts and is a leading provider of electric car batteries, BYD sells its autos at the lowest prices in China.

Revisions by BYD include paring the price of its Seagull hatchback to 55,800 yuan ($7,780), a 20% reduction to a model that was already the carmaker’s cheapest and one that had garnered global attention for its sub-$10,000 price tag. The Seal dual-motor hybrid sedan (direct competitor to the $37,000 Tesla Model 3) saw the biggest price cut at 34%, or by 53,000 yuan to 102,800 yuan ($14,333). (ED: These may be temporary price cuts.)

Fatal Decline of the Imperial Power

The U.S. cannot compete with or contain China. Using China as a scapegoat for its global economic decline has proved counterproductive. Better for the U.S. to cooperate with the PRC, realistically examine its economy, become aware of its limitations, and take decisive action to prevent a fatal decline.

The hindrances to economic progress is fourfold:

(1) Debt drives the economy and the debt has become unmanageable.
(2) Manufacturers have established offshore facilities to open new markets and to compete more effectively.
(3) Off shore production and having the dollar as an international currency has produced a high trade deficit.
(4) U.S. markets in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America have eroded.

Debt drives the U.S. economy and, the two charts indicate that without increasing the exorbitant debt, the economy will stagnate.

GDP/PPP

All Sectors Debt

Given a money supply to purchase goods and services, how can production and eventual sales of goods and services advance without increases in the money supply? One way is to increase the velocity of money, which occurred with on-time inventory, credit card purchasing, and computer speedup of financial transactions. These phenomena occurred during past decades and exploded the GDP. Another means is by having a positive trade balance; selling goods externally. If these means are not occurring, and they no longer are, increases in the money supply are required to increase production and sell additional goods.

U.S. goods trade deficit increased in 2024 to a record $1.2 trillion, and, although many economists excuse the trade deficit, saying that,

a trade deficit can only arise if foreigners invest more in the US than Americans invest abroad. In other words, a country can only have a trade deficit if it also has an equally sized investment surplus. The US is able to sustain a large trade deficit because so many foreigners are eager to invest here,

is more a rationalization than a reality. The trade deficit arose because American industry found it more profitable to produce overseas and made the dollar the international currency. As an international currency, the dollar is in demand and its exchange rate is high compared to other currencies. The strong dollar raises the prices of U.S. goods, makes its exports expensive and its imports cheap. Yes, the balance of payments must be equalized, and the dollars return as either purchase of government securities ─ one principal reason for rise in government debt ─ or purchase of U.S. assets. The former has become unwieldly, leading to high interest rates and the latter gives foreign interests increased power in the American system. Having a positive balance of trade reduces government debt and foreign influence.

Government debt is not the total problem. A system that exists by debt is the real problem. For a free wheeling and profit first economy that generates huge trade deficits to grow, the money supply must grow. Because money is created by either bank loans (debt) or Federal Reserve borrowings from the Treasury (debt), all money is debt. For the economy to continually grow, debt must continually grow. Soon, financing the debt and its increasing interest rates will be a difficult problem. Credit will freeze, loans will default, and the money supply will shrink. Boom will become bust. The United States has no choice but to have its economy more managed and align government and industry in common goals that correct the trend to a fatal decline.

Tariffs as a government money raiser and incentive to produce locally will be another tax on the American consumer and will not stimulate private investment in internal production to replace foreign imports. So, why not maintain low priced imports and tax the consumer for another goal ─ government investment in competitive industries. Cooperation between government and industry, rather than free-wheeling economics will enable more rational decisions and predictable operations.

The United States pioneered the global economy but globalization is no longer a perfect fit for the economically mature nation. Markets once lost are usually lost for a long time. Preserving present markets and finding niche markets for specialized goods, which the omnipresent U.S. economy has many, will stabilize exports.

History shows that private industry has never been the source of solutions to economic lapses. Changes in life style and a return to the cohesion and social legislation that characterized the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era might solve the economic, social, and political declines predicted for America’s future. The democratic socialization of America is begging to begin.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Departing from a policy from trying to speak with a unique voice and not being derivative, I prefer to publish a view that is similar to my own but has been already published, is highly informative, and is eloquently expressed.

The secret sauce of Chinese industrial success
Smart state planning plus ferocious market competition
Hua Bin, May 23

The planning function is carried out by the China State Planning and Development Commission, which assembles the best minds in the government, academia, think tanks, and industries and goes through multi-year research, studies, and survey to understand and predict key technological trends and future market demand. Then they iterate and socialize the plans until there is broad buy-in.

Once top-line state planning priorities are set, central government empowers local governments to implement the policies. At the implementation level, fierce market competition becomes the norm.

Local governments compete with each other. Each local government is powerfully incentivized to create local tech and industrial champions as career advancements are typically tied in with achievements of national priorities.

Local governments unleash suites of policy support measures to attract and help businesses succeed, including

• Preferential tax
• Land use priority
• Preferential bank loans, even venture capital financing from government agencies (e.g. Shanghai and Shenzhen each has multi-billion dollar semiconductor funds)

Other policy support even extends to

• Establishing educational programs at universities to train and develop scientific and technical talents specifically for identified industries and technologies (e.g. AI, robotics, hypersonics, rare earth mining and refining, rail, ship building, etc.)
• Rolling out talent acquisition programs to provide housing, allowances, and compensation equalization schemes to attract talents to move to their cities. Some governments even provide WeWork type of office facilities to startups for free.
• investing in infrastructure upgrades including 5G coverage, EV charging stations, high speed rail, ports, bridges, etc. to enable smooth operation of large industrial enterprises.
• Investing in local parts and components supply chains that can be plugged into specific manufacturing sectors.
• Promoting successful technical leaders and executives in critical industries into senior government positions (e.g. the head of AVIC, the leading aeronautic business in China, was promoted to become a provincial governor)

The central government went so far as to crack down on monopolistic consumer tech companies such as Alibaba and Tencent in 2019 as these companies were consuming too much financial and talent resources and preventing startups from emerging. The main goal of the crackdown was to redirect resources (funding, talent) to more productive directions such as AI and hard tech.

As a result, in the key technological and industrial hubs across China, from Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Chengdu to Hefei and Changsa, you will find hundreds of EV companies, solar energy companies, AI and robotics startups, ship builders, and drone companies that are developing innovative technologies, building production capacity, and engage in intense competition for consumers.

In the competition, there are private businesses, state owned enterprises, and foreign companies as well. All have to compete for customers on price and quality and operate with razor thin margin. Innovation and cost efficiency are prized in the never-ending loop of hyper competition.

The Chinese industrial and technological ecosystem is often described by insiders as “arena for gladiators”. In a survival of the fittest environment, the winners of such competitions emerge as world class champions.

The same model is replicated in industry after industry from EV, smart phones, solar energy, robotics, ship building, AI large language models, drones, chip making, and biopharmaceuticals.

Many people mistakenly assume the Chinese state planning model means the government picks the winners and losers. That cannot be further from the truth. State planners pick the priority industries, define the swim lane, provide policy incentives, and then market takes over to decide the winner.

In contrast, the US industrial policy is more guilty of government picking winners – just witness how both Biden and Trump surround themselves with senior executives of incumbent tech giants when they announce policies such as the Chips Act, Inflation Reduction Act, or the Stargate program. Almost by definition, the main beneficiaries of these industrial policies will be the companies in the room. Market competition doesn’t seem to play the same decisive rule as in China.

As China accelerates the third mixed-economy phase of its industrial development, we can expect to see more Chinese companies will innovate faster, scale in the largest single market in the world, and become world-class competitors in their industries. Profit margins will be kept low as competition will never rest. However, more consumer surplus will accrue to customers, leading to improvement of living standards for all.

Hua Bin details the advances in China’s economy and describes why those advances will continue and cannot stall ─ the government apparatus plans ahead, outlines alternative directions to roadblocks, and facilitates shifts in production, enabling government industry to step in when private initiative falters. No matter how the U.S. contends China, the PRC will find a way to deter the contention and, in the end, the U.S. will lose, and lose until, as a last resort….

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

In his first term, Trump left the White House with the country in a state of physical, mental, social, political, and economic shock — a COVID-19 epidemic, economy in shambles, nation divided, an insurrection impeded, and two congressional attempts at having him removed from office. With this enviable record, maybe not all his fault, he asserted he had made the destroyed America “Great again.” Historians disagree.

The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey surveyed 525 historians and political science scholars. Abraham Lincoln topped the list, with Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Washington, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson rounding out the top five.

The results of a poll released on Presidents Day weekend rank Biden as the 14th greatest president in American history, coming in ahead of the likes of Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Ronald Reagan, and Ulysses S. Grant. His predecessor and likely Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, found himself in dead last at 45th on the list.

Donald Trump rates lowest (10.92), behind James Buchanan (16.71), Andrew Johnson (21.56), Franklin Pierce (24.6), William Henry Harrison (26.01), and Warren Harding (27.76). Barack Obama has risen nine places (from #16 to #7), as has Ulysses S. Grant (from #26 to #17), while Andrew Jackson has fallen 12 places (from #9 to #21) and Calvin Coolidge has dropped 7 spots (from #27 to #34).

After successor and predecessor Joe Biden managed to end the COVID-19 epidemic and revive the economy, while keeping the country divided, the dead last Trump entered his second term by announcing he is going to make the United States greater. Tariffs, which many prominent economists and Wall Street analysts say will cause a RECESSION, will revive the industrial base. Peace and stability will return to the Slavic nations and to the peoples of the Middle East. The dead last man is quoted as having said, “But it (Ukraine/Russian conflict) is a very easy negotiation to take place. I will have it solved within one day, a peace between them.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio now suggests “the U.S. might soon back away from negotiations altogether without more progress.”

The most grievous faux pas in Trump’s jumbled policies is his repudiation of The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement promoted by the Obama administration, which limited the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions relief and other provisions. The agreement was finalized on 14 July 2015, between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council together with the European Union.

For 13 years, Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges.

For 15 years, Iran agreed to enrich uranium only up to 3.67% and not to build heavy-water facilities.

For 10 years, uranium enrichment would be limited to a single facility using first-generation centrifuges. Other facilities would be converted to avoid proliferation risks. IAEA would have regular access to all Iranian nuclear facilities to monitor compliance. In return for verifiably abiding by those provisions, Iran would receive relief from U.S., European Union, and United Nations S.C. nuclear-related sanctions.

To President Donald J. Trump “the Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States ever entered.” He inaugurated the PROTECTING AMERICA FROM A BAD DEAL, terminating the United States’ participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and re-imposing sanctions lifted under the deal. Misinformation, exaggerations, and wild predictions steered America from A GREAT DEAL into a BAD FUTURE.

• President Trump is terminating United States participation in the JCPOA, as it failed to protect America’s national security interests.
• The JCPOA enriched the Iranian regime and enabled its malign behavior, while at best delaying its ability to pursue nuclear weapons and allowing it to preserve nuclear research and development.
• The re-imposed sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy, such as its energy, petrochemical, and financial sectors.
• United States withdrawal from the JCPOA will pressure the Iranian regime to alter its course of malign activities and ensure that Iranian bad acts are no longer rewarded. As a result, both Iran and its regional proxies will be put on notice. As importantly, this step will help ensure global funds stop flowing towards illicit terrorist and nuclear activities.
• Intelligence recently released by Israel provides compelling details about Iran’s past secret efforts to develop nuclear weapons, which it lied about for years.
• The intelligence further demonstrates that the Iranian regime did not come clean about its nuclear weapons activity, and that it entered the JCPOA in bad faith.
• The JCPOA failed to deal with the threat of Iran’s missile program and did not include a strong enough mechanism for inspections and verification.
• The JCPOA foolishly gave the Iranian regime a windfall of cash and access to the international financial system for trade and investment.
• *Instead of using the money from the JCPOA to support the Iranian people at home, the regime has instead funded a military buildup and continues to fund its terrorist proxies, such as Hizballah and Hamas.

Because of Trump’s decision to leave the JCPOA, everything the JCPOA managed to prevent has been encouraged. The Islamic State has ballistic missiles, drones, anti-ballistic missiles, and uranium stock at 60 percent enrichment, close to having material for a nuclear bomb.

WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Iran could make enough fissile for one nuclear bomb in “about 12 days,” a top U.S. Defense Department official said on Tuesday, down from the estimated one year it would have taken while the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was in effect.

Trump’s efforts have been counterproductive and his fast fall into oblivion might be hastened in the renewed nuclear discussions, except, wait, he can be resurrected. By playing his cards right, not the way he told Ukraine President Zelensky is playing the cards, he can rise faster than a SpaceX starship and vault himself into a page of glorious history ─ Trump can rid the world of the nuclear menace ─ Iran can help Trump to achieve nuclear disarmament. Unlikely, but doable.

The only reason for Iran having a nuclear weapons program is to neutralize Israel’s nuclear armaments. The Ayatollahs will definitely halt their program if assured Israel surrenders its weapons, that is, if Israel has deliverable weapons to surrender. This is a fair trade and one that Trump, who covets a Nobel Prize, might entertain. Think of it, and he will ─ Donald J. Trump, 45th and 47th presidents of the United States was responsible for halting nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and for eventually reducing the nuclear threat throughout the world. Much to deliberate, much to cajole, much to administrate, and much to admire. What is the alternative — much to bomb, much to kill, much to destroy, and much for history to scorn.

Israel will not approve, and will kick, squirm, and threaten. Without the United States support and an entire world from Tierra del Fuego to Siberia allied with the proposition, Israel will receive an offer it cannot refuse. The bitter man will smile again. His hateful disposition hid the real Trump, the man who wants to be loved by all.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The press conference after his meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni revealed the extent of his descent into a chaotic state ─ he hardly knew she was there.

Usually, the press conference that occurs after a meeting between two “heads of state” concentrates on the results of the discussion between the two executives. The U.S. president may field most of the questions, but a healthy, alert, and empathetic executive makes certain that the foreign minster is also addressed and is given equal time to reply to questions. Not with Trump; he continually answered questions, while Giorgia Meloni sat quietly aside until an Italian correspondent asked a question of the Italian Prime Minister. Trump unashamedly lied and insulted people in Ms. Meloni’s presence; displaying characteristics that shock foreign dignitaries and embarrass the American people.

A question on price rises from a CNN reporter stirred Trump into his act. After berating the reporter with an abusive remark, “if you were truthful, which you are not,” Mr. Veracity casually stated, “I learned that gasoline hit $1.98 in some states.” Knowing that the lowest charge in my area is about $3.30/gallon, I hastened to ask Gemini to tell me the state with the lowest gas price. Answer: Mississippi at $2.53/gallon and national average at $3.34/gallon. Mr. Veracity continued with his audacious remarks, careless statements, and mathematical ignorance.

“When I came into office they hit me with the price of eggs. Fake news like you, you’re fake. Eggs had gone up 87 percent and we did an unbelievable job and eggs are now down 92 percent.” Medium sized eggs had a price tag of $5-$6/dozen, which by Trump’s figures would now be about 40 cents to 55 cents for a dozen, a price from 50 years ago.

“Tariffs are making us rich, losing trillions and now we are making money, taking in billions of dollars. I took in more than 700 billions of dollars from China.” The economic whiz still does not know that the importer pays the tariff and always increases the price and passes the duty charge on to the consumer. (Note: In rare cases, over a long time, tariffs may increase the value of the currency and indirectly lower the price the importer pays for the merchandise. In this case the importer might not raise the price. This rarity has not happened.) Nobody asked how he (personally) “took in more than 700 billions of dollars from China,” when the total income from tariffs was only $80B in 2019 and not all were duties on goods from China.

Trump’s obsession with Joe Biden grows and grows. “We’re getting criminals out of this country who Biden allowed to enter. Hundreds of thousands of criminals and murders, drug dealers. Opened jails all over the world and they came here. Biden did that.” The disturbing fixation on Biden continued.

“When Biden came in, oil went through the roof. That is what caused the problem. If Biden were in power, oil would be 7 or 8 dollars/gallon.“ Not only does former U.S. President, Joe Biden, have the keys to the jails in Latin America, he controls OPEC and determines the price of oil. Seems Trump’s mental gymnastics confused the price of oil with the price of gasoline.

All Biden’s administration was good at was “stealing elections.” No need to be concerned, now, “We have a real president who understands what it is all about. I had the strongest economy by far.”

In Donald Trump’s world, the meager GDP growth during his term in office represented the best U.S. economy of all time. COVID-19 in the year 2020 reduced the average GDP, but the other years did not show spectacular growth.

Bill Clinton 1993–2001 4.0%
George W. Bush 2001–2009 2.4%
Barack Obama 2009–2017 2.3%
Donald Trump 2017–2021 2.3% (2.46% in 2017, 2.97% in 2018 2.47% in 2019)
Joe Biden 2021–2025 3.2%

Driven by animosity and never by charity, the “liar-in-chief” ridiculed federal laws, created an unnecessary upheaval in the financial community, undermined an agency that gains credibility by having a neutral appearance, and insulted an independent agency’s leader who was not there to defend himself.

In response to a question regarding Federal Reserve actions, Trump replied:

I don’t think he (Federal Reserve Chairperson Jerome Hayden “Jay” Powell) is doing the job, too late, always too late…. If I ask Powell to leave, he’ll be out of there, real fast….Only things gone up are interest rates because they are playing politics; Federal Reserve are not smart people.

“Didn’t you nominate him,” asked a press member. “I can’t complain because we had the greatest economy,” the wise man answered.

Trump later retracted his remark of having the capability of firing Powell, who, by a previous Supreme Court decision ─ the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor decision from the Supreme Court, finding the president cannot fire leaders of independent federal agencies over policy disagreements ─ challenged Trump’s statement. He could not retract the obvious attempt to force an independent agency to behave as if dependent upon him and to have the public lose faith in the agency that regulates the money supply and has its name on all currency.

After disposing of the people that most annoy him, Trump turned to the nation that most annoys him ─ Iran ─ with his biggest whopper, deciphered by anyone who can read. “I terminated the Iran deal and you can see they haven’t been able to do anything.” Yes, it is true, Iran has not been able to do “anything”; they have been able to do “everything.”

Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, claiming “it failed to curtail Iran’s missile program and regional influence.” Formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the 2015 agreement reached between Iran and the major world powers prevented the Islamic State from developing the centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Imposing restrictions on its nuclear activities and allowing international inspections of the nuclear facilities froze Iran’s nuclear activities for ten years

The treaty would have expired in 2025 and been either renegotiated or Iran could re-start its nuclear activities. After JCPOA was scrapped, Iran developed a massive number of ballistic missiles, increased its regional influence, allied with Russia and China, and enriched trace amounts of uranium to nearly weapons-grade levels. Iran has done everything that Trump claimed he would prevent. In the year 2025, they were not starting from scratch but, due to Donald Trump, were nearly finished having atomic weapons. Added benefits ─ Iran is able to negotiate with increased leverage and does not have to give up anything ─ let the powers bomb the facilities and suffer a little destruction in the process.

The serial mendacities, self-aggrandizements, character assassinations, and petty resentments, where Trump elevates himself by judging and demeaning others, type him as slightly deranged. His relation to the eccentric scriptwriter in Mario Vargas Llosa’s novel made its complete appearance, with Pedro Camacho Trump showing he had gone berserk by vilifying an admired and deceased president. The real life Pedro Camacho Trump recited the most sickening, psychopathic, and unhinged statement ever uttered in normal society: “Carter died a happy man, know why, because he was not the worst president, Joe Biden was.”

The men in white would have done the nation a favor by hauling the soon-to-be ex-president away to his preferred rest home ─ Mar-a-Lago. Hm, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wore white for the occasion.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

After Trump used presidential authority to purge his opposition from the Kennedy Center board, and the newly appointed board voted unanimously to elect him as its new chairperson, self-cancellation culture came into effect. In response to the changes, administrators, stars, and artists, including Board Treasurer Shonda Rhimes, National Symphony Orchestra Artistic Advisor Ben Folds, Artistic Advisor-at-Large Renée Fleming, and Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter severed connections with the Kennedy Center. Performances have been cancelled.

The abrupt changes in the social and cultural atmosphere parallel the political changes ─ the public has become wary of a liberal establishment that shapes its customs, habits, and lives. Not unique and chilling ─ the German populace of 1932 expressed similar attitudes to the Weimar Republic and, because the leaders of the Weimar Republic would not recognize their growing detachment with the populace, the totalitarian Nazis accommodated citizen wishes.

I suspect the rearrangements that Donald Trump prepares for the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts and The U.S. Institute of Peace will highlight American exceptionalism, clean and wholesome living, and a superior American culture. Nothing controversial on the stages. Too bad! I have several arguments with both institutions and looked forward to a day my arguments could be resolved. Doubtful the Trump contingent will fulfill the expectations, which makes me wonder what they will accomplish. Unlike the decimated federal government bureaus that consist of personnel and office space, these institutions are housed in buildings of architectural merit and on prime real estate that cannot be easily disposed.

Before I describe my arguments with the operation of the Kennedy Center, I’ll mention one captivating aspect of the Kennedy Center ─ walkways around the building.

Surrounding two floors of the cavernous building are a lower walkway and rooftop terrace that provide captivating views of Washington D.C., the Potomac River, and Northern Virginia. It is worth a trip to Foggy Bottom, just to take a walk around the building.

My gripes with the Kennedy Center are personal reflections, to which many will not agree. Nevertheless, I consider it relevant to expose another example of a small cadre of pseudo intellectuals imposing their persuasions on the public and arousing the wrath of those who sense a liberal imposition, one of several that unknowingly paved the road to Trump’s victory.

(1) The Kennedy Center is a clean looking, well proportioned, and architecturally sound building on the outside that is mismatched by a solemn and confusing overkill of unapparent cultural activity on the inside.

The building has six large, and hidden theaters, dozens of unused rooms, and several smaller theater spaces somewhere in the cavernous building, if you can find them and reach them before you run out of breath. It is attractive from afar, overwhelming up close, and bewildering inside; nothing to see but carpets, walls, chandeliers, and ceilings; a false elegance that makes the patron feel impoverished and insignificant; no feeling of a center for performing arts.

Much nicer to have richly decorated and stand-alone theaters for each cultural activity, similar to New York’s Lincoln Center. Stand in the outside court of the Lincoln Center and have the feeling you are somewhere.

Stand in the corridors of the Kennedy Center and just keep walking until you find one of the outside walkways and start breathing again.

(2) Started out as a National Center for the Performing Arts and gravitated to becoming “a living memorial for President John F. Kennedy.”

John F. Kennedy (JFK) served as president for less than four years. His administration had its “ups” and “downs,” and a proper discussion of its merits needs more than can be contained in this article. I trust a neutral opinion can objectively conclude that Kennedy was not one of our greatest presidents and does not warrant more attention than the large number of less than great presidents. However, for some strange reason, JFK has been honored with identification to a massive amount of memorials, schools, roadways, plazas, avenues, statues, stadiums, transit facilities, buildings, and institutions. Similar to public relations efforts that keep Rudolf Valentino, Greta Garbo, and George Gershwin alive, the public relations effort that created a “Camelot” for Kennedy’s administration extends to eternity. I recognize that JFK was assassinated and deserves a sympathetic look, which he can and should have in memorials. More than a few memorials for a less than great president is bewildering.

New York’s Idlewild airport was renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport; Cape Canaveral Space center was renamed JFK Space enter; and Cape Canaveral was renamed Cape Kennedy, before a referendum passed by Florida voters in 1973 reverted it to its original name. The John F. Kennedy Expressway in Chicago is one of many roadways named after the former president.

In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation creating a National Cultural Center in the nation’s capital. Two months after Kennedy’s assassination, an Act of Congress designated the National Cultural Center as The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The JFK Center opened its doors in 1971.

Recognized as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy did not mean The Center for the Performing Arts operates to popularize the Kennedy name and the Kennedy presidency. For decades, I found minor references to President Kennedy within the building and only recently have I been alerted that the building, as an institution for the performing arts, has been reconstituted as a living testimony to President John F. Kennedy and his presidency. In the huge entranceway, known as the Hall of States, photos of JFK, plastered to the walls in a haphazard and awkward manner ruin the quiet elegance the hall attempted to achieve.

On the top floor, a space has been dedicated for a Kennedy museum. The museum consists of a collection of photographs, sound recordings, newspaper clippings, posters, and video presentations, has no coherence, provides little insight into the Kennedy mystique, and resembles an arcade.

Lacking information, artefacts, and research, it is a poor tribute to the thirty-fifth president of the USA and a dud when compared to The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum at Columbia Point, on the UMass campus, Boston, MA. With coherent information, artefacts, and extensive research, the latter records Kennedy’s history, his rise in politics, his successes and failures, his rivalry with Lyndon Johnson, and the ultimate reversal in fortunes for the two major politicians of their times.

(3) Has disagreeable sculptures that may fit other public places but do not have a place in a building that houses a National Center for the Performing Arts.

In a plaza facing the two entrances to the Kennedy Center are bas-reliefs by the German sculptor, Jurgen Weber — “Amerika” and “War or Peace,” both gifts by the Goethe Institute to the Kennedy Center.

“Amerika” with a “K’ is fashionable with those who are not raptured with America. Add an angry “statue of liberty” and know the artist is not partisan to American life. I don’t understand how the unrelated juxtaposition of naked people, lips without faces, faces without bodies, objects without meaning, and non-descript buildings describes Amerika, at least it is not clear.

An angry and masculine statue of Liberty, one of America’s most treasured possessions, does not resonate with the public. An artist can be excused for challenging many of the U.S. hypocritical symbols, but nobody extinguishes the lady’s torch.

The tableau is gruesome, disturbing, unimaginative, and without composition or balance. Any comment on Amerikan society is only recognizable by the title. Nor is it original; paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, circa 1500, had similar motifs.

The sculpted “War or Peace” is more incomprehensible. Some indications of violence, no indications of war, unpleasantly whimsical, and nothing peaceful. One positive quality ─ the performing arts are represented.

A preferred tittle is “Apollo and Pan,” a variation of the musical contest between the god, Phoebus Apollo, competing in a music competition against the satyr-god, Pan, a derivation of a painting by Hendrik de Clerck, circa 1600. Major variation is the emphasis on the sexes — masculine in Jurgen Weber’s rendition; feminine in Hendrik de Clerck’s interpretation.

Give the bas-relief a name that better identifies the import of the artistic work and I can understand having a renamed and whimsical “War or Peace” on the grounds of a performing arts institution. With little artistic merit, is there a reason for “Amerika and its modern rendition of a previous painting being situated on the grounds of a Center for Performing Arts? More baffling is that neither have been placed in areas where much of the audience walks. “Amerika” is in a plaza that few pass through before entering the building. “War or Peace,” is on a wall that cars pass by before entering the garage. Nobody walks there. There is no reason to walk there and no walk that goes there. I may be the only person who has carefully observed the bas-relief and found a spot to take a picture.

A preview of the cleansed and sanitized Kennedy Center has appeared. Enter the Hall of States and you are welcomed by our majesties, a grim presidente, an archaic black and white photo of Mrs. Trump, and photos of VP JD Vance and his wife; all set in cheap frames from a Michaels store.

What happens next is a mystery. The Kennedy Center will lose much of its audience, the Washington DC area citizens who are the most liberal in the nation, some of its grants from philanthropists, a part of its $46 million federal contribution, and many of the artists and programs that filled up its spaces. Fiscal year 2023 showed revenue of $286,438,548, with the main sources being $140,861,307 in contributions — grants and donations, which made up 49.2 percent of the total revenue) and $129,917,134 from program services — ticket sales and subscriptions, making up 45.4 percent of revenue.

Programs, contributions, and audience will slide, which means revenue will slide. Losses will increase dramatically (claims are made by Interim executive director Ric Grenell that the Kennedy center is already broke) and to where? Will artistic spaces remain empty, and if so, why will they be needed? Not easy to disassemble without demolishing parts of the building; similar to chopping off an arm to gain weight.

The United States Institute of Peace (USIP)
Writing about the USIP may be similar to writing about the pyramids ─ past history. In a short time, the Trump administration removed George E. Moose, the organization’s president, fired most of the USIP board, and left Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Defense University President Peter Garvin as three remaining board members. The unholy trinity appointed Kenneth Jackson as acting USIP president, who fired almost the entire staff of the crumbling U.S. Institute of Peace. Since then, access to website usip.org receives a notice, “Sorry, you have been blocked.”

Established in 1984 by congressional legislation and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. Congress funds the USIP and governs it “by a bipartisan board of directors with 15 members, which must include the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, and the president of the National Defense University. The remaining 12 members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.” Purpose — an independent, nonprofit, national institute tasked with promoting conflict resolution and prevention worldwide.

From my perspective, the USIP contains some eager and valiant persons, working diligently to achieve a peaceful word. Unfortunately, powers to be have prevented the efforts in achieving peace. The Board of Directors who frame the agenda are those who receive the recommendations that shape the government’s legislative and executive agendas. They are not independent and talk to themselves. Similar to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial museum, which has shown no effort in preventing holocausts, both institutions exist to delude the public into believing they represent the better nature of an America that promotes war and genocide.

This was confirmed in 2008, when the U.S. Institute of Peace, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the American Academy of Diplomacy jointly convened the Genocide Prevention Task Force to “spotlight genocide prevention as a national priority and to develop practical policy recommendations to enhance the capacity of the U.S. government to respond to emerging threats of genocide and mass atrocities.” Since then, we have had the Rwanda genocide, the Rohingya genocide, and the ongoing, most severe and most obvious Palestinian genocide. The latter exposes the hypocrisy of the USIP and its cronies.

Where goeth USIP has big problems. Congress authorized $100 million for construction of its headquarters, and private donors raised another $86 million to satisfy its construction. Who owns the building and what will be its new charter are unclear. How, or will the private donors be repaid? A war will be raging at the Institute of Peace.

What and who are next on the chopping block of the 21st century “reign of terror?” Careful, Miss Statue of Liberty, who has the effrontery to welcome those lazy, dirty, and criminal immigrants to our vibrant, antiseptic, and uncorrupted shores.

Watch out, you may be next.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Uncontrolled criminals prance around Gaza and West Bank neighborhoods, shooting whom they want, destroying what they don’t want, stealing whatever pleases them. The locals can’t interfere and the authorities have been told to protect the criminals from harm. Alarmed citizens in foreign neighborhoods organize to halt the criminality and are accused of illegal activity against the criminals, who are portrayed as victims. The appointed U.S. representative to the United Nations, previously a New York congressional representative, designates students who fought courageously to halt the genocide of the Palestinian people as anti-Semites. Some students are arrested for deportation, while the serial killers continue their “benevolent” activity of depopulating the earth. Is this science fiction of a dystopian world; no this is the reality of our dystopian world.

A contradiction tells the true story.
The students demonstrating against the obvious genocide of the Palestinian people, in which Israel, who claims to represent the Jewish people, is the perpetrator, are accused of anti-Semitism, of falsely labelling the Jewish community of being involved in the genocide, and supposedly, preventing some Jews from attending class. Nothing specific in these accusations and no names mentioned. If there have been anti-Jewish occurrences, they have been few and not alarming. Miscreants among the student protestors are incidental and are not representative of the mass of protestors.

The contradiction occurs from the guardians against ant-Semitism asserting you cannot accuse all Jews of genocide because of the genocide tactics of Israel, and they accuse the protestors of being “Hamas managed” because a few of the student protestors may incline to favor Hamas. Adding to the contradiction is that labelling an organization, which notable and credible persons consider a “resistance organization,” and has never committed a terrorist action against the United States, is arbitrary and not a considered action. Not allowing people to express thoughts that do not violate laws or harm the American people is not thoughtful guidance; it is thought control, a perversion of the U.S. constitution. Giving more importance to a few Jews who could not attend class (Is this true?) rather than giving attention to the genocide of a population is demented.

We realize the enormous problem the Palestinians have to survive the onslaught; we do not realize that this is a problem, a punishing and challenging problem, but is not the problem. The problem is the Zionist Israelis and their followers, who arm the murderers, steer the masses to accept criminally insane activities, determine our present, and command our future. Who are they and why do we have them determine our lives?

If, at the end of the 19th century, a Jewish person was asked, “What does it means to be a Jew?” most would have stumbled over the question. At that time, a preponderance of Jews considered themselves “secular,” an expression that meant they did not want to be Christians or atheists. These Jews were mostly humanists, “a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good” – American Humanist Association. Beneath the cloudy skies, there were reform Jews, Reconstructionist Jews, conservative Jews, orthodox Jews, ultra-orthodox Jews, and people who called themselves Jews by heritage. Zionist Jews made its entrance upon a disparate crew of worshippers and non-worshippers.

Unlike other Jews who had interpretative connections to Judaism and positive reasons for expressing their alliance with Judaism, the Zionists had no connection to Judaism’s doctrines and an entirely negative approach. Their outlook that the Jews were a people who needed to be united in a nation, were subjected to cruel anti-Semitism that had no vindication, and only they knew the path to Nirvana did not agree with knowledge and attitudes of the 19^th century Jewish community.

A people is “a body of persons that are united by a common culture, tradition, or sense of kinship, that typically have common language, institutions, and beliefs, and that often constitute a politically organized group.” The late 18^th century Jews, who lived in different countries, spoke different languages, and had different customs and histories did not fit the description. At the end of the 19th century, life was not perfect for European Jews (nor for anyone else), but they had made tremendous economic, social, and political gains, and the trend continued positive. With Jews represented in educational institutions and government positions, becoming well known in all cultural representations — music, art, theatre, and writing — and managing to become successful wage earners in many avenues of employment, the Zionist case that “Jews could never satisfactorily integrate into western nations” became more dubious with each passing day.

Despite a century of repetition and recitation, little evidence exists of extensive deadly attacks on Jews in the late 19th century, during the era of incipient Zionism. A few isolated groups in France and Germany accused Jews of attempting to dominate the economy and culture. Due to these reason, some attacks occurred early in the century in Germany (Hep-Hep riots). Other happenings, which related to exaggeration of acts by Jews and the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881, occurred later in Russia. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, an English-language reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale University Press in 2008, relates,

Anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire before 1881 was a rare event, confined largely to the rapidly expanding Black Sea entrepot of Odessa. The first Odessa pogrom, in 1821, was linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities. Although the pogrom of 1871 was occasioned in part by a rumor that Jews had vandalized the Greek community’s church, many non-Greeks participated, as they had done during earlier disorders in 1859.

The pogroms of 1881 and 1882, which occurred in waves throughout the southwestern provinces of the Russian Empire, were the first to assume the nature of a mass movement. Violence was largely directed against the property of Jews rather than their persons The total number of fatalities is disputed but may have been as few as 50, half of them pogromshchiki who were killed when troops opened fire on rioting mobs.

In all of Europe, from what I have been able to confirm, less than 100 Jews were killed and possibly a few thousand were injured in anti-Jewish riots during the 100 years of the 19th century that witnessed the establishment of political Zionism. For context, compare those figures to two other atrocities during that time, which may be exaggerated and are rarely mentioned.

Circassia, Caucasus 1864-1867, 400,000-1,500,000 perished or deported.
Armenians, Turkiye, 1894-1896, 100,000 Armenians killed in Hamidian Massacres.

The Zionist game plan in the late 1800s made no sense. Why would Western Jews, whose principal problem was verbal abuse from a few detractors, want to leave industrial nations and go to an unknown place and deprived area that had nothing to offer, except prevention by the local authorities and animosity by the local inhabitants? The East European Jews lived in difficult surroundings but had an escape route ─ from 1881 to 1914, more than 2.5 million Jews migrated from Eastern Europe. Of these, about two million reached the United States, 300,000 went to other overseas countries, and approximately 350,000 chose Western Europe.

During the time that 2.5 million East European Jews migrated to Western nation, only 30,000 of them travelled to Palestine and 15,000 returned. It would take a century, if possible, to accommodate millions of new arrivals to Palestine. If the Zionists wanted to relive pressure on East European Jews, why didn’t they finance immigration to the United States? They’ll say that history proved them correct. Seems so, but not so; fortuitous events and plain luck enabled their agenda.

From its beginnings to start of World War I, Zionism proved a stagnant adventure. During that period, about 80,000 Jews came to Palestine, not all of whom were Zionists, many being adventurists, utopian Socialists, and some seeking opportunities. By 1918, only about 60,000 remained. World War I conveniently destroyed the Ottoman Empire, and the mysterious Balfour Declaration revived the Zionist adventure. In addition, the League of Nations’ certification of the British Mandate in Palestine prevented the formation of a national Palestinian governing body and provided opportunities for English speaking European Jews to work in the British administration. Suddenly, there was no longer an impediment for Jews to enter Palestine. They came with the blessings of a Balfour Declaration that certified their validity and protection by his Majesty’s forces. From 1918-1922, approximately 24,000 Jews arrived in Palestine.

The year 1924 was more fortuitous for the Zionists. The US Immigration Act closed the doors to mass Jewish immigration from East European nations and this Act steered Jews to Palestine. By 1931, Palestine housed 175,000 Jews. Did they arrive as Zionists or to seek an improved economic situation from their depressed surroundings? In the 1930’s, and until the end of World War II, Nazi persecutions of the Jews drove more than 60,000 German Jews to immigrate to Palestine (about 280.000 German and Austrian Jews migrated to other places, with about 125,000 managing to come to the to the United States).

Revelations of the Holocaust and plight of Jewish refugees after World War II gained worldwide sympathy for the Zionist cause and propelled more immigrants to Palestine. The Cold War provided the most decisive benefit for Zionism ─ the Soviet Union support for an Israeli state drove the United States to compete for Zionist attention. Votes from both nations and a few bribes provided a narrow passage of United Nations Declaration 181 and established the Zionist state, one of the darkest days in world history.

The rest is history, and that history is one of constant attacks on Palestinians, expropriation of their lands, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, oppression, battles between Israel and its adversaries, which Israel always won and from which it was able to expand its initial territory and dominate the original inhabitants of the Levant; not a proud outcome for Theodore Herzl, who, in his 1903 novel, Altneuland,

….did not foresee any conflict between Jews and Arabs. One of the main characters in Altneuland is a Haifa engineer, Reshid Bey, who is one of the leaders of the “New Society.” He is very grateful to his Jewish neighbors for improving the economic condition of Palestine and sees no cause for conflict. All non-Jews have equal rights, and an attempt by a fanatical rabbi to disenfranchise the non-Jewish citizens of their rights fails in the election which is the center of the main political plot of the novel.[

The Zionist assumptions that the Jews were a people who needed to be united in a nation, were subjected to cruel anti-Semitism that had no vindication, and that only they knew the path to Nirvana have proven to be paranoid, diabolical, and senseless.

A new people

The Middle East and North African Jews who came to Israel were Arabs; the Ashkenazi were European; the Beta Israel were Ethiopians; and the Yemenites were from the Arabian Peninsula. Israel replaced the different languages, dialects, music, cultures, and heritage of these ethnicities with unique and uniform characteristics, and created a new people, the Israeli Jew, who spoke a new language, modern Hebrew. Reshef, Yael. Revival of Hebrew: Grammatical Structure and Lexicon, Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, (2013) reveals.

While Modern Hebrew is largely based on Mishnaic and Biblical Hebrew, as well as Sephardi and Ashkenazi liturgical and literary tradition from the Medieval and Haskalah (18th century Jewish enlightenment) eras, and retains its Semitic character in its morphology and in much of its syntax, the consensus among scholars is that Modern Hebrew represents a fundamentally new linguistic system, not directly continuing any previous linguistic state, being a koine language (dialect) of the same language, based on historical layers of Hebrew, as well as incorporating foreign elements, mainly those introduced during the most critical revival period between 1880 and 1920, as well as new elements created by speakers through natural linguistic evolution.

Destruction of centuries-old Jewish history and life in Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt accompanied the creation of a new people. The Zionists, who complained about the persecution of Jews, wiped out Jewish history, determined who was Jewish, and required all Jews to shed much of their ancestral characteristics before they could integrate into the Israel community. The significance of the construction of a new Jew, in contrast to the reconstruction of an ancient Jew, has been given scant attention. The shaping of a new Jewish mind from a central educational source has distorted a population that previously had no central control and can no longer control individual destiny.

Jews were the principal victims of the Nazi regime, and the Zionists have consistently publicized atrocities committed upon the Jews by their Nazi executions. The same Zionists, in their attempts to dominate the Palestinians, have adopted the Third Reich tactics they exposed and condemned. The evils of Nazism — separation of ethnicities, virulent nationalism, irredentism, constant warfare, racist laws, killing of opposition, punitive measures after an attack, ethnic cleansing, indoctrination of the young, and genocide are in the Zionist handbook and have been conveniently brushed away by Israel’s propaganda artists. The atrocities committed by the Nazi regime have earned their followers the adjectives of deranged and insane. Atrocities by the Israeli regime and its worldwide followers are lightly treated and tacitly supported by western nations and peoples. No epithets to their violent actions are applied. If this is a state that the Jews desire, a state built on oppression of other people, theft of their lands, and now an intentional genocide, then the Jews cannot escape the enmity of the world.

Conclusion

The real problem, which devours the Palestinians, is a Zionist movement that is irrational and demented. The ferocity and sadistic war against the Gazan people is the most cruel and unnecessary action against a people during modern times. Only the demented would follow up that war by reinvigorating it at a more escalated scale. We can understand the mentality that dictates the sadism by regarding expressions from Zionist leaders, a few of dozens. No rational leader or normal person would utter these disgusting words.

“One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” —Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, New York Times, Feb. 28, 1994.

“The Palestinians are like crocodiles.” —Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2000.

“They are beasts walking on two legs.” —Prime Minister Menachem Begin, in a speech to the Knesset, New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

“We shall use the ultimate force until Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours.” —Deputy Prime Minister Rafael Eitan.

“[When we build settlements] Arabs will only be able to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” —Deputy Prime Minister Rafael Eitan

“We shall reduce the Palestinians to a community of woodcutters and waiters.” —Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, 1960, The Arabs in Israel.

“There is a huge gap between us and our enemies not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience.” —President Moshe Katsav, Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001.

Trying to talk honestly, operate fairly, and cooperate with the irrational and demented is an almost impossible task. Talk of two-states, one state, and relieving the genocide goes nowhere. Even the academic analysis that indicates this is settler colonialism, of which there are elements, does not lead anywhere and may lead astray ─ the Western nations, to whom the Palestinians appeal, are not likely to admit to participation in settler colonialism. Best not to antagonize them. Settler colonialists need a reason for their voyages — free land, ample resources, and colonial protection. Palestine did not provide any of these ingredients for the original settlers. Palestine only provided Palestinians, waiting to be destroyed.

The complacent world does not realize the immensity of the problem. Political, social, and economic life has been skewed by a control that dominates information and thought. The Ill equipped and easily manipulated are elected to highest political offices, partisan politics rules, and economic divide grows. Those, who have much, gain more; those who gain more dictate more. Defeat of Zionism is an international priority and can be done if the populations prioritize. If not ─ Nobody Saves the World. The demented command the future.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The Kyiv Independent (?), Friday, March 14, 2025, “General Staff: Russia has lost 891,660 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022.” In January 2025, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense estimated that 430,790 Russian troops were killed in 2024 alone.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (ISSS) is less sanguine: “…as of early January 2025, the IISS estimates that a minimum of 172,000 Russian troops have been killed and 611,000 wounded, of which at least 376,000 are severely wounded (disabled), with up to an accumulated 235,000 wounded but recoverable.”

For one simple reason, the statistics don’t seem credible ─ other longer and more deadly wars had fewer casualties. The much, much longer Vietnam War had much less American casualties and the horrific World War II, which featured several beach invasions and large infantry battles, had less American dead and about the same casualties as claimed for the Russian battalions in their present war.

In the three years of war in Ukraine, no large infantry battles have occurred; the battles are mainly heavy weapons pulverizing a civilian area, followed by troops entering and occupying after the area is leveled and the enemy leaves. The Russians may have lost a large number of troops in the early stage of the war (30,000?), during the attempt to invade Kiev and the decision to leave. Later months do not indicate the same rate of casualties. In the next largest battle, three months in Mariupol, Ukraine claims to have killed 6,500 Russian soldiers. Even if this is slightly exaggerated, the next largest battle had only 2000 mortalities/month, which equates to 72,000 deaths in three years of equally intensive battles, of which there were none. On the southern front, Russia captured Kherson with few losses and retreated across the Dnieper when Ukraine launched its only large offensive, ceding Kherson and showing no intention of sacrificing soldiers in a losing battle.

Contrasting with Kyiv Independent’s stats, is Mediazona, an independent (?) Russian online news source that methodically searched records to obtain military losses. Their meticulous “data service, in collaboration with the BBC Russian Service and a team of volunteers, concluded that, “…Over 95,000 people fighting for Russia’s military have now died as the war in Ukraine enters the fourth year…. Given the estimate above, the true number of Russian military deaths could range from 146,194 to 211,169.”

Why is the number of Russians killed in the three-year war a meaningful and controversial topic? This is Ukraine’s way of informing the public that it may have lost territory but is not losing the war. Russia cannot continue gaining meager ground with a massive number of their soldiers permanently interred in the ground. Russia will be forced into compromise. Dubious logic.

The Russians have all they want — Crimea, the Russian mainland linked to Crimea, and the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts incorporated into Russia. The war map, as of March 2025, tells that story

The Donetsk basin reaches to the dark lines. Russia needs only to capture Pokrovsk and Kramatorsk to control all the cities of the Donetsk Oblast, and effectively all of Donetsk and Luhansk. Their troops are at the gates of both cities. Super nationalist Vladimir Putin will not rest until his nation controls all of Donetsk, nor will he allow those who have died for that cause to lie buried without the cause succeeding.

Why this farce of “let’s end the war,” without ending the war, is a mystery. Zelensky mentions “guarantees,” undoubtedly meaning that other nations will prevent Russia from interfering again in Ukraine sovereignty. Doesn’t the Ukraine president realize that guarantees are only words on paper, that European governments say what they mean but don’t mean what they say and that governments who change with international styles may not recognize a previous government’s decisions. A solid guarantee has NATO or UN troops at the border between the two warring nations, a prelude to World War III.

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” ─ George Santayana, “Tipperary.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Trump continued his sadistic excursion through graveyards by continually pointing to the Democratic aisle, letting everyone know the Dems and their previous leaders, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, were in charge during vicious attacks on Americans. Mentioning the capture of the “mastermind” of the Kabul airport killings of American citizens, “you know the killings during the mess that Joe Biden allowed,” in a State of the Union to both houses of Congress, just to ridicule Biden and show his mastery, made Trump equal in depravity to the “so called” mastermind. Is the person really the “mastermind,” or someone Pakistani intelligence willingly supplied for a few greenbacks? What does the revelation of a “capture” have to do with the state of the union?

Aggravating that we will have four years of this punishing behavior; more aggravating to realize that tens of millions support this malicious behavior; more and more aggravating is that we encounter similar disturbances in everyday life. Try to discuss Israel’s genocide at Columbia University.

It does not have to be this way. We don’t have to tear each other apart and subdue the rest of the world to live decently; the Ukrainians and Russians don’t have to fight and die for land that Russians and Ukrainians can peacefully determine by themselves; Jews can live well anywhere in the word, they don’t need to slaughter Palestinians to survive.

Without having economic or political power, having an effect in changing attitudes and the course of civilization is a difficult challenge. Exposing injustice is now leading to enhancing injustice ─ making it happen faster. Correcting false information is now leading to spreading false information faster; mendacity is appreciated. It’s the ancient story ─ good vs. evil, and the “good guys,” who refuse to adopt the winning methodology of “cheat, lie, and accuse,” have no chance. In all institutions — academic, medical, scientific, economic — those in control protect their agendas, regardless of validity or truth.

The apathetic and those disinterested in encouraging challenges accept conventional beliefs and concepts, even when thought exposes them as spurious. Many, accepted theories and notions deserve and need attack. Changing a programmed mindset and planning a strategy to liberation are official civil duties. The only alternative is revolution. Where is Georges Danton when we most need him?

“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”- Maximilien Robespierre

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Trump professes a smooth and clever operator, a master of the art of the deal, which is a business term for international diplomacy. He is a frenetic wheeler-dealer, which is a business term for gunboat diplomacy. Before Ukraine’s rare earth minerals begged to be mined by U.S. corporations, there was nothing Donald Trump relished from Ukraine President Zelensky; nice to end the war, but the war is not harming the United States. The war is harming Russia, and there is much the United States can gain from Russia, including rare earth minerals, by having Putin believe the U.S. is not siding with the Kremlin, which includes a truce. Trump has done nothing for the United States and all for Putin by siding with the Russian leader. He could have done much for the United States by pretending to side with Zelensky and eschewing his art of the deal for legitimate international diplomacy

Entrance of the rare earth minerals to the discussion is baffling and contradictory. An agreement by Zelensky to having American construction crews drilling close to the Russian border and American industrialists investing in a nation that Putin wanted neutral would end “peace negotiations.” Russian troops would press on to capture the cherished rocks and align so that citizens from a NATO nation do not operate close to its territory. If Trump coveted the materials, why did he antagonize its owner?Doubts exist of the extent of Ukraine’s possession of the minerals within its non-occupied territory, and if it is physically and economically viable to access and use them. What is this all about? Was Trump setting a trap for Zelensky?

Trump’s response to Zelensky’s statement that “a deal to end the war with Russia was very far away and the war may not end soon, “is strange and alarming. Trump said, “He better not be right about that.” This is not advice from a sympathetic soul. Sounds as if America is in the war and he wants Ukraine to surrender. Trump’s overzealous support of Russia will harvest more than a truce. It allows a sterner position and more severe demands from Russia ─ a Russian proposal that requests Odessa, Kharkiv, and Kyiv incorporated into Bear country. Zelensky wants guarantees that his nation will be protected. That makes sense. Once there is a peace treaty, Ukraine territory is lost, never to be regained. What stops a superior Russia from restarting the conflict and seeing more territory? Not complying with Zelensky’s request is not being sincere about an agreeable peace. The militant charge for peace has no relation with the war, with Putin, and with making America great again. Donald Trump is eager to win the Nobel peace prize and scoundrel, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky, is preventing it.

International Isolation

War, as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, is the U.S. preferred method to advance its hegemony ─ economic warfare against those who can contend the U.S., and military warfare against weaker foes. It is welcoming to learn that war will no longer be the vanguard of U.S. foreign policy. Is it true? Will Trump learn that the U.S military-industrial complex only knows war, that it is a permanent feature of the U.S. psyche? Without war, the constituted U.S. is not a global leader.

Europeans won’t readily invite nation executives who do not listen to others and demand everyone listen to them. The inexperience of those who occupy Trump’s cabinet is anathema to the mostly well-groomed European counterparts. The executives and legislators operate at different levels and correspond at no level. Future communications and relations between the disUnited States and semi-unitedEuropean nations will be difficult.

Trump believes he has sympathetic recognition from Putin and Xi. He has that posture toward them; doubtful he has that posture from them. These leaders are professional statespersons. They exercise care in their relations with leaders who behave erratically, are petulant, not diplomatic, have inconsistent policies, and uncertain direction. They want to be sure they understand with whom they are dealing. The Russian and Chinese leaders may pay lip service to Trump, but will act with caution.

Economic depression

Some of the rash moves by Trump and his official “bull in the China shop,” the Musk ox, have merit and national support. America’s president failed to learn how and why we got here from there before he started making here no more. His knowledge of issues is nil and those advising him reinforce his nilness. Decisions from whims and meager knowledge are coin tossing and not careful decisions. His policies date back to the 1920’s and the result will be same as occurred in the 1920’s ─ depression.

Trump adores private debt and abhors government debt.
Government debt is not the problem. A system that exists by debt is the problem. Government deficit is one of several methods to increase the money supply (debt) and create demand. In times of economic stress, government borrowing exhibits advantages.

(1) Government borrows at lower interest rates than consumers and its debt is easily rolled over.

(2) The government can always pay its debt and cannot go bankrupt. Artful debtors (such as Trump), receiving funds from careless creditors, have gone bankrupt and spiraled the economy into declines.

During the seven years between 1924 and 1930, federal government debt slowly decreased from $395B to $304B. Herbert Hoover eschewed debt and coveted balanced budgets. In 1930, the low debt U.S. began its Great Depression.

Trump wants low taxes

Taxes transfer money between the government and the taxpayers; neither method adds or subtracts money in the economy nor allows more or less available spending to the economy; the purchasing power stays the same; the total purchases of goods and services remain the same; and the GDP remains the same.

Lowering taxes assists the already employed, and that is not the major priority. Who pays taxes ─ the employed. Who receives tax breaks ─ those who pay taxes. In effect, lowering taxes redistributes federal assistance from needy persons to the employed. Which is preferable, redistributing income so the employed have more to spend or redistributing the income so the underemployed have something to spend?

Stimulating the economy by tax breaks is a psychological phenomenon. The talk, exaggerations, promises, and general optimism of tax breaks fashion a more optimistic public, which supposedly stimulates spending, investment, and courage to carry more debt. Creeping in to the debate is another assumption ─ those who have excess funds will invest and stimulate growth. Not considered is they invest in speculative ventures that only churn money or they might purchase imports, which decreases purchasing power in the domestic economy.

GDP has steadily grown, with a few bumps, in the last 70 years, and no relation to lowering of taxes is proven. A government report: Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945, Thomas L. Hungerford Specialist in Public Finance, September 14, 2012, concludes:

… results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.

Trump‘s economic plans are guided by “achieving increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution.”

Tax rates fell from 60 percent for top earners in 1920 to 25 percent in 1924 and slightly lower to 23 percent in 1929. Did the lower taxes help the economy? The Hungerford report indicates otherwise. For sure, the lower taxes did not prevent the Depression and might have contributed to its extension.

Trump craves low interest rates

Optimum interest rates are not arbitrary, they are a calculated tool for the Federal Reserve to delicately regulate the money supply and the economy; lowering rates (increasing money supply) when the economy is heading downward and raising rates (limiting increases in money supply) when the economy is overheated, inflation is rising, and speculation is rampant. Several economists offer a leading factor in the Great Depression as “differences of opinion contributed to the Federal Reserve’s most serious sin of omission: failure to stem the decline in the supply of money. From the fall of 1930 through the winter of 1933, the money supply fell by nearly 30 percent. The declining supply of funds reduced average prices by an equivalent amount. This deflation increased debt burdens; distorted economic decision-making; reduced consumption; increased unemployment; and forced banks, firms, and individuals into bankruptcy.”

Trump wants low interest rates to achieve a short-term gain in the economy and make his record look good; after him, the deluge. He will have speculation, more uncertain private debt, and money leaving the country to seek higher interest rates; all followed by potential economic collapse.

Immigration

The word immigrant irks the pure white American, Donald Trump. A highly industrialized nation with upward mobility requires an increasing work force and consuming population to grow. When encountering a low population growth, immigration is the avenue for revitalizing the economy. Arguing past immigration and not preparing for future immigration is setting the doomsday clock on a capitalist system. Trump is headed for a pyrrhic victory.

Tariffs

In the Trump world, tariffs obtain revenue for the government, which might enable a decrease in income taxes, and give an added opportunity for American industry to compete. The first proposition is obviously false; tariffs raise the price of imported goods and shift the relief of the income tax burden to an equal import tax burden. It is a wash. Stimulating production facilities to discard their mothballs and become alive again is speculation. Tax the imports of one nation and another nation steps in with low price goods.

Canadian and Mexican exports to the United States are highly valued added products. The U.S. ships unfinished products to those nations. They add their labor and resources and ship finished products to the United States. Keeping Canadian and Mexican added value to a minimum is mandatory for U.S. manufacturers. Tariffs augment prices of the imported goods, which, from producer perspective, is equivalent to augmenting the added value. American producers cannot look inward for relief. They must look outward and find labor from other nations that can fabricate the finished products.

And there is always retaliation. Looming in the tariff debate is the spectra of the1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff, “that raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to protect American businesses and farmers during the Great Depression. However, it led to retaliatory tariffs from other countries and significantly decreased international trade, worsening the economic situation.”

Government downsizing

Another bugaboo, from those who rail against inefficiency and free riders, is the swollen government bureaucracy. Government and bureaucracy are one word; always swollen, the government absorbs unemployed whose paychecks circulate in the economy. Their lack of productive activities does little harm. Yes, there are workers who get a free ride. This is bothersome and not resolved by the stampede of a Musk ox.

The government is not a business with a profit and loss sheet. It can downsize but not without consideration that inefficiency it is not an employee fault; at the day of hire, the government owed the hire person proper training, proper supervision, and proper tasks. The correct way to downsize is for departments to submit and defend budgets. After that, attrition and incentives are used to streamline the departments so that all seats are warm and office temperature rises from the heat of the more energetic civil servants.

Depressing to observe the disUnited States thump its chest, while trending into a thinning of its constitution. The heralded phrase of U.S. foreign policy experts, “We had to destroy them in order to save them is mirrored, “We had to destroy ourselves to save ourselves.” Might be just what Americans and the world needs. The Trump era has sputtered before Tesla is able to pass Nissan in U.S. automobile market share. Antagonizing the entire world, especially those who share borders, is the ultimate constraint to a successful America. Replaying 1930 brings back the events of 1930. Trump’s mania, expressed in his outbursts, has been visited upon the American public. Bring back the Prozac, manic depression is now a standard U.S. disease. Trump will soon be seen as another Nicolae Ceausescu, integrated into the disintegrating American dream.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Seems disturbing, electrifying, and paralyzing. Ho hum. Welcome to the world that is, has always been, and will be until the mushroom cloud signifies resolution of the problem. Started in the Garden of Eden, prophesized by Jesus of Nazareth, emphasized by the Manichaeism of Mani in Persia, eloquently expressed by Voltaire’s Candide, and staged by Anthony Newley in his 1966 musical, Stop the world, I want to get off, the battle between good and evil oscillates the world between low ground and lower ground. Those who gather their extensive knowledge and politely convey to the masses the absurdities of the institutions that govern them are accorded the adjectives of “mad dog,” “berserk,” “enemy of the people,” and a multitude of other kindly expressions. The smartest of all, the eminent Karl Marx, expressed it correctly, “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.” The lord of the manor guides the way and the sheep in the manor blindly follow.

It is difficult to characterize the events or specify the day that the nation’s mood changed from acceptance of neoliberalism to rejection, from supporting American “representative” democracy to pondering that it might be a delusion. It is not difficult to characterize what prompted some of the collective to modify approval of the established government. History has shown that, even if the U.S. military prevailed, engagement in a Vietnam War had no benefit to the United States. A war, conducted with no more reason than to slaughter Vietnamese, started the doubt that the will of the people prevailed. The violent execution of Libyan leader, “mad dog” Muammar Gaddafi, on 20 October 2011, during Barak Obama’s administration, finalized the doubt. As the truth of the events leading to NATO’s intervention in the Libyan civil war and the horrific facts of Gaddafi’s execution became known, a more aware public departed ways with Obama’s Democratic Party and 2016 presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, the sponsors of U.S. favoring the NATO attack on Gaddafi’s Libya. Several times in the campaign, the attachment of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the intervention was vigorously discussed. Difficult to prove that the war against Libya played a decisive role in the close 2016 election; not difficult to show the issue persuaded a number of voters to elevate Donald Trump to the highest office and established a modified psyche in the America of today.

Barack Obama entered the presidential office with an appearance of protecting the Palestinians from Israeli oppression and allying with those who sought peace, stability, and freedom for the world’s dispossessed. President Barack Obama remained a system subordinate and betrayed those who supported him. Unlike Citizen Jimmy Carter, who used his knowledge and prestige to fight for the rights of others, Citizen Barack Obama has played it safe, maybe for personal reasons; other black leaders have been assassinated.

The man, in whose assassination Obama played a decisive role, the much maligned Muammar Gaddafi, had scare resemblance to the coordinated media descriptions of him. Someone I met, who had been stationed at Wheelus Air force base in Libya, told me he was walking through Tripoli in 1970, noticed a man sitting on the sidewalk, and immediately recognized him as Colonel Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, Libya’s new leader who had, in the previous year, overthrown the monarchy in a bloodless coup. The solitary person of deep thought and avant-garde behavior in action and dress, is the Gaddafi I sensed from his rhetoric, accomplishments, and interviews. The usual simplified description of an antagonist to U.S. policy as a terrorist, madman, tyrant, and executioner has negligible verification; mostly slanted stories or original fiction from the U.S. Stateless Department and Unintelligence agencies who have issues with revolutionary thoughts and deeds.

As moral, spiritual, and undoubtedly defacto leader in the governing of Libya, Gaddafi used his nation for one of the boldest experiments in participatory democracy. Claiming, as many have, that representative democracy is manipulated, that “in western parliamentary democracies, special interests compete for and gain power without representing the people,” the Libyan leader established a grassroots approach to government ─ a series of Popular Conferences and People’s Committees worked together to propose and a higher elected authority served to dispose. In Gaddafi’s words: “The final step is when the new socialist society reaches the stage where profit and money disappear. It is through transforming society into a fully productive society, and through reaching in production a level where the material needs of the members of society are satisfied. On that final stage, profit will automatically disappear and there will be no need for money.”

The military colonel turned social and economic prophet may have been derivative and naïve in his approach and dictatorial in forcing the grandiose experiment upon a people not prepared for its implementation. Gaddafi later recognized the dilemma by admitting that people subjected to colonialism may not have acquired the required resources, knowledge, and capability for the extraordinary leap to the socialist ideal; adopting the doctrines in his Green Book needed a more advanced nation. In 2003, despite Libya having the highest GDP/capita and standard of living in Africa, he admitted defeat and pursued more conventional free enterprise economic policies for the Libya nation. The U.S. invasion of Iraq and demise of Saddam Hussein may have contributed to Gaddafi’s decision.

Interviews available at

and at

reveal Gaddafi as a purposively deceptive person, who had knowledge of all issues, intentionally responded quietly and succinctly, controlled emotions, played down his abilities, and strategically placed the “gotcha” questioners into a “gotcha retreat.” These interviews do not show the persona Gaddafi, who is better described in a speech to the Libyan people at

where he displays a forceful personality and ability to speak extemporaneously.

Note: May have to click a few times.

Prophetic Gaddafi admired Barak Obama, principally due to the American president’s African and Muslim heritage, which, according to Gaddafi, enabled Obama to think more as an African and not as a “Yankee.” Gaddafi missed a beat in wanting the person most responsible for his vicious execution to remain in office for eternity. Obama missed more than a beat by listening to the absurd rhetoric that brought the United States to join a NATO-led collation, which, on March 19, 2011 began a military intervention into the ending Libyan Civil War and implemented United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 (UNSCR 1973). The Resolution demanded “an immediate ceasefire” and authorized the international community to “establish a no-fly zone and to use all means necessary short of foreign occupation to protect civilians.”

Principal reason given for the UN Resolution — Gaddafi was prepared to massacre at least 100,000 of his opponents, a 1000 times exaggeration and an obvious impossibility. President Barack Obama addressed the issue with the statement: “Gaddafi declared that he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people. He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment.”

Reuters reporting demonstrated large differences between Gaddafi’s remarks and President Obama’s careless interpretation: Gaddafi Tells Rebel City, Benghazi, ‘We Will Show No Mercy, March 17, 2011.

Muammar Gaddafi told Libyan rebels on Thursday his armed forces were coming to their capital Benghazi tonight and would not show any mercy to fighters who resisted them. In a radio address, he told Benghazi residents that soldiers would search every house in the city and people who had no arms had no reason to fear. He also told his troops not to pursue any rebels who drop their guns and flee when government forces reach the city.

Logic tells us that few Benghazi residents had guns to hide, and Gadhafi’s forces were too limited to carry out any large-scale purge. Gadhafi’s comment (much different than Obama’s presentation) was only meant to create fear. No leader would tell his people he intended to kill masses of them. If so, they had nothing to lose by fighting. Why encourage them?

The next morsel of food for thought is that the civil war was no threat to any NATO nation. The clincher – the western nations had not considered any changes in Libya’s future. Suddenly, with no plan, no knowledge of the rebel forces’ constituencies, and no idea as to where the interference would lead, NATO attacked Libya.

Martin Aliker a senior adviser to Yoweri Museveni President Yoweri Museveni of Yoweri, in his memoir, “The Bell is Ringing: Martin Aliker’s Story,” recites his opinion.

They were only interested in “killing Gaddafi, killing Gaddafi, and killing Gaddafi.” Gaddafi was quoted as saying that what the enemies of Libya did not understand was that if they changed his regime the next one would be of Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda.

He said that Libya was the Great Wall which, if broken, would lead to a flood of illegal immigrants into Europe, some of whom would die on the water but some would survive and reach Europe. He said he was ready to talk to the rebels but that the rebels were not ready to talk.

Gaddafi proved to be omniscient and intentionally vilified. On March 17, he directly addressed the rebels of Benghazi: “Throw away your weapons, exactly like your brothers in Ajdabiya and other places did. They laid down their arms and they are safe. We never pursued them at all.”

The duplicitous attack on Muhammar Gaddafi and his nation, promoted by then Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, contributed to her loss in the 2016 presidential election and the entrance of real estate magnate, Donald Trump, into the highest office in the coast-to-coast U.S. mainland.

The 2024 presidential election, and its immediate aftermath may have proved Gaddafi correct ─ representative democracy could be a delusion.

Stop the world, I want to get off.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The melodramatic ending to 13 years of a horrific civil war in Syria had an additional drama. Muhammad al-Jawlani, who served five years in a U.S. prison in Iraq for terrorist activities, and was noted as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under U.S. Department of State Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, led the National Salvation Front that achieved the victory.

Muhammad al-Jawlani, as a reformed al-Nusra Front leader, may be an issue, but he is not the principal issue; his shadowy figure illuminates the principal issue — contradictions, dubious reports, manufactured facts, selective fancies, and fitting truths to agendas guide U.S. foreign policies influence public opinion, and make it impossible to know who Muhammad al-Jawlani is and what the **!!++// is going on. The real issues that confront Syria and the real reasons for a civil war that left an elevated estimate of 620 thousand deaths, more than six million internally displaced, and about five million refugees, have been obscured. Natural disasters accompanied the human disaster and are also responsible for the catastrophe. Statements and decisions have been inconsistent with reality.

The American Revolution has characteristics that guide an understanding of the Syrian insurrection. In both situations, ardent and semi-popular groups rebelled against injustices and hoped to create new regimes. In both situations, foreign powers, France and Spain in the American Revolution, Russia, Iran, United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other nations in the Syrian revolution, stoked the violence, commanded the direction, and shaped the rebellions. Portrayed as revolutions, the American and Syrian rebellions are more accurately described as battlegrounds for conflicting geo-politics.

By working together to defeat their British enemy and coordinating the supply of weapons and logistics to the colonists, France and Spain enabled the American Revolution to succeed. To obtain assistance, the foreign powers obliged the colonists to obtain sovereignty, declare themselves an independent nation, and provide a unified command so the two European nations could deal directly with an established government. Insistence by the two foreign powers that arms could only be supplied to a sovereign government provoked the issuance of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

In Syria, foreign supporters of the insurgents did not cooperate and were unable to supply weapons and logistic support to a unified command. For these reasons, the insurgency did not succeed. Each day of armed struggle increased the killings of Syrians; another, we had to kill them to save them.

Before the massive insurrection, Syria was a nation with free health care and almost universal education, with capability to supply adequate food, clothing, and housing to its population. Syrians did not breathe the air of freedom, but they inhaled the air of Syria, the oxygen of thousands of years of remembrances, peoples loosely bound together by history, culture, and civilization.

The post-World War I French mandate composed Syria of two states ─ Damascus and Aleppo. The western part became Lebanon and Latakia; the latter mostly aligned with Damascus. The northern part contained the Kurdish region, along the border with Turkey.

In 1936, Syrian nationalists gained Syrian independence in the Franco-Syrian Treaty. After 1970, the Baathist government forged a Syrian identity and guaranteed religious and ethnic freedom to all its citizens. All of that is slowly fading. Even if there is a new Syrian government, will there be a Syrian people, and a Syrian nation?

The map shows Syria’s real problem ─ its divisions. Inability of intelligence agencies to gather the facts, and for competing nations to face the facts, brought the Syrian war to its punishing situation. Can the National Salvation Front gain unique authority? Can an established governing body gain universal approval?

A new government cannot easily resolve Syria’s condition; the catastrophes have been more than man-made. In addition to the religious and social divisions, Syria suffers from an urban/rural divide, ethnic antagonisms, and natural calamities, which have exaggerated the conflict and need immediate attention. From the onset of the civil demonstrations, which began in March 2011 in the city of Dara’a, near the Jordanian border, agricultural unemployment, crowding of urban areas, dislocations, and possible food shortages occupied the time and energy of the Syrian government.

Natural Calamities

A body of social scientists and international political observers concluded that severe drought, during the early part of the 21st century forced 1.5 million Syrian farmers to migrate to urban areas and this added to social stresses that eventually resulted in the uprising during March 2011. An article, The Ominous Story of Syria’s Climate Refugees, Scientific American, December 17, 2015, starts with the following:

Drought, which is being exacerbated by climate change and bad government policies, has forced more than a million Syrian farmers to move to overcrowded cities. Water shortages, ruined land and corruption, they say, fomented revolution.

John Wendle, the article’s author, talked with Mustafa Abdul Hamid, a 30-year-old farmer from Azaz, near Aleppo.

“The war and the drought, they are the same thing,” says Mustafa Abdul Hamid, a 30-year-old farmer from Azaz, near Aleppo. “The start of the revolution was water and land,” Hamid says.
Life was good before the drought, Hamid recalls. Back home in Syria, he and his family farmed three hectares of topsoil so rich it was the color of henna. They grew wheat, fava beans, tomatoes, and potatoes. Hamid says he used to harvest three quarters of a metric ton of wheat per hectare in the years before the drought. Then the rains failed, and his yields plunged to barely half that amount. “All I needed was water,” he says. “And I didn’t have water. So things got very bad. The government wouldn’t allow us to drill for water. You’d go to prison.”

The Scientific American article concluded:

Syria’s water crisis is largely of its own making. Back in the 1970s, the military regime led by President Hafez al-Assad launched an ill-conceived drive for agricultural self-sufficiency. No one seemed to consider whether Syria had sufficient groundwater and rainfall to raise those crops. Farmers made up for water shortages by drilling wells to tap the country’s underground water reserves. When water tables retreated, people dug deeper. In 2005 the regime of Assad’s son and successor, President Bashar al-Assad, made it illegal to dig new wells without a license issued personally, for a fee, by an official, but it was mostly ignored, out of necessity.

The Rural and Urban Conflict

Economic, social, health, and intellectual disparities between urban and rural life have plagued most nations and played a leading role in civil disturbances. China’s 1960s Cultural Revolution and Cambodia’s Pol Pot emptying of the cities during the late 1970s were futile and disastrous attempts by totalitarian governments to resolve the urban/rural divide. China still struggles with the problem and is slowly moving rural dwellers to huge apartment complexes in mega-cities. Syria’s displaced remain displaced because they have no viable place to go. The disparities have continually surfaced and will disturb the new regime

Ethnic and Tribal Differences

Forged from European secret agreements, which created artificial nations without regard to ethnic differences, the Middle East nations struggle to give a unique identity to disparate faces. By populating Kurdish urban areas with Arab Iraqis, Saddam Hussein tried to reduce Kurdish nationalism and turn Kurds into pure Iraqis. Moammar Gaddafi pacified the Libyan tribes but could not reduce antagonisms between the eastern and western provinces ─Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. Syria is a bundle of tribal conflicts, and the Baathist government waltzed through them by applying a strong and authoritarian rule.

Fitting facts to agendas

A one-sided look at the Syrian government was compounded by one-sided reporting.
Back in 2011, at the start of the civil war, police arrested and pommeled several high school students for painting anti-government graffiti on a wall. Considered the spark that lit the flame, the arrests of the children in the southern city of Dara’a triggered a march for political rights and an end to corruption. Syrian police reportedly countered with water cannons and gunfire, and killed three protesters. According to the Syrian government news agency, “infiltrators among the marchers smashed cars, destroyed other property, and attacked police, causing chaos and riots.” And so, it goes – rebel forces accuse and the government excuses. Who should be trusted in the era of ‘false news?’ One problem is that conventional media reports were always slanted against Assad. Other reports often tell a different story.

Jonathan Marshall, ConsortiumNews.com, July 20, 2015 provides an alternative interpretation.

… in an uncharacteristic gesture intended to ease tensions the government offered to release the detained students, but seven police officers were killed, and the Baath Party Headquarters and courthouse were torched, in renewed violence. Around the beginning of April, according to another account, gunmen set a sophisticated ambush, killing perhaps two dozen government troops headed for Dara’a.

President Assad tried to calm the situation by sending senior government officials with family roots in the city to emphasize his personal commitment to prosecute those responsible for shooting protesters. He fired the provincial governor and a general in the political security force for their role. The government also released the children whose arrest had triggered the protests in the first place.

Assad also announced several national reforms. As summarized by the UN’s independent commission of inquiry on Syria, “These steps included the formation of a new Government, the lifting of the state of emergency, the abolition of the Supreme State Security Court, the granting of general amnesties and new regulations on the right of citizens to participate in peaceful demonstrations.” His response failed to satisfy protesters who took to the streets and declared the city a “liberated zone.” As political scientist Charles Tripp has observed, “This was too great a challenge to the authorities, and at the end of April, a military operation was put in motion with the aim of reasserting government control, whatever the cost in human life.”

Described by the United States as an insurrection against the Assad regime in an attempt to achieve freedom and democracy, the conflict in Syria emerged with a different context. Groups of Syrians who want democratic action and freedom existed, but they did not demonstrate great strength and were usurped by better-organized groups — ISIS and Al-Nusra — who eschewed democracy and freedom. The result of the initial battle for Raqqa, where different rebel forces — Free Syrian Army and Islamic brigades — engaged and defeated the Syrian army, validate this statement. Who emerged as victor and in complete control of the city? It was ISIS. Raqqa’s population, swollen in size by hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by the battles, did not support any side. Mostly Sunnis, they remained neutral or gravitated toward ISIS, uncaring about expressions of liberty, democracy, and freedom.

Attacking the Assad regime and reinforcing the rebellion encouraged the inevitable ─ the destruction of Syria. A great part of its population is in exile; other than Damascus, its major cities are in shambles; its ancient heritage sites are ruins; its infrastructure is wrecked. The shared history, pride in continuity from the start of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, and ability to enable diverse ethnicities and religions to work together, which characterized Syrians, have been smothered. By addressing the causes of the problems of Middle East nations as slogans — lack of democracy and freedom — the United States assured there would be no democracy and freedom. By destroying Syrian sovereignty, the United States elevated ISIS’ claims to sovereignty.

Atrocities

In all wars, combatants vie for public opinion by accusing the other side of atrocities, which are usually true, but exaggerated and hypocritical. No side owns atrocities.

Revelations of alleged gas attacks against populations, shelling and bombing of civilians in rebel-controlled areas, mass incarcerations, and atrocities against prisoners are the principal grievances of international opinion against the Assad regime. These charges may be valid, and cannot be excused, but they have a stimulus; they arise partially out of revenge for mass kidnappings by rebel forces of Assad supporters who are ordinary civilians, executions of captured Syrian soldiers in rebel held territories, and alleged gas and shelling attacks against civilians in government held areas. They are part of many “out of control” internecine wars. Examine the U.S. Civil War, the 1920 Russian Civil War, the 1937 Spanish Civil War, and 15 years of the Vietnam Civil War. Since Cain slew Abel, fraternal animosity is woven into humanity’s fabric.

This is not an attempt to minimize the atrocities and human rights violations committed by the Baathist regime; just the opposite, all atrocities and human rights violations must be exposed, but we should not permit those committed in Syria to divert attention from those committed in Saudi Arabia and its prisons, Israel and its prisons, and by U.S. authorities in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq during the Iraq War, at Guantanamo Bay, and at the CIA’s network of “black sites” around the world, where the agency kept rendered terror suspects for “enhanced interrogations.”

The hypocrisy of preaching law and order and paving a road to peaceful reconciliation appeared immediately after the National Salvation Front consolidated its authority. Israel, once again, thumbed its nose at the world community and received approval from the U.S. government for its hostile actions. After Israel violated international law by seizing additional Syrian territory adjacent to the occupied Golan Heights, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller retrieved the macro that stated, “Israel has right to defend itself and take actions against terrorist organizations.”

As a response to Israel’s 480 air force strikes on Syrian military bases and destruction of the Syrian fleet overnight, The Washington Post reported, “Washington had given its blessing years ago to Israeli freedom of action in Syria, including airstrikes, as a self-defense measure, and that it extended to the present.” Israel has the unique privilege of destroying the military potential of a sovereign nation and render that nation defenseless.

Lack of understanding of Syria’s many problems contributed to the lack of understanding of the nature of the rebellion. Did people rebel because Syria was too authoritarian, or was Syria too authoritarian because that was needed to resolve problems and squash rebellion? Will the new government be less authoritarian and more effective? Will the National Salvation Front allow itself to follow the U.S. and become a satrap for Israel?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Reports had Caitlin Clark, considered the college all-time greatest female basketball player and “rookie of the year” with the Indiana Fever, leaving the WNBA for the European League. Who better to ask about this sensational occurrence than political commentator, Bill Maher.

The comedian turned talk show host indicated that Clark was a victim of racism. After showing a clip of Caitlin Clark body checked by an opponent, Maher said, “We also have a racial element to this. We can’t deny that.” He followed the remark with, “Women are catty. The league is very lesbian and she’s not, and there’s race,” he said. “There’s a lot going on.”

Those words don’t proceed from logical arguments — body checks by a few aggressive players against rookie stars are not unique and appear in all sports. Holding an entire league responsible for the actions of a few hyperactive players is conspiratorial. Describing women as “catty,” and the league as “lesbian” and racial are examples of illiberal bigotry. The WBNA has predominantly black players, similar to the NBA . In the sport of ping pong, Chinese people are superior. In the sport of basketball, black people are superior.

Another comment attributed to Maher, which I have not been able to verify on any video, is, “Women’s basketball got on my radar — like everybody’s — because of Caitlin Clark,” he explained. “And the other girls and the league are delighted for her success. … I’m joking of course. They f—king hate her.”

This type of comment, that Caitlin Clark inspired many in the white world to become interested in the WBNA, which other commentators have stated, proves that Jackie Robinson’s exploits only reduced the appearance of racism. Caitlin Clark may be an excellent player but she is seventh in scoring and tied for fourth in overall efficiency in the league’s statistics. Just as the NBA is the same NBA without rookie of the year, Victor Wembanyama, the WNBA is the same WNBA without rookie of the year, Caitlin Clark. The white majority became interested in the WNBA when their great white hope entered the courts to battle black players. In the fortuitous moments, they learned that the WNBA league housed exciting basketball and entertaining basketball handlers, something their prejudice prevented them from knowing. Television and streaming services quickly observed the money flow and the WNBA, previously a sidetracked oddity of mostly black women hoopsters, became a sports rage. The next time, Maher charges others with racism, he should look in the mirror.

The rumor that started the crass statements has been body checked. ESPN announcer, Ryan Ruocco, reports, “We talked to Caitlin Clark earlier today. She said she almost definitely will not play basketball this offseason. So it is likely we will not see her play again until April.”

The decades apart racisms exhibited in the sports arenas are not isolated cases. They demonstrate that Americans look inwards and have a lack of unawareness that racisms, of many forms, are imprinted in their psyches. When the agenda of a controlling institution changes — financial, political, social, or economic — and the particular racism impedes the agenda, then Americans are told to change their attitude; an imprint is relieved.

By excessive attention to a genocide committed almost 100 years ago in a Western nation to Western people, a controlling institution has imprinted its racist attitude in the minds of Americans. The agenda assures that the World War II genocide is given consistent recognition, and the genocide by western oriented people in an Arab country does not register. Racism, as shown by Bill Maher’s remarks and attitude, is a significant factor that guides the genocide of the Palestinian people.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Immediately after World War II, Cold War competition with the Soviet Union drove U.S. policies, mildly favored Israel, and tended toward achieving a balance of power between the Zionist state and Arab world. Israel’s victory in the 1967 six-day war changed the status quo. Warsaw Pact nations had supplied arms to Egypt, ostensibly for defensive purposes, and Israel’s rapid offensive angered them. The Soviet bloc severing of relations with Israel led Washington to believe the Arab world had allied with the Soviet Union and motivated Uncle Sam to elevate relations with the victorious nation. Each year, the commitment to advance Israel’s supremacy and slaughter of the Palestinian people grew. Each year, the democratic appearance and humanistic values of the American system deteriorated. Each year, the American system, established in 1789, tended toward destruction of its political and social fabrics.

President Jimmy Carter added a Middle East foreign policy directive by claiming the Soviet Union posed a grave threat to the free movement of Middle Eastern oil through the Persian Gulf. Safeguarding the oil flow was of vital interest to the United States of America. Framed in other words, the U.S. had another mission ─ prevent Iran from threatening Arab kingdoms and disturbing the flow of oil.

One approach to examining policies is to compare results with intentions. Dr. Michael S. Bell, professor at the National Defense University Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, has given a sensible definition of the policies: 1) protection of the American homeland from terrorist attacks; 2) peace between countries in the region; 3) nonproliferation of nuclear weapons; and 4) the free flow of energy and commerce to the global economy.

Protection of the American homeland from terrorist attacks

Protection from terrorist attacks did not occur, not in the homeland, at American military bases, and in American embassies. The American people remain unformed why Sept 11, 2001 and other terrorist attacks occurred.

The errors started with President Ronald Reagan allowing the CIA to shuffle funds to Pakistan intelligence, who used the funds to finance Saudi construction engineer, Osama bin Laden, to construct roads and bases in Afghanistan that eventually became training grounds for al-Qaeda militants. The road led through several nations. Along its path, al-Qaeda recruited others to form new terrorist organizations and attack American facilities in several countries. In Afghanistan, the CIA paved the road to the 9/11 terrorist attack on American soil.

Hidden from public knowledge is that America’s support for Israel contributed to Obama bin Laden‘s arguments with the United States. The al-Qaeda leader revealed his attitude in the opening sentences of a “Letter to America.” Bin Laden’s words are unpleasant and offensive but taking notice and reading them was a prerequisite for devising a strategy that defeated terrorism and protected Americans. The letter’s opening statements.

 Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:

(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.

a) You attacked us in Palestine:

(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.

(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon.

The letter appeared in 1998, but before that date bin Laden had signaled his displeasure with America. Ignoring the reasons for his threats was a grave policy mistake and proved fatal. Policy errors manufactured additional policy errors.

By stationing U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, President George H. W. Bush aroused Radical Islamists in the Desert Kingdom to join forces with Osama bin Laden. On December 29, 1992, a bomb exploded  at the Gold Mohur hotel in Aden, Yemen, where U.S. troops had been staying while on route to Somalia.

Intelligence and strategy failures by President Bill Clinton elevated al-Qaeda to an international enterprise. President Clinton’s aggressive policy in Somalia created a mistrust of American power among East Africans and an anarchy that eventually led to emergence of The Islamic Courts Union ( ICU), who preached Shariah as law and ruled parts of Somalia at various times. After being defeated, the ICU evolved into Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda look alike in East Africa.

• On Friday, February 26, 1993, Kuwaiti Ramzi Yousef and Jordanian Eyad Ismoil parked a yellow Ryder van in the public parking garage beneath the World Trade Center. Later in the day, the van exploded, killing six people and injuring 1,042.
• In June 1996, an enormous truck bomb detonated in the Khobar Towers residential complex for Air Force personnel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen Americans and wounding 372.
• Truck bomb explosions occurred on 7 August 1998 at U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and killed hundreds of people. The attacks were linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, under direction from Osama bin Laden.
• Al-Qaeda associates bombed the U.S. Navy warship, USS Cole, in October 2000 and killed 17 sailors. Al-Qaeda in Yemen, soon to become al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was born.

No intelligence failures can possibly compare to those that enabled foreign terrorists to enter the United States, request one-way flying lessons, take planes up with no concern about being able to land them, book flight tickets, walk through airport inspections, seize commercial planes in mid-flight, and fly them into public buildings. No terrorist action has been as serious as those that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Guided by a tendency to assist Radical Islam in its endeavors, the George Bush administration provided a route for al-Qaeda to mature into ISIS. The invasion of Iraq and disposal of a Saddam Hussein regime, which had prevented al-Qaeda elements from establishing themselves, exposed Iraq’s porous borders to Radical Islamic fighters. Founded in October 2004, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) emerged from a transnational terrorist group, created and led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His cohorts entered through Jordan, while al-Qaeda members forced out of Waziristan in Pakistan found a safe haven in Iraq. Fighters trained in the deserts of Saudi Arabia hopped planes to Istanbul and Damascus and worked their way across Syria into Iraq. Disturbed by the U.S. invasion and military tactics, Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai, later known as Al Baghdadi, founder of the Islamic Caliphate, transformed himself from a fun loving soccer player into a hardened militant and helped to found Jamaat Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamaah (JJASJ) and countered the U.S. military in Iraq.

After previous disastrous policies prepared the framework for ISIS to establish its caliphate, and spawn “look-alikes” in Yemen and throughout North Africa, President Barack Obama approached the dangerous situation with confusion. Not wanting to betray his French ally, Obama brought his country into the Libyan civil war and enabled Radical Islamists a safe haven in the new Libya

Since the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi, a leader who constrained al-Qaeda, militants from Libya have flowed east, through friendly Turkey into Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. Weapons captured from Gadhafi’s stockpiles have flowed west to equip al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Militants trained in post-Gadhafi Libya attacked tourists at beaches and museums in Tunisia; Boko Haram spreads havoc throughout northern Nigeria and parts of Chad.

The al-Qaeda that the U.S. helped create committed the greatest single act of foreign destruction to American soil. The Afghanistan the U.S. helped establish became the Afghanistan the U.S. was  forced to combat and could not destroy. The Israel that the U.S. nourished and fortified contributed to the development of international terrorism and to the U.S. failure in containing  it, a common thread through all U.S. Middle East policy failures. The American people sat silently as its State Department and Israel brought terrorism to American shores.

Peace between countries in the region

Instead of bringing a pledged peace and stability to the Middle East, the U.S. has brought constant violence and mayhem. Except for Iraq’s wars against Iran and Kuwait, and some skirmishes in Yemen, the Middle East Arab nations have not attacked one another. The United States has been twice at war with Iraq and has engaged Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Patron Israel has fought wars with Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt and has had continuous strife with the Palestinians, which have exploded into intense battles in Gaza. The U.S. invasion of Iraq came from the bidding of the Neocons  ─ American officials allied with Israel. Deceptively portrayed as a war to defeat Saddam Hussein’s’ developments of farcical “weapons of mass destruction,” the invasion of Iraq used American forces to subdue Israel’s principal nemesis.

Reasons for U.S. antipathy toward Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen Houthis, and Iran are not clear. None of these nationalities have attacked the U.S. or its personnel. Their common expressions are opposition to (1) Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people; (2) seizing Arab lands, and (3) disturbing Muslim sites in Jerusalem. Without Israel, dominating their lives, the Middle East might have rivalries but warfare is not probable. U.S. policy of bringing peace between countries in the region could not succeed. Support of an aggressive Israel meant peace in the region was impossible.

Nonproliferation of nuclear weapons

Nonproliferation of nuclear weapons is best accomplished by making certain that no nation fears a nuclear threat. By ignoring Israel’s development of the atomic bomb, the U.S. made sure that Middle East nations felt constantly threatened by an aggressive Israeli military machine. Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Syria briefly sought nuclear developments and were stopped. Although denying it, Iran is presently believed to be in an advanced stage toward developing an atomic bomb. Do away with Israel’s atomic bombs and assuredly, Iran will halt its developments. Another failure of U.S. policy due to its strange relations with Israel.

Free flow of energy and commerce to the global economy.

OPEC determines the price of oil and the U.S. does not control OPEC. President Carter’s anxiety that closing the Strait of Hormuz will greatly disturb oil shipments to Western nations is exaggerated. The burning of oil by the U.S. fifth fleet in the Indian Ocean contributes as much to the price of oil as would the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. Well, not exactly, but it’s a point.

In 2022, oil flow through the Straits “averaged 21 million barrels per day (b/d), or the equivalent of about 21% of global petroleum liquids consumption. Estimates are that” 82% of the crude oil and condensate that moved through the Strait of Hormuz went to Asian markets in 2022. China, India, Japan, and South Korea were the top destinations for the crude oil ….In 2022, the United States imported about 0.7 million b/d of crude oil and condensate from Persian Gulf countries through the Strait of Hormuz, accounting for about 11% of U.S. crude oil and condensate imports and 3% of U.S. petroleum liquids consumption.” China received 1/3 of the Asian market for the crude oil.

Whose free flow of energy is the fifth fleet protecting? Very little to the Western markets; more to the Asian markets and mostly to China. The fifth fleet, which has been hanging around in the Indian ocean for thirty years waiting for Godot is principally occupied to defend Chinese (our nemesis) right to assure oil shipments.

If the United States wants to assure Iran will not interfere with oil shipments, why not become friends with Iran? Good reason to be friends with the mullahs. Friends help friends, except when the “friend” is Israel.

Want to receive shocks in free flow of oil, Israel is the “go to guy.” The deepest scarcity of oil and high prices occurred when oil producing Arab nations embargoed oil to the United States in retaliation for U.S. rescue mission of military shipments to Israel during the !973 Yom Kippur War, another U.S. Middle East policy of sacrificing the interests of the U.S. people to enhance Israel’s interests.

Conclusion

U.S. Middle East policies have been consistent failures, bringing great harm to Arab populations and to the American people. In all the policies, beginning with the ratification of the 1947 Partition Plan and arriving at military assistance to Israel in its 2023 war on Gaza, the Israel state appears and diverts the policies to catastrophes. Americans of good conscience stand aghast at Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians and America’s participation in the genocide. They do not realize that the Palestinian genocide is a byproduct of 70 years of slaughter of the American psyche and its institutions. Too few take notice of the onslaught on American academic and press freedoms, corruption of American values, coopting of its political system, and reduction of its intellectual qualities. Assailants sink America further into an abyss and more Palestinians are murdered from the same assailants. Americans and Palestinians are “captured in a web that imprisons every faculty and sense.” Only a captured faculty can allow a genocide. No  genocide makes sense and this genocide makes all of us senseless.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The taxicab ride from Tel Aviv ended at the front of the Hotel Leonardo Ashkelon. Sliding from the rear seat on to the violet colored brick sidewalk, Professor Farad Al-Khatib looked toward the Mediterranean Sea and took a deep breath. This autumn air had lost its caressing touch, fish smells, and natural sounds. Just a steady drone from passing traffic. Different, yes, he expected differences, and they did not hide memories.

“Father, will we be able to swim; will we catch fish; can we go out a boat; is the sand too hot?” A pleasing look and comforting smile followed by the words, “Son, you want so much. God willing, I shall get them for you.”

Following closely behind the professor, Vihaan Basu, Farad’s associate at The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, shouted “What’s the hurry’ we’re here to rest, aren’t we?” He followed his question with the words, “Surprisingly quiet here.”

The men entered the hotel and looked to the registration desk at the end of an ultra-modern lobby. Sparse of any seats, a chandelier of low hanging globes reflected off a glass floor, and, with no defined inside, the lobby had only a pass-through to the desk before reaching the outside. Two smiling ash blond haired women, gray eyes contrasting with their fair skin and lively faces, greeted the two Canadians.

Farad played his usual identification game of accent and appearance. “Ukraine?”

“Yes, Ukraine,” said one woman, as the other interrupted Farad’s quick registering and leaving by calling out, “Wait Professor Al-Khatib, you have a message.”

A message, which had a name and phone number, and requested to be contacted, was from the graduate student that Professor Milstein from Tel Aviv University, the conference coordinator, did not personally know but was requested to introduce to Farad at the conference he attended. The student had asked where Farad would be staying in Ashkelon, if he might contact him at the hotel, and briefly meet and talk about a cooperative experiment based on Farad’s work.

After settling himself in the temporary space, Farad prepared to leave the room for his walk. The note, which he had placed on the desk, stopped him. “Milstein’s student, well not his student,” he said to himself. After thinking for a moment, he concluded it would be impolite not to call. He called and a voice replied, “This is Brian.”

Brian dispensed with formalities, eagerly explained his interest in autism and desire to be part of the re-sequencing study. If they met for about one-half hour, he could introduce himself, and obtain an assigned role in the study. Farad explained he intended to see the city, and they could communicate after he returned to Canada in two weeks. In an excited voice, Brian offered a walk and talk. He would be honored to show the professor his city. An enthused Brian ended with, “No worries, I can be at your hotel in five minutes. We can manage it.”

“No worries? You are going to show me your city? Were you born here, Brian?”

“No, in Australia but I came here at the age of five. Grew up here. Love the beaches.”

“And the kangaroos and Koala bears?” said Farad.

“Kangaroos. Koalas. You’re humorous professor. Hey, I’ve seen geckos and lizards.”

Farad pondered a moment. “Brian, I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” Going about a strange city could be troubling, and this city had problems. Rockets had landed from Gaza; the community was edgy, and people on the edge can easily misinterpret behavior. He preferred not to ask his associate to accompany him. Vihaan weighed almost 300 pounds, did not engage in strenuous exercises, and walked slowly. Local Brian could be worthwhile company. A troubling itch pushed him into caution ─ tales of Israel’s Shin Bet apprehending Canadian-Palestinians and asking to have their relatives supply intelligence on Hamas activities. He called Vihaan and said that if he was not in the hotel lobby at 6:30 PM, the time they agreed to meet for dinner, he should call the mobile phone the conference gave him to use. He called Brian and agreed to meet at the hotel entrance in five minutes.

Farad recognized the student he had previously met, a blonde, tall, and muscular man who evidently worked out daily in the local gym and could probably wrestle an alligator. He motioned for Brian to follow, and the two walked out the rear terrace, down a street and onto the beach. Not the beach that Farad remembered – no fishing boats and nets, the sand whitened and purified as if sifted through a strainer.

Brian talked continuously and energetically. Farad listened quietly, nodding occasionally, as if in agreement. The stroll led to Farad’s intended destination ─ Canaanite Gate ─ the mud-bricked entrance to an ancient city from a walkway that connected the city to a port. More polished and partially reconstructed from what he remembered, the Gate, which his father revered, symbolized attachment to his family.

“We may not be direct descendants of the Canaanites, but surely their blood runs in ours and we are part of their heritage,” he had said to Farad.

They arrived at Tel Ashkelon. Archaeological exhibits traced development of the area from Canaanites, Philistines, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, and Ottomans to the present. As they left the park, Farad’s muttering of the word ‘Israelites,’ startled Brian. “What did you say, professor?”

“Oh, was I thinking out loud? A common practice with me. Israelites, there was no mention of Israelites in this area.”

“Our history shows our King David conquered the entire coast.”

“Your history or biblical history? Is there any verified evidence of a King David or any Israelites along the entire coast?” said Farad.

“Well, there must be…there’s…” A disturbed Brian paused for a moment, smiled at Farad, and said, “Who cares, it’s all biblical stories.”

Farad contemplated Brian’s sudden change in behavior before he said, “Do you know the way to the mosque close to Al-Ustaj and Al-Shuk Streets?”

“Mosque? Al-Ustaj, Al-Shuk Streets? Are you referring to this city?” said Brian.

“You may know them as Herzl and Eli Cohen streets.”

“Eli Cohen Street is not far from the park, and ends at Herzl. There is a museum close by, whose tower is shaped as if part of a mosque.”
“Lead the way,” said Farad.

They passed an area that Farad remembered had smells of melon fields and through a neighborhood with small cafes where men sat at tables, played chess, and read newspapers with Russian print. Shops featured tea, caviar, vodka, pork, and kielbasa in Russian and Hebrew. “Damn Russkies, they’ll never be Israelis,” exclaimed Brian.

The two men turned left, reached Eli Cohen Street, and then turned right. Upon recognizing the minaret, Farad looked at a row of shops, turned right, stopped momentarily at a café, looked around as if to gain direction, told Brian to wait, and hurried forward. Brian followed closely behind the heavily breathing Farad. After walking one block, Farad stopped at the corner and looked up at a two-story building with an orange tiled roof. He stood erect, sighed slightly, and held back the tear that shaped itself on an eyelid. The crescent shaped door welcomed him and he moved forward to it, then stopped and recalled the failures of others who tried to do the same. He turned, walked back to the café, sat down, ordered tea and falafel, and stared at green tables with blue umbrellas that covered a square across the street.

“I’ll have the same,” Brian said to the waiter. “What are you staring at?” he asked Farad.

“I’m looking at the donkeys and camels carrying turquoise and fuchsia dyed silk, being sold to weavers who made festival dresses with black and indigo cotton threads. Their ‘ji’nneh u nar’ – ‘heaven and hell’, ‘nasheq rohoh’ – ‘breath of the soul’ and ‘abu mitayn’ – ‘father of two hundred’ creations demonstrated the originality of our Al-Majdal weavers. Can you hear the rhythmic sounds of the looms?”

“Weavers, looms? You have imagination, professor. That house, what is it?”

“That house. I was born and lived there until I was ten years old. My father and his brothers own these shops. We had a restaurant here.”

“Own these shops? Born here? I thought you were born in Gaza?” said Brian.

“We never sold them, and so we own them. Who told you I was born in Gaza?” replied a stiffening Farad.

“Oh, I…I do…do not know…exactly. Must be something I heard.” responded Brian. He paused for a moment and then asked in a confused tone, “Why did you leave here?”

“Why did I leave? You do not know,” said Farad.

“How can I know?” answered Brian.

“In 1948, when I was ten years old, a Zionist force approached our town. We heard of atrocities, of Irgun leaders telling their comrades to take six villagers prisoner and shoot them so the others would become fearful and flee. My parents were desperate and thought it preferable to come back when hostilities had ended. Shells and bombs burst close to us, and we continued to flee. We walked 40 Kilometers to Gaza City, two days with a cart, a donkey, few possessions and 30 neighbors. When we attempted to return, Zionist armed men stopped us, and forced us to remain. Afterwards, trucks came, daily, from Beit Daras, Isdud, Tabiyya, Qastina, Hamameh, and our al-Majdal, filled with distraught people. We slept in tents for months.”

With no display of emotion, Brian asked about Farad’s remaining family in Gaza. Remaining family, brothers, who were fishermen, had died, one of natural causes, the other by a bullet from an Israeli patrol boat. Sisters, nieces, nephews and many grandchildren still lived in Gaza.

“They must have needs. Are you able to help?” Brian did not wait for an answer and continued. “I’m part of a group that recognizes the difficulties of the Palestinians in Gaza, what with Hamas controlling the society. We have connections and can help.”

When Farad looked at him with a questioning face, Brian said, “With work, food, travel, money. The group can funnel all of it through you so there is no link to the Israeli organization. Very simple and very helpful.” Brian waited for a sign of agreement and observed a questioning countenance. “Obviously, we cannot assist anyone allied with Hamas, so we will have to make sure of that,” said Brian.

“This man has no sensibility or sensitivity,” Farad said to himself, and, in an inquiring manner, asked, “How do you make sure they are not allied with Hamas?”

“It’s not in the best interests of any Palestinian to ally with Hamas, and so we’ll expect them to inform us who is allied with Hamas. Do they know anyone who is considering militant activities, things like that.”

When he noticed fear on Farad’s face, Brian raised his hands. Farad noticed a man at a table in the square look to his right. A man and a woman emerged from a car. The woman went to the driver’s seat and the man walked toward the café tables in the adjacent square. Farad looked at his watch, which registered 6:25.

“You’re fortunate to have this weather. At this time of year, Toronto is cool and soon cold. My aged bones relish the warmth,” Farad said in a calm and sympathetic voice.

“Aged, you’re 79 but do not seem that old.”

“Lots of exercise and nutritious food, just healthy living, and maybe good genes.”

‘Could be another study for us,” said Brian who was glad to develop a rapport, an important ingredient in what he was trying to do. His apprehensive posture turned to comfort. “How’s the falafel, professor?”

Before Farad could answer, the phone rang. He nonchalantly looked at the phone, stood up as if to stretch his tired legs, and walked a few steps. In a low voice, Farad told Vihaan to come quickly with a taxi to the end of Eli Cohen Street, just before Herzl. “You will see a café with blue umbrellas to his right. Should take about five minutes.” Farad walked to his seat and, although Vihaan had ended the conversation, he continued talking into the phone. “All right, I’ll have the article prepared before December.” He paused as if listening. “Don’t worry; I won’t forget to return the phone at the airport. All right. Thanks for your considerations. Bye.”

After sitting, a relaxed Farad talked about the conference and the new investigations he would be making, in which Brian might be interested. Brian listened quietly and finally interrupted. Evidently, the professor intended to visit relatives in Gaza before going back home. Knowing he would have to fly from Ben Gurion airport to Cairo and then obtain transportation to Gaza, which was a long trip, Brian had a suggestion. “If you’re in agreement with this group, I’m sure they can arrange for you to go directly from here to Gaza. You can be there in one hour by car, go through security, and get a cab to wherever they are. Can’t beat that,” said a triumphant Brian.

Farad appeared agreeable and pondered until he noticed Vihaan emerge from a cab and come close. He quickly offered to pay the bill. Brian responded by placing his hand on Farad’s hand and saying, “You are a guest in my city, and I insist on paying.”

“No, said Farad, “You are a temporary guest in my city, and we pay for guests.” He threw a 50 shekel note on the table, ran to Vihaan, grabbed his arm, and raced to the taxicab. After shouting a restaurant name to the taxi driver, Farad took a deep breath, remained silent for a minute, looked at Vihaan, and spoke. “I hope the restaurant has learned to prepare our sfihaat better than that café prepared our falafel.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Economics

Economics is a “dismal science” that has a postulate ─ all money is debt. This postulate leads to the realization that the capitalist economy grows and survives with mounting debt and only the government can carry the debt burden. Debt forces the government to manage the economy and a more managed economy continually develops. U.S. Middle East policy generates constant wars, promotes an arms race, and is partly responsible for the continually increasing debt and managed economy.

Foreign Policy

Establishing hegemony by making the world recognize American exceptionalism, regardless of opponents are killed in the process, defines U.S. foreign policy. This one-sided and arrogant policy aligns with Israel’s modus operandi. It has been historical, counterproductive in several adventures, is doomed to failure in the present crisis, and will continue to harm the American people.

Politics

Extravagant divisions in the electorate and political system demonstrate a lack of comprehension of the political system by government officials and political strategists. Israel’s supporters take advantage of the mayhem in the political system and influence politicians and voters.

Media

Knowledge leading to capable decisions has not accompanied the rapid expansion in communications. Money talks and media squawks. Media is a convenient means of controlling and manipulating minds. Israel supporters are adept in using the media to manipulate the American public.

The Middle East crisis, engineered by Israel and the United States, overrides all other issues. It is unfathomable, an artificial construct that is incomprehensible. The issue can be resolved in one minute of time ─ stop the oppression of the Palestinians and grant them equal rights. Instead, deliberate destructions of the Palestinian community and of those who attempt to aid the Palestinians are the avenues of resolution. A spillover into greater destruction of other peoples, including the perpetrators of the genocide, is predicted. Get rid of everyone and the world’s problems will vanish.

The unending crises are a mystery and unraveling the mystery has become more of a detective story than an academic pursuit. Why is there a genocide, why is it supported, and can it be stopped? Historians, foreign policy experts, journalists, political commentators, and wise old men have not provided adequate answers to the questions. There is more to committing genocide than power politics.

At 10:54 PM, October 6, 2024, the world population was 8,226,477,186. Take a guess and estimate that 1.5 billion have sufficient awareness (not knowledge) of the Middle East crisis to attach themselves to a side in the crisis. Only a portion of inhabitants of the western world and India would favor the Israeli aggressive tactics; maybe 100 million in India and 200 million in the western world, compared to 1.2 billion in the rest of the Arab, African, Latin American, Central and Southeast Asia, and China worlds.

Take a more rigid perspective on what is definitely a genocide ─ no mistake in characterizing the violence against the Palestinians by that term. How does the number of those who know it is a genocide and still favor Israel compare with those who view it as a genocide and want it stopped? My guess is that a small clique of 7 million Zionist Jews (the Christian Zionists may favor Israel but do not influence others) actively influence 100 million people to favor their cause, and a billion of the world’s population react in horror to the genocide. A small clique of 7 million people are moving the world to enormous destruction and one billion remain powerless to prevent it. How can that be?

The mystery deepens with the revelation that this scenario has no reason. The argument that Jews, who are the wealthiest group in almost all western nations and occupy positions of prestige and importance in much greater portion than others, fear attack and need a land for themselves falls flat. In the land called Israel, only a small portion of the Jewish population can gain excessive wealth and dominance, while all live in constant fear of attack and animosity from much of the universe.

A one-state Israel, where all ethnicities live together and have equal rights can function as any democratic state. The Israeli Palestinians and Druze have been good citizens. Palestinians in all parts of the world — Chile, United States, Germany, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon — have pursued activities that benefitted their adopted nations. If the Jews in the one-state followed a similar pattern of dominance that Jews in the western world exhibit, then a greater portion of Israeli Jews will achieve enhanced prosperity in the expanded economy. The one-state might benefit the lesser advantaged Israeli Jews.

Let’s clarify nonsense. Jews can live almost any place throughout the western world and not be oppressed or subjected to violent anti-Jewish attacks. In 2020, Mexico had a population of 126,799,054 and a Jewish population of 58,876 people, 0.05 percent, and an infinitesimal part of the Mexican citizenry. On Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, Claudia Sheinbaum, one of the relatively few Jews in Mexico, was sworn in as president without incident. Worshippers of contrived anti-Semitism statistics, please explain that happening. There are few cases of physical attacks against Jews, and the ADL promotes the U.S. as a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Compare Jewish life in the United States with the centuries of life of African Americans, who live at the economic margin, are subjected to periodic police attacks that take their lives, and do not consider establishing a land of their own. Anti-Semitism is trivial compared to the discrimination that severely disrupts the lives of other Americans. Let’s not confuse anti-Jewish feeling, due to Jewish support of the genocide of the Palestinian people, with arbitrary prejudice against Jews.

Why is there a genocide?

Israeli murderous rampages lack compassion for Palestinian suffering, show no sympathy for the killed and no remorse for even “accidental” killings. Calculated dehumanization of the civilized, educated, endurable, and heroic Palestinian people certifies the inhumanity and criminal bent of the Zionist Jews.

Israel’s genocidal reaction to Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, a day that will be pressed forever in the American conscience, was unnecessary. The preferred strategy for a responsible military that values life is to reinforce the border, which could easily be made impenetrable. Using Mossad’s network of informers, infiltrators, and military drone and satellite surveillance, the Israeli military has mapped locations and movements of Hamas’ military leaders and fighting wing. Selective targets for drone and commando raids could have disrupted Hamas’ fighting capability. After crippling Hamas, the military could have developed a strategy that totally immobilizes Hamas and minimizes civilian casualties.

Israeli tank battalions could have surrounded schools, apartment buildings, hospital and refugee centers before broadcasting evacuation and surrender orders. After evacuation, which saves civilian lives, the tanks could have probed or shelled buildings they claimed harvested Hamas. No armed brigades surrounded buildings, no evacuation advisories occurred, and no Hamas operatives have been shown to be present in the wreckage. Just the opposite has happened; the Gazans have been told to flee and then have been shot by snipers. Doctors are shocked at the casualties and reports that have an unusual number of children shot in the head. Whole extended families of 30-70 people have been killed without warning. Israel is fighting an army that has no antitank guns, no heavy weapons, and just a few cadres still willing to fight. There is no Hamas army and there is no real war.

The Gaza campaign is not a military campaign; it is an excuse for a deliberate genocide. It has nothing to do with political and military strategies that are developed from able and astute minds. It comes from these minds — depraved, egocentric, inhuman, and criminal bent.

These criminal bent cannot distinguish between right and wrong, are trained to attach themselves to a unique tribe, and emotionally detach themselves from others. The criminal mind drives a great portion of the Israel community. This was shown in an interview by Christine Amanpour with an Israeli woman whose daughter was kidnapped by Hamas. The woman tells Christine Amanpour that “October 7 was a catastrophe for the whole world. Hamas is terrorist and terrorizing its own people. The world thanks us for fighting for them. Hamas is seeking to eliminate us and the free world.”

It is obvious the woman is reciting a script prepared by the Israeli propaganda machine. She does not concentrate on the travails of her daughter and displays a mind trained to attach itself to a unique tribe and emotionally detach itself from others. Only Israelis matter, and the world should recognize that damage to Israelis is damage to the entire word. Israelis are rescuing all of us. Hamas and its slingshots are “seeking to eliminate nuclear armed Israel and the free world.”

Here is the difference between terrorist Hamas that terrorizes its own people and benevolent Israel.

Image Courtesy of CNN Gaza before October 7

Image courtesy of Reuters  Gaza after October 7

Terrorist Hamas has terrorized the population by constructing housing, schools, universities, hospitals, sports arenas, and given Gazans the tools to live, while Israel did all it could to disrupt their lives. Benevolent Israel has no compunction in destroying housing, schools, universities, hospitals, and tools that terrorist Hamas has given its people to survive the continuous onslaught against them.

It’s Gresham’s law ─ bad money drives out good money ─ applied to human existence — bad people drive out good people; in this case, the worst constantly replacing the less worst. There are many Israelis, even settlers, who want to cooperate with the Palestinians, but the plurality that gained government control permits and encourages robbery and murder of Palestinians. The settlers take advantage of the opportunities.

The genocide proceeds from a criminal bent leadership that organizes criminal activities, which is rationalized. Provoke the Palestinians to respond to an attack and then accuse them of attacking ─ a favorite and successful trickster investment by the Zionist Jews, which has given them huge dividends. The Zionists expect those robbed and harmed will seek justice, from within and from without. Way to stop that is to get rid of them. With no them, there is nothing to worry about. There is no resurrection.

Why are nations and groups supporting the genocide?

All those who support the genocide of the Palestinian people are inflicted with the criminal bent plus gene — might makes right and anyone who does not recognize your might has no right to live. Bill Maher, a political comedian who posed as a human rights advocate, revealed how the American conscience reflects the Zionist conscience. In an HBO episode, Maher exclaimed, “The State of Israel is here to stay and the Palestinians will need to get used to it.” At other times, he defended Israel’s war on the Gazans and defended his positions with,

History is brutal, and humans are not good people, and, I would submit that Israel did not steal anybody’s land. This is another thing I’ve heard the last couple of weeks, words like ‘occupiers’ and ‘colonizers’ and ‘apartheid,’ which I don’t think people understand the history there. The Jews have been in that area of the world since about 1200 BC, way before the first Muslim or Arab walked the earth. Other people do not understand the history there.

Bill Maher is considered a political satirist with a large following. He must have been satirizing when stating, “The Jews have been in that area of the world since about 1200 BC, way before the first Muslim or Arab walked the earth.” Any existing Neanderthals to claim the land? Where have the Palestinians prevented Israel’s existence? If they did, how did Israel get so strong? Aren’t the Zionist Jews attempting to prevent Palestinian existence? Aren’t the Palestinians here to stay and shouldn’t the Jews get over it? Maher follows the usual Zionist scheme ─ attribute to the adversary the iniquities and guilt of the Zionists.

The United States, beginning with the landing of the Pilgrims, and Israel, beginning with the landing of the Zionists, follow identical patterns of history. Both obtained assistance from the indigenous people and then obliterated them. Continuous wars, always in defense, never compromising, always killing mercilessly, and each convinced of their exceptionalism categorize the Israelis and Americans ─ partners in crime against humanity, willing accomplices to genocide.

Can the genocide be stopped?

Rays of hope indicate nations will take a firm stand against the genocide and rally support for the Palestinians.

• China has taken an active role in promoting a ceasefire.
• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the United Nations General Assembly it should recommend use of force if the UN Security Council fails to stop Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.
• Russia has shown sympathy for the Palestinian cause but is unable to act while being tied up in Ukraine.
• France’s President Macron has asked all nations to stop sending arms to Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response to President Macron’s plea revealed his lack of responsible executive behavior in international relations, his twisted mind, escape from reality, and superior attitude.

As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilized countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side….Yet President Macron and some other Western leaders are now calling for an arms embargo against Israel. Shame on them.

Let me tell you this, Israel will win with or without their support, but their shame will continue long after the war is won.

• Spain, Norway and Ireland have recognized Palestine statehood. Spain announced it would join South Africa’s genocide case before the International Court of Justice against Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Response from Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz repeated Netanyahu’s’ obsessive behavior, the twisted mind, the escape from reality, and the superior attitude. In an X message, addressed to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, Katz wrote,

Hamas thanks you for your service….Khamenei, Sinwar, and deputy PM Yolanda Diaz (Spain’s deputy PM) call for the elimination of Israel and for the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian terror state from the river to the sea….Sanchez, when you don’t fire your deputy and declare recognition of a Palestinian state — you are a partner to incitement to the genocide of Jews and to war crimes.

• Iran has entered the hostilities and defiantly said it will not back down. Does Iran have a power that allows its defiance?

The minds and authorities that gave us genocide of the Native Americans, slavery, and genocide of the Palestinians cannot be changed. There is little hope that revolutions in the United States and Israel will occur and correct the situation. Where are the Obamas? Unfortunately, Israel, together with its supplicating ally, the mighty U.S., feels comfortable. It has destroyed its antagonists. Hamas is impotent, Hezbollah is in disarray, with Netanyahu boasting that “Lebanon could face destruction like Gaza,” a confession that destruction of Gaza and not Hamas guides Israel’s military actions. Iran awaits an attack that Defense Minister Gallant describes as “deadly, precise and, above all, surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened. They will see the results.”

The rays of hope that indicate nations will take a firm stand against the genocide and rally support for the Palestinians is blocked by the knowledge that all will burn. The world is trapped. Israel has nuclear weapons and will not hesitate to use them, knowing that by its small size and close location to other nations, opponents realize that radioactive fallout from atomic bombs falling on Tel Aviv will jeopardize surrounding nations. The military option is not plausible.

Israel has always posed the crisis as “it’s us or them,” another departure from reality that is used to justify its criminal behavior. “Us” refers to, “They intend to destroy us”(Israel.)” “Them “refers to, “We destroy them before we are destroyed.” Nobody has shown the power or proclivity to have it “us.” Battle maps show Arab nations with large arrows thrusting huge armies to batter Israel. Where are any of them?

With Israel having atomic weapons and a mentality that will use them, stopping the genocide by military means predicts it will be “us” and “them,” where “us” are the peace loving people of the world and them are all the Israelis — Jews, Muslims and Christians. Israel has the world in a “lose-lose” situation and will never accept a “win-win” situation. This leaves little room to maneuver and ability to save the Palestinians. Social isolation and economic deprivation, including sanctions of the criminal nation, are paths to forcing the issue. They are long and difficult and have not proven effective in past genocides.

The solution to stopping Israel’s massacre of the Palestinians lies with the Israelis and Jews around the world. Israel’s genocidal policies have generated internal detractors, social unrest, political divides, an economic decline, and military disagreements. All combat is neutralized by “us” or “them,” supplied by the constant war against the Palestinians, which demands absolute loyalty to the state that is shielding its Jews from another Holocaust. This steady stream of propaganda is similar to the manner in which the Nazi state convinced a plurality of Germans to support the Nazis until the end. It’s a toss up as to who better fits the image of Nazism ─ Deutschland or Zionistland?

The “us” or “them,” reinforced by a population that has been nurtured on a daily cereal of holocaust and enjoys being a victim, explains the bewildering Israeli Jewish position on blithely, and it is blithely, committing genocide. The real Jews, those in the Western world, who understand Judaism and the struggles of their immigrant ancestors, have been thrust into a battle to rescue Judaism and the Palestinians.

As mentioned before, Jews live well and peacefully everywhere, except in Israel. If their sleep is disturbed, it is because of Israel and its partners in crime. The anti-defamation League (ADL), better named the Defamation League, is a business; it exists to find anti-Jewish expressions and the more it can manufacture, the more successful it is as a business. The Israel Lobby is a conspiratorial lobbying arm of the Israeli government, reaching deeply into media, DC “Think Tanks,” government agencies, religious institutions, cultural institutions, and households, providing an invisible army of millions, many born in Israel and sent by Israel to corrode the political system, influence the electoral system, and delude the central nervous systems. Defeating the anti-Judaism branches of the anti-Jewish Zionist extremists is a challenge that is met by numbers, dollars, resources, energy, demonstrations, public relations, media advertisements and strategic thinking, which translates to being one step ahead of the most conniving, lying, cheating, and deceiving assortment of killers the world now sees. In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald,

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.

It has eluded us now;
Tomorrow, we will run a little faster,
Stretch our arms a little longer.

Boats against the current,
Borne back ceaselessly into the Past.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Read Part 1.

The events described in previous articles ─ pro-Israel influence that enabled rapid recognition by the U.S. government of the Israel regime in 1948 and an American murder of 29 Palestinians at the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron in 1994 are not isolated relics of the past. They link to events that occur in contemporary times and remain alive as if happening today ─ salient features in the historical narrative that a world ignored and served to claim more victims.

Pro-Israel influence that enabled rapid recognition by the U.S. government of the Israel regime initiated the trend that guaranteed almost continuous support by the U.S. government for Israel’s mounting crimes. Made in America Baruch Goldstein, in his murderous rampage, set the stage for continuous murders of Palestinians and for the made in America bombs that extinguished the life of Hezbollah Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah.

The constant drumming of arranged epithets and twists of reality, where an Israel committed atrocity becomes an Israel sacrifice, continues to manipulate minds. Hezbollah and its deceased leader, Hassan Nasrallah, are not portrayed as fighting to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people by the terrorist Israeli government; they are labelled as terrorist Hezbollah and terrorist Nasrallah urging genocide of nuclear-armed Israel and as individuals who deserve the ultimate fate.

In his speech to the United Nations (UN), Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, displayed the deranged and manipulative mind that governs Israel’s actions. He said “more resolutions have been passed by the General Assembly against Israel in the last decade than against the rest of the world’s countries,” and accused the UN of being a “house of darkness” and a “swamp of antisemitic bile.” The avalanche of UN resolutions condemning Israel’s genocidal actions prove that Israel is a “house of darkness,” a nation that has no regard for international law, and has leaders who feed upon hating other peoples. In his purposeful upside-down world, Netanyahu attempted to use valid condemnation of Israel’s actions by those who have been trusted to safeguard the world against criminal actions to prove Israel is a “shining light on the hill.”

From Netanyahu,

Hezbollah is the quintessential terror organization in the world today. It has tentacles that span all continents. It has murdered more Americans and more Frenchmen than any group except Bin Laden. It’s murdered the citizens of many countries represented in this room.

Netanyahu alludes to one incident, the 40 year-old 1983 bombings of French and American barracks in Beirut. On October 23, 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck filled with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and killed 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, another suicide attack killed 58 French soldiers in their barracks. The barracks were components of contingents of U.S. Marines and French forces that arrived in Lebanon as part of a peacekeeping mission. After the Sabra and Shatila massacres, which killed between “1,300 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias,” and French and U.S. naval bombardments of the Shouf hills, Lebanese militants perceived the French and U.S. presences in their land as intruding forces that protected Israel’s invasion. The militants wanted these forces to leave, and, not too long after the bombings, they left. No confirmed information is available of who authorized and carried out the bombings. A formal Hezbollah did not exist at that time.

There is definite information that Israeli air force jet fighter aircraft and navy motor torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War, killed 34 and wounded 171 crew members. Many Americans have been arbitrarily murdered by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, about ½ dozen this year.

Heart breaking to learn that Turkish-American woman, Aysenur Eygi, who radiates beauty, was shot and killed while protesting near Nablus. Disturbing to know the U.S. government does not hold Israeli officials responsible. Pulverizing to understand that Israel uses slaughter to send a message ─ come to Israel to help the Palestinians and you will be killed — young, old, man, woman, or child. Her life should not be forgotten, and her image should appear on every protest mechanism.

Apply Netanyahu’s statement to situations that caused U.S. casualties, and we have, “Israel is the quintessential terror organization in the world today. It has tentacles that span all continents. It has murdered more Americans than any group except Bin Laden. It’s murdered the citizens of many countries represented at the UN.”

Reality, truth, and facts are rarely considered by Israel’s puppets. Reading a paper placed before him, US President Joe Biden says the same as his leader.

Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror. His death from an Israeli airstrike is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.”

“Hundreds of Americans,” and “thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians?” Some Israeli civilians have been killed in the tit-for-tat hostilities, a minute number compared to Lebanese civilians and UN workers killed by Israel. Ex-president Joseph Biden, please name one American proven to be killed by Hezbollah since it became an official organization in 1985.

The Israeli Prime Minister, who believes that the function of the peoples of the world is to make certain Israeli Jews live and survive well, regardless of the murders of others, recites,

After generations in which our people were slaughtered, remorselessly butchered, and no one raised a finger in our defense, we now have a state. We now have a brave army, an army of incomparable courage, and we are defending ourselves.

An insolent and degrading insult to all those who fought and died in World War II. The United States, Soviet Union, and their allies fought bravely to defeat the Nazi state in World War II. They raised more than their fingers; they sacrificed themselves in defense of all the European peoples. If there was a strategy to liberate anyone from the camps and secure their lives — Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, political opponents of the Nazi regime, and Jews — they would have implemented the strategy.

In war and immediate post-war years, communication and access to news, including firsthand knowledge was limited — no Internet, no 100 channels of television, no electronic mail, no You Tube, no digital cameras, no smart phones, no Facetime, no WhatsApp, and no social media. The ubiquitous, daily, and on site images of the violence we see today were not available to stir the mind to action. Unbelievable, that despite the enormous information that describes the genocide in Gaza, the world remains relatively passive and little effort is being applied to prevent the genocide. Just the opposite is occurring; societies are helping and encouraging it. Mr. Netanyahu, nobody encouraged the Holocaust; Mr. Netanyahu stand up and tell us why you are encouraging the genocide, requesting the Western world to contribute to your gruesome cause, and are ready to extend it to Lebanon?

The unwary world, still unable to confront its malaise, has allowed the Israeli Jews to judge who lives and who dies, slaughtering others with impunity and without redress. Netanyahu has said it with bravado, vowing to destroy anyone in the world who harms an Israeli citizen. Recent events indicate nobody is safe from the Zionist Jews who murder with ease, without remorse, and without facing justice. Give it perspective by citing a few examples.

The goat and sheepherders in the South Hebron Hills live a simple and basic life on semi-desert land, which is barely sufficient to feed their small herds. They don’t ask anything from anybody, don’t harm anybody, and just want to do their daily chores. Settlers from Brooklyn, New York, who never saw a goat or sheep in their life, have suddenly become herders who need room and land for their pet goats. Simple way to get it ─ forcibly evict these simple people and ruin their lives by telling them the land is now a closed “firing zone.” If they protest, well, just shoot them. A video (scroll down) shows a settler arguing with a Palestinian herder on the herder’s land in the village of al-Tawani and arbitrarily shooting him. Israeli soldiers nonchalantly regard the incident and nobody detains the assailant.

Gaza has its daily atrocities. Israeli snipers and soldiers wantonly murder men, women, and especially children. In one episode, Israeli soldiers search a building, going from apartment to apartment. They enter an apartment and order several men to strip and then execute them. No reason and no concern for the killings. Go to “The Night Won’t End,” a film that investigates civilian killings in Gaza. View from 1:00.01 to 1:04.50 and be prepared to witness a horror.

In the West Bank town of Qabatiya, soldiers murder several Palestinians and then commit a gruesome act — treat the lifeless bodies as rubbish and throw them off the roof into the street below.  

The New York Times reports,

According to Wafa (Palestine News Agency), seven Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military during a 10-hour raid into Qabatiya, south of the city of Jenin, on Thursday. Among them, Wafa said, were the three people — believed to be men — captured in the video.

Wafa reported that, after being thrown from the building, the bodies were mutilated on the ground by the claw of an Israeli excavator before being taken away by the military.

In describing the exploding pagers that killed about 10 people and injured several thousand in Lebanon, media, as usual, inserts a description of Hezbollah as the “terror group.” Here we have one of the most horrific terror attacks in recorded history, with innocent civilians suddenly blinded while doing their daily activities and the victims are called the terrorists.

Biggest atrocity

The greatest atrocity has been done to Jewish people. Since its inception, Israel Jews have been used as pawns to oppress and subjugate others and been subjected to constant attacks. Thanks to Netanyahu and his compatriots, the Jews have become the most hated people in the world. Not just animosity or mild disapproval; venomous hatred of not wanting to associate and wishing disappearance. World Jewry may not realize it but this animosity comes from democratic, freedom loving, and liberal persons, people fighting for human rights who now express belief that Zionist Jews are inhuman. Many decent and well-meaning people are following the suggestion by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi.

Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Why should these genocide loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat out racist.

Can the world confront its malaise? Activists should keep doing what they are doing and try to overcome the Zionists and their worldwide conspirators who find antidotes by converting protests against their malevolent actions into malevolent protests by the protestors. The latest trickery has the New York Times, Sept. 4, 2024, publish, “Across the United States this spring, Iran also used social media to stoke student-organized protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, with operatives providing financial assistance and posing as students, according to American intelligence assessments.” What nonsense.

Well known that Israeli operatives flood social media with derogatory information on campus protestors and flattering information on their counter protestors, and hundreds of millions of dollars of donations are used to shape college presidents’ and government officials’ decisions. The Iranian agents, if they existed, probably could not buy a government or college official a cup of coffee.

Mentioning the atrocities committed by Israel leads to the question, “What can be done to stop Israel?” Arguments to the eventual demise of the Zionist nightmare are more wish fulfillment than reality.

The Times of Israel (TOI) features an article, “Derelict economy could sink ‘Titanic’ Israel, experts warn,” which relates, “New research paints worrying picture of decades of neglected national priorities leaving the country without the resources to face existential threats.” TOI is perspicacious, Intel has halted expansion of its facilities in Israel, delaying construction of a $25 billion factory for chip production. This pessimism gives optimism to those who believe that a disastrous economy will not be able to support a strong military. After Israel’s military decimates Hezbollah as a fighting force, Israel will no longer need a world class military to protect it from fulfilling its self-guided mission. This mission does not have a high-flying economy as its prominent feature; the Israel economy will always receive assistance from its benefactors — United States, Germany, and Jewish billionaires around the world. The salient feature of the Zionist mission is Irredentism ─ uniting of Jews around the world, physically or morally, in a supposedly united Biblical kingdom of Judah and Israel. That mission is almost completed and only enforcers composed of a small military and a large settler population will be needed to contain the Palestinians on the plantation. The shrinking labor force, due to emigrating Israelis, will be filled by the slave labor of compliant Palestinians.

Another argument for defeating Israel treats collapse of its principal supporter, the United States of America. Accomplishing that internally does not seem plausible. A possible solution to Israel’s maddening of the civilized world lays with leaders of several nations. A world realignment of blocs, those contending American hegemony and those blindly supporting it, is occurring. The U.S. faces economic decline from Chinese competition. If a substantial number of nations are convinced that moving away from the United States and aligning with China is less dangerous than allowing the modern Israelites and their Joshua leader to continue the revival of the Biblical Conquest, slay the inhabitants of the “promised Land,” and lead the world to continuous conflagrations, they could take action and give the U.S. an offer it cannot refuse ─ stop aiding Israel or we start aiding China. Successful rearrangement of the contending blocs requires a three-way endeavor.

• Gravitation to use of the Yuan as international currency will sink the dollar, substantially raise the price of U.S. imports, and cause a national inflation. This will be offset by lowering the cost of U.S. labor for exports and foreign investment.
• Tariffs will have to be imposed by foreign nations to offset the reduced prices and increased competitiveness of U.S. exports
• Nations will have to be assured they are not threatened by loss of U.S. security.

We have a complex subject that needs discussion beyond this article. Wait, there may be a solution on the way. I don’t recommend it but ex-President and future felon, Donald Trump, proposes weakening the dollar, increasing tariffs, and providing less security to other nations.

Will a Trump victory bring about the international realignment that forces the United States to compromise its protection of Israel to guarantee protection of its economy? What a dilemma!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Except for a brief interlude during the Eisenhower administration, United States’ support for Israel, in its genocide of the Palestinian people, has been an ongoing process since the Truman administration recognized the state. Contemporary events prompt a review of the post-World War II history that resulted in the formation of a nation that had no visible name until David Ben Gurion proclaimed, on May 14, 1948, the state as Israel.

Books, articles, documents, memoirs and letters from past generations detail how a small group of insiders prevailed over recommendations from an experienced and famous U.S. State Department of “wise men.” It is the story of the Zionist mission. It is the story of apartheid Israel.

The impact, legacy and relevance of the 1946-1948 events to today’s occurrences have not been sufficiently explored. Under the surface are the hidden messages and obscure drives that shaped the past and extended into the future. A more complete analysis of the legacy from Truman’s rapid recognition of the state of Israel explains the past and clarifies the present.

In the initiation of a trend, supporters of those who derailed State Department Near East policy were able to integrate themselves into Middle East policy and subsequently shape global policies. Turmoil from initial events provoked a continuous turmoil in the Middle East. Almost all administrations framed Middle East polices to favor the Zionist cause.

The Truman State Department consisted of leading luminaries of U.S. State Department history. George C. Marshall, United States military chief of staff during World War II, first military leader to become Secretary of State and later a Nobel Prize recipient, had Loy Henderson, Robert A. Lovett, Dean Rusk, Warren Austin and other known figures in his department. Many of them were not entirely supportive of the UN partition plan; their State Department followed Truman’s directives until sensing the partition plan would be counterproductive and cause more violence than it intended to resolve. The record indicates the State Department attempted to modify Truman’s policy that favored partition. They sought a temporary UN  trusteeship.

President Truman postured himself as motivated by a conviction — the displaced Jews who had survived the World War II Holocaust needed and deserved an immediate home. The U.S. president vacillated in his arguments and contradicted himself in statements. He railed vehemently against the steady stream of advocates for a Jewish state and retained several presidential advisors who pursed one purpose; promoting a new Jewish state. A suspicion remains that his humanitarian motives had a political content; the Democratic Party craved the financial and voting support of Zionist organizations and their allies.

Clark Clifford, Truman’s chief consul and ardent promoter for a Jewish state, quickly became one of the president’s closest assistants. He was not Truman’s principal assistant, a post held by John Roy Steelman, and behaved as if he were titular chief of staff by acting unilaterally and somewhat dubious in actions that proved decisive. The evidence points to Clifford favoring election expediencies in developing policies that led to the creation of the state of Israel.

The story begins at the closing shots of World War II and with the refugees in displaced persons camps.

The plight of the displaced persons could not be easily resolved. The United States was involved in returning millions of its armed forces to their homes, in the repatriation of captured enemy soldiers, and in preventing mass starvation in Europe. A possibility of a post-war depression and mass unemployment guided America’s political thinkers. In addition, the U.S. immigration laws did not permit the immediate admittance of the displaced persons, nor could it show favoritism. Unable to find a legal mechanism that would  bring them to America, Truman petitioned Great Britain to allow them to immigrate to Palestine. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee cited the 1939 White Paper, which specified a definite number of applicants, as a limiting factor. He also suspected new immigrants would burden Britain’s over-stressed mandate and add troubles to the existing emergency.

Truman could not prevail over Attlee. What to do? After presentations by an Anglo-American inquiry commission and a joint cabinet committee (Morrison-Grady) failed to achieve welcoming peace proposals, a tired and irked British government requested the UN General Assembly to consider the Palestine problem. On May 15, 1947, the UN created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). The committee outlined a partition plan with the city of Jerusalem under a UN trusteeship. Truman instructed the State Department to support the partition plan. UN Ambassador Warren Austin and the state department’s Near East Division, led by Loy Henderson, doubted that partition could resolve the situation.

During the months of UNSCOP’s efforts, Truman complained of pressure by pro-Zionist groups. In Volume II of his Memoirs, p.158, the former president relates:

The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been there before but that the White house too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders — actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed. Some were even suggesting that we pressure sovereign nations into favorable votes in the General Assembly.

This harsh rhetoric was mild compared to other Truman’s statements concerning the Zionists and its American leaders, especially Cleveland’s Rabbi Silver. In a memorandum to advisor David K. Niles, the president wrote, “We could have settled this whole Palestine thing if U.S. politics had been kept out of it. Terror and Silver are the contributing cause of some, if not all of our troubles.”

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly approved the UNSCOP Partition plan. Approval only meant agreement in principle. No effective means for transferring the principle into an operational result had been determined. The lack of enforcement provoked more conflict in Palestine. Each side strived to gain territory and advantage. The uncontrolled mayhem steered the U.S. State Department to adopt the concept of a temporary trusteeship for the area. Believing it had President Truman’s approval, the State Department instructed the U.S. delegation to the United States to petition for a special session of the General Assembly and reconsider the Palestinian issue. In his presentation, UN Ambassador Warren Austin proposed the establishment of a temporary trusteeship for Palestine.

Truman denied giving a green light for the presentation and wrote in his diary, which has been quoted in “The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, P.127. “This morning I find that the State dept. has reversed my Palestine policy. The first I knew about it is what I see in the papers. Isn’t that hell!” His infuriation arose from embarrassment of having assured Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, whom he highly regarded, that the U.S. would not depart from the Partition Plan and would not entertain a temporary trusteeship. George McKee Elsey, in his memoir, An Unplanned Life, p.161, supplied evidence of Truman’s awareness and permission for the speech. White House staff member Elsey writes:

In fact, as I quickly learned in delving into the record and querying White House and State Staff, Truman had personally read and approved some days earlier the Austin speech, which outlined a plan for U.N. trusteeship of Palestine when the British Mandate ended in May in lieu of partitioning the area into separate Jewish and Arab territories.

The May 15 date for the British exit neared, and the Zionists prepared to declare their state and present their credentials for recognition. Contradictions in U.S. Near East policy led to policies that became completely confusing.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly, March 25, 1948, President Truman clarified his nation’s temporary endorsement of a UN Trusteeship for Palestine that did not prejudice partition. The pleased State Department instructed Ambassador Austin to proceed with deliberations of the Trusteeship proposal. As if not cognizant of the UN trusteeship discussion, Truman prepared to recognize the soon to be formed state. On May 12, two days before an expected announcement by the Jewish Agency in Palestine, an angered George C. Marshall and his assistant Robert Lovett confronted Truman and demanded reasons for the haste in wanting to grant recognition. The president selected his counsel Clark Clifford, who was not involved in foreign policy, to clarify the reasons for the intended recognition.

Clifford’s principal reasons for instant recognition: The UN Security Council could not obtain a truce in hostilities; partition would happen in fact; the U.S. would eventually have to recognize a new state, and it was preferable to get the jump on the Soviet Union.

Clifford’s arguments are easily rebutted. (1) More significant than whether or not the Security Council could obtain a truce was that the UN council was engaged in discussions hoping to achieve a truce. Recognition would close the discussions and prevent the truce. (2) If the Trusteeship was approved and implemented, an entity unilaterally invoking a partition scheme would violate the UN dictates. (3) Clifford’s simple explanation that the U.S. must recognize the new state quickly because the U.S. must recognize the new state was a statement and not a clarification. (4) As for the Soviet Union, Clifford echoed the alarm of Phillip C. Jessup, a member of the U.S. delegation to the UN, who, according to Robert J. Donovan in his book Conflict and Crisis, The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, p.380, cabled UN affairs officer Dean Rusk that the Soviet Union wanted recognition to use Article 51 of the UN charter to protect the new state and thus gain a foothold in the Middle East. This view is specious — Article 51 pertains to defense of member states and the new nation did not become a UN member until one year later. Besides, wasn’t it advantageous for the U.S. to have the Soviet Union recognize the new state before it did? The State Department could then claim it had no choice and would lose less favor with the Arab states.

Marshall questioned why a domestic affairs advisor was determining foreign policy. Truman replied that he had invited Clifford to make a presentation. Obviously, Truman did not want history to record his words and asked his campaign manager to speak for him. Sensing that politics and the forthcoming presidential election had become overriding factors in a significant foreign policy decision, the dedicated George C. Marshall uttered one of the most insulting words ever directed by a cabinet official to a president, “If you follow Clifford’s advice, and if I were to vote in the next election, I would vote against you.” Clark Clifford’s Memoir, Council to the President, P.13, mentions that the Secretary also insisted that these personal remarks be included in the official state department record of the meeting. Whew! (Vice President Harris take note.)

Fearing that the transfer of advice on Near East affairs from the state and defense departments to inexperienced advisors and non-professional lobbyists would continue, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Lovett determined to change Truman’s intentions. For some unknown reason, rather than calling the president directly, he channeled his inquiries through Counselor Clark Clifford. The president’s counselor didn’t speak to the president about Lovett’s urgencies, but assumed a new role ─ he spoke for the president. In response to Lovett’s request to ask Truman to delay recognition, Clifford confesses in his memoir, P.22,

Saying (to Lovett) I would check with the President, I waited about three minutes and called Lovett back to say that delay was out of the question. It was about 5:40 and the State Department has run out of time and ideas.

Within a few minutes, one of the most bizarre sequence of events that had ever occurred in U.S. diplomacy unfolded.

Clifford states he called Dean Rusk and asked the UN affairs officer to inform Warren Austin, chief of the U.S. delegation to the UN, that the president intended to recognize the new Near East state within fifteen minutes. His called bypassed protocol; usually the assistant secretary of state should be informed and that person has the obligation to inform other staff members of decisions. Clifford quotes a surprised Rusk as retaliating with the remark, “This cuts directly across what our delegation had been trying to accomplish in the General Assembly, and we have a large majority for it.” Rusk supposedly called Warren Austin who went home without bothering to inform the U.S. delegation of the news.

Truman’s rapid signing (within 11 minutes) of the document that gave de facto recognition to the ‘new state of Israel’ angered members at a United Nations meeting on the Trusteeship. After learning the new state would be called Israel, the words ‘Jewish state’ were crossed out and the words ‘state of Israel’ were inserted.

May 14 was an enviable day for the new state of Israel, but an unpleasant day for the 160 year old American republic. The diplomatic solution to the Near East crisis had been settled, but the conflict has not been resolved.

What does history show?

History supports the conviction that the Partition Plan would not resolve the hostilities. The State Department concern for rapidly recognizing a new state, without knowledge of its constitution or composition, was diplomatically correct and prescient. The quick recognition of a state for the Jewish population prevented the UN from finishing a discussion of providing mechanisms to prevent more bloodshed and providing proper protection for the state’s large Palestinian population. George Marshall’s State Department acted honestly, with knowledge, and with the conviction it served the interests of the United States

President Harry S. Truman correctly perceived the tenacity of the Zionists. He erred in his judgment that the Partition Plan would resolve the conflict. The unusual rapid response for recognition of the new state, without awareness of its composition, signified a pardon of the excesses committed by Irgun and Haganah against civilian populations and certified the exclusion of any Palestinian voice in the new government. Truman never asked what would happen to the 400,000 Palestinians who had no representation in the new state. Evidently, he didn’t consider that the placing of 100,000 displaced Jews into Palestine would also mean the placing of weapons in the hands of many of these persons and, together with instant recognition, would reinforce the eventual displacement of 900,000 Palestinians. The European DP camps were temporary shelter for those who would undoubtedly find permanent homes and citizenship; the UNWRA refugee camps became permanent homes for several million Palestinian displaced persons who languish with stateless identification.

The post-election provided Truman with an opportunity to show he was not captive to the Zionist enterprise. What did he do? He only half-heartedly pressured Israel in 1949 to resettle displaced Palestinians. This token maneuver is verified by Joshua Landis. In a paper published in The Palestinian Refugees: Old Problems – New Solutions, University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, OK, 2001, p. 77-87, Landis writes,

McGee threatened the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. that if Israel did not accept 200,000 refugees, the US would withhold $49 million worth of Export-Import Bank loans to Israel. The Israeli Ambassador was unimpressed with McGhee’s threat and responded that McGhee “wouldn’t get by with this move.” The Israeli Ambassador boasted that “he would stop it.”

True to his word, the Ambassador was able to nip McGhee’s threat in the bud. That same afternoon, the White house phoned McGhee to say that the President would have nothing to do with withholding loans to Israel. Never again would a State Department official under President Truman attempt to intimidate Israel on the issue of refugees.

Landis claims the U.S. President tried to resolve the Palestinian DP problem by offering the Syrian government $400,000,000 dollars in exchange for settling up to 500,000 Palestinians in the fertile plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. A president of a nation was willing to burden his own nation in order to relieve Israel of its obligation to the Palestinian refugees. In retrospect, he behaved circumspect and his compassion for victims depended on their value to the Democratic Party.

A humanitarian light brightened the parade of lobbyists for partition and this light managed to convince many of the validity of their cause. Later U.S. government Middle East policies repeated the intense lobbying that guided Truman’s 1948 decisions and subdued the power and recommendations of government agencies.

The darkened perspective, due to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, has not deterred the forces who continue to obtain a U.S. foreign policy that favors their direction. The memory of Truman’s electoral victory, which defied all predictions, continues to make prospective candidates for national office sense that winning elections depends upon support from those who also support Israel.

The legacy of the 1946-1948 events is well described. Control of discussions pushed a previous U.S. administration to provide a legal frame for creation of the state of Israel. Control of discussions continued and impelled contemporary administrations to provide the support for that frame. Without U.S. support, Israel’s authentic moral, political, economic and military character would have been exposed and its structure weakened. The Israeli state might have collapsed.

The genocide started in 1947, from an improbable ‘there’ and has continued until the impossible ‘here.’ By supporting Israel, the democratic and freedom loving United States has made the improbable a sickening and frightful reality.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Although the Jews are not a people  — speaking different languages, having different cultures, not having a shared history, and not residing together in one place for generations — and Judaism has featured rabbis, who are teachers, and has never instituted a hierarchy, Israel’s Nation State Laws unilaterally claimed Israel as being the sole representative of all Jews.

Article 6A ─ The state shall foster the well-being of the Jewish people in trouble or in captivity due to the fact of their Jewishness or their citizenship;
Article 6B ─ The state shall act in the Diaspora to preserve the affinity between the state and the Jewish people; and
Article 6C ─ The state shall act to preserve the cultural, historic, and religious heritage of the Jewish people in the diaspora.

With the help of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and its accomplices — Anti defamation League (ADL), Hillel, a Zionist indoctrination organization for college students, Jewish National Fund, and AIPAC, among others — the Zionists wrestled the dominant position from American Jews.

From appearances, Zionism rang well with Jewish populations and achieved success. Population statistics that indicate Jews flocked to their “new country” are a troubling misread of history. Falsely claiming that Israel saved the Jews after the World War II genocide, Zionism has caused a second and more killing Holocaust — the ethical Judaism that shaped Western Jews is dead and the Judaism that rabbinical Jews brought to fruition in Mesopotamia and guided world Jewry is subdued. Jews are at odds with one another and cannot escape the charges of committing genocide of the Palestinian people.

Freed from a pastoral life, dry conditions, and restricted economies in the Levant, new communities  of Mesopotamian Jews, knowledgeable and worldly, appeared in the Fertile Crescent after the third century B.C. and survived to modern times. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers housed the great Jewish academies of Surah, Pumbadita, and Nehardea, and best expressed the legacy and heritage of modern Judaism. In The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492, by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Princeton University press, 2012, the authors claim that “Judaism reached its Golden Age in 800-1200 A.D. During that time, Mesopotamia and Persia contained 75% of world Jewry with the rest in North Africa and Western Europe.”

The Middle East and North African Jews who came to Israel were Arabs; the Europeans Jews were Ashkenazi; the Ethiopian Jews were Beta Israel; and the Yemenite Jews were from the Arabian Peninsula. Israel replaced the differing languages, dialects, music, cultures, and heritage of these unique ethnicities with uniform characteristics, and created a new people, the Israeli Jew. Destruction of centuries old Jewish history and life in Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt accompanied the creation of a new people. The Zionists, who complained about persecution of Jews, wiped out a major portion of Jewish history, determined who was Jewish, and required all Jews to shed much of their ancestral characteristics before integrating into the Israeli community.

Most Jews adhere to Rabbinical Judaism, a form of Judaism that achieved its modern status in Mesopotamia during the 5th century A.D. It was in the Persian Parthian and Sassanian Empires (248 B.C. to 641 A.D) that Jewish scribes codified the oral and written laws from the Torah, Mishnah, and Gemara and produced the Babylonian Talmud, which became the central text of Rabbinic Judaism, and the basis for Jewish law.

In 2023, the world’s core Jewish population (those identifying as Jews above all else) was estimated at 15.7 million. With 7.2 million Jews, Israel claimed the largest Jewish population in the world, not all of them lived in Israel, followed by the United States with 5.7 million, which also contained a sizeable population of self-exiled Israelis. By numbers, Israel appears as the selected home of world Jewry. The numbers do not tell the story. Relatively few Jews selected Israel as their home. Jews arrived there temporarily, by mistake, or by accidents of history, and could not get out. Their children, born in Israel, are products of the mistaken voyages and never realized  the dilemma their parents faced. The large birth rate of the Israeli Orthodox Jews and Mizrahi (Arab and North African Jews) and the low birth rate of the Western Jews skewed the statistics. Examine the record.

From its beginnings to the start of World War I, Zionism proved a stagnant adventure. During that period, statistics indicate that  about 70,000 Jews came to Palestine, not all of them were Zionists, many being adventurists, utopian Socialists, and some seeking opportunities. By 1918, only about 30,000 of the original 70,000 remained. Meanwhile, more than 2,500,000 East European Jews ventured to other places, mostly to the United States. Where are the Zionists?

World War I, destruction of the Ottoman Empire, and the Balfour Declaration revived the Zionist adventure. The League of Nations’ certification of the British Mandate in Palestine prevented  formation of a national Palestinian governing body, and provided opportunities for English speaking European Jews to work in the British administration. They came with protection of his Majesty’s forces. From 1918-1922, approximately 24,000 Jews arrived in Palestine.

The year 1924 was more fortuitous for the Zionists. The US Immigration Act closed the doors to mass Jewish immigration from East European nations and this Act steered Jews to Palestine. By 1931, Palestine housed 175,000 Jews. Were the new arrivals Zionists or people seeking an improved situation from their depressed surroundings?

During the 1930’s, Nazi persecutions of the Jews drove more than 60,000 German Jews to immigrate to Palestine (about 280,000 German and Austrian Jews migrated to other places, with about 125,000 managing to come to the United States). The German Jews were deficient in wanting  to learn Hebrew , unwilling to integrate, and perceived their voyage to the British Mandate as an escape from persecution in Nazi Germany and not necessarily a permanent solution to their refugee problem.

Figures are difficult to certify. Accepted figures are that at the end of World war II, about six million refugees wandered Europe and, after the guns went silent, one million found refuge in displaced person (DP) camps, of which 250,000 were Jews. During 1945-1950, about 120,000 of the Jewish DPs arrived in the former British Mandate. Many of the DPs had no other choice and some were unaware of where the ships were taking them. Their voyages did not conclude in 1950. Not well publicized is that “Between 1945 and 1967, almost 190,000 Jews left Palestine and Israel.”

The vast number of Jews wanting to leave Israel troubled the humanitarian commissions that previously served the refugees. Meetings between commission representatives and  Israeli authorities  highlighted that “emigration from the country was creating serious complications in Europe, and becoming a political embarrassment for Israel.” What did the Israeli government do? A discussion on Israel’s formation relates:

The government restricted distribution of passports and exit permits….The Israeli government also decided that new immigrants wishing to leave the country would not be allowed to do so unless they refund the state for the value of material benefits that they had received upon immigration to Israel. In some cases, prospective emigrants were even required to repay the costs involved in bringing them to Israel and maintaining them in immigration camps in Israel. And this was a serious obstacle for emigration because many people who wanted to leave the country were unable to pay all those costs, so they had to stay in Israel. And, the government also launched a propaganda campaign in the newspapers against emigration.

The dispossession of the Palestinians , which led to the 1948 war between Israel and Arab states, provoked Arab leaders to question the loyalty of their Arab Jews and placed the Jews living in Arab nations in a difficult position. Although Arabs by ethnicity and having a Jewish heritage in their surroundings for 2000 years, these Jews were now regarded with suspicion. Zionist operations within their nations, military conflicts, and oppression of the Palestinians, provoked the Arab governments into hostile actions against their Jewish citizens who had no recourse but to find safety with those who had caused their plight.

Why would Jews, who survived the ups and downs of having lived among Arabs for 2000 years, suddenly leave  their homelands? An Iraqi Jew had closer ethnic relationship to an Egyptian Muslim than to an Ashkenazi Jew. The former differed mainly in religious practices. An Iraqi Jew, except for religious practices, had little commonality with the Ashkenazi Jew.

The sudden exit of Arab Jews from their ancient lands questioned the veracity of the Zionist movement. If Zion was a home for Jews, why hadn’t these Jews moved to the Levant during the Ottoman Empire, and why hadn’t the Zionists considered relocating them from their inception? One answer is contained in an article, “Ideology or Ethnicity? The Israeli Political Crisis,” By Ori Yehudai

The concept of the “new Jew” espoused by Labor Zionists was a project of Western modernization. It emphasized modern “Israeliness”—the product of the Zionist revolution—over “Jewishness,” which was identified with the diasporic past. This approach was less appealing for Jews originating in Muslim countries, many of whom had remained more rooted in Jewish tradition.

It is obvious that it was the creation of apartheid and genocidal Israel that doomed the life of fellow Jews in Arab lands and, in many case, extraordinary lives that were reduced to despair and destitution and could not be easily repaired. Moshe Gat, Professor Emeritus, Bar Ilan University, General History and Political Science reports in  Iraq and its Jewish minority: from the establishment of the state to the great Jewish immigration 1921-1951,

 Jews were considered among the top tier of Iraqi society and were at the centre of its political and spiritual life. There were judges, lawyers, writers, poets, and politicians among them. They viewed themselves as worthy and capable of shaping the Iraqi state and society, feeling that they were an integral part of it. The community leaders’ good economic status, their influence over the country’s trade and economy, and long history in Iraq served as suitable grounds for integrating into local society since the establishment of Iraq as a state.

The last two great waves of immigration came from the Soviet Union. From 1970 to 1988, 291,000 Soviet Jews were granted exit visas, of who 165,000 migrated to Israel and 126,000 to the United States. The Kremlin granted visas to Soviet Jews who had relatives in Israel, but the Washington Post, February 19, 1989, reports, “Most of the newcomers leave the Soviet Union on Israeli visas, but once they get to the halfway stop in Vienna, more than 90 percent jump ship and opt for the United States.” Arrangements between Israel and the United States steered the recalcitrant back to Israel. Few Soviet Jews cared to go to Israel. They had no choice.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the desperate economic and social situation prompted its citizens to seek comfortable surroundings. Additional opportunities for Soviet Jews to migrate arose and 810,727 came to Israel during the last decade of the 20th century. Did these Jews come to Israel as Zionists or as disenchanted who had no other place to go? A report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) leans to the latter conviction.

The exodus of Soviet Jews increased in 1989 with almost 90 percent wanting to resettle in the United States. Some estimated that as many as 50,000 to 60,000 would leave in 1989. There would be a dual-track system for Soviet Jews to leave the Soviet Union. They could either apply to go to Israel or apply for refugee status at the American Embassy in Moscow….This arrangement of a two-track system in Moscow resulted in Israel becoming, “by default, the destination for the vast majority of Jews seeking refuge.”

Another wave of immigrants to Israel came from Ethiopia. The Beta Israel practiced a more biblical Judaism than rabbinic Judaism and considered  themselves Jews. Historians are uncertain how this relationship emerged and when it was first noticed. From 1980 to 2009, they came to Israel in several operations, with a strange logistics support from the United States.

More pull by Israeli rabbis than push from Ethiopians, the Israeli government decided in 1977 that the Beta Israel qualified for the Israeli Law of Return. Israeli forces performed several dramatic operations to rescue the Beta Israel communities from civil war and famine. “At the end of 2019, there were 155,300 Jews of Ethiopian descent in Israel. Approximately 87,500 were Israelis who were born in Ethiopia, and 67,800 were born-and-raised Israelis with fathers born in Ethiopia.”

Despite progress, Ethiopian Jews are still not well assimilated into Israeli-Jewish society. They remain, on average, on a lower economic and educational level than other Israelis.  From UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

TEL AVIV, 9 February 2012 (IRIN) – Growing up in Israel, Shay Sium became accustomed to being called a “nigger.” Sium, 32, has lived in Israel most of his life, but says he and other Ethiopian Jews are treated differently from other Israelis: factories do not want to employ them; landlords refuse them; and certain schools turn away their children. “The word discrimination doesn’t describe what we experience. There is another word for it: racism. It is a shame that we still have to use this word today,” he told IRIN. An estimated 125,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel, but while they are supposed to be full citizens with equal rights, their community has continued to face widespread discrimination and socio-economic difficulties, according to its leaders. A recent decision – as reported by local media – by 120 homeowners not to sell or rent their apartments to Israeli-Ethiopian families has brought discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in Israel back into the spotlight

They came as Beta Israel. They survive as converts to a new Israeli, their heritage disappearing in the Zionist regimented surroundings.

Commentary has shown that Zionism attracted a relatively small portion of Jews to Palestine. They came for many other reasons and left for many reasons. The total number of Israelis who migrated to other countries and resided abroad reached 756 thousand at the end of 2020. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics said that between 572-612 thousand Israelis lived outside the country, and this estimate does not include the number of those born abroad.

Israel is not composed of Jews who sought a state defined by Israel’s Nation State Laws. It is composed of Jews who sought escape from economic and social oppression or deprivation, only to learn they were to become executioners in victimizing and oppressing others and have their children indoctrinated by a philosophy that traumatized them with the belief that the entire world was composed of anti-Semites waiting to harm them, and only Israel provided a safe haven.

The Zionists have not created an ingathering of the Jewish people or returned them to their ancient lands. As described previously, Jews as a people do not exist, an ancient Hebrew civilization is a fictitious exaggeration, and Jews of today are scarcely related to Hebrews who wandered the hills of Judah 2500 years ago. Want confirmation?

Go to Ashkelon and its open-air museum of civilizations that ruled Ashkelon from the Canaanites to the Ottomans. No mention of a Hebrew civilization or Hebrew rule. Go to any of the great museums of the world — Metropolitan, British, Louvre, several in Berlin, and Jerusalem. No artifacts or presentations of any ancient Hebrew civilization and no reference to Jews governing the Mediterranean coast of present day Israel, the area to which the Zionists “returned.” Go to Jerusalem and learn there is no extant major structure from Biblical Israel. The only well-known structure, the Western wall, is an ancient supporting wall of the platform from Herod’s time, which did not hear worshippers at that time. It became a place of prayer for Jews in the late 15th century after Mameluke authorities permitted Jews a safe place for worship, and suddenly morphed into “the most revered site in Judaism,” during modern times. Revered by default, there is no other.

Another revered Jewish ground is Masada and its heroic fighters against Roman oppression. The balloon recently burst on this one. From the Times of Israel, Masada legend upended: ‘The Romans came, saw and conquered, quickly and brutally.

Recent research by a team of Tel Aviv University archaeologists may upend the Masada legend by asserting that the siege likely lasted just a few weeks and not years. [ED: Indicates that Masada Jews did not commit suicide] Likewise, the primary motivation for the Romans in assaulting Masada wasn’t to defeat the last holdout of the Jewish rebellion but rather to preserve the supply of lucrative balsam, a perfume produced in nearby Ein Gedi.

But the dominant faction at Masada was indeed “the bandits,” who, as noted by Josephus, sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem went down from Masada to Ein Gedi in a raid. They killed hundreds of women and children at the balsam plantation there after the workers fled, and disrupted production of the precious fragrance. It was an effective raid designed to damage Roman interests in the region.

The Zionists have not created an ingathering of Jewish people. The Jews, as a people do not exist.
The Zionists have not recreated an ancient Jewish civilization. No vital ancient Jewish civilization ever existed.

Examine closely.
The Zionists recreated the medieval European ghetto, complete with walls and Jewish isolation from other communities. They replaced intermittent attacks against Jews with permanent attacks on Jews; come to Israel and face a daily barrage of flying bullets.

The Zionists have divided Jewish communities, caused severe family frictions, and spurred Jews to relinquish their Jewish faith.

The Zionists shifted intermittent resentment against Jews to perpetual animosity, leading almost the entire world to label Jews as committing genocide of the Palestinian people. We are all anti-Semites now.

The humanism that guided American Jews is almost gone.
Jewish heritage that developed the Talmud, the guiding laws of modern Jewry, has disappeared.
Jews are depicted as people with yarmulkes, living on hilltops, and carrying Uzi guns.
The Messiah that brings Jews back to Jerusalem has arrived and is not wanted.

Judaism is dead and its coffin is in Gaza.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The Middle Class Tax Cut

No matter how it is sliced, diced, or spiced, this middle class tax cut benefits nobody, harms the nation, and questions Harris’ credibility. The presidential aspirant said in her acceptance speech that she will be a president for all peoples in the nation. Singling out a tax cut for the more fortunate does not match her words. Unexplained is why this special class needs a tax cut.

Tax cuts are usual when demand is low, such as in a recession. The present economy is healthy with plenty, and I do mean plenty, of new Teslas in my middle class neighborhood. Elevated consumer demand is subsiding, noted by the decrease in consumer-inflated prices and increase in stock and housing market asset prices. Money is flowing into assets and a middle class tax cut will accelerate the trend.

Taxes transfer money between the government and the public. Neither method adds or subtracts to the money supply nor allows more or less available spending to the economy ─ the purchasing power stays the same, which means the purchasing of goods and services remain the same, and the GDP remains the same  Lowering taxes mainly assists the already employed, and that is not the major priority. Who pays taxes ─ the employed. Who receives tax breaks ─ those who pay taxes. Lowering taxes redistributes federal assistance from needy persons to the employed. Which is preferable, redistributing income so the employed have more to spend or redistributing the income so the underemployed have something to spend?

Stimulating the economy by tax breaks is a psychological phenomenon. The talk, exaggerations, promises, and general optimism of tax breaks fashion a more optimistic public, which supposedly stimulates spending, investment, and courage to carry more debt. Creeping in to the debate is another assumption ─ those who have excess funds will invest and stimulate growth. Not considered is they might invest in speculative ventures that only churn money or might purchase imports, which decreases purchasing power of domestic production.

GDP has steadily grown, with a few bumps, in the last 80 years, and no relation to lowering of taxes has been shown. A government report: Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945, Thomas L. Hungerford Specialist in Public Finance, September 14, 2012 at concludes:

The top income tax rates have changed considerably since the end of World War II. Throughout the late-1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was typically above 90%; today it is 35%. Additionally, the top capital gains tax rate was 25% in the 1950s and 1960s, 35% in the 1970s; today it is 15%. The average tax rate faced by the top 0.01% of taxpayers was above 40% until the mid-1980s; today it is below 25%. Tax rates affecting taxpayers at the top of the income distribution are currently at their lowest levels since the end of the second World War. The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to how the economic pie is sliced ─ lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.

Because taxable incomes do not include inflation and these have increased greatly during the last decades, it is difficult to compare tax rates in 2024 with earlier tax rates. Peering through data, they seem just as low as they were in 2014, when the government report was published, or at a near historic post-World War II low. Why go lower?

Tax Deduction of up to $50,000 for New Small Businesses

The principal hindrance to starting a small business is the high interest rate. Tax deductions will not help small businesses that have no access to funds and no profits to tax. The proposal affects a minor portion of the small business community and is subsidized by a major portion of the economy ─ those who can also use tax breaks.

This tax benefit is a policy seeking a problem. Newly created small businesses have exploded in the post-pandemic period. An April, 2024 Treasury Department report relates,

Small businesses created over 70 percent of net new jobs since 2019. In the previous business cycle, small businesses created 64 percent of net new jobs.

Small business optimism is rebounding as inflation falls. Multiple measures of business optimism show substantial increases in recent months. More than 70 percent of small business leaders expect revenues to grow over the next year, the most since the pandemic.

Entrepreneurship continues to surge: the United States is averaging 430,000 new business applications per month in 2024, 50 percent more than in 2019. The subset of applications for businesses most likely to hire employees has also risen to 140,000 per month, 30 percent more than in 2019. Over 19 million businesses have been formed since Biden’s inauguration, and these are not just sole proprietorships or fly-by-night operations. The subset of applications for businesses most likely to hire employees has increased 30 percent from 2019.

The Main Street Alliance(MSA) establishes priorities for small businesses. Its 2025 agenda does not include a suggestion for a tax deduction.  The Alliance advocates for “stronger antitrust enforcement, fair tax policies, and expanded access to capital. This includes efforts to revise the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, support the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice Antitrust Division, and fight against cuts to critical small business funding from the Small Business Administration (SBA) and other agencies.”

MSA “plans on supporting the continued implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, paid family and medical leave, investments in child care, and enhanced subsidies for health insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.”

Child Tax Credit

Kamala Harris’ economic plans include a $6,000 tax credit for parents of newborns and a continuation of the pandemic-era Child Tax Credit (CTC). The latter expanded the Child Tax Credits and boosted the benefit to $3,600 for children under six years old and to $3,000 for children from 7 to 17 years of age.

Seems beneficial to subsidize those in need, which are usually growing families. In addition, it is good economics — places funds in hands of those who will spend them for essentials and move them through the economy. The question that Harris has not answered is, “To what level of income will the credits apply?” My recommendation is that credits should also be based on assets and slide off gradually from $60,000 income to $100,000 income. Their effects on inflation need study.

Corporate Tax Rate

Before Trump lowered the maximum corporate tax rate to a flat 21 percent, the 35 percent rate for income greater than $18.3 million, had been relatively constant for 32 years, and economic gyrations had not shown to be due to that rate.

The effective corporate tax rate graph tells another story — corporations have taken advantage of tax breaks and loopholes to reduce their taxes.

The problem is not high corporate tax; the problem is the ability of corporations to avoid paying taxes. If tax breaks and loopholes unique to U.S. corporations, such as accelerated depreciation, using excess tax benefits from stock options to reduce federal and state taxes, and industry specific tax breaks were reduced or eliminated, then the tax rate could also be reduced; the government charges with one legislation and discharges with another legislation. Corporations are responsible for finding loopholes to avoid taxes, and the government is responsible for providing the loopholes.

The posed advantages of a lower corporate tax rate — increased funds for investment translating into increased production, which increases employment and Gross Domestic Product might be true if corporations used the greater part of their profit for increased investment. However, corporations have used the excessive profit for executive bonuses, for stock buybacks, for corporate takeovers, and for augmenting retained earnings. With corporate profits at all-time highs, “S&P 500 Q1 2024 buybacks were $236.8 billion, up 8.1% from Q4 2023’s $219.1 billion and up 9.9% from Q1 2023’s $215.5 billion.”

Left out of the corporate books is responsibility to support infrastructure – transportation, communication, utilities – government research, government loans, credit guarantees, bailouts, assistance to education, job training, subsidies, and other programs that benefit corporations. Shouldn’t corporations repay a fair share of the financial assistance that guarantees their prosperity?

The oft-quoted assertion that high tax rates have been the primary driver for corporations to move facilities to nations that have low tax rates is not proven. Manufacturing close to market and utilization of low labor rates have been the more prominent drivers. Commentators spuriously define the words tax havens, tax deferred, and tax inversions to confuse the public, and promote the mistaken belief that U.S. corporations can change their domicile and easily escape major payments of the corporation’s federal taxes on income earned outside the United States.

Corporations, whose sales contain much intellectual property (Microsoft), are able to shift certain profits on sales, but this cannot easily occur for profits earned from trade or business of defined products manufactured outside the United States. If repatriated, these profits are eventually subjected to U.S. taxes.

The key proposition, which is overlooked,  is that government spends all of corporate taxes and all the money circulates in the economy, some invested, some increasing production, some increasing employment, and all adding to or maintaining GDP.  Why is this proposition “the key proposition?”

Economics becomes simplified when it is realized that all money is debt. The money supply can only be increased by either banks’ lending money from Reserves and essentially creating money, or by the Federal Reserve engaging in Open Market Operations ─ purchasing government debt that is financed by the Treasury Department. Treasury prints money that appear as IOUs at the Federal Reserve.  If money remains dormant as excessive retained earnings or circulates speculatively as stock buybacks,  the money, which is debt is not wisely used; it is comparable  to borrowing money at 6 percent and then, rather than purchasing a product, investing it at 3 percent. All money in the economy is debt and all the debt is paying interest and being constantly retired and renewed.

This last tidbit is, admittedly, controversial and needs more discussion. It is the essential of the capitalist system, which grows by reinvesting profits ─ capital generating capital ─ and where all the money supply, including profits, that is needed to generate capital is equal to the debt in the system. Positive trade balances play a role, but generally, capitalism only moves forward by increasing debt.

Trump Tariffs

One mystery that has clouded the Biden administration is negligence in canceling the Trump administration’s tariffs on goods from China. During their debate, Trump questioned Harris on why, “if the Dems do not support the tariffs, has the Biden administration kept them?” Harris did not supply an answer.

Tariffs are used to either increase government revenue ─ the principal method before the income taxation system ─ or to protect domestic industries.

Former President Trump proudly declared that his tariffs had harmed the Chinese government. Is the function of a U.S. president to harm another government? He also claimed that foreign companies are paying for tariffs. “Multiple studies suggest this is not the case: the cost of tariffs have been borne almost entirely by American households and American firms, not foreign exporters.”

Protection is difficult to gauge; tariffs may have helped some producers and harmed companies who use the imported goods and now have to pay higher prices for the commodity. The export country, in this case, China, can retaliate and raise taxes on imports from the U.S. and harm American industries.

Have the tariffs protected the steel industry, the principal industry in the tariffs? The answer came in December 2023, when Nippon Steel announced a $14.9 billion takeover deal of U.S. Steel.

Conclusion

In conventional economic theory, the government formulates a budget and taxes the public to pay for the budget. If the tax revenues do not reach the expenditures, then either the government cuts the budget ─ done during Bill Clinton administration ─  or issues debt. What is never done is to have taxes planned to follow budget considerations. The promises by presidential contenders of cutting taxes are promises that have no rational; future budgets will be forced to be planned about tax revenue rather than having tax revenue agree with budget plans, a bad way to run a country.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Grandnieces explained how to pronounce her first name and an assortment of previous well-respected Democrat luminaries detailed why they love and we should love candidate Harris. Finally, the real-life Kamala Harris took the stage, eloquently traced the course of her life and outlined her recommended policies, including the awaited “ticking bomb” that has divided the Democratic Party  ─ handling of the Middle East crisis. Did the real Kamala Harris stand up?

To the eager Democrats, more from being influenced by the engineered media than what they saw, Kamala Harris was convincing, presenting herself as a patriotic and  dedicated American, fighting  for people’s rights, and demonstrating ability to handle the previously mentioned critical issue facing the Democratic Party ─ the Middle East crisis. Driven by the manipulated euphoria, the followers of the Democratic Party ruled that the real Kamala Harris stood up.

A surface phenomena!

Kamala Harris did not have to express herself with the narratives that she used. Her presentation reinforced the reasons that guide those who have been driven to the Trump candidacy — Democratic support for NATO  and foreign wars, liberal hypocrisy, promotion of the military-industrial complex, interference in other nations, and claiming  the moral high ground. Candidate Harris may have harmed her candidacy. Parse the words.

Before a delegation, chanting Trump rhetoric of “USA, USA, USA,” VP Harris said, “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.”

U.S. foreign policy defends its global hegemony — economic, cultural, and militarist — against perceived opponents in China and Russia. Harris’ dialogue prompted many questions:

Why does Israel deserve unique attention? How does Israel fit in with U.S. objectives and U.S. worldwide conflicts any more than Egypt?
Why does a president seeker single out support for a nation, which, if it disappeared, would not change U.S. life, U.S. global strategy, or U.S. direction by one monkey tail?
Why defend apartheid Israel in its theft of Palestinian lands, dehumanizing  the Palestinian people, and murdering their children?
Where are the adversaries that Israel must defend itself against? Are they Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, who have no offensive capabilities, and  — no air force, no tanks, no navies and no desire to be vanquished? [Iran has an aged and minor air force, but it has a navy and hypersonic missiles; some military analysts consider that Hezbollah defeated Israel — DV ed]

By some weird (favored word these days) thinking, adopting Israel’s problems as America’s problems is an ordinary consideration. Israel’s adversaries are immediately America’s adversaries. Problems that the U.S. has with China and Russia receive no attention in Israel; hey, Russia and China are two of Israel’s favored partners.

If Kamala Harris does not want “the people of Israel to again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival,” shouldn’t she warn Israel that it is preferable that a terrorist organization called Zionism does not inflict upon the people of Palestine the horrors it has caused them for 75 years, including unspeakable violence against the population and massacres of infants? Unlike Israel, which has killed many American civilians and service people (USS Liberty), Hamas has not done any damage to Americans and, from an American perspective, cannot be  designated a terrorist organization, no more that the U.S., who committed several atrocities in Vietnam and Iraq, can be labelled a terrorist organization.

Reading a document scripted by AIPAC, became evident by the additional Harris comment, “At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”

This is the usual and cunning  Zionist practice of presenting everything with the “good guy” and “bad guy” balanced approach. Keep up the hopes. Don’t be concerned that Israel is favored, there are also elements who realize that “what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating.” Note that Harris delineates Hamas committing devastation upon Israelis, but makes no mention of who caused the devastation in Gaza and uses “many innocent lives lost,” rather than “innocent people murdered.” Who promoted “desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again, and who induced “the scale of suffering that is heartbreaking.” The culprit Israel is never mentioned.

For the umpteenth time, we hear, “With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock because now is the time to get a hostage deal and cease-fire done,” and “President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.” Mention of Palestinians’ “right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination” has been an annual ritual and Democrat’s doctrine for decades. The “time to get a hostage deal and cease-fire done” was nine months ago, before tens of thousands of Palestinians were slaughtered and almost all of them were several times displaced.

The heir to Anthony Blinken, the most incapable Secretary of State in all U.S. history, will probably be saying the same in year 2030, except for replacing the words “Palestinian people,” with the words, “the  ten surviving Palestinians.”

By some weird (favored word these days) thinking, the convention invited the parents of a Zionist American, who was captured by Hamas, to plead for his release. The parents stated he had migrated to Israel to be with his people. Let’s place this in perspective.

This is a person who grew up in the United States, received his education and training in the United States, speaks English. and identifies with American culture.  He has no identification with Israelis, who speak Hebrew, eat different foods, and have a different history and culture. Does he share much with a Moroccan or Tunisian Jew? Are these his people? Isn’t he American?

This person deserted the nation that nurtured him and, for no adequate reason, assisted a despotic nation in its genocide of the Palestinians. The Americans of Palestinian descent, murdered, harassed, and detained by Israel received no attention.

VP Harris continued her pandering to the military-industrial complex with the brilliant remarks, “And know this: I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists,” followed with, “Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies, he said Russia could “do whatever the hell they want… as President, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.”

In the 2016 election, a major part of the American electorate rejected the conventional wisdoms of using NATO for offensive purposes, enhancing the military-industrial complex, and waging constant wars. In 2024, eight years later, the Dems still do not realize why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election.

All that Kamala Harris said could have been iterated in a more politically preferred manner — stopping wars rather than helping others in wars, ending the Middle East strife rather than assisting in genocide, finding ways to gain Iran and DPRK friendships rather than threatening them, striving to reduce conflict rather than strengthening NATO.

Moving voters away from the Democratic Party emerged from a hypocritical statement, “…to be clear, my entire career, I’ve only had one client: the people.” If so, why did Harris pander to one class, the middle class, by offering, “Well, instead of a Trump tax hike, we will pass a middle-class tax cut that will benefit more than 100 million Americans.”

Tax cuts are controversial and usually occur during times of recessions. Is Harris saying that the present tax rates, which are the lowest since World War II, are still not sufficiently low, and that the Biden administration ignored the middle class and will make amends? Is it wise to cut taxes and increase consumer demand during an inflationary period? This suggested tax cut is a disaster for the American economy. Not wanting to drift this article too far from its central issue, I’ll defer discussion of the proposed tax cut for another article.

Number one issue

There are a multitude of reasons that the U.S. participation in the genocide of the Palestinian people is the number one issue in the U.S. today and, unless that issue is justly satisfied, it does not matter who gets elected.  Supporting the genocide,

• Turns the Declaration of Independence and Constitution into words on paper, which are used to benefit an elite and cajole the masses.
• Reduces democracy, human rights, freedom, justice, and right to self-determination to farce.
• Intensifies the divisions that have already polarized America.
• Drives many Americans to despair, unable to comprehend how an obvious genocide by an obvious tyrant is supported and permitted. The American government and its mass of citizens exhibit insensitivity to the genocide, insensibility to the forces driving it, lack of concern for the Palestinian people, and have bewildered the knowing America.
• Betrays American sacrifices in World War II, where the U.S. fought against a tyranny and now supports its almost identical lookalike.
• Ratifies the use of those killed in Nazi labor camps to justify the mass killings of innocent Palestinians.
• Increases resentment to Jews and reinforces charges that Jews manipulate power and control media and courts. I know people who now refuse to socialize with Jews unless they are assured these Jews are not pro-Israel.
• Disturbs American youth who cannot understand how a legitimate and necessary protest against genocide becomes charged as an anti-Semitic diatribe and their pleas for human tights turns them into anti-Semites.

Many of us have become ashamed of being Jews. Must we now become ashamed of being Americans?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Except for revenging terrorist attacks by Iranian dissidents and Israeli intelligence and military services, the Islamic Republic has not harmed anybody in the Western nations. In the last 200 years, Iran has fought only one war ─ a defensive battle against aggressor Iraq. It has assisted friendly nations in their conflicts with other nations, similar to United States actions, but on a smaller scale. The demise of Ayatollah Khomeini established a refreshed Islamic Republic that promoted cordial relations with nations who were willing to return the cordiality. Iran has not sought hegemony, economic advantage, or extension of its influence to others than those who desire the influence.

Do a somersault and find the real Iran. The real Iran has tried to cooperate with the United States and other nations and bring peace and stability to the Middle East.

This does not excuse Iran’s semi-autocratic regime and human rights violations, no more than they can be excused in nations with whom the United States has friendly relations — Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Mexico, Tajikistan, and others. For American diplomats, the concept of “cannot excuse” is an excuse for not engaging in diplomacy and resolving problems with Iran. The results have been disasters — harm to American society, harm to the American people, and an unending voyage to calamities.

Designating Iran as the greatest menace to peace assumes there is peace in the Middle East. Is there peace and has there been peace since the words Middle East entered the lexicon? The conflagrations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria would have existed without the presence of the Islamic Republic; the former two wars occurred due to United States’ invasions in those nations. Is the Islamic Republic responsible for Israel’s continuous wars with its neighbors and for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the Emirates battles with their own citizens and quarrels they had with Yemen and Gaddafi’s Libya. The Islamic Republic and its well-educated and alert citizens have not initiated a war against another nation and their restraint holds the key to Middle East peace. The United States refusal to allow the key to unlock the cages that maintain the doves of peace is one of the great tragedies of the century. This was shown in the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Unlike America, Iran had special connections and interests in Afghanistan. After the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. officials responsible for preparing the war in Afghanistan, solicited help to unseat the Taliban and establish a stable government in Kabul. Iran had organized the resistance by the Northern Alliance and provided the Alliance arms and funding, which helped topple the Taliban regime.  In an interview with Iranian Press Service (IPS), Flynt Leverett, senior director for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council (NSC), said, “The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States.”

Because the Northern Alliance played a significant role in driving the Taliban out of Kabul in November 2001, they demanded 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government and blocked agreement with other opposition groups. According to the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Dobbins, Iran played a “decisive role” in persuading the Northern Alliance delegation to compromise its demands.

Dobbins, J. (2009). “Negotiating with Iran: Reflections from Personal Experience,” The Washington Quarterly, 33(1), 149–162.

The Northern Alliance delegate, Younis Qanooni, on instructions from Kabul, was insisting that his faction not only retain the three most important ministries—defense, foreign affairs, and interior—but also hold three-fourths of the total. These demands were unacceptable to the other three Afghan factions represented in Bonn. Unless the Northern Alliance demand could be significantly reduced, there was no way the resultant government could be portrayed as broadly based and representative.

Finally Iranian representative, Javad Zarif, stood up, and signaled Qanooni to join him in the corner of the room. They spoke in whispers for no more than a minute. Qanooni then returned to the table and offered to give up two ministries. He also agreed to create three new ones that could be awarded to other factions. We had a deal. For the following six months, Afghanistan would be governed by an interim administration composed of 29 department heads plus a chairman. Sixteen of these posts would go to the Northern Alliance, just slightly more than half.

Dobbins worked with Iranian negotiators in Bonn and related that at a donors conference in Tokyo, in January, 2002, Iran pledged $540 million in assistance to Afghanistan.

Dobbins writes:

Emerging from a larger gathering in Tokyo, one of the Iranian representatives took me aside to reaffirm his government’s desire to continue to cooperate on Afghanistan. I agreed that this would be desirable, but warned that Iranian behavior in other areas represented an obstacle to cooperation. Furthermore, I cautioned him by saying that my brief only extends to Afghanistan. He replied by saying, “We know that. We would like to work on these other issues with the appropriate people in your government.”

On returning to Washington, O’Neill and I reported these conversations, to then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and cabinet level colleagues, and to the Middle Eastern Bureau at the Department of State (DOS). No one evinced any interest. The Iranians received no private reply. Instead, they received a very public answer. One week later, in his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush named Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, an “axis of evil.” How arch-enemies Iran and Iraq could form any axis, evil or otherwise, was never explained.

How would the Afghanistan fiasco have played out if the American governments cooperated with the Iranian governments? No analysis can supply a definite and credible answer; clues are available.

The result of 20 years of U.S. occupation and battle in Afghanistan resulted in nearly 111,000 civilians killed or injured, more than 64,100 national military and police killed, about 2500 American soldiers killed and 20,660 injured in action, and $1 trillion spent by the U.S. in all phases of a conflict that ended with the Taliban return to power. The only accomplishment of the twenty years of strife had Osama bin Laden leave the isolated, uncomfortable, and rugged mountain caves in Tora Bora for a comfortable and well-equipped walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a gift from Pakistan intelligence. Note that the al-Qaeda leader did not flee to U.S. adversary, Iran; he joined his family in U.S. friendly, Pakistan. The 20-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan was a catastrophe and anything is better than a catastrophe.

More than any other nation Iran had justifiable reasons for wanting a stable, friendly, and economically secure government in Afghanistan.

• Iran had previous problems with the Taliban and did not want to repeat them.
• Terrorists enter Iran from Afghanistan and cause havoc to the Islamic Republic.
• Iran and the Afghan government created a free trading zone on their border and Iran wanted to continue to continue to exploit the arrangement.
• In 2017, Iran surpassed Pakistan as Afghanistan’s top trade partner and, in 2019, Iranian exports reached $1.24 billion.
• Iran had funded construction of the 90-mile (140 kilometer) line from Khaf in northeastern Iran to Ghoryan in western Afghanistan.
• Iran and Afghanistan had several mutual problems that needed, and still need, close contact to resolve. Among them are water distribution, poppy production in Afghanistan, export of opium to Iran, and refugee flow to Iran. “Between 1979 and 2014, Iran claims to have lost some 4,000 security forces fighting heavily armed drug traffickers along its eastern border. In 2019, Iran seized more heroin and illicit morphine than any other country, according to U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.”
• Iran shared ethnic, linguistic and religious links with millions of Afghan Shi’a and was interested in their protection.

More than any other nation, Iran had assets to assist in achieving a stable, friendly, peaceful, and economically secure government in Afghanistan.

• Iran was a large source of foreign direct investment, and provided millions of dollars for Afghanistan’s western provinces to build roads, electrical grids, schools, and health clinics.
• Afghanistan found Iran could assist Afghanistan in trade. “On April 2016, Iran, Afghanistan and India signed an agreement to develop the Chabahar port in southeastern Iran as a trading hub for all three nations.  Afghan goods would be transported to the Iranian port by rail, and then be shipped to India by sea. The first phase of the port was inaugurated in 2017.”
• Iran had knowledge of Taliban personnel, arrangements, and activities. It had contacts and informants who could provide intelligence.
• Not sure if they would acquiesce, but the Iranians could accommodate bases from which to attack the Taliban and to which fighters could retreat.

The U.S. State Department learned nothing from its disjointed and catastrophic actions in Afghanistan. It repeated the same worthless and aggressive policy in its invasion of Iraq.

After supporting Iraq against Iran in the 1980s Iraq-Iran war, the U.S. declared war in 1991 against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and performed a first in the history of foreign policy ─ helping a nation that wars against a nation that is not doing any harm to you, and then attacking the nation that it helped do the harm to the nation that was not harming you. The U.S. continued with sanctions against the nation it previously supported, Iraq, and then, in 2003, engaged it in another war, finally ending up with the nation it initially wanted to contain, Iran, essentially winning the war without firing another shot, and gaining influence in Iraq; another example of a U.S. policy toward Iran that backfired. Foreign policy at its finest.

While stumbling and fumbling its way into destroying Iraq, the U.S. managed to have al-Qaeda (remember them, the guys that America invaded Afghanistan to defeat) reconstitute itself in Iraq. This renewed al-Qaeda, “organized a wave of attacks, often suicide bombings, that targeted security forces, government institutions, and Iraqi civilians.” The American military was forced to use Iraq’s notorious militias, known as “Awakening Councils,” to expel the al-Qaeda organization; a short-lived victory that led to the formation of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS).

A statement by the ever-unaware President Trump, in a January 8, 2020 speech, argued the US had been responsible for defeating ISIS and the Islamic Republic should realize that it is in their benefit to work with the United States in making sure ISIS remained defeated. The US spent years and billions of dollars in training an Iraqi army that fled Mosul and left it to a small contingent of ISIS forces. Showing no will and expertise to fight, Iraq’s debilitated military permitted ISIS to rapidly expand and conquer Tikrit and other cities. Events energized Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, which, with cooperation from Iran and personal assistance from Major General Qasem Soleimani, was able to retake Tikrit and Ramadi, push ISIS out of Fallujah, and eventually play a leading role in ISIS’ defeat in Mosul. The U.S. honored Soleimani’s efforts by assassinating him ─ one of the most vicious crimes in history ─ and commended Iran by continually sanctioning it. No good deed goes unpunished.

As in Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic assisted in the re-building of Iraq. As far back as 2012, The Guardian reported that “Iran is one of Iraq’s most important regional economic partners, with an annual trade volume between the two sides standing at $8bn to $10b.” The U.S. confused competitive advantage with diabolical meddling and regarded Iran as a troubling factor in the Fertile Crescent, even though the inhabitants of Mesopotamia considered the United States as the troublemaker in the region. Iran had leverage in Iraq that could not be ignored nor easily combated.

Why is the Islamic Republic, sanctioned, vilified, and isolated? One clue is that almost all references to Iran in the U.S. media succeed with the phrase, “leading state sponsor of terrorism.” The phrase is stuck onto the word Iran as if by Velcro and all the words are one word. How does this coincidental commonality occur?

It occurs because the Zionist press distributes most reports on Iran to the American media. Israel has used U.S. support to subdue Israel’s adversaries — Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, and Iraq —and  has turned its national army to coerce Iran, the last man standing, into battle. It has turned its worldwide army of thought controllers to vilify Iran and entice Western powers to remove the Islamic member of the “axis of evil” from the map. Blind the world to reality.

Substitute the nation Israel for the nation Iran in each of the salient accusations made against Iran and the accusations become correct. Nowhere do the facts and historical narrative demonstrate that Iran has disrupted peace and stability by any of the combining factors. Israel is present in all the factors. During the 2016 presidential campaign, contender Donald Trump said, “Many nations, including allies, ripped off the US.” Doesn’t Donald Trump, in his support for apartheid Israel, know that he verified his statement? Bet on the wrong horse and you are sure to lose.

The following table summarizes the factors and clarifies the issues.

Iran ─ Key to World Peace

Resolving Iran’s oppression of its people and Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians are separate topics and cannot be resolved together. Permitting Israel to subdue Iran might dispatch the Ayatollahs, but enables the genocide of the Palestinian people, and allows Israel additional opportunities of expansion and continuous threats to other nations. The Zionist influence on Western governments and media will be enhanced.

Separating Iran’s internal oppression from its external policies allows using a challenging force to overcome an unchallenged destructive power. Which is more important and expedient — continually scolding and sanctioning Iran for its oppressive behavior or energizing an Iran that might repel the Israel juggernaut and push Israelis to realize they can no longer survive as a criminal enterprise and can become a “shining light on the Mediterranean,” a part of a truly democratic and bi-national state?

Analysis shows Iran has not displayed characteristics of a “major sponsor of international terrorism — creating turmoil, preventing peace, and wanting to dominate the Middle East.” The only international directives against Iran are sanctions and human rights violations. Israel displays all the characteristics falsely attributed to Iran plus recipient of tens of Resolutions and decisions by International agencies that accuse Israel and its leaders of aspects of genocide, war crimes, apartheid, illegal occupation, and crimes against humanity. The U.S. fought World War II to defeat Nazism, then allows its traits to arise again and gives support to its features ─ an enormous betrayal to the American public.

The defeated Nazi German state evolved into the German Democratic Republic. The defeated Israeli state will evolve into the Middle East Democratic Republic. The world will breathe easier and less concerned that events can spiral out of control and can usher in Armageddon. The multitude of arrogant Jewish organizations that served a foreign state will disappear. Jews will not display divided loyalty and will not arouse suspicion. They will no longer pose as victims who demand special attention but will express themselves as support for those who need attention. Washington DC will no longer be referenced as “occupied Zionist territory.”

Preventing Iran’s defeat does not strengthen Iran’s image or its government’s oppressive tactics. Just the opposite. With the threat of Israel removed, Hezbollah, Palestinians, and Assad’s Syria will have less need to be reliant on Tehran and will turn move favorably to the United States.

Counterfeit U.S. policies have led to continuous warfare in the Middle East, unnecessary sacrifice of U.S. lives, economic disturbances, and waste of taxpayer money. In the cauldron of corruption and autocracies, which pits Sunni against Shi’a, Gulf States and Saudi Arabia against Iran, religious extremists against moderates, and Israel against all, the United States makes its choice of allies. Whom does Washington support — those who are the most repressive, most corrupt, most militaristic, most prone to cause Middle East instability — Israel, cited by Osama bin Laden as a principal reason for Al Qaeda terrorism and Saudi Arabia, a principal supplier of al-Qaeda terrorists. A less resentful outlook on Iran yields a revised perspective of a violent, unstable, and disturbed Middle East. Israel would finally be recognized as the major cause of chaos to the region.

If Israel claims God permits it to ignore international law, murder whomever at will, and threaten all civilization, then even the devil should be approached to replace Israel with a law-abiding nation. Iran, similar to a multitude of nations, might be a problem; Israel is THE PROBLEM.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

In post-World War II, except for assassins from Israel, have military and intelligence agencies assassinated political leaders of another nation? Have any of these assassinations occurred in a nation that is not the native nation of the assassinated? Two come to mind.

On March 1, 2020, the Trump government assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, and, on November 28, 1971, four Black September gunmen killed Wasfi Tal, Prime Minister of Jordan, in the lobby of the Sheraton Cairo Hotel in Egypt? U.S. special forces dispatched Osama bin-Laden in Pakistan, but bin-Laden was not a leader of a country. Established nations have a silent agreement of not assassinating another nation’s leaders and consider it an ugly behavior.

There have been assassinations during military coups, in which the United States participated in the takeovers, several attempts to kill Fidel Castro by U.S. agencies, assassinations of dissidents on foreign soil by Russian, Turkish, and Iranian intelligence, and unproven charges of American complicity in assassinations of foreign leaders. Israel’s widespread physical and character assassinations of foreign leaders and civilians are unique; the numbers are staggering, and the world’s inattention to the numbers is chilling.

Foreign civilians murdered by Israel in foreign nations

Israel’s murders of innocents, who are doing daily tasks to earn bread and assist their countries, are mafia style “hits,” criminal activities to protect criminal activities. They are performed as routine matters, with no regard to the lives of others, as if those who are not Israelis are insignificant human beings.

September 11, 1962, Heinz Krug, a West German rocket scientist working for Egypt’s missile program, was abducted and his body never found. From Operation Damocles:

The Mossad set up a sting involving a former SS officer and war hero named Otto Skorzeny who Krug was led to believe would help keep him and the other scientists safe. Instead, Skorzeny killed Krug and a team of Israeli agents poured acid on his body and buried his remains in the forest outside Munich. The leader of the Mossad team was Yitzhak Shamir, the head of the special operations unit and later prime minister.

In November, 1962, two parcel bombs arrived at the office of the missile project’s director, Wolfgang Pilz, maiming his secretary and killing five Egyptian workers.

In February 1963, another scientist, Hans Kleinwachter, escaped an ambush in Switzerland. That April, two Mossad agents in Basel threatened to kill the project manager Paul Goerke and his daughter. A pistol was fired at a West German professor who was researching electronics for Egypt in the town of Lörrach.

Note the use of a famous Nazi, Otto Skorzeny, in one of the escapades.

June 13, 1980, Yehia El-Mashad, Egyptian nuclear scientist was murdered in his room at the Méridien Hotel in Paris.

September 1981, José Alberto Albano do Amarante, a Brazilian Air Force lieutenant colonel, was  assassinated by the Israeli intelligence service to prevent Brazil from becoming a nuclear nation.

July 14, 1989,  Said S. Bedair, Egyptian scientist in microwave engineering and a colonel in the Egyptian army fell to his death from the balcony of his brother’s apartment in Alexandria, Egypt. His veins were found cut and a gas leak was detected in the apartment. Egyptians claim that the Mossad assassinated him in a way that appeared a suicide.

March 20, 1990,  Gerald Bull, Canadian engineer and designer of the Project Babylon “supergun” for Saddam Hussein’s government, was shot at the door to his apartment in Brussels, Belgium. Attributed to Mossad by several sources.

Murdered Iranian Scientists and family members

Mossad has been accused of assassinating Masoud Alimohammadi, Ardeshir Hosseinpour, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad, and Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan; scientists involved in the Iranian nuclear and missile programs. In some of the attacks other innocent civilians were killed. Israel is also suspected of being behind the attempted assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Fereydoon Abbasi. Meir Dagan, who served as Director of Mossad from 2002 until 2009, while not taking credit for the assassinations, praised them in an interview with a journalist, saying “the removal of important brains” from the Iranian nuclear project had achieved so-called “white defections”, frightening other Iranian nuclear scientists into requesting that they be transferred to civilian projects.

November 12, 2011,  General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the main architect of the Iranian missile system and the founder of Iran’s deterrent power ballistic missile, was assassinated in Tehran.

April 21, 2018, Fadi Mohammad al-Batsh, a Palestinian engineer, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

August 5, 2018, Aziz Asbar, Syrian scientist responsible for long-range rockets and chemical weapons programs, was killed by a car bomb in Masyaf, Syria.

November 27, 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, senior official in the nuclear program of Iran, was killed by a remotely operated gun in a truck smuggled into Iran.

March 19, 2023,  Ali Ramzi Al-Aswad, Palestinian Islamic Jihad engineer, was killed in the Damascus outskirts. Islamic Jihad accused Israel of the murder.

Killing innocent civilians because they perform activities that assist Israel’s adversaries is not confined to weapons manufacture. Anyone in Gaza who helps Gazans to survive the Israeli onslaught is also in the crosshairs.

Data from the U.N.’s Crisis Coordination Centre In Gaza, released by Dropsite News, shows that, by the end of June, 2024 , Israel’s assault on Gaza killed 195 United Nations staff members and at least 172 dependents of the staff.

The killing of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen alarmed the world. It was not an “isolated mistake.” NBC News reports,

But while the Israel Defense Forces investigation suggests this was an isolated “grave mistake,” the mounting toll faced by aid agencies throughout the war points instead to what they say are systemic failings in the IDF’s approach to protecting humanitarian workers in the Gaza Strip. According to the United Nations, a total of 224 humanitarian aid workers have been killed since the start of the war.

Murder of Palestinian and Hezbollah leaders

Israel seems to delight in killing leaders and family members of those opposing Israel, while knowing the deceased leader will be replaced by another leader. Violating the sovereignty of other nations by blooding their soils does not bother the Israelis. They always excuse the killings by claiming the leader had given orders for a violent action against Israelis, without noting that the violent action succeeded several Israeli violent actions against the Palestinians and Israel could terminate the extrajudicial killings by granting the Palestinians their deserved freedom. The Israelis are special people; they are allowed to murder whomever, wherever, and whenever.

April 16, 1988, Abu Jihad, second-in-command to Yassir Arafat, was shot dead in front of his family by Israeli commandos in Tunis.

February 16, 1992, Abbas al-Musawi , Secretary-General of Hezbollah, was killed by Israeli Apache helicopters that fired missiles at the 3 vehicle motorcade of al-Musawi in southern Lebanon, killing him, his wife, his five-year-old son, and four others.

March 22, 2004,  Ahmed Yassin, the frail and nearly blind paraplegic co-founder of Hamas, two bodyguards, and seven bystanders were killed by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache-fired Hellfire missiles. Seventeen bystanders were wounded.

April 17, 2004, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, successor to Ahmed Yassin. was killed by helicopter-fired missiles, along with his son and bodyguard. Several bystanders were injured.

July 31, 2024, Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas, was killed by a bomb in Tehran. Eighty innocent members of Haniyeh’s close and extended family had already been systematically killed by Israel.

Haniyeh’s murder reminded me of the failed attempt to kill Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’ previous political leader. I met Khaled Mashaal in Damascus, Syria, where he went after his recovery. My notes on that meeting.

Not kosher was a clandestine trip to meet a “minor” Hamas official, who turned out to be Khalid Meshaal, official political leader of Hamas, exiled in Damascus. The world became more aware of Meshaal when Israel’s Mossad tried to assassinate him in Amman. Jordan’s King Abdullah forced Israel to immediately supply an antidote to the poison given to Meshaal by threatening to publicly hang the Mossad agents who tried to kill the Hamas leader.

Meshaal does not fill the western media description of a wild eyed fanatic. On the contrary, he is a friendly, deliberate, and well-spoken person who makes sense to the many who subscribe to similar positions. He said that Israel does not want peace and both negotiating parties aren’t strong enough to market their results to their peoples. Meshaal doesn’t delineate Hamas’ positions, but defers to a Palestinian position that accepts 1967 borders and an Arab position that has accepted the two-state solution. Since 2002, Bush has repeatedly spoken of support for a two-state solution, but where is it? The Hamas leader expects the region to be more explosive. Nevertheless, if the PA feels the Palestinian rights have been fulfilled, Hamas will welcome that. He has proposed a Hudna (truce), and if Israel responds positively, Hamas will not be an obstacle to peace. If the Right of Return is the only remaining problem, Hamas will compromise, and accept the will of the people. He claims Hamas does not encourage militancy, does not desire a theocratic state, is a national liberation movement, and will let the Palestinian people decide its own government.

The February 1986 assassination of Sven Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986, has never been solved. Swedish prosecutor Krister Petersson claimed “there was ‘reasonable evidence’ that the assailant was Stig Engstrom, a graphic designer at an insurance company, who killed himself in 2000, at the age of 66, and could not rule out the possibility that Mr. Engstrom had acted as part of a larger conspiracy.” Olof Palme, who had credibility and many admirers, was a severe critic of Israel, at a time when no Western leader voiced arguments against Israel. Could Mossad have been involved in his killing?

Systematic Murder of Journalists

Journalists are well identified and, in battles that have no battleground and are person to person, there is little possibility of a journalist becoming a casualty unless deliberately targeted. The only reason to deliberately target a journalist is to prevent the presentation of the truth.

As of August 6, 2024, the Committee to protect Journalists (CPJ) “preliminary investigations showed at least 113 journalists and media workers were among the more than 40,000 killed since the war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.” A previous report, in May 2024, “found that Israeli soldiers had killed at least 20 journalists in the last 22 years and none had ever been charged or held accountable.”

The most well-known murder of a journalist was the May 11, 2022 deliberate targeting of Shireen Abu Akleh, “a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for 25 years for Al Jazeera while wearing a blue press vest and covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.” The Biden administration insisted “on ‘full and transparent accounting’ of death of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.” Despite not receiving any accounting, Biden has done nothing to punish Israel.

Write “bad” stories about the Mafia and the Mafia retaliates, and apparently without concern ─ proof that Mafia Israel controls the American government.

Revenge attacks on Adversaries

Anyone who harmed an Israeli can expect to be hunted down and receive retribution. Hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese Hezbollah have been found guilty without trial, and they and innocent others of mistaken identity have been blasted from the Earth. Three things wrong with the bold strikes.

(1)    They do not prevent the deaths of Israel’s citizens and soldiers; they only retaliate for the deaths. Why were the Israelis killed; their murders revenged the killings and extreme harm done to individual Palestinians and the Palestinian community.

(2)    Since day one of the Zionist invasion, the Israel population has been guilty of theft of Palestinian lands, wanton killings of Palestinians, destruction of their communities, oppression, ethnic cleansing, and interferences in their daily life. The Palestinians have a valid reason for their attacks. No Israeli is innocent. Israel’s retaliations are not revenge; they are a way of telling the Palestinians, “If you counter our thefts and oppression of your community we will strike you harder.

(3)    Hamas and Hezbollah have warned Israel to halt all attacks on the Palestinian community. Israel ignores the threats and willingly provokes Hamas and Hezbollah into counterattacks.

Character Assassinations

No officials in the world’s governments speak in the vicious and demeaning manner of other officials as do Israeli officials; dehumanizing Palestinians and defaming antagonists.

Every decision by United Nations (UN) agencies and Human Rights organizations that contradicts Israel’s polices is met with derision by Israeli officials. As an example, when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly called for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan said the UN no longer held “even one ounce of legitimacy or relevance.”

Speaking at a conference in Israel, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”

Israel’s former justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, posted on Facebook:

Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

Stereotypes and prejudice in conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish society, Bar-Tal, D., & Teichman, Y. (2005), Cambridge University Press, P.359 reports that “10% of the drawings in a sample of children asked to sketch a typical Arab depicted them as animals. Extensive evidence that Israeli children, when asked about Arabs, spoke of them in terms of pigs and other animals (as well as “barbarians,” “Nazis,” and murderers).”

A worldwide contingent of Israel supporters defame Israel’s critics with false charges of anti-Semitism and media attacks that ruin reputations, cause employment difficulties, and isolate individuals.

The Canary Mission, documents people and groups that it falsely accuses of promoting hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews on North American college campuses. This bigoted organization also posts its Jewish Friends of Anti-Semites
ADL, an organization concerned with false stereotypes, publishes its Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America.
AMCHA, joins the forces of Israel supporters that make a mockery of the word anti-Semite, with its list of more than 200 anti-Israel Middle East Studies professors, many of whom are Jews.

Israel is a Criminal Enterprise

Middle East commentators ponder the reasons for Israel’s policy of targeted assassinations. Do they halt aggressive activities that counter Israel? Are they meant to intimidate people so they become fearful of engaging in actions that upset Israel or led to the belief that death is an act of mercy? Do they serve “as a mechanism to galvanize its own society rather than genuinely altering the political or military stance of its adversaries,” mentioned by Abdaljawad Omar in an article, “The real reason Israel is assassinating Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, and why it won’t stop the resistance?” It’s all part of a pattern, the pattern of a criminal enterprise and not the pattern of an established nation.

Nations are formed from a community of people who share a common land, language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and history for centuries. If it were otherwise, why has Israel’s thrust been to give its Jews the scaffolding of a new nation by giving them a common language, culture, descent, and history, which reject how they previously lived? No established state has governments, leaders, and people who express themselves in the despicable manner and commit extrajudicial crimes in the violent manner as does Israel. The gathering of violent people, their engagement in continuous battle to gain territory and resources, and strong arm those who interfere with their thievery and dictatorial control are the efforts of a criminal enterprise.

Misinterpretation of the governing nature and violent behavior of Israel has led to a faulty approach to resolving the Middle East crisis. There are no two-state, no one-state, no confederation, and no federal solutions to the crisis. There is only a “no state,” a criminal enterprise that pleads for an international police force to defeat the criminals and prevent additional murderous catastrophes.

This is not a sarcastic and fanciful gaze at world politics. Engage Israelis in negotiations and find you are negotiating how much you are willing to be robbed. Those who honestly sought and still seek a reasonable compromise and solution of the crisis by negotiations have not factored into their arguments the true nature of the Zionist criminal mission and its criminal constituents;  a criminality that is international, extending to money laundering, ecstasy trade, prostitution, arms trade, and harboring criminals, including sex criminals fleeing the law. Israel does what it wants, when it wants, and where it wants, not functioning as a normal state but as a criminal enterprise.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The Jews during Zionism’s formation did not believe in or trust Zionism.
Reform Judaism’s Declaration of Principles: 1885 Pittsburgh Conference stated,

We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.

Between 1881 and 1914, 2.5 million Jews migrated from Russia ─ 1.7 million to America, 500,000 to Western Europe, almost 300,000 to other nations, and only 30,000 – 50,000 to Palestine. Of the latter, 15,000 returned to Russia. Jews rejected Zionism from its outset.

Despite rejection, Zionist supporters managed to skew Western governments’ policies to favor their mission. A worldwide propaganda machine obscures Identification of Israel as a criminal state that willfully murders Palestinians, steals their lands, has ethnically cleansed them, buried their villages under rubble, and destroyed their history and heritage. Quick to use the expression ‘Holocaust denial” on anyone who questions aspects of the Holocaust, the Zionists impressed upon the Jews the use of “denial” for anything that smacks of Jewish malfeasance, and includes the greatest malfeasance, the act of genocide. Charges of malfeasance by Jews are converted into anti-Semitism, truth becomes denied, anger of Jews against a manufactured hostile world is internalized, and bitterness against hostile Jews is intensified. The Zionists have used debts as collateral, turning valid charges against them into sympathy for their cause.

Start with the beginning of Zionism.
Although antipathy toward Jews and Judaism remained strong in Christian Europe, physical attacks on western European Jews, after a brief episode of the 1819-1826 Hep-Hep riots in Germany, were relatively few.

Often mentioned is the Dreyfus case, where a Jewish military officer in the 1896 French army was twice sentenced and later pardoned for giving military secrets to the Germans. Highlighted as an example of anti-Semitism in a French military, “rife with anti-Semitism,” and psychologically extended to the French populace, the Dreyfus case circulated for a century in American media, whose audience had no relation to the French incident (why?), giving the Dreyfus case a life of its own, and making it seem that there was not one Dreyfus but thousands. The Zionists needed a Dreyfus to substantiate their mission for all time, refusing to recognize that the Dreyfus case contradicted the Zionist mission; being an isolated case, it proved Jews could integrate into European institutions and receive equal justice.

Was the French military rife with anti-Semitism? According to Piers Paul, The Dreyfus Affair. p. 83, “The French army of the period was relatively open to entry and advancement by talent, with an estimated 300 Jewish officers, of whom ten were generals.” Only five African-American officers in the much larger US army in WWII. Why not emphasize the opposite of what the Zionists proffered; French Jews received equal and eventual justice. After the French Revolution, physical attacks on Jews rarely occurred in France.

Imperial Russia was another European community that the Zionists accused of serious anti-Semitism, exaggerating the damage done to Jewish communities in a multi-ethnic nation ravaged with ethnic disturbances. They used a special term, “pogroms,” to characterize attacks on Jews. Note that prejudice to other ethnicities does not qualify for a special term, such as “anti-Semitism,” nor does violence against any of them.

A lack of communications in Russia during the 19th century, a tendency to create sensational news, and a willingness to accept rumors make it difficult to ascertain the extent of attacks on Russia’s Jewish community. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, a reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale University Press in 2008, is a more objective and authoritative source. Excerpts from their work can be found here.

Anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire before 1881 was a rare event, confined largely to the rapidly expanding Black Sea entrepot of Odessa. In Odessa, Greeks and Jews, two rival ethnic and economic communities, lived side by side. The first Odessa pogrom, in 1821, was linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities. Although the pogrom of 1871 was occasioned in part by a rumor that Jews had vandalized the Greek community’s church, many non-Greeks participated, as they had done during earlier disorders in 1859.

After Alexander II became Tsar in 1855, he lessened anti-Jewish edicts, rescinded forced conscription, allowed Jews to attend universities, and permitted Jewish emigration from the Pale. His assassination in 1881 prompted Tsar Alexander III to reverse his father’s actions. Because some Jews were involved in Russia’s revolutionary party, Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), which organized the assassination, the assassination acted as a catalyst for a wave of attacks on Jews during 1881-83.

Typically, the pogroms of this period originated in large cities, and then spread to surrounding villages, traveling along means of communication such as rivers and railroads. Violence was largely directed against the property of Jews rather than their persons. In the course of more than 250 individual events, millions of rubles worth of Jewish property was destroyed. The total number of fatalities is disputed but may have been as few as 50, half of them pogromshchiki who were killed when troops opened fire on rioting mobs.

Note that this was one large “pogrom,” which emanated from one incident that touched the Russian nerve, was directed mainly against Jewish property, did not have government support, and faded out. “Michael Aronson has sought to refute the long-standing belief that the regime of Alexander III actively conspired to lead the Russian masses into savage riots against the Jews. In Aronson’s view the pogroms were spontaneous, by which he means not that they happened without cause, but that they happened largely without prior planning or organization.”

Missing from references to the attacks on the Jewish population is that the Tsars inherited Jewish and other populations after the 1791-1795 partitions of Poland and sought means to integrate the new ethnicities into a Russian way of life. Nevertheless, in Tsarist Russia, the principal population to which Zionism should have had appeal, there is no evidence that a massive number of Jews accepted Zionism.

Unwaveringly secularist in its beliefs, the Russian Bund discarded the idea of a Holy Land and a sacred tongue. Its language was Yiddish, spoken by millions of Jews throughout the Pale. This was also the source of the organization’s four principles: socialism, secularism, Yiddish, and doyikayt or localness. The latter concept was encapsulated in the Bund slogan: “There, where we live, that is our country.” The Bund disapproved greatly of Zionism and considered the idea of emigrating to Palestine to be political escapism.

Imperial Russia contained several minorities that economically contested and attacked one another. Economic rivalry was the leading cause of attacks on Jews. From Middleman Minorities and Ethnic Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Russian Empire, The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 87, Issue 1, January 2020.

Using detailed panel data from the Pale of Settlement area between 1800 and 1927, we document that anti-Jewish pogroms—mob violence against the Jewish minority—broke out when economic shocks coincided with political turmoil. When this happened, pogroms primarily occurred in places where Jews dominated middleman occupations, i.e., moneylending and grain trading. This evidence is inconsistent with the scapegoating hypothesis, according to which Jews were blamed for all misfortunes of the majority. Instead, the evidence is consistent with the politico-economic mechanism, in which Jewish middlemen served as providers of insurance against economic shocks to peasants and urban grain buyers in a relationship based on repeated interactions.

Violation of any human life can not be underestimated or ignored; Jews suffered in the 19th century Russian Empire, and so did almost everyone else, including native Russians. Placed in context — location, time, comparison of the fate and life of Jews to other minorities, and internal and external factors that favored the Jews — the reasons for Zionists to behave as the rescuer of their co-religionists is dubious.

For others, also not of the Russian Orthodox faith, persecution was magnitudes worse. From Balfour Project:

The Moscow Patriarchate presided over the state religion and other believers were generally disadvantaged, often persecuted, or sometimes driven from Russian lands. The non-Orthodox were despised as unbelievers and thousands of Catholics were deported to Siberia in the mid-19th century. At the same time, around half a million Muslims were driven from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, Iran or further afield. At the south-eastern border of the Pale of Settlement began the lands of the Circassians, a mostly Muslim group who had lived since the 14th century along the northern Black Sea coast from Sochi and eastwards into the Caucasus mountains. A long war of attrition ended in the genocide of 1865. According to official Russian statistics, the population was reduced by 97 per cent. At least 200,000, and possibly several hundred thousand people died through ethnic cleansing, hunger, epidemics and bitterly cold weather.

Compared to other ethnicities ─ Native American, slaved Africans, Chinese, Irish, and Catholic in the U.S., and Chinese, Indian, and African during the age of Imperialism, the persecution and distress of European Jews was insignificant. Yet, the Zionists made it appear that Jews were the most suffering people in the world and the world believed it.

Despite the overwhelming verbal and physical rejection of Zionism by worldwide Jewry, a small group of conspirators managed to convince the British government to issue the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which is not an official or legal instrument. It is not even a Declaration. It is a letter from Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, which has a phrase, “declaration of sympathy,” from which it was given the more lofty description of declaration. Who are these two guys?

Arthur James Balfour, known as Lord Balfour, served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905 and as foreign secretary from 1916 to 1919,

Lionel Walter Rothschild was a British zoologist from the wealthy Rothschild banking family, who served as a Conservative member of Parliament from 1899 to 1910. He was sympathetic to the Zionist cause and had an eminent position in the Anglo-Jewish community.

The letter:

Why was the letter issued, what did it exactly mean, and why did it have impact? Acceptable answers have not been supplied. One clue is from Minutes of British War Cabinet Meetings

Meeting No. 245, Minute No. 18, 4 October 1917: 4 October 1917: “… [Balfour] stated that the German Government were making great efforts to capture the sympathy of the Zionist Movement.”

Meeting No. 261, Minute No. 12, 31 October 1917
With reference to War Cabinet 245, Minute 18, the War Cabinet had before them a note by the Secretary, and also a memorandum by Lord Curzon on the subject of the Zionist movement. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated that he gathered that everyone was now agreed that, from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made.

World leaders failed to recognize the ominous outcomes of their San Remo Peace Conference and the newly formed League of Nations, which created a new international order that sliced the Middle East for the major European powers. Both approved establishment of a Jewish presence in the British Mandate in accord with the Balfour Letter. Despite these achievements, progress for obtaining a central headquarters for Zionism went slowly until US immigration laws and persecution of German Jews renewed Zionist life.

The year 1924 was fortuitous for the Zionists. The US Immigration Act closed the doors to mass Jewish immigration from East European nations and the Act steered Jews to migrate to Palestine. By 1931, Palestine housed 175,000 Jews. The economic depression slowed the migration. The rise of Nazi Germany reinvigorated it.

After the Nazis began their rule, they slowly froze Jewish assets. Although not proven, a principal reason for Germany slowly freezing Jewish assets and engaging in its own boycott of Jewish enterprises was the boycott of German goods, which was organized by Jewish groups in the United States as a response to the confined and sporadic violence and harassment by Nazi Party members against Jews in early 1933. Zionists saw the frozen assets as a means to bring Jews to the British Mandate.

By the Ha’avara Transfer Agreement with Nazi Germany, the Zionists used German Jewish assets, including bank deposits to purchase German products that were exported to the Jewish-owned Ha’avara Company in Tel-Aviv. A portion of the money from the sales of the goods went to the emigrants, who could leave Germany and regain assets after arrival in Palestine and in an amount corresponding to their deposits in German banks. The Zionists enabled the Nazi regime to circumvent the international boycott campaign that its policies had provoked. The Zionist movement, which had become the only authorized Jewish organization in Nazi Germany, was able to transfer about 53,000 Jews to Palestine. Again, the Zionists turned catastrophe to the Jews into an opportunity for themselves.

Zionist luck, if that is the proper word for gaining from calamities to others, continued. Revelations of the Holocaust and the plight of Jewish refugees after World War II gained worldwide sympathy for the Zionist cause. About 136,000 displaced Jews came to Palestine, mostly out of desperation and without intention to remain. The Cold War provided the most decisive benefit for Zionism ─ Soviet Union support for an Israeli state drove the United States to compete for Zionist attention. Votes from both nations, bribes, and arm twisting provided a narrow victory for United Nations Declaration 181 and the Zionists established their state.

Because neither state had official names at that time, designations as Arab and Jewish states were used to map out contours of land where the major portions of the ethnicities would live. President Truman recognized the Jewish state, which became Israel just before he approved recognition. The U.S. president failed to observe that, although the state was bi-national, a small Zionist group took control of all apparatus of the new state and did that without consulting Palestinian leadership.

The UN did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states ─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and another mostly Palestinian state composed of about 70 percent who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a small contingent of foreign Jews that had come as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine (200,000), and another larger contingent of foreign Jews (300,000) that arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate.  The Mandate was only a way station for Jews caught in the tragedies during the 1930s and World War II. If neither cataclysm occurred, would these Jews have gone to the Mandate? Without them, how many Jews would have been there in 1947?

David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill- equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state, and, with seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — cleansed the area of Palestinians and established Israel.

The Zionists turned lying, cheating, and deceiving into an accepted ethnic cleansing. During the next years, they continued the lies, cheats, and deceptions to steal more land and oppress Palestinians. Taking advantage of the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, the Zionist Jews have embarked on a genocide of the Palestinian people, masking it as a defense of their land against a force that has no offensive power to conquer anything.

The Zionists made the struggle (which they engineered) a zero-sum game of “us” or “them.” The “us” is those who steal the land and the patrimony and the lives of “them.” They forced the Jews into a choice, reasoning that the powers in control will favor “us.” This poses a difficulty for Jews who will not support genocide and, therefore, cannot support “us,” and fear that for the Palestinians to survive the Jews in Israel will not survive. A different look — if the Jews liberate themselves from the conditioned grip that Zionism has on them and differentiate between a liberated Jew and a Zionist Jew, the liberated Jews will lose their paranoid fear and the Zionist Jews will lose their power, which is based upon creating paranoia and fear in fellow Jews.

Unfortunately, the liberation of the Jews is not foreseen and the decimation of innocents will occur — a replay of the story of Purim, “when having obtained royal permission to strike their enemies, including women and children, the Jews kill over seventy-five thousand people! Esther then further seeks permission for another day of massacre.”

Unleashed from subjugation and drowned with power, they seek another day of massacre. Is Joshua, who slew the inhabitants of Jericho, eradicated the Canaanites, and is a hero in Jewish mythology, a clue to the mentality of leaders of the Jewish people? Do the horrors visited upon the Gazans, purposeful and wanton killings and massacres beyond credulity, carry Joshua to modern times and tell a cautious story of the Zionist Jews?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The Jews during Zionism’s formation did not believe in or trust Zionism.
Reform Judaism’s Declaration of Principles: 1885 Pittsburgh Conference stated,

We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.

Between 1881 and 1914, 2.5 million Jews migrated from Russia ─ 1.7 million to America, 500,000 to Western Europe, almost 300,000 to other nations, and only 30,000 – 50,000 to Palestine. Of the latter, 15,000 returned to Russia. Jews rejected Zionism from its outset.

Despite rejection, Zionist supporters managed to skew Western governments’ policies to favor their mission. A worldwide propaganda machine obscures Identification of Israel as a criminal state that willfully murders Palestinians, steals their lands, has ethnically cleansed them, buried their villages under rubble, and destroyed their history and heritage. Quick to use the expression ‘Holocaust denial” on anyone who questions aspects of the Holocaust, the Zionists impressed upon the Jews the use of “denial” for anything that smacks of Jewish malfeasance, and includes the greatest malfeasance, the act of genocide. Charges of malfeasance by Jews are converted into anti-Semitism, truth becomes denied, anger of Jews against a manufactured hostile world is internalized, and bitterness against hostile Jews is intensified. The Zionists have used debts as collateral, turning valid charges against them into sympathy for their cause.

Start with the beginning of Zionism.
Although antipathy toward Jews and Judaism remained strong in Christian Europe, physical attacks on western European Jews, after a brief episode of the 1819-1826 Hep-Hep riots in Germany, were relatively few.

Often mentioned is the Dreyfus case, where a Jewish military officer in the 1896 French army was twice sentenced and later pardoned for giving military secrets to the Germans. Highlighted as an example of anti-Semitism in a French military, “rife with anti-Semitism,” and psychologically extended to the French populace, the Dreyfus case circulated for a century in American media, whose audience had no relation to the French incident (why?), giving the Dreyfus case a life of its own, and making it seem that there was not one Dreyfus but thousands. The Zionists needed a Dreyfus to substantiate their mission for all time, refusing to recognize that the Dreyfus case contradicted the Zionist mission; being an isolated case, it proved Jews could integrate into European institutions and receive equal justice.

Was the French military rife with anti-Semitism? According to Piers Paul, The Dreyfus Affair. p. 83, “The French army of the period was relatively open to entry and advancement by talent, with an estimated 300 Jewish officers, of whom ten were generals.” Only five African-American officers in the much larger US army in WWII. Why not emphasize the opposite of what the Zionists proffered; French Jews received equal and eventual justice. After the French Revolution, physical attacks on Jews rarely occurred in France.

Imperial Russia was another European community that the Zionists accused of serious anti-Semitism, exaggerating the damage done to Jewish communities in a multi-ethnic nation ravaged with ethnic disturbances. They used a special term, “pogroms,” to characterize attacks on Jews. Note that prejudice to other ethnicities does not qualify for a special term, such as “anti-Semitism,” nor does violence against any of them.

A lack of communications in Russia during the 19th century, a tendency to create sensational news, and a willingness to accept rumors make it difficult to ascertain the extent of attacks on Russia’s Jewish community. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, a reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale University Press in 2008, is a more objective and authoritative source. Excerpts from their work can be found here.

Anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire before 1881 was a rare event, confined largely to the rapidly expanding Black Sea entrepot of Odessa. In Odessa, Greeks and Jews, two rival ethnic and economic communities, lived side by side. The first Odessa pogrom, in 1821, was linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities. Although the pogrom of 1871 was occasioned in part by a rumor that Jews had vandalized the Greek community’s church, many non-Greeks participated, as they had done during earlier disorders in 1859.

After Alexander II became Tsar in 1855, he lessened anti-Jewish edicts, rescinded forced conscription, allowed Jews to attend universities, and permitted Jewish emigration from the Pale. His assassination in 1881 prompted Tsar Alexander III to reverse his father’s actions. Because some Jews were involved in Russia’s revolutionary party, Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), which organized the assassination, the assassination acted as a catalyst for a wave of attacks on Jews during 1881-83.

Typically, the pogroms of this period originated in large cities, and then spread to surrounding villages, traveling along means of communication such as rivers and railroads. Violence was largely directed against the property of Jews rather than their persons. In the course of more than 250 individual events, millions of rubles worth of Jewish property was destroyed. The total number of fatalities is disputed but may have been as few as 50, half of them pogromshchiki who were killed when troops opened fire on rioting mobs.

Note that this was one large “pogrom,” which emanated from one incident that touched the Russian nerve, was directed mainly against Jewish property, did not have government support, and faded out. “Michael Aronson has sought to refute the long-standing belief that the regime of Alexander III actively conspired to lead the Russian masses into savage riots against the Jews. In Aronson’s view the pogroms were spontaneous, by which he means not that they happened without cause, but that they happened largely without prior planning or organization.”

Missing from references to the attacks on the Jewish population is that the Tsars inherited Jewish and other populations after the 1791-1795 partitions of Poland and sought means to integrate the new ethnicities into a Russian way of life. Nevertheless, in Tsarist Russia, the principal population to which Zionism should have had appeal, there is no evidence that a massive number of Jews accepted Zionism.

Unwaveringly secularist in its beliefs, the Russian Bund discarded the idea of a Holy Land and a sacred tongue. Its language was Yiddish, spoken by millions of Jews throughout the Pale. This was also the source of the organization’s four principles: socialism, secularism, Yiddish, and doyikayt or localness. The latter concept was encapsulated in the Bund slogan: “There, where we live, that is our country.” The Bund disapproved greatly of Zionism and considered the idea of emigrating to Palestine to be political escapism.

Imperial Russia contained several minorities that economically contested and attacked one another. Economic rivalry was the leading cause of attacks on Jews. From Middleman Minorities and Ethnic Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Russian Empire, The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 87, Issue 1, January 2020.

Using detailed panel data from the Pale of Settlement area between 1800 and 1927, we document that anti-Jewish pogroms—mob violence against the Jewish minority—broke out when economic shocks coincided with political turmoil. When this happened, pogroms primarily occurred in places where Jews dominated middleman occupations, i.e., moneylending and grain trading. This evidence is inconsistent with the scapegoating hypothesis, according to which Jews were blamed for all misfortunes of the majority. Instead, the evidence is consistent with the politico-economic mechanism, in which Jewish middlemen served as providers of insurance against economic shocks to peasants and urban grain buyers in a relationship based on repeated interactions.

Violation of any human life can not be underestimated or ignored; Jews suffered in the 19th century Russian Empire, and so did almost everyone else, including native Russians. Placed in context — location, time, comparison of the fate and life of Jews to other minorities, and internal and external factors that favored the Jews — the reasons for Zionists to behave as the rescuer of their co-religionists is dubious.

For others, also not of the Russian Orthodox faith, persecution was magnitudes worse. From Balfour Project:

The Moscow Patriarchate presided over the state religion and other believers were generally disadvantaged, often persecuted, or sometimes driven from Russian lands. The non-Orthodox were despised as unbelievers and thousands of Catholics were deported to Siberia in the mid-19th century. At the same time, around half a million Muslims were driven from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, Iran or further afield. At the south-eastern border of the Pale of Settlement began the lands of the Circassians, a mostly Muslim group who had lived since the 14th century along the northern Black Sea coast from Sochi and eastwards into the Caucasus mountains. A long war of attrition ended in the genocide of 1865. According to official Russian statistics, the population was reduced by 97 per cent. At least 200,000, and possibly several hundred thousand people died through ethnic cleansing, hunger, epidemics and bitterly cold weather.

Compared to other ethnicities ─ Native American, slaved Africans, Chinese, Irish, and Catholic in the U.S., and Chinese, Indian, and African during the age of Imperialism, the persecution and distress of European Jews was insignificant. Yet, the Zionists made it appear that Jews were the most suffering people in the world and the world believed it.

Despite the overwhelming verbal and physical rejection of Zionism by worldwide Jewry, a small group of conspirators managed to convince the British government to issue the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which is not an official or legal instrument. It is not even a Declaration. It is a letter from Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, which has a phrase, “declaration of sympathy,” from which it was given the more lofty description of declaration. Who are these two guys?

Arthur James Balfour, known as Lord Balfour, served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905 and as foreign secretary from 1916 to 1919,

Lionel Walter Rothschild was a British zoologist from the wealthy Rothschild banking family, who served as a Conservative member of Parliament from 1899 to 1910. He was sympathetic to the Zionist cause and had an eminent position in the Anglo-Jewish community.

The letter:

Why was the letter issued, what did it exactly mean, and why did it have impact? Acceptable answers have not been supplied. One clue is from Minutes of British War Cabinet Meetings

Meeting No. 245, Minute No. 18, 4 October 1917: 4 October 1917: “… [Balfour] stated that the German Government were making great efforts to capture the sympathy of the Zionist Movement.”

Meeting No. 261, Minute No. 12, 31 October 1917
With reference to War Cabinet 245, Minute 18, the War Cabinet had before them a note by the Secretary, and also a memorandum by Lord Curzon on the subject of the Zionist movement. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated that he gathered that everyone was now agreed that, from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made.

World leaders failed to recognize the ominous outcomes of their San Remo Peace Conference and the newly formed League of Nations, which created a new international order that sliced the Middle East for the major European powers. Both approved establishment of a Jewish presence in the British Mandate in accord with the Balfour Letter. Despite these achievements, progress for obtaining a central headquarters for Zionism went slowly until US immigration laws and persecution of German Jews renewed Zionist life.

The year 1924 was fortuitous for the Zionists. The US Immigration Act closed the doors to mass Jewish immigration from East European nations and the Act steered Jews to migrate to Palestine. By 1931, Palestine housed 175,000 Jews. The economic depression slowed the migration. The rise of Nazi Germany reinvigorated it.

After the Nazis began their rule, they slowly froze Jewish assets. Although not proven, a principal reason for Germany slowly freezing Jewish assets and engaging in its own boycott of Jewish enterprises was the boycott of German goods, which was organized by Jewish groups in the United States as a response to the confined and sporadic violence and harassment by Nazi Party members against Jews in early 1933. Zionists saw the frozen assets as a means to bring Jews to the British Mandate.

By the Ha’avara Transfer Agreement with Nazi Germany, the Zionists used German Jewish assets, including bank deposits to purchase German products that were exported to the Jewish-owned Ha’avara Company in Tel-Aviv. A portion of the money from the sales of the goods went to the emigrants, who could leave Germany and regain assets after arrival in Palestine and in an amount corresponding to their deposits in German banks. The Zionists enabled the Nazi regime to circumvent the international boycott campaign that its policies had provoked. The Zionist movement, which had become the only authorized Jewish organization in Nazi Germany, was able to transfer about 53,000 Jews to Palestine. Again, the Zionists turned catastrophe to the Jews into an opportunity for themselves.

Zionist luck, if that is the proper word for gaining from calamities to others, continued. Revelations of the Holocaust and the plight of Jewish refugees after World War II gained worldwide sympathy for the Zionist cause. About 136,000 displaced Jews came to Palestine, mostly out of desperation and without intention to remain. The Cold War provided the most decisive benefit for Zionism ─ Soviet Union support for an Israeli state drove the United States to compete for Zionist attention. Votes from both nations, bribes, and arm twisting provided a narrow victory for United Nations Declaration 181 and the Zionists established their state.

Because neither state had official names at that time, designations as Arab and Jewish states were used to map out contours of land where the major portions of the ethnicities would live. President Truman recognized the Jewish state, which became Israel just before he approved recognition. The U.S. president failed to observe that, although the state was bi-national, a small Zionist group took control of all apparatus of the new state and did that without consulting Palestinian leadership.

The UN did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states ─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and another mostly Palestinian state composed of about 70 percent who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a small contingent of foreign Jews that had come as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine (200,000), and another larger contingent of foreign Jews (300,000) that arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate.  The Mandate was only a way station for Jews caught in the tragedies during the 1930s and World War II. If neither cataclysm occurred, would these Jews have gone to the Mandate? Without them, how many Jews would have been there in 1947?

David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill- equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state, and, with seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — cleansed the area of Palestinians and established Israel.

The Zionists turned lying, cheating, and deceiving into an accepted ethnic cleansing. During the next years, they continued the lies, cheats, and deceptions to steal more land and oppress Palestinians. Taking advantage of the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, the Zionist Jews have embarked on a genocide of the Palestinian people, masking it as a defense of their land against a force that has no offensive power to conquer anything.

The Zionists made the struggle (which they engineered) a zero-sum game of “us” or “them.” The “us” is those who steal the land and the patrimony and the lives of “them.” They forced the Jews into a choice, reasoning that the powers in control will favor “us.” This poses a difficulty for Jews who will not support genocide and, therefore, cannot support “us,” and fear that for the Palestinians to survive the Jews in Israel will not survive. A different look — if the Jews liberate themselves from the conditioned grip that Zionism has on them and differentiate between a liberated Jew and a Zionist Jew, the liberated Jews will lose their paranoid fear and the Zionist Jews will lose their power, which is based upon creating paranoia and fear in fellow Jews.

Unfortunately, the liberation of the Jews is not foreseen and the decimation of innocents will occur — a replay of the story of Purim, “when having obtained royal permission to strike their enemies, including women and children, the Jews kill over seventy-five thousand people! Esther then further seeks permission for another day of massacre.”

Unleashed from subjugation and drowned with power, they seek another day of massacre. Is Joshua, who slew the inhabitants of Jericho, eradicated the Canaanites, and is a hero in Jewish mythology, a clue to the mentality of leaders of the Jewish people? Do the horrors visited upon the Gazans, purposeful and wanton killings and massacres beyond credulity, carry Joshua to modern times and tell a cautious story of the Zionist Jews?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The Jews during Zionism’s formation did not believe in or trust Zionism.
Reform Judaism’s Declaration of Principles: 1885 Pittsburgh Conference stated,

We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.

Between 1881 and 1914, 2.5 million Jews migrated from Russia ─ 1.7 million to America, 500,000 to Western Europe, almost 300,000 to other nations, and only 30,000 – 50,000 to Palestine. Of the latter, 15,000 returned to Russia. Jews rejected Zionism from its outset.

Despite rejection, Zionist supporters managed to skew Western governments’ policies to favor their mission. A worldwide propaganda machine obscures Identification of Israel as a criminal state that willfully murders Palestinians, steals their lands, has ethnically cleansed them, buried their villages under rubble, and destroyed their history and heritage. Quick to use the expression ‘Holocaust denial” on anyone who questions aspects of the Holocaust, the Zionists impressed upon the Jews the use of “denial” for anything that smacks of Jewish malfeasance, and includes the greatest malfeasance, the act of genocide. Charges of malfeasance by Jews are converted into anti-Semitism, truth becomes denied, anger of Jews against a manufactured hostile world is internalized, and bitterness against hostile Jews is intensified. The Zionists have used debts as collateral, turning valid charges against them into sympathy for their cause.

Start with the beginning of Zionism.
Although antipathy toward Jews and Judaism remained strong in Christian Europe, physical attacks on western European Jews, after a brief episode of the 1819-1826 Hep-Hep riots in Germany, were relatively few.

Often mentioned is the Dreyfus case, where a Jewish military officer in the 1896 French army was twice sentenced and later pardoned for giving military secrets to the Germans. Highlighted as an example of anti-Semitism in a French military, “rife with anti-Semitism,” and psychologically extended to the French populace, the Dreyfus case circulated for a century in American media, whose audience had no relation to the French incident (why?), giving the Dreyfus case a life of its own, and making it seem that there was not one Dreyfus but thousands. The Zionists needed a Dreyfus to substantiate their mission for all time, refusing to recognize that the Dreyfus case contradicted the Zionist mission; being an isolated case, it proved Jews could integrate into European institutions and receive equal justice.

Was the French military rife with anti-Semitism? According to Piers Paul, The Dreyfus Affair. p. 83, “The French army of the period was relatively open to entry and advancement by talent, with an estimated 300 Jewish officers, of whom ten were generals.” Only five African-American officers in the much larger US army in WWII. Why not emphasize the opposite of what the Zionists proffered; French Jews received equal and eventual justice. After the French Revolution, physical attacks on Jews rarely occurred in France.

Imperial Russia was another European community that the Zionists accused of serious anti-Semitism, exaggerating the damage done to Jewish communities in a multi-ethnic nation ravaged with ethnic disturbances. They used a special term, “pogroms,” to characterize attacks on Jews. Note that prejudice to other ethnicities does not qualify for a special term, such as “anti-Semitism,” nor does violence against any of them.

A lack of communications in Russia during the 19th century, a tendency to create sensational news, and a willingness to accept rumors make it difficult to ascertain the extent of attacks on Russia’s Jewish community. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, a reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale University Press in 2008, is a more objective and authoritative source. Excerpts from their work can be found here.

Anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire before 1881 was a rare event, confined largely to the rapidly expanding Black Sea entrepot of Odessa. In Odessa, Greeks and Jews, two rival ethnic and economic communities, lived side by side. The first Odessa pogrom, in 1821, was linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities. Although the pogrom of 1871 was occasioned in part by a rumor that Jews had vandalized the Greek community’s church, many non-Greeks participated, as they had done during earlier disorders in 1859.

After Alexander II became Tsar in 1855, he lessened anti-Jewish edicts, rescinded forced conscription, allowed Jews to attend universities, and permitted Jewish emigration from the Pale. His assassination in 1881 prompted Tsar Alexander III to reverse his father’s actions. Because some Jews were involved in Russia’s revolutionary party, Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), which organized the assassination, the assassination acted as a catalyst for a wave of attacks on Jews during 1881-83.

Typically, the pogroms of this period originated in large cities, and then spread to surrounding villages, traveling along means of communication such as rivers and railroads. Violence was largely directed against the property of Jews rather than their persons. In the course of more than 250 individual events, millions of rubles worth of Jewish property was destroyed. The total number of fatalities is disputed but may have been as few as 50, half of them pogromshchiki who were killed when troops opened fire on rioting mobs.

Note that this was one large “pogrom,” which emanated from one incident that touched the Russian nerve, was directed mainly against Jewish property, did not have government support, and faded out. “Michael Aronson has sought to refute the long-standing belief that the regime of Alexander III actively conspired to lead the Russian masses into savage riots against the Jews. In Aronson’s view the pogroms were spontaneous, by which he means not that they happened without cause, but that they happened largely without prior planning or organization.”

Missing from references to the attacks on the Jewish population is that the Tsars inherited Jewish and other populations after the 1791-1795 partitions of Poland and sought means to integrate the new ethnicities into a Russian way of life. Nevertheless, in Tsarist Russia, the principal population to which Zionism should have had appeal, there is no evidence that a massive number of Jews accepted Zionism.

Unwaveringly secularist in its beliefs, the Russian Bund discarded the idea of a Holy Land and a sacred tongue. Its language was Yiddish, spoken by millions of Jews throughout the Pale. This was also the source of the organization’s four principles: socialism, secularism, Yiddish, and doyikayt or localness. The latter concept was encapsulated in the Bund slogan: “There, where we live, that is our country.” The Bund disapproved greatly of Zionism and considered the idea of emigrating to Palestine to be political escapism.

Imperial Russia contained several minorities that economically contested and attacked one another. Economic rivalry was the leading cause of attacks on Jews. From Middleman Minorities and Ethnic Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Russian Empire, The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 87, Issue 1, January 2020.

Using detailed panel data from the Pale of Settlement area between 1800 and 1927, we document that anti-Jewish pogroms—mob violence against the Jewish minority—broke out when economic shocks coincided with political turmoil. When this happened, pogroms primarily occurred in places where Jews dominated middleman occupations, i.e., moneylending and grain trading. This evidence is inconsistent with the scapegoating hypothesis, according to which Jews were blamed for all misfortunes of the majority. Instead, the evidence is consistent with the politico-economic mechanism, in which Jewish middlemen served as providers of insurance against economic shocks to peasants and urban grain buyers in a relationship based on repeated interactions.

Violation of any human life can not be underestimated or ignored; Jews suffered in the 19th century Russian Empire, and so did almost everyone else, including native Russians. Placed in context — location, time, comparison of the fate and life of Jews to other minorities, and internal and external factors that favored the Jews — the reasons for Zionists to behave as the rescuer of their co-religionists is dubious.

For others, also not of the Russian Orthodox faith, persecution was magnitudes worse. From Balfour Project:

The Moscow Patriarchate presided over the state religion and other believers were generally disadvantaged, often persecuted, or sometimes driven from Russian lands. The non-Orthodox were despised as unbelievers and thousands of Catholics were deported to Siberia in the mid-19th century. At the same time, around half a million Muslims were driven from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, Iran or further afield. At the south-eastern border of the Pale of Settlement began the lands of the Circassians, a mostly Muslim group who had lived since the 14th century along the northern Black Sea coast from Sochi and eastwards into the Caucasus mountains. A long war of attrition ended in the genocide of 1865. According to official Russian statistics, the population was reduced by 97 per cent. At least 200,000, and possibly several hundred thousand people died through ethnic cleansing, hunger, epidemics and bitterly cold weather.

Compared to other ethnicities ─ Native American, slaved Africans, Chinese, Irish, and Catholic in the U.S., and Chinese, Indian, and African during the age of Imperialism, the persecution and distress of European Jews was insignificant. Yet, the Zionists made it appear that Jews were the most suffering people in the world and the world believed it.

Despite the overwhelming verbal and physical rejection of Zionism by worldwide Jewry, a small group of conspirators managed to convince the British government to issue the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which is not an official or legal instrument. It is not even a Declaration. It is a letter from Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, which has a phrase, “declaration of sympathy,” from which it was given the more lofty description of declaration. Who are these two guys?

Arthur James Balfour, known as Lord Balfour, served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905 and as foreign secretary from 1916 to 1919,

Lionel Walter Rothschild was a British zoologist from the wealthy Rothschild banking family, who served as a Conservative member of Parliament from 1899 to 1910. He was sympathetic to the Zionist cause and had an eminent position in the Anglo-Jewish community.

The letter:

Why was the letter issued, what did it exactly mean, and why did it have impact? Acceptable answers have not been supplied. One clue is from Minutes of British War Cabinet Meetings

Meeting No. 245, Minute No. 18, 4 October 1917: 4 October 1917: “… [Balfour] stated that the German Government were making great efforts to capture the sympathy of the Zionist Movement.”

Meeting No. 261, Minute No. 12, 31 October 1917
With reference to War Cabinet 245, Minute 18, the War Cabinet had before them a note by the Secretary, and also a memorandum by Lord Curzon on the subject of the Zionist movement. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated that he gathered that everyone was now agreed that, from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made.

World leaders failed to recognize the ominous outcomes of their San Remo Peace Conference and the newly formed League of Nations, which created a new international order that sliced the Middle East for the major European powers. Both approved establishment of a Jewish presence in the British Mandate in accord with the Balfour Letter. Despite these achievements, progress for obtaining a central headquarters for Zionism went slowly until US immigration laws and persecution of German Jews renewed Zionist life.

The year 1924 was fortuitous for the Zionists. The US Immigration Act closed the doors to mass Jewish immigration from East European nations and the Act steered Jews to migrate to Palestine. By 1931, Palestine housed 175,000 Jews. The economic depression slowed the migration. The rise of Nazi Germany reinvigorated it.

After the Nazis began their rule, they slowly froze Jewish assets. Although not proven, a principal reason for Germany slowly freezing Jewish assets and engaging in its own boycott of Jewish enterprises was the boycott of German goods, which was organized by Jewish groups in the United States as a response to the confined and sporadic violence and harassment by Nazi Party members against Jews in early 1933. Zionists saw the frozen assets as a means to bring Jews to the British Mandate.

By the Ha’avara Transfer Agreement with Nazi Germany, the Zionists used German Jewish assets, including bank deposits to purchase German products that were exported to the Jewish-owned Ha’avara Company in Tel-Aviv. A portion of the money from the sales of the goods went to the emigrants, who could leave Germany and regain assets after arrival in Palestine and in an amount corresponding to their deposits in German banks. The Zionists enabled the Nazi regime to circumvent the international boycott campaign that its policies had provoked. The Zionist movement, which had become the only authorized Jewish organization in Nazi Germany, was able to transfer about 53,000 Jews to Palestine. Again, the Zionists turned catastrophe to the Jews into an opportunity for themselves.

Zionist luck, if that is the proper word for gaining from calamities to others, continued. Revelations of the Holocaust and the plight of Jewish refugees after World War II gained worldwide sympathy for the Zionist cause. About 136,000 displaced Jews came to Palestine, mostly out of desperation and without intention to remain. The Cold War provided the most decisive benefit for Zionism ─ Soviet Union support for an Israeli state drove the United States to compete for Zionist attention. Votes from both nations, bribes, and arm twisting provided a narrow victory for United Nations Declaration 181 and the Zionists established their state.

Because neither state had official names at that time, designations as Arab and Jewish states were used to map out contours of land where the major portions of the ethnicities would live. President Truman recognized the Jewish state, which became Israel just before he approved recognition. The U.S. president failed to observe that, although the state was bi-national, a small Zionist group took control of all apparatus of the new state and did that without consulting Palestinian leadership.

The UN did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states ─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and another mostly Palestinian state composed of about 70 percent who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a small contingent of foreign Jews that had come as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine (200,000), and another larger contingent of foreign Jews (300,000) that arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate.  The Mandate was only a way station for Jews caught in the tragedies during the 1930s and World War II. If neither cataclysm occurred, would these Jews have gone to the Mandate? Without them, how many Jews would have been there in 1947?

David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill- equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state, and, with seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — cleansed the area of Palestinians and established Israel.

The Zionists turned lying, cheating, and deceiving into an accepted ethnic cleansing. During the next years, they continued the lies, cheats, and deceptions to steal more land and oppress Palestinians. Taking advantage of the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, the Zionist Jews have embarked on a genocide of the Palestinian people, masking it as a defense of their land against a force that has no offensive power to conquer anything.

The Zionists made the struggle (which they engineered) a zero-sum game of “us” or “them.” The “us” is those who steal the land and the patrimony and the lives of “them.” They forced the Jews into a choice, reasoning that the powers in control will favor “us.” This poses a difficulty for Jews who will not support genocide and, therefore, cannot support “us,” and fear that for the Palestinians to survive the Jews in Israel will not survive. A different look — if the Jews liberate themselves from the conditioned grip that Zionism has on them and differentiate between a liberated Jew and a Zionist Jew, the liberated Jews will lose their paranoid fear and the Zionist Jews will lose their power, which is based upon creating paranoia and fear in fellow Jews.

Unfortunately, the liberation of the Jews is not foreseen and the decimation of innocents will occur — a replay of the story of Purim, “when having obtained royal permission to strike their enemies, including women and children, the Jews kill over seventy-five thousand people! Esther then further seeks permission for another day of massacre.”

Unleashed from subjugation and drowned with power, they seek another day of massacre. Is Joshua, who slew the inhabitants of Jericho, eradicated the Canaanites, and is a hero in Jewish mythology, a clue to the mentality of leaders of the Jewish people? Do the horrors visited upon the Gazans, purposeful and wanton killings and massacres beyond credulity, carry Joshua to modern times and tell a cautious story of the Zionist Jews?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The Jews during Zionism’s formation did not believe in or trust Zionism.
Reform Judaism’s Declaration of Principles: 1885 Pittsburgh Conference stated,

We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.

Between 1881 and 1914, 2.5 million Jews migrated from Russia ─ 1.7 million to America, 500,000 to Western Europe, almost 300,000 to other nations, and only 30,000 – 50,000 to Palestine. Of the latter, 15,000 returned to Russia. Jews rejected Zionism from its outset.

Despite rejection, Zionist supporters managed to skew Western governments’ policies to favor their mission. A worldwide propaganda machine obscures Identification of Israel as a criminal state that willfully murders Palestinians, steals their lands, has ethnically cleansed them, buried their villages under rubble, and destroyed their history and heritage. Quick to use the expression ‘Holocaust denial” on anyone who questions aspects of the Holocaust, the Zionists impressed upon the Jews the use of “denial” for anything that smacks of Jewish malfeasance, and includes the greatest malfeasance, the act of genocide. Charges of malfeasance by Jews are converted into anti-Semitism, truth becomes denied, anger of Jews against a manufactured hostile world is internalized, and bitterness against hostile Jews is intensified. The Zionists have used debts as collateral, turning valid charges against them into sympathy for their cause.

Start with the beginning of Zionism.
Although antipathy toward Jews and Judaism remained strong in Christian Europe, physical attacks on western European Jews, after a brief episode of the 1819-1826 Hep-Hep riots in Germany, were relatively few.

Often mentioned is the Dreyfus case, where a Jewish military officer in the 1896 French army was twice sentenced and later pardoned for giving military secrets to the Germans. Highlighted as an example of anti-Semitism in a French military, “rife with anti-Semitism,” and psychologically extended to the French populace, the Dreyfus case circulated for a century in American media, whose audience had no relation to the French incident (why?), giving the Dreyfus case a life of its own, and making it seem that there was not one Dreyfus but thousands. The Zionists needed a Dreyfus to substantiate their mission for all time, refusing to recognize that the Dreyfus case contradicted the Zionist mission; being an isolated case, it proved Jews could integrate into European institutions and receive equal justice.

Was the French military rife with anti-Semitism? According to Piers Paul, The Dreyfus Affair. p. 83, “The French army of the period was relatively open to entry and advancement by talent, with an estimated 300 Jewish officers, of whom ten were generals.” Only five African-American officers in the much larger US army in WWII. Why not emphasize the opposite of what the Zionists proffered; French Jews received equal and eventual justice. After the French Revolution, physical attacks on Jews rarely occurred in France.

Imperial Russia was another European community that the Zionists accused of serious anti-Semitism, exaggerating the damage done to Jewish communities in a multi-ethnic nation ravaged with ethnic disturbances. They used a special term, “pogroms,” to characterize attacks on Jews. Note that prejudice to other ethnicities does not qualify for a special term, such as “anti-Semitism,” nor does violence against any of them.

A lack of communications in Russia during the 19th century, a tendency to create sensational news, and a willingness to accept rumors make it difficult to ascertain the extent of attacks on Russia’s Jewish community. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, a reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale University Press in 2008, is a more objective and authoritative source. Excerpts from their work can be found here.

Anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire before 1881 was a rare event, confined largely to the rapidly expanding Black Sea entrepot of Odessa. In Odessa, Greeks and Jews, two rival ethnic and economic communities, lived side by side. The first Odessa pogrom, in 1821, was linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities. Although the pogrom of 1871 was occasioned in part by a rumor that Jews had vandalized the Greek community’s church, many non-Greeks participated, as they had done during earlier disorders in 1859.

After Alexander II became Tsar in 1855, he lessened anti-Jewish edicts, rescinded forced conscription, allowed Jews to attend universities, and permitted Jewish emigration from the Pale. His assassination in 1881 prompted Tsar Alexander III to reverse his father’s actions. Because some Jews were involved in Russia’s revolutionary party, Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), which organized the assassination, the assassination acted as a catalyst for a wave of attacks on Jews during 1881-83.

Typically, the pogroms of this period originated in large cities, and then spread to surrounding villages, traveling along means of communication such as rivers and railroads. Violence was largely directed against the property of Jews rather than their persons. In the course of more than 250 individual events, millions of rubles worth of Jewish property was destroyed. The total number of fatalities is disputed but may have been as few as 50, half of them pogromshchiki who were killed when troops opened fire on rioting mobs.

Note that this was one large “pogrom,” which emanated from one incident that touched the Russian nerve, was directed mainly against Jewish property, did not have government support, and faded out. “Michael Aronson has sought to refute the long-standing belief that the regime of Alexander III actively conspired to lead the Russian masses into savage riots against the Jews. In Aronson’s view the pogroms were spontaneous, by which he means not that they happened without cause, but that they happened largely without prior planning or organization.”

Missing from references to the attacks on the Jewish population is that the Tsars inherited Jewish and other populations after the 1791-1795 partitions of Poland and sought means to integrate the new ethnicities into a Russian way of life. Nevertheless, in Tsarist Russia, the principal population to which Zionism should have had appeal, there is no evidence that a massive number of Jews accepted Zionism.

Unwaveringly secularist in its beliefs, the Russian Bund discarded the idea of a Holy Land and a sacred tongue. Its language was Yiddish, spoken by millions of Jews throughout the Pale. This was also the source of the organization’s four principles: socialism, secularism, Yiddish, and doyikayt or localness. The latter concept was encapsulated in the Bund slogan: “There, where we live, that is our country.” The Bund disapproved greatly of Zionism and considered the idea of emigrating to Palestine to be political escapism.

Imperial Russia contained several minorities that economically contested and attacked one another. Economic rivalry was the leading cause of attacks on Jews. From Middleman Minorities and Ethnic Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Russian Empire, The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 87, Issue 1, January 2020.

Using detailed panel data from the Pale of Settlement area between 1800 and 1927, we document that anti-Jewish pogroms—mob violence against the Jewish minority—broke out when economic shocks coincided with political turmoil. When this happened, pogroms primarily occurred in places where Jews dominated middleman occupations, i.e., moneylending and grain trading. This evidence is inconsistent with the scapegoating hypothesis, according to which Jews were blamed for all misfortunes of the majority. Instead, the evidence is consistent with the politico-economic mechanism, in which Jewish middlemen served as providers of insurance against economic shocks to peasants and urban grain buyers in a relationship based on repeated interactions.

Violation of any human life can not be underestimated or ignored; Jews suffered in the 19th century Russian Empire, and so did almost everyone else, including native Russians. Placed in context — location, time, comparison of the fate and life of Jews to other minorities, and internal and external factors that favored the Jews — the reasons for Zionists to behave as the rescuer of their co-religionists is dubious.

For others, also not of the Russian Orthodox faith, persecution was magnitudes worse. From Balfour Project:

The Moscow Patriarchate presided over the state religion and other believers were generally disadvantaged, often persecuted, or sometimes driven from Russian lands. The non-Orthodox were despised as unbelievers and thousands of Catholics were deported to Siberia in the mid-19th century. At the same time, around half a million Muslims were driven from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, Iran or further afield. At the south-eastern border of the Pale of Settlement began the lands of the Circassians, a mostly Muslim group who had lived since the 14th century along the northern Black Sea coast from Sochi and eastwards into the Caucasus mountains. A long war of attrition ended in the genocide of 1865. According to official Russian statistics, the population was reduced by 97 per cent. At least 200,000, and possibly several hundred thousand people died through ethnic cleansing, hunger, epidemics and bitterly cold weather.

Compared to other ethnicities ─ Native American, slaved Africans, Chinese, Irish, and Catholic in the U.S., and Chinese, Indian, and African during the age of Imperialism, the persecution and distress of European Jews was insignificant. Yet, the Zionists made it appear that Jews were the most suffering people in the world and the world believed it.

Despite the overwhelming verbal and physical rejection of Zionism by worldwide Jewry, a small group of conspirators managed to convince the British government to issue the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which is not an official or legal instrument. It is not even a Declaration. It is a letter from Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, which has a phrase, “declaration of sympathy,” from which it was given the more lofty description of declaration. Who are these two guys?

Arthur James Balfour, known as Lord Balfour, served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905 and as foreign secretary from 1916 to 1919,

Lionel Walter Rothschild was a British zoologist from the wealthy Rothschild banking family, who served as a Conservative member of Parliament from 1899 to 1910. He was sympathetic to the Zionist cause and had an eminent position in the Anglo-Jewish community.

The letter:

Why was the letter issued, what did it exactly mean, and why did it have impact? Acceptable answers have not been supplied. One clue is from Minutes of British War Cabinet Meetings

Meeting No. 245, Minute No. 18, 4 October 1917: 4 October 1917: “… [Balfour] stated that the German Government were making great efforts to capture the sympathy of the Zionist Movement.”

Meeting No. 261, Minute No. 12, 31 October 1917
With reference to War Cabinet 245, Minute 18, the War Cabinet had before them a note by the Secretary, and also a memorandum by Lord Curzon on the subject of the Zionist movement. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated that he gathered that everyone was now agreed that, from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made.

World leaders failed to recognize the ominous outcomes of their San Remo Peace Conference and the newly formed League of Nations, which created a new international order that sliced the Middle East for the major European powers. Both approved establishment of a Jewish presence in the British Mandate in accord with the Balfour Letter. Despite these achievements, progress for obtaining a central headquarters for Zionism went slowly until US immigration laws and persecution of German Jews renewed Zionist life.

The year 1924 was fortuitous for the Zionists. The US Immigration Act closed the doors to mass Jewish immigration from East European nations and the Act steered Jews to migrate to Palestine. By 1931, Palestine housed 175,000 Jews. The economic depression slowed the migration. The rise of Nazi Germany reinvigorated it.

After the Nazis began their rule, they slowly froze Jewish assets. Although not proven, a principal reason for Germany slowly freezing Jewish assets and engaging in its own boycott of Jewish enterprises was the boycott of German goods, which was organized by Jewish groups in the United States as a response to the confined and sporadic violence and harassment by Nazi Party members against Jews in early 1933. Zionists saw the frozen assets as a means to bring Jews to the British Mandate.

By the Ha’avara Transfer Agreement with Nazi Germany, the Zionists used German Jewish assets, including bank deposits to purchase German products that were exported to the Jewish-owned Ha’avara Company in Tel-Aviv. A portion of the money from the sales of the goods went to the emigrants, who could leave Germany and regain assets after arrival in Palestine and in an amount corresponding to their deposits in German banks. The Zionists enabled the Nazi regime to circumvent the international boycott campaign that its policies had provoked. The Zionist movement, which had become the only authorized Jewish organization in Nazi Germany, was able to transfer about 53,000 Jews to Palestine. Again, the Zionists turned catastrophe to the Jews into an opportunity for themselves.

Zionist luck, if that is the proper word for gaining from calamities to others, continued. Revelations of the Holocaust and the plight of Jewish refugees after World War II gained worldwide sympathy for the Zionist cause. About 136,000 displaced Jews came to Palestine, mostly out of desperation and without intention to remain. The Cold War provided the most decisive benefit for Zionism ─ Soviet Union support for an Israeli state drove the United States to compete for Zionist attention. Votes from both nations, bribes, and arm twisting provided a narrow victory for United Nations Declaration 181 and the Zionists established their state.

Because neither state had official names at that time, designations as Arab and Jewish states were used to map out contours of land where the major portions of the ethnicities would live. President Truman recognized the Jewish state, which became Israel just before he approved recognition. The U.S. president failed to observe that, although the state was bi-national, a small Zionist group took control of all apparatus of the new state and did that without consulting Palestinian leadership.

The UN did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states ─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and another mostly Palestinian state composed of about 70 percent who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a small contingent of foreign Jews that had come as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine (200,000), and another larger contingent of foreign Jews (300,000) that arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate.  The Mandate was only a way station for Jews caught in the tragedies during the 1930s and World War II. If neither cataclysm occurred, would these Jews have gone to the Mandate? Without them, how many Jews would have been there in 1947?

David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill- equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state, and, with seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — cleansed the area of Palestinians and established Israel.

The Zionists turned lying, cheating, and deceiving into an accepted ethnic cleansing. During the next years, they continued the lies, cheats, and deceptions to steal more land and oppress Palestinians. Taking advantage of the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, the Zionist Jews have embarked on a genocide of the Palestinian people, masking it as a defense of their land against a force that has no offensive power to conquer anything.

The Zionists made the struggle (which they engineered) a zero-sum game of “us” or “them.” The “us” is those who steal the land and the patrimony and the lives of “them.” They forced the Jews into a choice, reasoning that the powers in control will favor “us.” This poses a difficulty for Jews who will not support genocide and, therefore, cannot support “us,” and fear that for the Palestinians to survive the Jews in Israel will not survive. A different look — if the Jews liberate themselves from the conditioned grip that Zionism has on them and differentiate between a liberated Jew and a Zionist Jew, the liberated Jews will lose their paranoid fear and the Zionist Jews will lose their power, which is based upon creating paranoia and fear in fellow Jews.

Unfortunately, the liberation of the Jews is not foreseen and the decimation of innocents will occur — a replay of the story of Purim, “when having obtained royal permission to strike their enemies, including women and children, the Jews kill over seventy-five thousand people! Esther then further seeks permission for another day of massacre.”

Unleashed from subjugation and drowned with power, they seek another day of massacre. Is Joshua, who slew the inhabitants of Jericho, eradicated the Canaanites, and is a hero in Jewish mythology, a clue to the mentality of leaders of the Jewish people? Do the horrors visited upon the Gazans, purposeful and wanton killings and massacres beyond credulity, carry Joshua to modern times and tell a cautious story of the Zionist Jews?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The endless wars, one in almost every year of the American Republic, are shadowed by words of peace, democracy, and human rights. Happening far from U.S. soil, their effects are more visual than visceral, appearing as images on a television screen. The larger post-World War II conflagrations, those that followed the “war to end all wars,” in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have not permanently resolved the issues that promoted the wars. From their littered battlefields remain the old contestants and from an embittered landscape new contestants emerge to oppose the U.S. “world order.” The U.S. intelligence community said, “it views four countries as posing the main national security challenges in the coming year: China, followed by Russia, Iran and North Korea.” Each challenge has a fork in the road. Each fork taken is leading to war.

China
“China increasingly is a near-peer competitor, challenging the United States in multiple arenas — especially economically, militarily, and technologically — and is pushing to change global norms,” says a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Interpretation ─ China has disrupted the United States’ world hegemony and military superiority. Only the U.S. is allowed to have hegemony and the military superiority that assures the hegemony.

Foreign Policy (FP) magazine’s article, “How Primed for War Is China,” goes further: “The likelihood of war with China may be the single-most important question in international affairs today.”

If China uses military force against Taiwan or another target in the Western Pacific, the result could be war with the United States—a fight between two nuclear-armed giants brawling for hegemony in that region and the wider world. If China attacked amid ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the world would be consumed by interlocking conflicts across Eurasia’s key regions, a global conflagration unlike anything since World War II. How worried should we be?

No worry about that. Beijing will not pursue war. Why would it? It is winning and winners have no need to go to war. The concern is that the continuous trashing will lead the PRC to trash its treasury holdings that finance U.S. trade debt (already started), use reserves to purchase huge chunks of United States assets, diminish its hefty agricultural imports from Yankee farms, and enforce its ban of exports of rare earth extraction and separation technologies  (China produces 60 percent of the world’s rare earth materials and processes nearly 90 percent). The U.S. should worry that, by not cooperating, the Red Dragon may decide it is better not to bother with Washington and use its overwhelming industrial power, with which the U.S. cannot compete, to sink the U.S. economy.

China does not chide the U.S. about its urban blight, mass shootings, drug problem, riots in Black neighborhoods, enforcing the Caribbean as an American lake, campus revolution, and media control by special interests. However, U.S. administrations insist on being involved in China’s internal affairs — Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, South China Sea, Belt and Road, Uyghurs — and never shows how this involvement benefits the U.S. people.

U.S. interference in China’s internal affairs has not changed anything! The United States is determined to halt China’s progress to economic dominance and to no avail. China will continue to do what China wants to do. With an industrious, capable, and educated population, which is four times the size of the U.S. population, arable land 75 percent of that of the U.S. (295,220,748 arable acres compared to 389,767,633 arable acres), and a multiple of resources that the world needs, China, by default will eventually emerge, if it has not already, as the world’s economic superpower.

What does the U.S. expect from its STOP the unstoppable China policy? Where can its rhetoric and aggressive actions lead but to confrontation? The only worthwhile confrontation is America confronting itself. The party is over and it’s time to call it a day, a new day and a new America ─ not going to war to protect its interests but resting comfortably by sharing its interests.

Russia
Western politicos responded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comment, “The breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century,” with boisterous laughter. Go to Ukraine and observe the tragedy and learn that Putin’s remark has been too lightly regarded. It’s not a matter of right and wrong. It’s a matter of life and death. The nation, which made the greatest contribution in defeating Nazi Germany and endured the most physical and mental losses, suffered the most territorial, social, and economic forfeitures in post-World War II.

From a Russian perspective, Crimea had been a vital part of Russia since the time of Catherine the Great ─ a warm water port and outlet to the Black Sea. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s attachment of Crimea to The Ukraine Republic was an administrative move, and as long as Ukraine allowed Russia free entry to Crimea, Moscow did not seek annexation. To the Russia government of year 2014, the Euromaidan Revolution changed the arrangement. Putin easily rationalized annexing a Ukraine region whose population was 2/3 Russian, considered a part of Russia, and was under attack by Ukrainian nationalists.

Maintaining Ukraine in the Russian orbit, or at least, preventing it from becoming a NATO ally, was a natural position for any Russian government, a mini Monroe Doctrine that neutralizes bordering nations and impedes foreign intrusions. Change in Ukraine’s status forecast a change in Russia’s position, a certain prediction of war. Ukraine and Russia were soul mates; their parting was a trauma that could only be erased by seizure of the Maiden after the Euromaidan.

Ukraine has lost the war; at least they cannot win, but don’t tell anybody. Its forces are defeated and depleted and cannot mount an offensive against the capably defended Russian captured territory. Its people and economy will continue to suffer and soldiers will die in the small battles that will continue and continue. Ukraine’s hope is having Putin leave by a coup, voluntarily, or involuntarily and having a new Russian administration that is compliant with Zelensky’s expectations. The former is possible; the latter is not possible. Russian military will not allow its sacrifices to be reversed.

For Ukrainians, it is a “zero sum” battle; they can only lose and cannot dictate how much they lose. A truce is impeded by Putin’s ambition to incorporate Odessa into Russia and link Russia through captured Ukraine territory to Moldova’s breakaway Republic of Transnistria, which the Russian president expects will become a Russian satellite, similar to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This leaves Ukraine with two choices: (1) Forget the European Union, forget NATO, and remain a nation loosely allied with Russia, or (2) Solicit support from the United States and Europe and eventually start a World War that destroys everybody.

As of July 8, 2024, Ukraine and United States are headed for the latter fork in the road. After entering into war, the contestants find no way, except to end it with a more punishing war. That cannot happen. Russians crossing the Dnieper River and capturing Odessa is also unlikely. The visions of the presidents of Russia and Ukraine clash with reality. Their visions and their presence are the impediments to resolving the conflict. Both must retire to their palatial homes and write their memoirs. A world tour featuring the two in a debate is a promising You Tube event.

Commentators characterized the Soviet Union as a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. After it became scrambled eggs, Russia’s characterization became simplified; no matter what Putin’s Russia does, it is viewed as a cold, icy, and heartless land that preys on its neighbors and causes misery to the world. Apply a little warmth, defrost the ice, and Russia has another appearance.

Iran
Ponder and ponder, why is the U.S. eager to assist Israel and act aggressively toward Iran? What has Iran done to the U.S. or anybody? The US wants Iran to eschew nuclear and ballistic weapons, but the provocative approach indicates other purposes — completely alienate Iran, destroy its military capability, and bring Tehran to collapse and submission. Accomplishing the far-reaching goals will not affect the average American, increase US defense posture, or diminish the continuous battering of the helpless faces of the Middle East. The strategy mostly pleases Israel and Saudi Arabia, who have engineered it, share major responsibility for the Middle East turmoil, and are using mighty America to subdue the principal antagonist to their malicious activities.

Although Iran has not sent a single soldier cross its borders to invade another nation and has insufficient military power to contest a United States’ reprisal, the Islamic republic is accused of trying to conquer the entire Middle East. Because rebellions from oppressed Shi’a factions occur in Bahrain and Yemen, Iran is accused of using surrogates to extend their power ─ guilt by association. Because Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah have extended friendship (who does not want to have friends), Iran, who cannot even sell its pistachio nuts to these nations, is accused of controlling them.

Iran is an independent nation with its own concepts for governing. The Islamic Republic might not be a huggable nation, but compared to Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, it is a model democracy and a theocratic lightweight. Except for isolate incidents, Iran has never attacked anyone, doesn’t indicate it intends to attack anyone, and doesn’t have the capability to wage war against a major nation.

Defined as Iran, the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism, the Iranian government has not been involved in terrorist acts against the United States, or proven to have engaged in international terrorism. There have been some accusations concerning one incident in Argentina, one in the U.S. and a few in Europe against dissidents who cause havoc in Iran, but these have been isolated incidents. Two accusations go back thirty to forty years, and none are associated with a particular organization.

If the US honestly wants to have Iran promise never to be a warring nation, it would approach the issues with a question, “What will it take for you (Iran) never to pursue weapons of mass destruction?” Assuredly, the response would include provisions that require the U.S. to no longer assist the despotic Saudi Kingdom in its oppression of minorities and opposition, in its export of terrorists, and interference in Yemen. The response would propose that the U.S. eliminate financial, military and cooperative support to Israel’s theft of Palestinian lands, oppressive conditions imposed on Palestinians, and daily killings of Palestinian people, and combat Israel’s expansionist plans.

The correct question soliciting a formative response and leading to decisive US actions resolves two situations and benefits the U.S. — fear of Iran developing weapons of mass destruction is relieved and the Middle East is pointed in a direction that achieves justice, peace, and stability for its peoples. The road to war is a tool for Israel’s objectives. The U.S. continues on that road, willingly sacrificing Americans for the benefit of the Zionist state. Tyranny and treason in the American government and the American people either are not observant or just don’t care.

Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK)
Nowhere and seemingly everywhere, North Korea stands at a fork in the road. The small and unimportant state that wants to be left alone and remain uncontaminated by global germs, is constantly pushed into responding to military maneuvers at its border, threats of annihilation, and insults to its leaders and nation. From United States’ actions and press coverage, North Korea assumes the world stage as a dynamic and mighty nation and exerts a power that forces respect and response. How can a nation, constantly described as an insular and “hermit kingdom,” cast a shadow that reaches 5000 miles to the United States mainland and speak with a voice that generates a worldwide listening audience?

The world faces a contemporary DPRK, a DPRK that enters the third decade of the 21st century with a changed perspective from the DPRK that entered the century. Rehashing of old grievances, reciting past DPRK policies that caused horrific happenings to its people, and purposeful misunderstanding of contemporary North Korea lead to misdirected policies and unwarranted problems. Purposeful misunderstanding comes from exaggerations of negative actions, from not proving these negative actions, from evaluating actions from agendas and opinions and not from facts, from selecting and guessing the facts, and from approaching matters from different perspectives and consciences.

Instead of heading away from North Korea, the U.S. speeds toward a confrontation and North Korea makes preparations — developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems and signing a mutual defense pact with Russia. The U.S. State department paves the road to war and, as a favor to its antagonist, induces it to develop the offensive and defensive capabilities to wage the war. Apparently, the U.S. defense department has orders not to attack the DPRK before it has ICBMs and warheads that can demolish the U.S. Unlike Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, let’s make this a fair fight.

North and South Vietnam have only one problem ─ U.S. interference in their internal affairs. Stop the joint maneuvers and remove the U.S. troops and the North and South will learn how to get along and realize they must get along. If they do not find friendship and engage in hostilities, they will resolve the issue in a way that badly affects both and does not affect the U.S. Why internationalize an issue that is national and can be contained? Why make the U.S. land subjected to possible attack because two miscreants cannot behave?

North Korea might go down in history as the nation that awakened the world to the consequences of global saber rattling. It has shown that the nuclear world can become one big poker game, in which a challenge to a bluff can be an ‘all win’ and ‘all lose’ proposition. Which gambler is willing to play that game when an ‘all win’ doesn’t add much more to what the gambler already has, and an ‘all lose’ means leaving the person with nothing? The odds greatly favor America, but the wager return is not worth taking the bet, despite the odds. Keep it sweet and simple, let the Koreans settle their problems, and we will see doves flying over the Korean peninsula.

The Road to War
The U.S. does not develop foreign policies from facts and reality; they are developed from made-up stories that fit agendas. Those who guide the agendas solicit support from the population by providing  narratives that rile the American public and define its enemies. This diversion from facts and truth is responsible for the counterproductive wars fought by the U.S., for Middle East turmoil, for a world confronted with terrorism, and for the contemporary horrors in Ukraine and Gaza. U.S. foreign policy is not the cause of all the problems, but it intensifies them and rarely solves any of them.

Because violence and military challenges are being used to resolve the escalating conflicts throughout the globe, should not more simplified and less aggressive approaches be surveyed and determined if they can serve to resolve the world conflagrations. Features of that determination modify current U.S. thinking:

(1) Rather than concluding nations want to confront U.S. military power, realize nations fear military power and desire peaceful relations with the powerful United States.

(2) Rather than attempting to steer adversaries to a lose position, steer them to a beneficial position.

(3) Rather than denying nations the basic requirements for survival, assist their populations in times of need.

(4) Rather than provoking nations to military buildup and action, assuage them into feeling comfortable and not threatened.

(5) Rather than challenging by military threat, show willingness to negotiate to a mutually agreed solution.

(6) Rather than interfering in domestic disputes, recognize the sovereign rights of all nations to solve their own problems.

(7) Rather than relying on incomplete information, purposeful myths, and misinterpretations, learn to understand the vagaries and seemingly irrational attitudes of sovereign nations whose cultures produce different mindsets.

From ever war to war no more.
A pleasant thought
that U.S. administrations thwart.
All roads still lead to war.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Someone, whose cousin was friendly with White House (WH) correspondent, Helen Thomas,  related to me the anguish that the dean of WH correspondents suffered after being accused of anti-Semitism. Helen was born in Lebanon and consistently favored the Palestinian cause. Having been the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club, the pro-Israel contingent found it difficult to silence her. When she was at the advanced age of 90, they leaped to the jugular. In an impromptu question concerning Israel, her reply that “Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and go home to Poland, Germany, America, and everywhere else,” provoked the usual spurious charge of anti-Semitism against the American idol. Harassed and bothered, Helen Thomas quit her post with Hearst newspapers and died two years later.

Helen Thomas was decades ahead of her time. Today, her comment is prescient and is the best advice for the Jewish community that needs to shed the conditioned attachment to Zionism and the cruelty it has visited upon the peoples of the Middle East. Through clever manipulation of minds, the Zionists convinced Jews and many non-Jews that their victory in the 1967 six-day war established a nation of invincible and superior people. Jews, and only Jews, are welcome to join the unique assembly. After receiving a driver’s license, each new Israeli receives another license, a license to steal, kill, and plunder ─ whatever property a Palestinian owns is rightfully Israeli. Jews should recognize that their life in Israel depends upon the deaths of Palestinians. These Jews can find life without initiating deaths. These Jews should get out of Israel.

Part 1 of this two-part article delineated the reason Jews allied with a militarist, nationalist, xenophobic, racist, and apartheid nation ─ conditioning. The principle elements of the conditioning, repeatedly drilled into every Jewish person — Jews are a nation, they have a shared ancient history that claims biblical lands, they are subjected to harassment by an anti-Semitic world, and they are only safe in their own nation —were shown to be fabricated, hysterical, and not historical. No deep intellectual awareness is needed to prove the fallacies and historical nonsense perpetrated by the Zionists. Only those who are disoriented or gain something from subscribing to the distortions adhere to the Zionist philosophy. But many do, and not only Jews and the captured and raptured evangelists; government officials and every day streaming TV watchers eagerly swoon at the mention of Israel, as if their lives depended upon Israel’s success.

In dealing with Israel’s brutal invasion of Gaza, Joseph Biden, president of the United States of America (US), behaves as if the US is a partner in the invasion, coordinating its activities with those of Israel and obligingly supplying Israel with the necessities for accomplishing the horrifying task. Why is the US involved in Israel’s genocidal tactics? Of what benefit to the US people is aiding Israel in its destructive actions? Why did Joe Biden, the US president, read from script, and say that the October 7, 2023 attack “was the worst atrocity committed against the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust?”

The attack was only against Israelis, those who Hamas accuses of oppressing the Palestinians. It did not differentiate between Jews and others; Bedouins, Arabs, and many foreign workers were killed. Hearing Biden’s words showed the conditioned manner in which even the president of one of the world’s most significant nations follows the Zionist supremacist position, ignoring the deaths of others than Jews, making believe that this is one of continuous atrocities against Jews, and relating it to the Holocaust ─ when you can, mention the World War II Holocaust.

Texas Senator, Ted Cruz, is another Israel admirer, who goes ballistic, shouting and screaming at anyone who offends his beloved Israel. Why does a Texan, immersed in border politics, in immigration, and relations with the Mexican community get overly excited with a foreign nation that has no attachment to his duties for his constituents? Why do Americans care about Israel more than Armenia?

Does the Mossad have derogatory information on US representatives that sways congressional commitments to the American people and has them favor Israel? Could be. If so, then another good reason for Israeli Jews to leave the Levant and make Israel a democratic nation like other democratic nations. A nation built on White nationalism is not acceptable anywhere. Why is it acceptable in Israel?

Look at in another way. Many nations have committed atrocities against people in their midst but no citizens of these nations have seen the atrocities up close. Great Britain, in its days of glorious imperialism, ravaged the world, but the British, on their isolated island, did not observe the deadly occurrences. The Germans had their abhorrent ways but not at home, during a war that fogged the killings, and not yet in the era of the ubiquitous internet. Americans are aware of misbehavior of their armed forces, but the happenings are so far away they cannot emotionally connect with the oppressed. No Israeli is more than 20 miles from the repression, whether in Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza. They see it day after day after day. Maybe, they become inured to the oppression or just accept it as someone else’s problem. In either case, humanity has been lost, and when the environment degrades humanity and the environment cannot be changed, it’s time to leave the environment and regain humanity.

The inhumanity expressed by Israelis, who adore victimhood and challenging inhumane activities by others, is not a one-time thing of a small collection of the society, it is a continuous operation by almost  every functioning and living person in the Israel community. I knew a Jewish refugee who had a home he left in a town in the Czech Republic, east of Brno. I visited the town and saw the home standing vacant at the corner of the Main Square, still empty and, at that time, legally owned by the heirs who were involved in litigation with the authorities concerning unpaid taxes. During the 1948-1949 war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from their homes and sought safety in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank. Some walked back after one week to find new locks on the doors and Iraqi and other Jews occupying their homes. Nobody let them in; none of the recent arrivals returned a stolen home to the legal towner. Two of thousands of heartbreaking stories.

Twenty years since I had seen Northern Galilee, I was finally given a permit by the Israeli military authorities to visit. I decided to take two of my daughters with me. It took less than three hours to reach Safed, renamed Tsvat by Israel after 1948. The van stopped in front of the white stone home that held childhood memories. I proceeded to the familiar metal door, where I knocked. A large eastern European woman opened the door. We argued. I returned to the van, my hardened face wet with tears. “She wouldn’t let me in! She still has the same curtains I made with my mother.”

We proceeded in silence, as I wept discretely, to lunch at a hotel on Lake Tiberias, where my youngest child grew hyper. Instead of imposing my usual military-style discipline on the child, I encouraged her “splatter water,” “make more noise” – a shock to the rest of the family. The Israeli waiter hurriedly came to the table demanding, in Hebrew, they stop the raucous behavior. It was then that my defiance exploded into cursing the waiter in Arabic. “We can do whatever we please! This is my father’s hotel!” Until that moment, my children had been sheltered from knowing anything about my dear loss.
Rasmiya Barghout

We finally settled in Ramle, in a big stone house that had belonged to an Arab family…In the back of the house was a lemon tree, which almost collapsed each year under its fruit… One morning, right after the Six-Day War, an Arab man turned up at the front door. He said: ‘My name is Bashir el-Kheiri. This house belonged to my family.’

One day – I shall never forget it – Bashir’s brother came to Ramle with his father. The old man was blind. After entering the gate, he caressed the rugged stones of the house. Then he asked if the lemon tree was still there. He was led to the backyard. When he put his hands on the trunk of the tree he had planted, he did not utter a word. Tears rolled down his cheeks. My father then gave him a lemon. He was clutching it in his hands when he left. Bashir’s mother told me, years later, that when her husband couldn’t sleep, he used to pace up and down their apartment holding in his hand an old, shriveled lemon.
— Dalia Landau, The Lemon Tree

A controlled media daily demonstrates the twists and callous insensitivity and inattention to the tragedies and rights of others and gives aggravated consideration to tragedies inflicted upon Jews.

Grayson Beare, son of Julian Beare, chairperson of the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation, stabbed Halima Hoosen-Preston, her husband Shaun Preston, and her son in their Durban, South African home. The mother died and the others are fighting for their lives. Grayson Beare has been charged with murder and attempted murder.

The Mail & Guardian, a South African weekly newspaper and website, headlined the attack as “Estranged son of SA Holocaust and Genocide Foundation chairperson in court for alleged Islamophobic murder.”

…the assault allegedly occurred after an altercation Beare had with Hoosen-Preston during which she laughed upon hearing that his cousins had been killed in Israel. He said this in a video that went viral on social media, in which he identified himself as a former Zionist who has rejected the Jewish religion. The Beare family has distanced itself from Grayson, who has previously been treated for psychological problems and substance abuse, saying they stand with Hoosen-Preston’s family.

I cannot find any coverage of this horrendous incident of Islamophobia in the American media, which usually reports significant happenings in South Africa. If anyone knows of a report, please let me know. Another bother — what is the purpose of these Holocaust and Genocide Foundations and Museums (There are three in South Africa.) if they have not prevented genocide, have the parties in the foundations attached to those committing genocide, have not rallied the world against other genocides, and have the son of the Holocaust and Genocide Foundations chairperson, who has been raised in the Holocaust and Genocide Foundation environment, apparently not learning about genocide, and involved in a violent racial act?

A shocking rape of a young girl in Paris, France, and the use of the victim’s tragedy to highlight an alleged and unproven anti-Semitic act shows the discrepancy in American media reporting. The Washington Post headline read: “Reported rape of Jewish girl linked to rising antisemitism in France.”

The reported rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in a suburb of Paris has brought protesters into the streets and drawn condemnations from top politicians, who have linked the episode to rampant antisemitism. French authorities indicted two 13-year-old boys on charges of aggravated rape, making religious insults and death threats, and recording or sharing images of a sexual nature, among other crimes, prosecutors said in a Wednesday statement. A third boy, age 12, was charged with being an assisting witness to a rape, as well for making religious insults and death threats. According to the media, the girl’s ex-boyfriend was angry that the victim had not told him she was Jewish.

This gruesome act in a foreign nation received front-page attention from most American media while no American media reported the South African murder. The latter murder was due to hatred of Muslims while the former violation has a loose and unverified attachment to hatred of Jews.

No charge of anti-Semitism has been made by the victim or her family, and are only being made by the media, using a prosecutor statement of “religious insults” by juveniles as defining an anti-Semitic act. The Washington Post report completely ignores a description of the victim and her mental and physical state, identifying her only as a “Jewish girl,” and concentrates on the perpetration of an unproven and subordinate anti-Semitism. The perverted use of this vicious attack, which ignores the damage to the young girl and serves the anti-Semitic industry, whose purpose is to gain sympathy for the Zionist Jews, is an obscenity, as low as a human being can become.

As long as Israeli Jews control Palestinian life, there will be no meaningful life for anyone in the Middle East. They should either relinquish control or leave. Because the Israeli Jews cannot find existence without controlling the Palestinians, they must leave. What point is there in having endless strife that punishes everyone when all can live in peace and harmony by simply doing what is correct ─ Israeli Jews allowing Palestinians to live in peace and harmony by leaving Israel and finding peace and harmony with millions of other Jews in the Western world? With this remark, we can discern the reason for the contrived and false charges of anti-Semitism, which are mainly anti-Zionist demonstrations. The Zionists want everyone to believe that the Western world is a conspiracy of anti-Semites. They proclaim that only Israel, where Jews from one ethnicity despise Jews from other ethnicities, where all Jews are threatened daily, and where Jewish behavior manufactures antipathy toward Jews is the safest place for Jews to live.

Dual citizenship is a major stumbling block for Jews to permanently leave Israel. By allowing dual citizenship in Western nations, Israeli Jews maintain Israel citizenship and live in foreign nations. Through a network of contacts, Israelis gain employment and enjoy the more highly developed and interesting social and cultural life Europe and America. They reside in the West and have first allegiance to Israel, many serving in the Israel armed forces, few, if any, in their primary country. Their feet and body are in the West, their mind is in Israel. Although I have no documented proof, I suspect that many serve Israel as foreign agents.

Contemporary statistics on dual US/Israeli citizenship are not readily apparent. Some clues:

Israeli government ministries and the Los Angeles-based Israeli American Council, which represents Israelis nationwide, estimate  between 500,000 and 800,000 Israelis lived in the United States in the year 2014. Since 1948, 112,000 US-born citizens have arrived in Israel and by 2021, 50,000 – 300,000 Israelis held dual citizenship with the US.

From 2009 to 2023 the United States’ population grew from 308.5M to 340M or 10.2%. Jewish population grew from 6.5M to 7.5M or 15.3%. The 50 percent faster growth rate of the Jewish population indicates an influx of Jews into the American mainland from the only ports these immigrants could have departed, those in Israel.

As long as these Israelis benefit from retaining their Israeli citizenship — vote in Israeli elections, gain protection from foreign legal action by returning to Israel, and add to Israeli population statistics, they will retain the Israel passport and Israel citizenship. Denying dual citizenship and penalizing those who surreptitiously practice dual citizenship (Israel will still allow the dual citizenship) is a top priority for inviting Israeli Jews to permanently leave Israel.

Much is written about the Middle East crisis, its past, its present, its future. The falsifications, obfuscations, miscalculations, misinterpretations, and calculations are difficult to answer and the reality difficult to present. Two renditions give a clue to the verisimilitude.

The Zionist portray themselves as turning a destitute and neglected area into a thriving and productive region. Survey the differences in countries between the year 1900 and year 2024 and you find almost all the world has changed in the same manner. No miracle by Zionism. Go to Chile and other places where Palestinians have settled and see what Palestinians have done and how they have achieved the highest education in the world. The Zionists have turned a peaceful area into a battleground. Protecting Palestine against the arbitrary intrusions by the Zionists should be high on the agenda of the world’s governments.

“For us, it’s a ‘never again’ war,” said Avner Golov, the vice president of research and alliances at the Tel Aviv-based think tank MIND Israel. “My generation now faces a question that I never thought I [would] face, and this is whether a Jewish state can exist in the hostile Middle East,” he added. “We need to make sure the answer is yes.”

After 75 years of establishment of the Zionist state, we still hear “war, war, war,” and never learn why it is necessary to have a Jewish state in the Middle East. Oh, yes, there are people in the Western nations who do not like Jews (the wealthiest community), Catholics (plenty), Asians, Mormons, Evangelists (plenty), Hispanics, Muslims (plenty), and almost everyone who walks.

So, we have yesterday repeated today and ready to repeat tomorrow, Israel is ready for ‘all-out war’ in Lebanon. The Israeli military says its Northern Command has approved operational plans for war with Lebanon.

Zionism, let our people go.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The fuss that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken manufactured over their Israel inspired ceasefire plan is pathetic. Claiming Hamas is “proposing changes that are not workable.” without specifying the proposed changes (are there changes?), is not informing anybody. Apparently, Blinken’s subservient role in this sleight of hand act is to make believe a truce is pursued, and then charge Hamas with deception for not agreeing with an impossible plan. His tone and posturing indicate more performance than honest diplomacy.

Israel, and not Hamas, controls the hostilities, and, for that reason, no plan will work. Israel will continue encroaching on the Palestinians, which will eventually provoke Hamas to respond. Biden’s plan is a trap, placing Hamas in a “no win” situation. The US president should propose a cease to all aggression against the Palestinians and oppression of the Palestinians. Without a complete halt to both, no truce is guaranteed.

With no truce plan operable, the future for the Palestinians is not hopeful. All proposals for self-governing ─ two states ─  or mutual governing — one-state, Federated states, bi-national state — are not acceptable to the single-minded, racist, supremacist, and apartheid Zionist regime. To prevent the genocide, one measure can be effective — Israeli Jews vote with their feet and leave Israel for other nations in much greater numbers than the Palestinians increase their tally in the stolen lands. With a great number of Jews gone, the Zionist government will have difficulties to govern for the benefit of Jews alone and have problems maintaining the territories for Jews alone. Hallelujah!

When Zionism reared its ugly head, Jews were no longer seeking liberation, they were enjoying liberation, finding acceptance and expression throughout Western Europe. Although not completely integrated in the societies where they lived and still facing some headwinds, almost all Jews rejected Zionism. After World War II, Jews became completely integrated in Western nations that gave them the highest standard of living, an advanced education, security, equal opportunity, and prominence in all activities. After meeting Godot and finding Nirvana, most Jews have become Zionists, either willing to leave the nations that gave them succulence or swear allegiance to a Zionist country. Is that sensible?

Conditioning

There is only one reason for Jews to ally themselves with a militarist, nationalist, xenophobic, racist, and apartheid nation ─ conditioning. The principle elements of the conditioning, repeatedly drilled into every Jewish person, are that Jews are a nation, they have a shared ancient history that claims biblical lands, they are subjected to harassment by an anti-Semitic world, and they are only safe in their own nation. All of this is hysterical and none of this is historical

Getting Israelis to move away from a land they believe God gave them seems absurd. No, absurd is that anyone lives in the God forsaken land.  I have only been to Israel on three occasions, once staying for three weeks in Jerusalem. Although observations are personal and go back 14 years, they still revealed the mindset of Israelis who inhabit a land that has been developed from subjugation of indigenous people. Growing up with the daily mischief, having a government that polishes the information and conditions its citizens, and not having any comparison, Yossi Israeli does not realize that he/she has been fed a distorted history, lives in nowheresville, and is going nowhere.

Jews are not a nation

The Jews that emerged from the Hebrews migrated to different nations, eventually spoke different languages, acquired different customs, formed different institutions, and no longer shared a common history. Unchained from the continual strife in a non-productive region, they spread throughout the world, loosely bound together by a common religion, shared myths, and shared values.

Two persons make a people, but a people don’t make a nation. A nation refers to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and history. If it were otherwise, why has Israel given its Jews the scaffolding of a new nation by giving them a common language, culture, descent, and history, which reject how they previously lived? The Mizrahi who came to Israel were Arabs; the Ashkenazi were Western; the Falasha were Ethiopians; and the Yemenites were from the Arabian Peninsula. Israel replaced the differing languages, dialects, music, cultures, and heritage of the ethnicities with unique and uniform characteristics. Accompanying the destruction of each community was the destruction of centuries old Jewish history and life in Tunisia, Iraq, Libya, and Egypt. All these immigrants became a new Jew, an Israeli Jew, who had no proven aspects of the biblical Hebrews

Falsifying History

Israel has many interesting sites, mostly Crusader, Roman, Christian, Canaanite, and Arabic. Biblical sites, related to Hebrews and Jews, are few, insignificant, and dubiously presented.

• Masada is given a heroic representation as the place where Jewish rebels sustained a Roman onslaught and committed suicide. It is an interesting Roman fortress with two places built by Herod the Great where Roman forces decimated Jewish rebels. No rebels committed suicide.
• Some remains of Jewish dwellings, burial grounds, and ritual baths exist, but no Jewish monuments, buildings, or institutions from the Biblical era remain within the “Old City” of today’s Jerusalem.
• None of the tombs — Abraham, Joseph, David, Rachel, and Absalom — are verified burial places of these biblical figures.
• The City of David is a defensive network dating back to the Middle Bronze Age. No relation to the mythical King David has been determined.
• The Western Wall is a supporting wall of the platform built during Herod’s time. It became a place of prayer for Jews in the late 15th century, after Mameluke authorities permitted Jews a safe area for worship and morphed into “the most revered site in Judaism” during modern times, only because there is no other.
• Neither King David’s Tower nor King David’s Citadel relate to David or his time.
• Neither the Pools of Solomon nor the Stables of Solomon relate to the time or life of King Solomon.
• None of the major museums in Jerusalem and throughout the world exhibit an ancient Hebrew civilization. Mention is made in history of Hebrew tribes and short periods of governing small areas of the Levant, but no ancient Jewish civilization that had  lasting effect on history and whose people have a totally direct relation with all scattered contemporary Jews has been uncovered.

Delusion

Contemporary Jews have been deluded. Ancient Israel was home to ancient Jews. The area that is now Israel was not the ancient home of modern Jews. When ethnicities speak of an ancient home, they speak, such as from the voices of Native Americans, of caring for the land and hunting grounds, for attachment to a soil that nourished them, and with intimate knowledge of ancestors. They may look back at a recognized civilization that gave the world advances in technology, culture, warfare, administration, or other disciplines and left identifiable physical traces that excite mankind. Modern Jews have no attachment to a soil, no memories of an advanced civilization, no honest attraction to an ancient land, and do not have knowledge of ancestors. The Palestinians have 100 percent “skin in the game;” they cherish every olive tree their ancestors planted centuries ago, every orange tree that gives aroma to their surroundings, and all the ground eggplant for the baba ghanoush they eat.

Zionist irredentism is concerned with the folk; it does not express concern for the land. Keeping biblical names as a subterfuge, Israel turned the land under the biblical names into an extension of northern Europe. In “beloved” Judah and Samaria, imported pine trees dot the landscape, hundreds of year-old olive groves lay torched, dormitory towns replace the green hilltops, and super highways pave over the quaint roads. In Israel, forests hide dynamited picturesque villages. Jerusalem, with its train, mall, contrived City of David, proposed cable car, and falsified tourist attractions has become a theme park.

Tension and apartheid everywhere

What person wants to continue a criminal past with a stained present? The parents of the present generation of Israeli Jews did not make amends for the injustices done to the Palestinians and continued the oppression. The present generation repeats the sordid activities of their parents. The continuing lives of Israelis is characterized by continuing the oppression. is that a meaningful life?

Nazareth’s large Muslim population did not please Jews, and, in 1957, they left, claiming they did not want to live under a communist mayor. The government illegally appropriated land from Nazareth and founded Nazareth Illit, a settlement within the great settlement. Historian Geremy Forman, Military Rule, Political Manipulation, and Jewish Settlement: Israeli Mechanisms for Controlling Nazareth in the 1950s, Journal of Israeli History, (2006) 335-359, states, “the town would safeguard the Jewish character of the Galilee as a whole, and… demonstrate state sovereignty to the Arab population more than any other settlement operation.” Forman wrote that Nazareth Illit was meant to “overpower Nazareth numerically, economically, and politically.”

Akka (Acre) is a world heritage site, whose old city is entirely Arabic. Jewish and Arab populations only meet at a junction. When I visited, the Souk was destroyed, with mud and water as surface material. Houses on the ancient streets needed repair. Israel supplies scarce funds to rehabilitate the Arab heritage of one of the jewels of the Mediterranean and pours funds into its Crusader attractions and constructing housing for obedient Jews to continually encroach on the Palestinian population and coerce them into selling their properties. Tensions have erupted into conflicts several times and, in 2022, the mayor declared, “The State of Israel is on the brink of civil war between Jews and Arabs.” The Jerusalem Post reported, “A series of Arab riots left city icons smashed and burned. Lynches sent Jewish residents to hospitals.”

Haifa’s 2022 population of 290,306 has Israeli Arabs constituting 10% of its population. They live in communities separated from Jews. What happened to the previous large Arab population of about 65,000 in 1947? Contradictory explanations of the battle for Haifa and the exodus of its Arab inhabitants have been made. No contradiction in knowing who left and was never permitted back.

Rashid al-Haj Ibrahim, an economist and nationalist, who, for a while, supervised the defense of Haifa, provided an eyewitness account of the flight of Haifa’s Arab residents.

Thousands of women, children and men hurried to the port district in a state of chaos and terror without precedent in the history of the Arab nation. They fled their houses to the coast, barefoot and naked, to wait for their turn to travel to Lebanon. They left their homeland, their houses, their possessions, their money, their welfare, and their trades, to surrender their dignity and their souls. According to The Economist, only 5,000–6,000 of the city’s 62,000 Arabs remained there by 2 October 1948.

Tel Aviv-Jaffa is another city where both Jewish and a diminishing Arab population exist and do not mix. Similar to Acre, Israel supplies scarce funds to maintain the ancient character and heritage of Arab Jaffa, another jewel of the Mediterranean, and pours funds into changing its character, diminishing remains of its Arab heritage, and constructing housing for Jews who obediently encroach on the Palestinian population and harass them into selling their properties.

Statistics from 1945 listed Jaffa having a population of 94,280, of whom 66,280 were Arabs and 28,000 were Jews. In 2021, Jaffa had 52,470 residents, about a third (17,000) of whom were Arabs. Abu Lyad, My Home, My Land a narrative of the Palestinian struggle describes the 1948 displacement of the Arab population.

May 13, 1948, is a day that will remain forever engraved in my memory. Less than twenty four hours before the proclamation of the Israeli state, my family fled Jaffa for refuge in Gaza. We had been under siege: the Zionist forces controlled all the roads leading south, and the only escape left open to us was the sea. It was under a hail of shells fired from Jewish artillery set up in neighboring settlements, especially Tel Aviv, that I clambered onto a makeshift boat with my parents, my four brothers and sisters and relatives.

Ashkelon, 20 kilometers north of the Gaza border, presents a picturesque setting along the Mediterranean coast. Sparkling white beaches matched by white-faced apartment buildings, green lawns and several wide boulevards depict a tranquil and content city. The modern city with the biblical name, is not peaceful. Rockets from Gaza have struck the city on several occasions. By arguments of war, the damage has not been extensive, but no damage can be ignored; there have been fatalities and wounded to the residents, who are Russian immigrants and descendants of those who seized Palestinian properties in the nearby villages.

Al-Majdal and its citizens suffered the fate of many Palestinian villages that hoped to escape the hostilities, but became engulfed in the 1948-1949 war in the Levant. With war raging in their midst, the citizens of Al-Majdal retreated 15 kilometers to a haven in Gaza. On November 4, 1948, Israeli forces captured the village. In August 1950, by a combination of inducements and threats, Al-Majdal’s 1000-2000 remaining inhabitants were expelled and trucked to Gaza. According to Eyal Kafkafi (1998), Segregation or integration of the Israeli Arabs – two concepts in Mapai, International Journal of Middle East Studie, 347-367, as reported in Wikipedia, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan promoted the expulsion, while Pinhas Lavon, secretary-general of the Histadrut, “wished to turn the town into a productive example of equal opportunity for the Arabs.” Despite a ruling by the Egyptian-Israel Mixed Armistice Commission that the Arabs transferred from Majdal should be returned to Israel, this never happened. In 2007, when I visited, I was told that only two Arab families remained in Ashkelon.

Journalist, Ramzy Baroud, reported his father’s memories in My Father was a Freedom Fighter.

My brothers and my comrades, we are all joined by a common sorrow and fate. We all fondly remember the rolling hills and valleys of our homeland, its villages, towns, its farms, and its humble yet dignified way of life. We long for the days of quiet and peaceful coexistence that Palestine offered, and we grieve the loss of life, the assault on our dignity, the destruction of our schools, mosques, homes in hundreds of villages that are now a fleeting memory. Our struggle has been an honorable and worthy cause, and it is by far more precious than trivial salaries and extraneous police uniforms the invader offers. I would rather starve, along with my family, a free man, than to live rich in slavery with badges of dishonor.

Gaza border towns Kfar Aza, Be’eri, and Nahal Oz have been sites for consistent rocket and mortar fire from Gaza. All three communities suffered extensive casualties from the October 7, 2023 attack. With nothing special to induce people to live in the area, why do Israelis choose a place where a “safe room” is necessary in the home, life can be deadly, and Gazans see Israelis living comfortably on the property stolen from them? Answer: These Israelis are the first line of defense against Hamas militants crossing the border and a place to disturb Gazans by having them see Israelis living comfortably on the property stolen from them.

Kibbutz Nahal Oz, was founded on October 1, 1955 and built on orchards stolen from the residents of the Palestinian village of Ma’in Abu Sitta.  Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, author of Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir, was 10 years old when, on May 14, 1948, he and his family living on their land in “Ma’in Abu Sitta,” were attacked by a Haganah force of 24 armored vehicles. “The force destroyed and burnt everything. The soldiers demolished the school that my father built in 1920; they stole the motor and equipment in the flour mill and well pump; they killed anyone in sight.”

Hebron is infamous for the massacre of a large gathering of Palestinian Muslims praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque. On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli physician and extremist of the far-right ultra-Zionist Kach movement, opened fire with an assault rifle and murdered 29 Muslim worshippers. When the Israeli military attempted to evict settlers from Hebron’s cherished “old city,” the setters broke windows and ruined Palestinian shops in the now empty “Old Town” area. They also broke the walls and locks of the Palestinian homes, then stood watch to harass any Palestinian who returns, and still try to prevent Palestinian children from attending a school in the area. To enforce the settler presence, Israeli security checkpoints have been installed at all former entrances to the market.

The West Bank, as of January 2023, hosts 144 settlements, including 12 in East Jerusalem. In addition to the settlement, there are more than 100 outposts, which are unauthorized settlements. About 450,000 Israeli settlers reside in the West Bank and 220,000 reside in East Jerusalem. One third of the settlers “see their presence as a means of ensuring permanent Jewish control over the area, which they call by the biblical names ‘Judea and Samaria.’ These settlers believe that by living in the West Bank “they are serving God’s will and helping to bring about the long-awaited coming of the Messiah.” Two thirds of the settlers claim they live in the West Bank to increase their quality of life. This does not sound reasonable.

The settlements are relatively small towns that are isolated from one another and rely on cities in Israel for employment and many services. On average, 60% of the employed population in a settlement is employed in Israel and the number of settlers employed in local agriculture and industry in the West Bank is very low.  Special benefits is the more likely reason. The Israel Policy Forum reports.

In 2014, the average per capita aid from the Israeli government to local authorities in the Judea and Samaria region was NIS 3,762, compared to NIS 2,282 within Israel. Local authorities east of the security barrier received NIS 5,950 per capita on average. In 2017, settlers received on average NIS 1,922 in grants and tax benefits, NIS 1,416 more than the national average.

The precarity of the settlement enterprise is obscured by the government largesse that keeps it afloat. Should Jerusalem choose to end this support, local governments and residents would find themselves in a dire financial position.

The settlers are not bettering their lives. They are in the West Bank so Israel can carve it up and prevent establishment of a viable Palestinian state, to worsen Palestinian lives, and prevent the Palestinians from having ontological security ─   a stable mental state derived from a sense of continuity in regard to the events in one’s life. The settlers are living an unsettled and cruel life.

The Specter of anti-Semitism

The major ingredient of the conditioning mix is to keep the Jewish people aware that anti-Semitism is in their breakfast food and anti-Semites are lurking everywhere, ready to pounce upon the Jewish populations and bring them another holocaust. Nonsense. I have never known any anti-Semitism in my life and have never seen it affect others

Sure, there are people who dislike Jews, just as people dislike, Sikhs, Orientals, Italians, Hispanics, rich people, poor people, Catholics, African-Americans, and even Eskimos, and, at times, exhibit virulent hatred of a particular ethnicity. Nothing unusual in a world of 7.5 billion people. Because Israel claims it is a Jewish state, which already arouses antipathy from humanity and many Jews align with an Israel that is accused of committing genocide, it is natural that a part of the world’s population will attack Jews. Should those enabling genocide be lightly treated? The pro-Israel faction reply to the challenge is not “we will stop the genocide.” They use the attacks to benefit their ugly work by labelling them anti-Semitic.

A “Nova survivor” ─ a new and calculated term, similar to Holocaust survivor, which will enter the lexicon for posterity and forever remind the world that only what happens to Jewish people matters  ─ arrived in new York as a part of an exhibition commemorating the victims of the Nova festival during the October 7 attack. What point is there in exhibiting and commemorating tragedies that cannot be undone and why in America? What do Americans have to do with the attack? Protestors came and protested this disgusting use of the violated to violate the American conscience and stir it to aid and abet the genocide.

Eilat Tibi, the “Nova survivor” showed how conditioned Israelis seek to label a protest against Israel as anti-Semitic. She said:

The other thing that’s surprised me the most is the antisemitism. As a Jew who lives in Israel, I had never felt it before. Coming to the States made me realize that Jews in the diaspora live with it all the time — sometimes it’s more intense, other times less.

Ms. Tibi is in the United States for a few days and knows the American pulse. She has lived in Israel for a lifetime and doesn’t know that if you want to find hatred of Jews – go to Israel, where the secular Jews despise the Orthodox Jews, the European Ashkenazi Jews are contemptuous of the Arab Mizrahim Jews and all discriminate against the Ethiopian Falasha Jews. From UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

TEL AVIV, 9 February 2012 (IRIN) – Growing up in Israel, Shay Sium became accustomed to being called a “nigger”. Sium, 32, has lived in Israel most of his life, but says he and other Ethiopian Jews are treated differently from other Israelis: factories do not want to employ them; landlords refuse them; and certain schools turn away their children. “The word discrimination doesn’t describe what we experience. There is another word for it: racism. It is a shame that we still have to use this word today,” he told IRIN.

Conclusion

Israeli Jews can live most anywhere and have an enjoyable life. Instead, they choose to live in a racist, virulent nationalist, and militarist state that practices apartheid and engage in the genocide of the Palestinian people. They choose to be a party to the genocide, to suffer, generation after generation, the agonies and threats that go with being an aggressor, living a life of lies and desperation. Their nation without borders is a mirror image of the Nazi Germany state that also had sketchy borders. They do not see themselves in the mirror. If they saw themselves in the mirror, would they want to stay in a genocidal state?

Zionism, let our people go.

Part two will examine more of the conditioning process and propose a method to rescue Jews from the Zionist grip.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Originally perceived as a tragic mistake that might prove costly to Gaza’s existence, Hamas’ attack revealed the calculated and brutal manner in which Israel uses injury to its citizens as an excuse to destroy Palestinian life in the occupied territories. Netanyahu’s genocidal response to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack has shocked the world. This revelation signals a turning point in the battle to save the Palestinians from Israel’s destructive tactics; international forces are emerging from the shadows and are willing to engage Israel’s vociferous warriors

Israel’s propaganda machinery used its access to Western media and convinced the world its military is fighting an entrenched terrorist force that it must destroy before that force destroys Israel and world Jewry. Whoever thinks otherwise is an anti-Semite, so don’t bother thinking about it. Those wanting veracity and justice seek to provide the public with a valid perspective of the happenings in Gaza and enable an intelligent and rational solution to a situation that is causing death and destruction. The contradictions and obvious mendacities exhibited by Israel’s legions go unnoticed by conventional media and  government officials. The public clamors for truths that converge to peace. Finally, paths for reaching the public are now available.

Start with Hamas

Hamas firmly established itself in 1987, with an association to  Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 38 years after a newly formed Israeli military seized territory awarded to the Palestinians in the Partition Plan 181, 37 years after Prime Minister David Ben Gurion approved the theft of lands from families that Hamas represents, and 36 years after the Israel government terrorized Palestinians to leave their ancestral homes. Israel’s military loaded Palestinians into trucks and transported them to Gaza with insufficient food, water, and shelter and ethnically cleansed the southwest zone of the British Mandate of Palestinians who just wanted to till their lands and showed no resistance to the Zionist intrusion. Hamas established itself long after the Zionists started the destruction of the Palestinians.

The nightmares for the residents from the ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages of  Al-Majdahl, Beit Daras, Falujah, Isdud, Qastina, Hamameh, and other villages did not end with their arduous trips to Gaza; ethnic cleansing was an initial step before wholesale theft of property and valuables. Two hundred thousand Palestinians were pushed into Gaza to live in tents, sleep on bare ground, and exist from aid by Quaker organizations and wages from subservient labor. Internment in refugee camps, brutal occupation, military raids, destruction of facilities, destruction of crops and arable lands, prevention of fishing rights, denial of livelihood, and denial of access to the outside world continued to punish the Gazans without an end.

After the 1993-1995 Oslo accords, Israel constructed a 60-kilometer fence around the Gaza Strip and destroyed Gaza’s only airport. Removing illegal Israeli settlers from Gaza, who were mainly there to give Israel an excuse for its military presence, did not stop infiltration by Israeli forces into Gaza. Several wars caused thousands of Palestinian casualties and immense infrastructure destruction. The lives of the displaced Palestinians and their descendants evolved from being wards of the United Nations to virtual imprisonment in an overly crowded environment.

By responding to 38 decades of terrorism committed against the people they represent, Hamas cannot be considered a terrorist organization. They may have, on occasions, used terrorist methods, which is the primary method they have, but fighting a terrorist nation by existing means is resistance to terrorism and not terrorism. Israel is a democratic nation, whose population determines the nation’s leaders and activities; those citizens are involved in the terrorism and, by not changing their nation’s terrorist activities, they are open to aggressive actions toward them. The descendants of the European Jews, who forced the antecedents of the present-day Gazans out of the land they now occupy, should recognize their obligation to those who live only a few kilometers away and whose oppression they can observe; the Gazan s also observe and are taunted by the prosperity they see from those who reside in their stolen lands, chase through their cherished fields and deny them the right to a peaceful and decent existence.

Hamas has not harmed anyone outside of Israel and there is no reason for the United States and the European Union (EU) to label Hamas as a terrorist organization. Israel’s Mossad has murdered and injured scores of innocent people globally and is not labelled a terrorist organization. Don’t these anomalies need correction?

The October 7 attack was a coda to the counter terrorism that the militant Gaza organization has waged against Israel. It was unusually vicious and may have included atrocities that deserve condemnation. Not resolved is the identification of the culprits in the atrocities; were they operating in accord with Hamas orders or were they isolated individuals expressing rage and taking revenge for the atrocities committed upon their families? Because Israel insists the atrocities were a Hamas directive, the question will never be investigated or answered. If that is the case, then Hamas receives the benefit of doubt─ it would be insensible of Hamas to urge actions that drive world opinion from its support.

Israel’s worldwide propaganda machine (Hasbara) previously instructed Western media to precede Hamas with the word terrorist, as if the two words were one word. The Pavlovian response to the characterization assured that upon hearing the word Hamas the adjective terrorist flowed to the brain. The terrorism that Israel and its Mossad have inflicted upon the Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Iranian people, as well as hundreds of innocents from several nations throughout the world, is never discussed.

If Hamas did not exist, Israel would find another organization to provoke, accuse of terrorism, and be pressed to liquidate in an uncontrollable war that the state of Israel claims was forced upon it.

The brutal war against the Palestinians

Israel’s excuses for waging war in Gaza fail from day one. If Israel wants to eliminate militant Hamas then it only needs to stop oppressing the Palestinians. No oppression, no provocations, and no Hamas reaction. In 2008, the Palestinian militant group floated an offer — if Israel withdrew from the lands it seized in the 1967 Mideast war and remained behind the green line, Hamas would agree to a 10-year truce. Israel did not accept the offer, showed it wanted it all Palestinian land, and then accused Hamas of terrorism for defending the Palestinians against Israel’s aggression.

Reinforcing the Israel border and containing Hamas behind the border is not difficult and would have resolved one issue. Negotiating release of the captives was only a matter of numbers in a quid pro quo deal that may have irritated Israel’s leaders but would have satisfied Israel’s anguished population. That leaves combatting the mortars and rockets that cause havoc to Israel. That problem could be resolved if the larger problem of oppression was resolved.

Exact statistics on Israeli casualties due to rockets fired from Gaza in the last 10 years, after barrages became heavy, are difficult to confirm. Research and estimation have about 25 Israelis killed from rocket fire, an average of 2.5/year. As of June 10, about 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the invasion and 50 hostages have died in captivity. Israel has traded an average of 2.5 deaths/year during the next 140 years for 350 immediate deaths to its citizens and total destruction of Gaza for assuring that there is no Hamas to launch rockets. Why does Israel prefer to have its military youth immediately killed and all hostages severely endangered when another plan is less deadly to the Israel population? Does that sound plausible? Netanyahu says the only way to save the hostages is by the invasion, which contradicts the assertion that ferocious Hamas will kill the hostages. Does that sound plausible?

Reasons for other Israeli military actions have been implausible.

Israel destroyed a World Central Kitchen  (WCK) convoy and killed seven aid workers. The IDF’s investigation concluded “that the army unit involved had believed the vehicles they were tracking from the sky had been taken over by Hamas gunmen, and that they were not aware of the coordination procedures put in place between the military and World Central Kitchen for that evening. After the aid convoy reached its warehouse destination, a car carrying what the IDF said were gunmen headed north, while the WCK aid workers began driving south in vehicles marked with the charity’s logo.”

The entire evidence presented by the Israeli military for believing Hamas fighters drove the trucks was seeing a bag that the military mistook for a gun. Other than the bag, the Israel investigation admitted the military did not have confirmation of any gunmen in any of the cars. One way of confirming — have troops establish a blockade on the road and then broadcast for the car occupants to leave the cars. That would have peacefully resolved the issue. Why wasn’t that done?

Conclusion: The World Central Kitchen convoy was deliberately targeted by Israeli military to intimidate food aid suppliers and have Israel obtain more control of food deliveries.

• Israel attacked a U.N. school in central Gaza and reportedly killed at least 33 persons, including 12 women and children. Reason — Hamas militants were believed to be operating from within the school. Next day, the Israelis bombed another United Nations-run school in northern Gaza, and three people were killed. Reason — belief of a Hamas position inside the school.

  Why hasn’t Israel occupied the institutions — schools, hospitals, community centers, mosques  — to ensure Hamas militants would not be able to use them and innocent civilians could? Just pull up in armored vehicles to the institutions, broadcast for all occupants to temporarily leave, carefully enter and occupy the institutions. If there are Hamas militants, they will either flee into tunnels or be killed in the ensuing firefight. Preferable to know the institution constituency than kill innocent civilians because it is suspected that Hamas militants might reside on the premises.

• One notable feature of all the hostages that have been released and rescued is that, regardless of the sensational headlines, none of the hostages appear to have been mistreated and all have emerged in good condition. There are no reports that Hamas has assassinated any hostage. NBC news reported on the June 8 rescue that, “ In the wake of the rescues, the bloodied and burned bodies of Palestinian adults and children were scattered on the town’s streets. Video showed bodies piled up near the doorway of one home.”

  Operating in an environment of violent hostility, the June 8 rescue of four hostages had a greater probability that more hostages and rescuers would be killed than survived. Only one military personnel was killed and “Gaza’s Ministry of Health said 210 people were killed and another 400 were injured in the assault and rescue operation.” This occurred at the same time the US had prepared a proposal that would bring release of all hostages.

  Another exposure of the brutality of the Israel military. They could have waited for the outcome of the US proposal before engaging in a dangerous and bloody rescue operation. The 210 Palestinians killed and 400 wounded did not counter the Israelis; they were just arbitrarily killed. Compare that to what Hamas could have been doing and has not done. Hamas has not kept the hostages in the same areas as Hamas fighters, which would act as a deterrence for Israel to attack or subject the hostages to death.

The Turning Point

A turning point in the long straight road along which Israel has driven the Palestinians has been achieved. Where that road will lead is indeterminate and precarious — this road has Zionist land mines that disturb and block passage.

In the campus  protests, those who favored the Palestinian cause and were against the genocide greatly outnumbered the pro-Israelis who favored the genocide. Yet, the smaller number of the genocidal were able to stifle the protests and have a congressional committee label them as anti-Semitic. As usual, in American democracy the mass of people do not determine policy; it is the well-heeled and well-connected who determine the country’s direction.

The turning point is a difficult road, along which everyone must shout louder, act more forcibly, attract more audience, and beat the drum of insensitivity until an American President steps out of the White House, crosses Pennsylvania Avenue, and warmly embraces those who demonstrate for Palestinian freedom.  Am I too naive?

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

• Israel should allow Palestinians to create a legitimate political leadership — which can take charge in the West Bank and Gaza — and empower Palestinians who pursue their freedom in ethical ways.
• Israeli forces must withdraw all the way to the border of Gaza. As that campaign now continues, Israel, the United States and other allies in parallel must agree on the deployment of an international force drawn from NATO countries, with their deployment agreed on by Israel and the United States and operating under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council.
• The most promising course of action, and one that has not been widely discussed, is a temporary international trusteeship under a U.N. Security Council mandate.
• We envision a political framework of two states in a confederated association. The core concepts can be outlined as follows: two sovereign states, each with its own government but with joint mechanisms and institutions for critical shared concerns.
• The future of Gaza — like that of the West Bank — is for Palestinians to decide. That is the essence of self-determination. The international community must not continue to place Israel first, as has been done for decades. It cannot try to seek convenient leaders as partners or try to enter yet another long-term arrangement.

All of the proposals contain wish fulfillment and thoughts that find acceptance in much of the peace-loving world. Each contains doubts of being accepted.

(1)    There is no transition from a war in Gaza to a rehabilitation of Gaza. There never was a war in Gaza. Israel used the October 7 attack as an excuse to accelerate its ongoing destruction of the Palestinian community.

(2)    The killing machine that destroyed housing, government, agriculture, medical facilities, educational institutions, cultural institutions, food distribution, transportation, entire families, and left trauma in a majority of the population has been rightfully termed genocide. Will those carrying out genocide for 75 years suddenly halt the aggression and wish everyone well? Won’t the genocide continue?

(3)    The proposals are designed to separate the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not provide sufficient living space and resources for the Palestinians and do not prevent additional Israeli encroachment on Palestinian land.

(4)    Israel has never listened to suggestions from others and always done what it wants, no matter the crime and no matter the reactions from the United Nations, United States, and any government. Why generate proposals for a “post-war” Gaza? For whom?

(5)    The Israeli government may seem in disarray with conflicting “good guy” and “bad guy” approaches. Don’t be fooled; the Israeli government and its Jewish citizens agree on incorporating all of the West Bank and Gaza into the stolen land and cleansing the entire area of Palestinians, which includes genocide. They differ in how to accomplish their purposes and that discussion goes on behind the scenes. The contradictory public disclosures are only window dressing to give hope to the helpless.

(6) The same type of fraudulent “made for public” disputes between Israeli and US governments appear in the media. The US pretends to be able to keep Israel in check and Israel pretends to listen. If Israel agrees with a US suggestion, it is because Israel has a plan and they want to make it seem that the US offered it; making their “ally” look good.

An article started with, “What can we do for the Palestinians after the genocide is over?” Not wanting to embarrass a website, its name will not be disclosed. Do people expect Israel to stop its genocide of the Palestinians? This innocence recalls the innocents of those who believed in the 2-state solution and some still do. From the day a Zionist set foot on Ottoman Palestine and, as outlined in their proposal at the 1919 Paris peace conference, the Zionists claimed all of Palestine and other territory.

The Zionists show they will never stop adding more Palestinian lands to the already conquered and stolen lands and they test the atmosphere with murmurs of the word “annexation.” All of the two-state proposals have had confusions and contradictions that make acceptance by both sides to be impossible. What was the point of suggesting the trading of stolen land in Israel for allowing settlers to remain on stolen land in the West Bank? If Israel had available land for settlers, why send them to the West Bank and then give up land in Israel so the settlers could remain in the West Bank? Why didn’t they remain in Israel and settle there?

The principle reason the two-state solution never had legs is because no Israeli Prime Minister wanted to go down in history as being the leader who prevented the Zionists from achieving their agenda. Knowing that and realizing the two-state solution is dead, why are there proposals for federated states, one-state, and a confederation, all of which have less probability of being accepted by Israel than the separated two states, which had zero probability.

The reality is that the genocide persists and how to stop it is the primary issue. One scenario has Israel claiming rehabilitation of their damaged lands as first priority, for which they will assert the Gazans have responsibility, and preceding with installation of additional security, so that the remains of the massive Hamas army never again enters a few kilometers into Israel. Gazans will be herded into a smaller enclave, which will be completely surrounded by Israeli troops — probably no access to sea, no access to Egypt, and completely separated from touching Israel. Israeli military and administrative families will build communities on Gazan lands.

Israel will control all entrances and exits to and from Gaza. Agriculture and fishing will be limited, with food importation and distribution operated by Israel authorities. Rebuilding of all demolished civic, educational, religious, medical, and cultural will be delayed and slow in forming. Look for Gazans to be living in tents for a long time. Israel’s ultra-orthodox extremists are still intent on making their Israel “Arab free,” and Gaza may provide a solution for housing some of the Arab populations from Jaffa, Beersheba, Haifa, Acre, Nazareth, and Jerusalem.

Reports indicate Israel has already started incorporation of Gaza into a greater Israel.

Israeli troops are fortifying a strategic corridor that carves Gaza in two, building bases, taking over civilian structures and razing homes, according to satellite imagery and other visual evidence — an effort that military analysts and Israeli experts say is part of a large-scale project to reshape the Strip and entrench the Israeli military presence there.

This exposition on the situation in Gaza reflects an interpretation of the Zionist mind. However, the facts don’t add up to accomplishing a genocide that reduces Palestinian population to nil; demographic analysis shows that type of genocide is implausible. Unless mass extermination methods are used, diminishing a population proceeds by applying simple arithmetic ─ maintain the death and departure rate about 3-4 percent higher than the birth rate. If this is done, within twenty years, Gaza’s population will be halved. In forty years, Gaza will have less than three hundred thousand Palestinian inhabitants and hundreds of thousands of Israelis, who may not be all Jews. “If this is done” does not translate into, “This can be done.”

Statistics indicate that the Palestinians in Gaza are the most resilient, admirable, and hardy people in the world. Despite decades of oppression, induced traumas, and physical and psychological wounds, their death rate is among the lowest and their birth rate is among the highest in the universe. They know how to handle adversity and take care of themselves and one another. The statistics tell the story.

*The World Factbook
**World Bank
***The World Factbook
****Highest birth rate in the world
****Lowest mortality rate in the world

A surprising statistic; the Palestinians may have the highest growth rate in the world. Can Israel’s oppressive tactics reduce the Palestinian birth rate and increase the mortality rate sufficiently to cause a demographic genocide? By withholding necessary medical assistance the Palestinian birth rate might be reduced to 15/1000 population and the infant mortality rate increased to 24/1000 live births.

Lithuania, at 15.17/1000 population, has the highest mortality rate on the planet. Why does Lithuania have the highest death rate?

Lithuania has the highest death rate in the world mainly because of the high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and cancer. These diseases are linked to high smoking rates, unhealthy diet, and lack of physical activity. Other factors that contribute to the high death rate are alcoholism, depression, and suicide, which are influenced by the climatic, economic, and social conditions in the country.

The Palestinians don’t have the same conditions that caused an accelerated death rate in Lithuania, especially a lack of physical activity. They spend the entire day in back breaking work and moving around just to survive. Even if their birth rate is reduced to 1.5 percent and a higher infant mortality rate reduces the living births to 1.46 percent, and the mortality rate is multiplied by six, which will give them the highest death rate in the world, the Palestinian growth rate will be only a slightly negative 0.37 percent annually. At that rate, it will take 195 years to halve the present Palestinian populations in Gaza and the West Bank. They will be around for a long time.

What are the Zionist Jews attempting to accomplish with their deadly policies, a genocide that destroys lives, institutions, housing, government, agriculture, medical facilities, educational institutions, cultural institutions, food distribution, transportation, and entire families and never breaks the will of the Palestinians and does not reduce their numbers? Either the Israeli Jews cannot live without making the Palestinians suffer, which may be a way of translating their disturbed psyche into a mission that exalts their existence, or they have a plan, a final solution. The careless world will have to be careful. Spanish have a good expression for being careful, “ojo,” or “eye,” and pointing to an eye when saying it.

Conclusions

The statistics and mental ramblings lead to decisive conclusions.

(1)    The genocide of the Palestinians is not told in numbers.

• Article II from The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide certifies the genocide.
• This genocide does not take life; it takes lives, preventing generations of Palestinians from satisfying their lives.
• Causing physical deprivation, suffering from constant aggression, and mental anguish in others can be more disturbing than demographic genocide.

(2)    The world portrays events and players upside down. Defending Hamas is depicted as being attached to terrorism and anti-Semitism. The facts indicate otherwise.

• In finally responding to several unanswered Israeli provocations, Hamas can be blamed for the few verified atrocities committed during the October 7 attack, but these were much less than the hundreds of atrocities committed against the Palestinians and Hamas’ followers in the West Bank and Gaza. The reply to atrocities committed by US troops is usually, “During battles, atrocities often happen.” Why single out Hamas for what others are also guilty and listen to the constant harping of the October 7 attack as if it was worse and more significant than Hiroshima, September 11, and Pearl Harbor?
• Hamas is portrayed as a corrupt, violent, terrorist, and manipulative organization that cannot administer and takes advantage of an innocent Gazan population. Reality shows the opposite. Despite constant violent attacks from Israel, Hamas has been able to sustain the morale of the Gazans, motivate them, and give them hope and life. Faced with inadequate food production, no airport or seaports, a lack of natural resources, interrupted energy, a barrier to financial markets, and limited access to the outside world, Hamas has created a society with educated, cultured, healthy, energetic, and endurable people. These are people with the highest growth rate in the world ─ they have the will to live and produce. With assistance from UNRWA, Hamas has built hospitals, schools, colleges, recreational facilities, sports arenas, and culture centers. Gazans are well housed (were well housed) with entire extended families inhabiting an apartment building. The organization has been remarkable, just the opposite from what propaganda wants us to believe.
• The Israeli Jews are portrayed as compassionate and peace loving victims of terror. Reality shows a corrupt government that incites settler violence, engages in innumerable wars, terrorizes Palestinians, and deceives the world into accepting their destruction of the Palestinian people, just the opposite from what propaganda wants us to believe.
• The “no holds” barred use of the anti-Semitism label to divert the public from learning the truth of the Zionist criminal actions has been clearly exposed during the last months. Seeing the success of the fraudulent anti-Semitism in gathering US domestic and government support, for Israel and intimidating college officials, leads to wondering if anti-Semitism is only a construct and was always a weapon used by the Zionists to shield the truth of irresponsible actions?  Should we reevaluate the promoted anti-Semitic charges of the Zionist past?

For 75 years, the Israeli Jews have been oppressing Palestinians as their national sport. They wanted the land and have taken the land. They want to cleanse the land of Palestinians and have not been able to achieve that objective and there is no indication of how they can achieve it. Will Israel keep the Palestinians in captivity for eternity? Looks that way, unless the Israeli Jews, who can live well anywhere, decide to leave or decide, “Maybe we can live together with the Palestinians in a single state. Regard how obedient the Israeli Palestinian population have been.” Or, will Israel remain guided by its extremists who recite,

Are these words from human beings? They are capable of anything. “Ojo” is the word of the day.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

NBC News

A growing number of leaders and organizations have called on Columbia University and its president to protect students amid reports of antisemitic and offensive statements and actions on and near its campus, which has been the site this week of a pro-Palestinian encampment and protest.

CBS NEWS

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A Jewish Yale University student said she was assaulted during pro-Palestinian protests on campus and now the university is investigating. Sahar Tartak, editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press, said she was assaulted Saturday night while covering demonstrations on the campus in New Haven, Connecticut. Tartak believes she was targeted for wearing Jewish attire. “I wear a Star of David necklace,” she said. “One of them taunted me by waving a Palestinian flag in my face and jabbed me with it in the eye.”

New York Post

A Jewish Yale University student journalist reporting on an anti-Israeli protest at the Ivy League school Saturday night was stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag, while her assailant has gone unpunished.

Breaking Points

Krystal and Saagar discuss the ‘stabbed in the eye’ girl being debunked by the video of the incident. “This is all complete B.S.”

Examine the press reports

The campus demonstrations are protests against U.S. policy of assisting Israel in its genocide of the Palestinian people, and the press cites them as either “pro-Palestinian” or “anti-Israel.” These opposing descriptions give an impression that the protests have a bias, do not affect the American people, and mainly concern those who favor the Palestinians and those who are repulsed by actions taken against Israel. A few words, constantly repeated, affect the mindset of the American people and distract them from understanding their government’s disgraceful policies.

The NBC report is not news; it is an advertisement for organizations that have an agenda and manufacture rumors to satisfy the agenda, not different from an exterminator falsely telling Columbia University authorities to protect students amid reports of rodents infesting the campus. Note also the mental link to “a pro-Palestinian encampment and protest.”

The New York Post, an infamous rag sheet, turns an unverified statement by an Israeli supporter into her being “stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag, while her assailant has gone unpunished.” The victim, Sahar Tartak, came to the demonstration with a video camera, wearing a Star of David necklace, and accompanied by another person described as having the appearance of an Orthodox Jew, an indication of purposeful intent to broadcast that she and the other person are Jewish students. Neither Sahar Tartak’s video camera nor any video camera recorded an attack upon her persona. There is no hospital report to show she was injured and her appearance immediately after the incident does not indicate harm to an eye.

Did Ms. Tartak come to the demonstration as a provocateur attempting to initiate verbal or physical attacks on her or the other Jewish student? When she did not succeed, did she fabricate an incident?

Striding as obvious Jewish students, Ms. Tartak and her friend walked untouched through the angry crowd. Her behavior initiated no attacks and showed that if there are attacks on Jewish students, they must be rare. Will Columbia University investigate her actions, which appear belligerent, untruthful, and purposely agitating? Isn’t it twisted to repress those who struggle to prevent genocide and follow the dictates of those who approve genocide?

Don’t Columbia and other universities know about the genocide and the terrible consequences inflicted on the Palestinians? Is their negligence due to American media — print, online, television, and radio — treating Israel as a friendly neighbor and a victim of terrorism, and approaching the two million Palestinians as collateral damage to Israel’s overpowering a few thousand Hamas militants who have no anti-tank weapons to halt tanks, no guided missiles to cause critical damage, and no handheld missile systems to destroy drones and aircraft? Nobody equipped Hamas with an adequate defense or for an effective offense. Militants crossed the border, walked a few miles, committed random havoc, and, after being alerted, Israeli forces wiped them out.

October 7, 2023, taught the Israeli military it had no problem in containing powerless Hamas; as soon as the militants met a prepared Israeli military they were quickly defeated. Israel had a temporary border problem of relaxation and apathy, which allowed the Hamas militants to enter. Stationing troops at the border and assuring they are alert rectified the situation. There was no need to send a massive number of soldiers into Gaza, have a number of them killed, slaughter the Gazans, and ensure none of the captives survived. Why did Israel pursue the more punishing path?

(1)    The Israeli government did not want to engage in talks with Hamas, which would elevate Hamas’ importance and put Israel on the defensive.

(2)    Israel has pursued one path — steal the Palestinian land and patrimony and contrive a means to cleanse the Palestinians from the area. Hamas’ resistance is a continuous block to the pursuit and a change in tactics was ordered.

(3)    The Hamas attack presented an opportunity to change the tactics from a slow ethnic cleansing to a more rapid genocide — fool the world into believing the demolishing of the Gazans is retribution and not genocide. With the obedient Western media occupied with reports from Gaza, less attention will be given to the violent ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

Attempts to subdue campus demonstrations that protest the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people reveal the obvious — since day one of their appearance, spurious anti-Semitism has been a constant weapon of Zionists to disguise the truth, foment hatred of their opponents, and advance their agenda. Their deceptive tactics have enraged segments of U.S. and European societies and directly led to animosity and attacks against Jews. Describing their state as a “Jewish state,” and having a majority of Jews throughout the world support the state and its genocidal actions is causing a backlash to the Jews. The only salvation for the Jewish community is separation from Zionism, its oppressive state, and its suicidal inclinations and halt the continuation of relying on the media to confuse the populace into favoring, protecting, and urging governments to rescue the Jewish community.

PBS’ News Hour, supposedly a more respected element of the U.S. media, on April 26, featured Israelis mark Passover amid conflict, loss and trauma. Description of the program: “This week, Jews around the world are observing Passover, the festival of liberation that marks the historic exodus from ancient Egypt.”

“The historic exodus from Egypt?” Is there any history that tells us of this mythical exodus? Are news broadcasts a compilation of facts or fiction?

But, this year, joy is tempered with loss and trauma. More than 160,000 Israelis will mark the holiday while displaced from their homes, as the war with Hamas continues. Still others have empty chairs at the dinner table, their loved ones still held captive by Hamas.

Upon orders from their command, and not due to excessive danger, a small percentage of Israelis are taking a respite from their daily lives and still established homes and eating matzah in temporary hotel quarters. Almost all Palestinians have been forced out of destroyed homes, where relatives still lie under the rubble, and they search to find a tent or place to house their permanently displaced families and obtain some bread, leavened or non-leavened, to eat. They don’t have empty chairs at dinner tables; they have no chairs and dinner tables and suffer the loss of the tens of thousands of loved ones and captives held by Israel.

The biblical “Exodus” story did not free the Jews. Just the opposite, it has been used to keep Jews in perpetual bondage to a spurious history and to promote an attitude of constant victimhood, while distracting them from realizing the role they play in the injustices done to others. Hopefully, Jews who absorb verified history will awaken other Jews to the destructive impulses generated from Israel, which prevents them from recognizing the roots and appeal of modern Judaism and instead induces them to adopt atavistic and reactionary attitudes from ancient Hebrew stories and its fictitious world — recreating the Passover plagues that now kill Palestinian livestock and crops and sent lice, flies, frogs, wild animals, locusts, hail, boils, and extended darkness throughout Gaza, and death to the firstborn child in every Palestinian household.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Israel’s worldwide propaganda mechanism omits the tens of previous illegal and damaging attacks inflicted upon Iran and charges Iran with cruel and threatening behavior that requires a strong reply. Already, members of England’s parliament (MP) obeyed the Zionist call for action with outrageous pleas to assist Israel against “Iran’s genocidal actions,” and “attempt to interrupt the peace.”

One person is injured and that is genocide. Tens of thousands of Gazans killed and no reference to genocide. Mayhem in the Middle East since the first Zionist set foot in Palestine and one relatively harmless attack disturbed the peace. Are these MPs real people or artificial intelligence? How can they run for office and be elected?

A common thread exists in US actions of aggressive behavior toward nations that have not threatened the security of the United States, such as 21^st-century Iraq and Iran. The common thread weaves nations that were or are antagonists of apartheid Israel. All, except Iran, have been subdued by the U.S. What Israel wants, Israel gets, and Israel convinced the United States to eliminate the foes of the Zionist Republic. Americans died and Americans paid for efforts that had scarce benefits to U.S. citizens. Iran is now the last nation standing and Israel is coercing the U.S. to perform its usual duty — get rid of Iran. Look at the record.

Sudan

Deposed Sudan leader, Omar al-Bashir, made it clear. “Israel is our enemy, our number one enemy, and we will continue calling Israel our enemy.” Israel also made its relationship with Bahir clear by destroying a Sudanese arms factory suspected of producing chemical weapons for Hamas. Times of Israel reports that “Over the years, there have been reports of the Israelis continuing to aid South Sudanese rebels during Sudan’s second civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2005.” Israel’s assistance to the rebels enabled South Sudan to secede and weaken Bashir. The Times of Israel also reports that “Miniature Israeli flags hang from car windshields and flutter at roadside stalls, and at the Juba souk in the city’s downtown, you can buy lapel pins with the Israeli flag alongside its black, red and green South Sudanese counterpart.”

Link of a car bomb at the World Trade Center in New York to Osama bin Laden, who resided in Sudan, prompted the US State Department to add Sudan to its list of state sponsors of terrorism. In October 1997, the U.S. imposed economic, trade, and financial sanctions on Sudan. These sanctions occurred despite none of the extremists engaging in terrorist activities while in Sudan. Bashir offered extradition or interviews of arrested al-Qaeda operatives and allowed access to the extensive files of Sudanese intelligence. According to a CIA source, reported in the Guardian, Sept 30, 2001, “This represents the worst single intelligence failure in this whole terrible business. It is the key to the whole thing right now. It is reasonable to say that had we had this data we may have had a better chance of preventing the attacks.”

The U.S. Congress heightened the insurrection in Sudan’s Darfur province by passing amendment H.Con.Res.467 — 108th Congress (2003-2004), amended 07/22/2004, which “States that Congress declares that the atrocities unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, are genocide, and urges the Administration to refer to such atrocities as genocide.” The amendment gathered world opinion against the Sudanese government. Although the public accepted the figure of 400,000 killings of people in Darfur, this genocide had no verification of the number of killings, no displayed mass graves, and no images of a great number of bodies.

Before he left the U.S. State Department, former US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick stated on ABC News online, November 9, 2005, “It’s a tribal war. And frankly I don’t think foreign forces want to get in the middle of a tribal war of Sudanese.”

A peace agreement ended the second Sudanese civil war in 2005. On July 9, 2011, South Sudan became independent and reduced Sudan to a pipeline for South Sudan oil. After Sudan became a diminished state, barely able to survive, the United States lifted economic and trade sanctions. Independent South Sudan fared worse — involved in its civil war, human rights violations, and social and economic turmoil. Human Rights Watch (HRW) claimed [South Sudan] “Government security forces and armed groups perpetrated serious human rights abuses, including killings, acts of sexual violence, abductions, detention, torture and other ill-treatment, the recruitment and use of children, and destruction of civilian property.” The U.S. government did not criticize the human rights violations of the friend of Israel.

On October 23, 2020, Israel and Sudan agreed to normalize relations
On April 6, 2021, the Sudanese cabinet approved a bill abolishing the 1958 law on boycotting Israel.

The once wealthy Sudan, flowing with minerals and gushing with oil had the possibility of becoming a strong and vibrant African nation. US policies of countering terrorism, assisting South Sudan rebels, and interfering in the Darfur civil war contributed to preventing that outcome and provided Israel with a friendly Sudan that no longer assisted the Palestinians.

Libya

Libya’s leader, Mohammar Qadhafi, has been quoted as saying on April 1, 2002, “Thousands of Libyans are ready to defend the Palestinian people.” In that speech he called for a Pan-Arab war against the state of Israel’s existence and demanded “other Arab leaders open their borders to allow Libyans to march into Palestine, to join the Palestinian uprising.” In the speech, Gaddafi claimed he would not recognize Israel as a state.

The United States used Gadhafi’s support for radical revolutions as a reason to have strained relations with Libya. Sanctions soon followed. In March 1982, the U.S. Government prohibited imports of Libyan crude oil into the United States and expanded the controls on U.S. originated goods intended for export to Libya. Licenses were required for all transactions, except food and medicine. In April 1985, all Export-Import Bank financing was prohibited.

On April 14, 1986, the United States launched air strikes against Libya in retaliation for “Libyan sponsorship of terrorism against American troops and citizens.” Five military targets and “terrorism centers” were hit, including Gadhafi’s headquarters.

After Libya halted its nuclear program, renounced terrorism, accepted responsibility for inappropriate actions by its officials, and paid appropriate compensation to the victims’ families for the bombing of a US commercial airplane over Lockerbie, Scotland, the United Nations (UN) lifted sanctions, the U.S. terminated the applicability of the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act to Libya, and President Bush signed an Executive Order terminating the national emergency, which ended economic sanctions.  All was going well until 2011.

Despite the lack of clarity of the 2011 rebellion against Gadhafi and specious reasons for NATO and US roles to defend the rebels, the U.S. government cut ties with the Gadhafi regime, sanctioned senior regime members, and, together with several European and Arab nations, managed to convince the UN Security Council to authorize intervention in the conflict. The intervention demolished the Gadhafi regime and enabled the rebels to obtain victory, another fallen nation that was an outspoken antagonist of Israel, and, still, in 2024, an embattled nation.

Egypt

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel to reclaim territories they had lost in the Six-Day War. With Israeli troops seriously outnumbered and facing near-certain defeat at the hands of the Soviet-backed nations, President Nixon ordered an emergency airlift of supplies and materiel. “Send everything that will fly,” Nixon told Henry Kissinger. The American airlift enabled Israel to launch a decisive counterattack that pushed the Egyptians back across the Suez Canal.

In a briefing,  Scuttle Diplomacy: Henry Kissinger and Arab-Israeli Peacemaking, by Salim Yaqub, Woodrow Wilson Center, Dr. Yaqub argued that “Kissinger’s pivotal role as the intermediary allowed him to feign neutrality while secretly supporting the Israelis, and to turn the peace negotiations into a long series of small confidence building steps which would give the appearance of progress that Egypt required to come to an agreement with Israel, but which would allow Israel to keep most of the Syrian and Palestinian land gained after the 1967 Six-Day War.”

Prime Minister of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, signed a peace treaty with Israel, and the U.S. normalized relations with previously combative Egypt. The most populous and leading nation of the Arab world, the principal defender of Arab rights, which had waged several wars with Israel, no longer posed a threat to Israel and became a weakened observer to the hostilities affecting the Middle East.

Syria

Israel and Syria battled from day one of the UN 181 Proclamation that recommended partition of the British Mandate.

The U.S. never favored the Assad regime and cut relations. After the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. soil, the Syrian Government tried limited cooperation with the U.S. War on Terror. Syrian intelligence alerted the U.S. of an Al-Qaeda plan to fly a hang glider loaded with explosives into the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Syria was also a destination for U.S. captives outside of its borders in its rendition program. According to U.S. officials, as reported by Nicholas Blanford, in a Special to The Christian Science Monitor, May 14, 2002, ”Syrian information was instrumental in catching militant Islamists around the world.”

Syria’s descent into near oblivion started with its civil wars, in which foreign fighters (ISIS and al-Nusra) entered Syria from NATO’s Turkey (no retribution to Turkey for allowing ISIS to enter Syria), and a multitude of insurgents fought with and against one another until Assad, with assistance from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, overcame the insurgencies. WikiLeaks, in 2011, released diplomatic cables between the U.S. embassy in Damascus and the State Department, which revealed the U.S. had given financial support to political opposition groups and their related projects through September 2010.

ISIS is defeated and a limping Assad government barely survives as a splintered nation. Bombed almost daily by Israeli missiles and planes, the hopelessly weak Syria cannot retaliate. With assistance from the U.S., Syria’s threat to Israel has been neutralized.

Iraq

Justifying the U.S. invasion of Iraq with a spurious reason that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and needed to be silenced was so absurd that another reason was sought. Security school scholars argued a joint threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorist groups. Hegemony school scholars argued preservation and extension of U.S. hegemony, including the spread of liberal democratic ideals. When in doubt bring in liberal democratic ideals.

The interventionists conveniently forgot that Saddam Hussein was a restraint to Iran and a deterrent to Radical Islamists. With Hussein removed, Iran lost its restraint. Bordering on Iraq and spiritually attached to Iraq’s Shi’a population, Iran became involved in the commercial, economic, and political future of Iraq, an event that U.S. strategists should have known.

The invasion of Iraq and disposal of a Saddam Hussein regime, which had prevented al-Qaeda elements from establishing themselves, exposed Iraq’s porous borders to Radical Islamic fighters. Founded in October 2004, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) emerged from a transnational terrorist group created and led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His cohorts entered through Jordan, while al-Qaeda forced out of Waziristan in Pakistan found a haven in Iraq. Meanwhile, fighters trained in and wandering through the deserts of Saudi Arabia hopped planes to Istanbul and Damascus and worked their way across Syria into Iraq. Disturbed by the U.S. invasion and military tactics, Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarrai, later known as Al Baghdadi, founder of the Islamic Caliphate, transformed himself from a fun-loving soccer player into a hardened militant and helped found the militant group Jamaat Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamaah (JJASJ), which countered the U.S. military in Iraq.

Spurious reasons and obvious counterproductive results leave doubts that the original explanation and rationales for the invasion were correct. A more valid reason involves the neocons in the Bush administration who were closely identified with Israel in the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and the office of the vice president, Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, who aggressively advanced the case for the invasion. Some backups to that theory,

Haaretz, Apr 03, 2003, “White Man’s Burden,” Ari Shavit, “The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish (ED: Avid Israel supporters), who were pushing President Bush to change the course of history.”

In The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad echoes the case.

The road to Iraq was paved with neoconservative intentions. Other factions of the US foreign policy establishment were eventually brought around to supporting the war, but the neocons were its architects and chief proponents.

Ahmad quotes a remark attributed to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. “It’s a toss-up whether Libby is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day.” He also quotes former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan who contended, “The closer you examine it, the clearer it is that neoconservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right.”

A 1996 report, Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, prepared by neoconservatives at the Jerusalem-based think tank, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, many of whom held vital positions in the George W. Bush administration, lends substance to the charge that the invasion of Iraq served Israel’s interests.

We must distinguish soberly and clearly friend from foe. We must make sure that our friends across the Middle East never doubt the solidity or value of our friendship….Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.

Israel can make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality — not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes. Israel’s new strategy — based on a shared philosophy of peace through strength — reflects continuity with Western values by stressing that Israel is self-reliant, does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it, including on the Golan Heights, and can manage its own affairs. Such self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.

Participants in the Study Group included Richard Perle, American Enterprise Institute, Study Group Leader, James Colbert, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Johns Hopkins University/SAIS, Douglas Feith, Feith and Zell Associates, Robert Loewenberg, President, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, Jonathan Torop, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, and Meyrav Wurmser, Johns Hopkins University.

Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser later served in high positions in the George W. Bush administration at the time of the Iraq invasion. The others were allied with organizations that promoted Israel’s interests.

Two observations:
(1)    Why were Americans prominent in an Israeli Think Tank and why were they advising a foreign nation?
(2)    Note that the thrust of the report is to advise Israel to have a “clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity, and mutuality.” This has been the modus operandi of the Netanyahu administrations.

Another ember that warmed the neocon’s heartfelt devotion to Israel; The Project for the New American Century urged an invasion of Iraq throughout the Clinton years. “Bombing Iraq Isn’t enough. Saddam Hussein must go,” William Kristol and Robert Kagan, PNAC neocon directors wrote in the 1998 New York Times.

No “smoking gun” firmly ties the neocons devoted to Israel together with using the United States military to eliminate another Israel antagonist. The argument is based upon it being the best, most factual, and only reason the war could have been wanted.

Iran – Last Nation Standing

The Islamic Republic may not be an exemplary nation, but there is no evidence or reason for the U.S. accusations that Iran is a destabilizing, expansionist nation, or leading sponsor of international terrorism. Why would it be – there are no external resources or land masses that would be helpful to Iran’s economy, Iran has not invaded any nation, and its few sea and drone attacks on others are reactions from a perception that others have colluded in harming the Islamic Republic and its allies. Ayatollah Khomeini’s vision of expanding his social ideology never got anywhere and died with him. Subsequent leaders have been forced to reach out to defend their interests and those of their friends, but none of these leaders has pursued an expansionist philosophy or wants the burden that accompanies the task — enough problems at home.

No matter what Iran does, the US perceives Iran as an enemy and a threat to not only the Middle East but to world order. All this hostility, despite the facts that (1) the Iranians showed willingness to create a new Afghanistan by pledging $560 million worth of assistance, almost equal to the amount that the United States pledged at the Tokyo donors’ conference in January 2002, (2) according to the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Dobbins, played a “decisive role in persuading the Northern Alliance delegation to compromise its demands of wanting 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government,” (3) Iran arrested Al-Qaeda agents on its territory and, because Al-Qaeda linked the Shiite Muslims, represented by Iran and Hezbollah, with Crusaders, Zionists, and Jews as its most bitter enemies, had ample reason to combat terrorist organizations, and (4) Iran has no reason for or capability of attacking the U.S .or its western allies.

Being vilified for inadequate reasons is followed by Iran not being praised for significant reasons. President Trump, in his January 8, 2020 speech, argued the U.S. had been responsible for defeating ISIS and the Islamic Republic should realize that it is in their benefit to work with the United States in making sure ISIS remains defeated. Trade the U.S. with Iran and Trump’s speech would be correct.

The U.S. spent years and billions of dollars in training an Iraqi army that fled Mosul and left it to a small contingent of ISIS forces. Showing no will and expertise to fight, Iraq’s debilitated military permitted ISIS to rapidly expand and conquer Tikrit and other cities. Events energized Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, which, with cooperation from Iran and leadership from its Major General Qasem Soleimani, recaptured Tikrit and Ramadi, pushed ISIS out of Fallujah, and played a leading role in ISIS’ defeat at Mosul. Iran and Soleimani were key elements in the defeat of ISIS.

What reward did Solemani receive for his efforts? When his convoy left Baghdad airport, a drone strike, perpetrated by U.S. military, assassinated Major General Solemani and nine other innocent people on January 3, 2002. UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, reported the U.S. had not provided sufficient evidence of an imminent threat to life to justify the attack.

As usual, Israel used the U.S. to satisfy its desires. “Israel was going to do this with us, and it was being planned and working on it for months,” President Trump said about the coordination to kill Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force. “We had everything all set to go, and the night before it happened, I got a call that Israel will not be participating in this attack. I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. We were disappointed by that. Very disappointed…But we did the job ourselves, with absolute precision … and then Bibi tried to take credit for it.”

Why do these protectors of the realm want Iran destroyed — they fear Iran may act as a deterrent to their future aggression. Iran cannot win a war with a nuclear weapon or any weapons; it can only posture and threaten use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Its principal antagonists, Israel, United States, and Saudi Arabia have elements that shield themselves from a nuclear attack by Iran. Israel’s small size makes it likely that fallout from a nuclear weapon will endanger the entire region, especially Iran’s allies. Any nuclear strike on Israel will be countered with a torrent of nuclear missiles that will completely wipe large Iran off the map and without fallout causing harm to neighboring nations. With little to gain and everything to lose, why would Iran engage in nuclear aggression?

Netanyahu’s scenario follows a pattern of using American lives and clout to further Israel’s interests and decimate its adversaries. Survey the record — destruction of Iraq, destruction of Sudan, destruction of Libya, destruction of Egypt, destruction of Syria. and now Iran. Only Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries will be left standing, remaining in that position as long as they show no threat to Israel.

The present confrontations between Iran and Israel have escalated. Those who believe Israel’s few drones over Isfahan concluded retaliation for Iran’s excessive number of missiles and harmless result in the attack on Israel might be mistaken. The drones may have only tested Iranian defensive capability. More, much more provocations may happen.

Due to US aggressive tactics, the antagonists to Israel have fallen and Iran is the last nation standing.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The fabricated illusions that muddled the past elections remain; Trump constructs illusion as his principal political tool and Biden proceeds with perpetrated illusions that he is in total command and apartheid Israel is worth defending. Include presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the crowd, a candidate whose illusions are his main appeal. Illusion has replaced reality and guided domestic policy, foreign policy, and politics. Before examining the present, demolish the illusions perpetrated in the previous elections and ask why they remain when reality proves they did not exist.

The Russians interfered in the 2016 election

The calculating and repetitious forces that implanted the accusation of Russian interference in the American psyche made it difficult to refute the charge. Debate on Russian interference was not accepted and was silenced with derision. Reality shows it was an illusion.

The most quoted proof of Russian interference in the 2106 presidential election contained several elements:

Seventeen United States (US) intelligence agencies certified Russian interference.
Acceptance of the charges came from the belief that 17 US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the US election. Former Director of National Intelligence Chief, James Clapper, testified to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee that no US intelligence agency researched the supposed interference. Clapper revealed that the Russia-hacking claim came from a “special intelligence community assessment” (ICA) produced by selected analysts from the CIA, NSA, and FBI, “a coordinated product from the three agencies and not by all 17 components of the intelligence community.” There was no specific intelligence agency involved. A few analysts from various agencies made an assessment far from definite proof, and 17 intelligence agencies accepted the assessment without adding any of their intelligence.

The Mueller report described the Russian government’s interference.
Employees of Internet Research Agency (IRA), a dubious Russian public relations company, were indicted, but no Russian officials were cited for election interference. Soviet intelligence officers were indicted for illegal phishing and cyber-attacks, “with intention to interfere,” and not directly for election interference.

Eleven Russian intelligence personnel have been indicted.
What do intelligence agencies do? They gather intelligence 24 hours each day and by any means. Cyber warfare is a favored means for all intelligence agencies to gather information and confuse the adversary with misinformation. At campaign election time, when computers buzz with finger tapping from wide-eyed volunteers, eager idealists, and networking individuals, the campaigners become big fish for the “phishers.” Russia’s military intelligence dumped all its findings into contrived websites and WikiLeaks and let the American public digest the information. (1) The Democratic National Committee Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, framed activities to assist Hillary Clinton and undermine Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign; (2) DNC fundraising staff discussed and compiled a list of people (mainly donors) who might be appointed to federal boards and commission; and (3) Former aide to President Bill Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal, claimed France was concerned that Libya’s large gold reserves might pose a threat to the value of the Central African Franc and displace French influence in Africa.

Revealing that the DNC, which should be an impartial arm of the Democratic Party and not committed to assisting any candidate, was helping Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and deriding Bernie Sanders’ campaign is a worthwhile exposure of corrupt practices and distortion of the political process. The DNC is the culprit that interfered in the Democratic process.

The Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) has been indicted.
For what reason and with what proof was the IRA indicted? Election Interference was only a supposition; there might have been other reasons for IRA’s operations. The only Russian organization involved in the US election activity does the same activities worldwide, mostly in Russia, and has done it for years. Why conclude that its activities were meant to interfere in the election? Isn’t that a conspiracy theory? Being a public relations company, is it more likely that it was data mining – placing ads, and learning by feedback their effectiveness and the public pulse, data that could be useful for other activities in Russia, which might include minor information for the Russian government? Widely predicted, and even conceded, that Hillary Clinton would win the election, why would any foreign entity support wasting resources and leave itself open to criticism in a futile effort?

The Russians engaged in a massive interference operation.
Despite the intention to inflate figures and characterize the “interference” as massive, the activity was trivial and had trivial impact. According to New York Magazine, about 3,000 ads were purchased on Facebook for $100,000. Compare this to a Facebook audience in the United States of 214 million users, and more than 1.8 billion monthly active users, millions of electioneering Twitter accounts, hundreds of mass demonstrations in the United States, and spending for the 2016 elections (presidential and congressional) estimated at $6.5 billion by campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.org. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Facebook’s General Counsel, Colin Stretch stated that Clinton and Trump spent $81 million on pre-election day Facebook ads. IRA’s efforts could not compete for eyeballs of the American electorate.

From USA Today:

We read every one of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by Russians (ED: Not Russian government and only 3,517 of many millions by others during the election). Here’s what we found. Only about 100 of the ads overtly mentioned support for Donald Trump or opposition to Hillary Clinton. A few dozen referenced questions about the U.S. election process and voting integrity, while a handful mentioned other candidates like Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush.

Accusing the Russian government of a massive conspiracy of interference in the 2016 US election, in which only one private agency, the Internet Research Agency, spent a trivial amount of money ($100,000) and did nothing to influence the election, is an illusion.

Democrats stole the election

Two features of the election certified the implausibility of Trump’s charges.

(1) Polls indicated a decisive Biden victory by several percentage points, Why would Democrats, expecting victory, jeopardize themselves and the anticipated election result by engaging in nefarious activities and risk being caught?

(2) Some irregularities and attempted fraud may have occurred, but It is impossible to fix a national election. A conspiracy to fix a national election requires an organization with a central administration and hundreds of people in key states who work in several well-coordinated actions. It is difficult to gain hundreds of adherents, have them agree to a central authority, and for them to be able to operate without disclosure. Can these activities — printing millions of false ballots, posting and mailing these false ballots, forging signatures, researching obituaries and voter registration lists — be performed without notice and remain hidden from extensive intelligent investigation?

Only one ballot can be obtained by a registered voter. Using false names and dead people gathers few ballots. Collecting a multitude of ballots requires counterfeiting, which is a difficult task, logistically and artistically. Ballots feature particular design elements that are difficult to copy. “They are printed on special card stock, with exact page size, color, and thickness varying by state, or even county or town.”

Let a host of geniuses manage to print the ballots with names of real or deceased people who would not be voting. How does the conspirator get the fraudulent ballots past the signature identification? Even if there were not 100 percent accurate signature identification, well-trained signature analysts will spot an unusual number of dubious ballots and, afterward, every ballot will be rigorously analyzed.

To bypass signature recognition, conspirators would have had to improvise devious means to bring fraudulent ballots into the secure center, navigate past security personnel, and hope the 360-degree cameras did not spot their illegal entries. Once inside, they would need co-conspirators to stow the ballots in a known location, and, at an opportune moment, have the co-conspirators retrieve and scan them.

Media should have confronted Trump and his followers on Day 1 and shown that it was impossible to fix the national election. This “election fraud killer” is still not publicized. No rational person can believe the 2020 election was rigged, and, weirdly, a huge component of the population embraces the illusion.

The new illusion

Because truths do not serve him and illusions preserve him, Trump prefers creating outlandish illusions rather than reciting basic truths. His principal defense in the criminal trial of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results is that he honestly believed the illusion that he won and the election was stolen.

Knowing he has no issues that will shake the electorate and defeat Biden, Trump has made Illegal immigration the inflammatory and principal issue. Rather than regarding immigration from the legal, economic, and statistical approach, Trump reaches for illusory images that captivate the mind, such as accusing Biden of “causing a border ‘bloodbath.’” He has also accused migrants of “poisoning the blood of the country” and vowed to launch the largest domestic deportation operation in the nation’s history if he wins a second term. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump said:

Under Crooked Joe Biden, every state is now a border state. Every town is now a border town because Joe Biden has brought the carnage and chaos and killing from all over world and dumped it straight into our backyards.

How many times a day, and in how many different presentations, has Donald Trump departed from script to exclaim, “This was the greatest economy we ever had, the greatest in the world, the greatest ever, and it all went down because of a pandemic?” Time to burst the bubble he has created around himself and let him know his ego-building statement is an illusion.

Trump does not describe the criteria by which he created the illusion that his economy was the greatest ever. He mentions the words GDP, stock market, and employment. Research the U.S. economy and learn that since 1891, the United States (US) has always had, except for some recessions, the best economy in the world. During the Roaring Twenties, the US had half of world production and had only 1/8 of the same during the Trump administration.

Almost every one of the U.S. presidents has seen a substantial rise in the stock market and GDP during their administration. The Trump administration only added to an existing trend — nothing unusual or extraordinary. Real GDP grew at a paltry average of 2-3 %/annum during his administration, so what is he talking about? He should not be talking; the more accepted ratings of economic power are GDP/PPP, the GDP that includes purchasing parity between nations, and industrial production. In the former, during Trump’s term in office, China led the United States by $27.3 trillion to $21.4 trillion. In industrial production, China produced $5.652 trillion in goods and the US. produced $3.436 trillion in goods.

Trump behaves as if he commands the world theater. He imagines seducing Kim Jung Un into halting nuclear and missile developments while Kim developed nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems, claims he would have prevented Putin from waging war in the Ukraine, insists he has disoriented Iran that glides ahead with its nuclear developments and finds means to overcome the sanctions, blames Biden for a rash withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan after he had ordered a rapid withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Somalia in the wake of his 2020 election loss, and maintains he solved a Middle East crisis that has exploded into its most aggressive since the world’s leading statesman made his utterances. All Illusions.

Biden

The present U.S. president is an illusion ─ is he the scrappy, thoughtful, and vital person he portrays or is he an aged and worn warrior dependent upon others for voice and conviction? Will the real Joe Biden, please not be propped up, and stand up? Biden is not the worn and withered character of Trump’s exaggeration but he is undoubtedly more frail in body and mind than presented before the camera and, from his appearance, might rapidly decline.

Joe’s most prominent illusion is his belief he can fool the electorate into thinking he is tough on Israel and can move Israel into a conciliatory position. Xios reports the president laid out an ultimatum to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” If Israel doesn’t change course in Gaza, we won’t be able to support you.” Changing course means not making it obvious that Israel is committing genocide and better to pause and go slower. Joe is fooling many but he does not realize he is still a “war criminal” and a sufficient number of voters recognize his hypocrisy and they will not vote for him.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy is an unknown to most of the electorate and an unknown in his effect on the presidential race. His agenda consists entirely of contradicting standard beliefs, which resonates with Trump followers or maybe, with those who approve of the Trump maverick and not of the Trump person, those who would have preferred to vote for the successful businessman and won’t vote for a man perceived as lying, swindling, and only interested in himself.

RFKjr. subscribes to Mark Twain’s advice, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.” He does not exactly convey illusions; some of his conspiracy theories, of which there are many, emerge as illusions, but within their frameworks are rational thoughts.

Briefly, he is allied with one of the country’s largest anti-vaccination advocacy groups; claims that a variety of childhood illnesses are being caused by the ingredients in vaccines; proposes that the 2004 election had been stolen from John Kerry; asserts that the CIA played  a role in the killing of his uncle (JFK) and his father (RFK); charges that 5G has been set up “to harvest data and control behavior,” accuses Anthony Fauci’s actions during the Covid-19 crisis  of orchestrating “a historic coup d’état against Western democracy,” and cites the presence of atrazine in the water supply as a contributor to “depression and gender dysphoria among boys since atrazine is known to clinically castrate frogs when dumped into their tanks.”

There may be partial truths in some of RFK jr’s ramblings but there are only illusions in several of them and these illusions attract voters.

Each of the candidates may have attributes that attract the electorate; each of the candidates has attributes that contradict their ability to hold the highest office in the land. Each professes illusions; each fails from the illusions.

Having three unwanted individuals competing for president of the United States of America exposes the most serious illusion, that the USA is a thriving democracy with a free press, where the people have a voice and a choice, a choice of choosing between illusions.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

“The Global War on the Jews, Anti-Semitism surges, even in the West, which shows why Israel exists,“ by The Editorial Board WSJ, Oct. 30, 2023.

The disturbing fact of the past month is that Jews are under attack not only in Israel and not only by Hamas. The weeks since the barbaric Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of Israel have witnessed physical assaults on Jews the world over, including in the U.S. and Europe. This most modern of pogroms—global, televised, politicized—demonstrates exactly what is at stake as Israel ramps up its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.

The Islamist group and its Western enablers are pursuing or justifying a genocidal war against Jews, not merely a territorial dispute with Israel. And since Western governments too often seem unable to protect the Jewish minorities in their midst, Israel must defend itself as the only safe home for the Jewish people.

To make the WSJ report official, we have the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Recording a “Dramatic Increase in U.S. Antisemitic Incidents Following Oct. 7 Hamas Massacre.”

ADL recorded a total of 312 anti-Semitic incidents between Oct. 7-23, 2023, 190 of which were directly linked to the war in Israel and Gaza.

When conflict erupts in Israel, antisemitic incidents soon follow in the U.S. and globally,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “From white supremacists in California displaying antisemitic banners on highway overpasses to radical anti-Zionists harassing Jewish people because of their real or perceived support for the Jewish state, we are witnessing a disturbing rise in antisemitic activity here while the war rages overseas.

Here is a sampling of incidents reported across the country, a few of which are rigorously confirmed:

• On Oct. 8 in Clifton, NJ: A car with individuals holding Palestinian flags appeared to intentionally swerve out of its lane, nearly hitting a visibly Jewish family.
• On Oct. 9 in Detroit, MI: A Jewish student was harassed, shoved and called “Fucking Zionist” while painting a free speech rock with an Israeli flag on the campus of Wayne State University.
• On Oct. 10 in Los Angeles, CA: An individual shouted “I am Hamas” and made death threats to Jewish individuals standing by a Kosher restaurant.
• On Oct. 12 in Indianapolis, IN: A man carrying an Israeli flag was allegedly assaulted by a pro-Palestinian protestor.
• On Oct. 15 in New York, NY: An individual allegedly punched a Jewish woman in the face at Grand Central Terminal. When she asked why, he responded: “You are Jewish.”
• On Oct. 15 in Walnut Creek, CA: White Lives Matter California, a white supremacist group, held a rally on a highway overpass and displayed signs stating: “Save Gaza,” “No More Wars for I$rael” and “Watch Europa the Last Battle.”
• On Oct. 18 in New York, NY: A group of Israeli individuals were harassed and at least one assaulted by a pro-Palestinian protestor in Times Square.

Tens of Palestinians are murdered and hundreds are wounded each day, whole families slaughtered, 70% of housing destroyed, people forced to wander on meager diets, some starving, hospitals demolished and no place to treat the wounded, and those happening are not important to the WSJ, the ADL, the U.S. government and most of the U.S. media ─ important is that a few Jews (who support the genocide) have been harassed. The latter is the extent of the global war against the Jews, for which WSJ blames Hamas. Is this a valid description of our world from a responsible newspaper or is this a story from The Onion? I cannot believe that America’s foremost financial journal published this article. Next, we might read in the WSJ that “Stage Coaches are the next great growth prospect, expected to overtake Tesla in energy-efficient vehicles.”

Put the incidents into numbers:
The ADL reports 312 incidents (????) of anti-Semitism in the United States, none resulting in death (one death accidentally happened in California when a pro-Israeli demonstrator engaged pro-Palestinian demonstrators) or serious injuries.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said it “received 3,578 complaints during the last three months of 2023, amid what it called ‘an ongoing wave of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate.’ Complaints of employment discrimination led the list with 662 instances; hate crimes and hate incidents were reported 472 times; and education discrimination 448 times.” These complaints are only from the last three months of 2023 and are ten times the charges (???) of anti-Semitism. Included in the  incidents were “a November shooting in Vermont where three students of Palestinian descent were shot and the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American child in Illinois in October.”

On March 26, the Palestinian Health Ministry cited that “at least 32,414 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since last October. A ministry statement said that 74,787 other Palestinians have also been injured in the onslaught. Many people are still trapped under rubble and on the roads and rescuers are unable to reach them.” According to the UN, “85% of Gaza’s population is internally displaced with acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed.”

Wonder if the Jews involved in the global war against the Jews will be willing to exchange places with the Gazans who are out strolling every day in the open air, cooking in rustic fireplaces, camping out in the evenings along the beautiful beaches, and just having a wonderful time.

Ooh, wait a second, could it be a coincidence that the PBS News Hour had an extensive report on the Russian imprisonment of one of Wall Street Journal reporters, Evan Gershkovich, whom they mention as being “the son of Russian Jewish immigrants?” Why the Jewish identification? If Evan was Catholic, would PBS mention his parents were Catholic?

Haven’t seen any PBS programs on Americans detained at Ben Gurion airport, languishing in Israeli prisons, killed by Israeli forces, and reporters killed by Israeli snipers. Two American brothers were detained in Gaza by Israeli forces during February and are being held in Ashkelon prison. A U.S. citizen, Samaher Esmail, who lives in New Orleans, “is being held in detention by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank over alleged ‘incitement on social media.’” Not much coverage of their plights.

While on the topic of how the Zionists influence the worldwide media —internet, newspapers, radio, television, comic books, cinema, theater, magazines, books, educational tools, Quora, Facebook, X, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, permit me to touch on an encounter I had with Senator Joseph Lieberman, my namesake, who recently died.

Joe arranged an evening meeting with his Connecticut constituency, which I was interested in attending to learn how Senators approach their votes and how voters approach their Senators. Among the “voters” were AIPAC representatives who set up a table recruiting for AIPAC. The discussion and questions were a pep rally for Israel, which to Joe’s credit, he toned down. I don’t remember if there was any recruiting for the Israeli Offense Force but if it ran short of manpower, they knew where to go.

Just to show the tentacles of the Zionists, appraise the use of the discussion group Quora for the most insidious and disgusting propaganda. A question that will receive an answer that defames the Palestinians and elevates the Israelis is posed:

Why are there many fancy cars and big houses in Gaza if it is so poor?
An answer is offered.

Good question!
The answer will not be so good: there are many things in Gaza that not every decent European country (for example, Estonia or Lithuania) has, because the whole world supports Gaza in gratitude for terrorism against Israel. To find out the number of holders of Gaza, just look at the list of countries voting pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli declarations and UN resolutions – all these legal entities are holders (pimps) of Gaza. New buildings on the seashore, where the foot of the Israeli military does not set foot, as well as reporters (just in case of information leakage), so all the pictures are from “private collections”! And this is not Israel, this is definitely Gaza – there are no Israeli flags anywhere, but we have them everywhere. Just don’t ask if there are rockets or rocket factories hidden in the basements of these buildings – I don’t know.

When someone comments that Palestinians are well educated, resourceful, and resilient and Israel engages in apartheid, the fangs come out.

Are you a goat enjoying terrorists up your arse, or just a useful idiot repeating whatever you hear? Israel has millions of Israeli Arabs, who are mostly those Palestinians that didn’t move away when Arab league told them to (planning to destroy Israel the next day after its independence was proclaimed). Israeli Arabs are in IDF, media, parliament, court etc. Now, in contrast, how about any Jew in Palestine or any of the surrounding countries? Apartheid much?

I answered the mendacious and crass comment with this authoritative reply and the comment was initially deleted.

Vulgar replies indicate the person knows nothing and therefore reverts to distractions. Almost the entire world and respected agencies cite Israel as an Apartheid state; I guess only you know better. Yes, Israeli Arabs cannot purchase property, cannot get loans, cannot obtain government housing, cannot live to live where they want, and cannot marry a Jew in Israel. Go to Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians and get the scoop. I trust Amnesty before trusting you.

Quora eventually reinstated my comment but does nothing about the myriad of comments from Israel’s supporters that violate platform policy for hate speech, harassment, bullying, and plain nonsense.

German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, displayed, to an unbelievable extent, the manipulation of minds by a remark she made during her first visit to Israel after Hamas’ October attack. “In these days we are all Israelis,” which means. “We are all genocidal killers.” What relation do contemporary Germans have with World War II happenings and what do those happenings have to do with allowing the genocide of an innocent people? What is she talking about?  Oh, I understand ─ Germans have the GG, the Genocide Gene, and support genocide whenever and wherever.

Almost all news dispatches use the words, “the Jewish state of Israel, and “the terrorist state of Iran.” How do so many news agencies manage to use the same description, and why? The more correct words are, “the terrorist state of Israel,” and “the Islamic state of Iran.”

Inability to counter the Zionist influence in the thought process is the major problem for those who recognize the genocide. Suppression of campus protests against the genocide and replacement of the protests by those favoring the genocide with a fraudulent anti-Semitism demonstrates that the world is callous to the extensive damage done by manipulation of the mindset — fiction replaces reality, cruelty replaces humanity, a few evil dictate over masses of good, corruption replaces dedication, and destruction replacements construction. Israel and its cohorts are leading the world to an abyss. Although there are myriads of well-directed activities and hard-working and dedicated persons, nobody has implemented an effective plan to stop the descent into the inferno and gathered unified forces that react to the alarm and offer hints of salvation.

The Jewish people permit the new Sicarri to bring them tragedy and they await their ultimate fate.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Added to this evil are its allies — a bewildered world that does nothing to halt the obvious genocide and coordinated media instructors who divert the discussion.

The captured media turned demonstrations that confronted the U.S. government’s assistance in Israel’s genocide into an overriding and spurious discussion of anti-Semitism in America ─ a few well-placed Israel supporters claimed they could not go to class. In America, taunts at genocide supporters are more important than the genocide. Now we have the confrontation of the Israeli government in their starvation of the Palestinian people turned into a debate of whether Israeli soldiers deliberately killed Palestinians obtaining food aid or whether the Palestinians died from chaotic conditions. We have confirmation that several Palestinians died from bullets. Because they might obtain food and escape dying from starvation, Israel’s soldiers shot them. Why argue the numbers, one is as bad as 100. We also know that Israel’s military incursion into Gaza precipitated this situation and the path to starvation has been carefully planned, starvation of the mind, the body, and the emotions.

Bomb all the homes so Gazans cannot store food and cook. Destroy the Al-Ailat bakery, and make sure the Gazans don’t get their bread. Destroy the AbuShahla orange farm and make sure the Gazans don’t get their nutrients. Destroy the Italiano Pizzeria and make sure the Gazans don’t get their carbs. Destroy all the libraries, parks, cultural centers, schools, and mosques, and make sure the Gazans have no place to go for solace. Destroy all the hospitals so that after they get sick and wounded the Gazans have no way to recuperate.

The weapon of starvation is not original; Israel has a good teacher ─ its benefactor, the democratic, freedom-loving United States of America. Not preventing starvation in the past has led to the present use of the weapon of starvation.

The Politics of Starvation

The powerful cannot always use military might to suppress adversaries. Their citizens and world opinion may react unfavorably and undermine a military adventure. Logistics may not favor it. Besides, they have other means, one of which is economic warfare; a method that can silently crush an adversary without firing a shot. Going to the extreme, economic warfare has the force of a neutron bomb; it disables the nation’s infrastructure and debilitates the population.

Economic warfare requires preparation before implementation.

First, the “grieved” country accuses its adversary of intended crimes of aggression. The adversary is powerless to defend and becomes marked with the adjective “rogue state.” Since the “rogue state” cannot ameliorate the crimes of which it is accused, being that they may not exist, and because these states are usually proud and will not compromise with their national integrity (one reason for their fate) further action must be taken against them. The next step is isolation. This step has several stages.

Although contrary to law in democratic countries and contradictory to the criticism made by the democratic countries against a policy of the former Soviet Union, which imposed travel restrictions on its citizens, the “grieved” country cautions and sometimes forbids all its citizens, except its intelligence services, to travel to the “rogue state.” Subtle enforcement procedures, such as heavy fines, harassment, embarrassing airport searches, letting the neighbors know, and calls from the Internal Revenue Department are used to protect travelers from being contaminated with “rogue” germs, shield them from vicious propaganda, and prevent them from being kidnapped for ransom and from being arrested due to accusations of spying. The two latter reasons are valid. The unmentioned reasons are to assure the adversary doesn’t acquire tourist dollars that enable it to survive, make certain that travelers don’t learn that all they have read and heard from their government is propaganda, and prevent rogueidization, in which a citizen suddenly sympathizes with the rogue and acquires rogue traits.

In the final stage, the enemy is isolated from international agencies, relief efforts, finances, and communications. After being forced into isolation, the enemy might achieve the adjective “hermit kingdom.” That denomination signifies it is ready for the great strike ─ economic warfare. The economic warfare punch has many shapes. If preferred sanctions are insufficiently effective, warships produce an illegal embargo by arriving close to the beaches and dwarfing the rowboats of the sanctioned nation, or airplanes guard against the infiltration of military weapons, such as water pumps, medicines, and construction materials. If the embargo does not complete the cleansing task, then the “grieved” country might arm surrogate warriors inside or close to the “rogue country” and have them add human catastrophes to the imposed catastrophes that already punish the undesired country.

“Rogues,” which have special qualifications, earn the title of terrorists. This title sticks to their names like velcro. It appears in all articles, headlines, dispatches, reports, and news as if the word terrorist followed by the name is one word. The “terrorist xxxx” (insert Hezbollah, Hamas, or Iran) earns this title by committing an evil deed that is usually in response to the tens of evil deeds committed against it. At times, economic warfare leads to a final step in whipping a “terrorist nation” back into shape ─ borderline starvation. If the food supply dwindles, certainly the unfortunate citizens of the “terrorist nation” will act as those who proclaimed “Liberte,” “Egalitie” and “Fraternitie” in the French Revolution. They will storm the gates of their oppressors, take away their cake, and demand bread. The United States has implemented political policies that have harmed nutrition in several countries. Despite the punitive measures, the leaders of “terrorist” nations still eat cake, while the populations suffer greatly from economic deprivation and, in some cases, function at a subsistence level

Since 1998, the US has established economic sanctions on more than 20 countries. The effectiveness of these sanctions in changing the Rogue” nation’s posture is described in two reports:

(1)    In an earlier report Daniel Griswold, “Going Alone on Economic Sanctions Hurts U.S. More than Foes.” CATO Institute, September 23, 2000, showed that trade sanctions failed to change the behavior of sanctioned countries, barred American companies from economic opportunities, and harmed the poorest people in the countries under sanctions, without significantly advancing national security.

From Cuba to Iran to Burma, sanctions have failed to achieve the goal of changing the behavior or the nature of target regimes. Sanctions have, however, deprived American companies of international business opportunities, punished domestic consumers, and hurt the poor and most vulnerable in the target countries. According to the president’s Export Council, the United States has imposed more than 40 trade sanctions against about three-dozen countries since 1993. The council estimates that those sanctions have cost American exporters $15 billion to $19 billion in lost annual sales overseas and caused long-term damage to U.S. companies ─ lost market share and reputations abroad as unreliable suppliers.

(2)    Dursun Peksen, “Better or Worse? The Effect of Economic Sanctions on Human Rights,” Journal of Peace Research, shows that extensive sanctions are more detrimental to human rights.

Utilizing time-series, cross-national data for the period 1981—2000, the findings suggest that economic sanctions worsen government respect for physical integrity rights, including freedom from disappearances, extra-judicial killings, torture, and political imprisonment.

In almost all cases, sanctioned countries have not changed their behavior and innocent civilians have greatly suffered.

Russia

Sanctions against Russia have failed to stifle the economy or diminish Putin’s willingness to continue the war. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts Russia’s Gross domestic product to rise by 2.6 percent in 2024. Cost of food in Russia increased 8.10 percent in January of 2024 over the same month in the previous year. Food Inflation averaged 9.14 percent from 2002 until 2024. Russian fossil fuel exports steadily declined after the invasion.

Iran

Iran’s romance with the atomic age provoked a series of sanctions  Asset freezes (March 2008) and an expanded arms embargo (June 2010) prohibited Iran from buying heavy weapons, such as attack helicopters and missiles. All of this initially proved futile and counterproductive. The 2007 US sanctions against Iranian banks provided Iran with immunity from the global financial crisis and enabled it to be one of the few major economies not to be severely affected by the economic downturn.

Economic warfare soon reached full scale by strikes against Iran’s earnings from its most precious resource and export ─ oil. The U.S. Congress passed unilateral sanctions that targeted Iran’s energy and banking sectors and penalties were imposed on firms that supplied Iran with substantial amounts of refined petroleum products.

The economic warfare affected Iran’s industries and welfare. In February 2024, Iran’s currency, the Rial, fell to a record low against the US dollar, losing about 95 percent of its value in the last decade. Lack of spare parts and inability to replace planes have affected aviation safety. Real GDP fell from $644b in 2010 to $240b in 2020 and is expected to rise to $421b in 2024.

Food Inflation in Iran averaged 34.95 percent from 2012 until 2024, reaching an all-time high of 87.00 percent in July of 2022

Sanctions have not stopped Iran’s nuclear activities, not prevented it from signing contracts with foreign firms to develop its energy resources, and not stopped the Islamic nation from implementing other contracts by funding in currencies other than the dollar. Crude oil exports, an essential part of Iran’s economy greatly declined, but, increased in recent years, as Iran adapted to a new world order.

Iraq

If Iraq were Pompeii, then the US would be Mt. Vesuvius.

After destroying much of Iraq in a declared war, the U.S. continued to destroy it further ─ first in the post-1991 Gulf War and later in the post-2003 invasion.

Excerpts from A UN Report on the Current Humanitarian Situation in Iraq, outline the suffering of the Iraqi people from the aftermath of the Gulf War.

Before the Gulf War

•  Before 1991 Iraq’s social and economic indicators were generally above the regional and developing country averages.
• Up to 1990, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) cited Iraq as having one of the highest per capita food availability indicators in the region.
• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), prior to 1991, health care reached approximately 97% of the urban population and 78% of rural residents.
• A major reduction in young child mortality took place from 1960 to 1990; with the infant mortality rate at 65 per 1,000 live births in 1989 (1991 Human Development Report average for developing countries was 76 per 1,000 live births.)
• Southern and central Iraq had well-developed water and sanitation systems, composed of two hundred water treatment plants (“wtp’s”) for urban areas and 1200 compact wtp’s to serve rural areas, as well as an extensive distribution network. WHO estimates that 90% of the population had access to an abundant quantity of safe drinking water.

After the Gulf War

• Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that Iraqi GDP may have fallen by nearly 67% in 1991, and the nation had “experienced a shift from relative affluence to massive poverty” and now had infant mortality rates that were “among the highest in the world.”
• The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimated the maternal mortality rate increased from 50/100,000 live births in 1989 to 117/100,000 in 1997.
• Calorie intake fell from a pre-war 3120 to 1093 calories per capita/per day in 1994-95.
• The prevalence of malnutrition in Iraqi children under five almost doubled from 1991 to 1996 (from 12% to 23%). Acute malnutrition in Center/South rose from 3% to 11% for the same age bracket.
• The World Food Program (WFP) estimated that access to potable water decreased to 50% of the 1990 level in urban areas and 33% in rural areas.
• School enrollment for all ages (6-23) declined to 53%. According to a field survey conducted in 1993, as quoted by UNESCO, in Central and Southern governorates, 83% of school buildings needed rehabilitation, with 8613 out of 10,334 schools having suffered serious damage.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq continued the destruction of Iraq.
Iraq became a war-torn nation, with sectarian strife bordering on civil war. By October 2010, post-invasion deaths of Iraqi civilians were estimated at almost 187,151 – 210,610.

A London Guardian report provided additional information on the effects of the war on Iraqi civilians: Rory Carroll in Baghdad: March 31, 2005, The Guardian reports:

Acute malnutrition among Iraqi children aged under five nearly doubled last year because of chaos caused by the US-led occupation, a United Nations expert said yesterday. Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission’s special expert on the right to food, said more than a quarter of Iraqi children do not have enough to eat and 7.7% are acutely malnourished – a jump from 4% recorded in the immediate aftermath of the US-led invasion. Reporting to the commission’s headquarters in Geneva, the Swiss professor claimed the situation was “a result of the war led by coalition forces.”

Excerpt from Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions, Joy Gordon. Harvard University Press, 2010, describes the extent of irrational economic warfare conducted by the United States against a defenseless Iraq.

For thirteen years the United States unilaterally prevented Iraq from importing nearly everything related to electricity, telecommunications, and transportation, blocked much of what was needed for agriculture and housing construction, and even prohibited some equipment and materials necessary for health care and food preparation.

On May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, appeared on the CBS program 60 Minutes. Commentator Lesley Stahl asked the ambassador, “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?” Madeleine Albright replied, “We think the price is worth it.”

Conclusion

Warfare is visualized in terms of dead soldiers, battlefield blood, eerie noises, and bombed-out structures. We cannot easily comprehend that warfare can be silent and still be deadly. Economic warfare has equivalents to military war. The country that takes the offense becomes the aggressor, as in any war, and the destruction to the defending state is equally brutal. In most cases, the economic war has worse results. In a one-sided manner, the civilian population of the defending nation suffers greatly and the aggressor country suffers few losses. The war rarely achieves the results that the offended party desired, and no peace treaty is signed. The struggle remains an open issue.

Gazans have suffered all forms of warfare — military, political, economic, and the politics of starvation. Their courage and battle to survive have no equal in all of history. A new word should be added to the language to remember their sacrifices ─  Gazavalor is one suggestion.

Israel’s tactics also deserve an addition to the vocabulary, one that describes its genocidal nature ─ Israelicide.

A major part of the corrupted U.S. media continues to rationalize Israel’s use of the weapon of starvation for the destruction of the Palestinian people and depicts Israelis as the victims. Some parts of the media give the starving Palestinians a voice and temper their voice with Israeli propaganda to give the situation a balance. Genocide cannot be balanced.

A satisfactory use of the weapon of starvation is to starve the beast and the beast is Israel.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Before scolding WAPO’s spurious description of Xi’s world, in which none of the charges are backed with proof, permit the presentation of one of the most serious errors in journalism history. Doubtful the WaPo staff will ever recover from this faux pas.  The editorial states:

China recorded a respectable 5.2 percent economic growth rate last year, but the real rate is lower when adjusted for falling prices. Rather than being an economic juggernaut, China seems likely to be entering a period of deflation, the sorts of conditions that led to Japan’s “lost decade.”

Having the real rate of growth to go down with deflation is equivalent to having an auto slow down when the gas pedal is more heavily pressed. How many hands, eyeballs, and minds at WAPO did not know that “inflation occurs when nominal GDP is higher than real GDP and deflation happens when real GDP is higher than nominal GDP.”

Real GDP= Nominal GDP/R
where: GDP=Gross domestic product
R=GDP deflator (R<1 during deflation and >1 during inflation)

​Examine the opening paragraph:

For the past decade, Americans have worried increasingly about China, not least because Chinese President Xi Jinping has centralized power, silenced critics, stalled private-sector reforms and taken an increasingly combative posture toward the rest of the world

Saying that Xi Jinping silenced critics, without specifying who and how is meaningless. To gain office, all politicians try to overcome critics. A good politician silences critics. China is different; the government runs on consensus, and when a decision is made, including who will be president, there are no remaining critics.

Again, without specifying the nature of Xi’s “increasingly combative posture toward the rest of the world?” how can his nature be evaluated? Have the Africans, Latinos, Europeans, Eskimos, and most of Asia found Xi combative or does the WaPo editorial board think Washington is the world?

Instead, Mr. Xi’s China is less free, less prosperous and less competently governed than it would have been had he taken a different course — one not inspired by rivalry with the West or fear of his own people.

“Mr. Xi’s China is less free.”

The intentional insult of replacing President Xi with Mr. XI demeans WaPo.
Western media always considered China devoid of freedom. How can a country be less free when it has always been considered not free? Consider who is setting the criteria and doing the evaluation. If Chinese authorities set the criteria and evaluated freedom in the United States how would they consider freedom of thought in the U.S. after the rise of Trumpism and his cohorts?

“Less prosperous.”

GDP is up 60 percent since Xi’s time in office; how could Xi have made China “less prosperous?”

China GDP (Trillions of US Dollars)

From Trading Economics

“and less competently governed than it would have been had he taken a different course.”

How does anyone know what will happen and what is the different course?” This is speculative speculation, a ridiculous assumption that does not pass the smell test.

Despite Mr. Xi lifting the world’s most draconian COVID-19 restrictions at the end of 2022, construction in China has slowed, manufacturing prices have declined and consumer spending has flattened. China’s stock market has lost $6 trillion in value in three years.

Reciting a decline in manufacturing prices and a flattening of consumer spending, as if they are always negatives, is not clever thinking. If a recession occurred, then they might be a result of an economic decline. No recession has occurred and their relation is due to consumer prices having dropped, maybe due to increased efficiency and productivity. Consumer transactions have increased and the total sales remained static, or did they? Beijing reports contradictory information and data does not indicate a flattening of consumer spending.

BEIJING, Jan. 21:

Robust consumption has been thriving and helping to underpin China’s economic recovery, while the country is energetically spurring consumer spending to strengthen one of the pillars needed to support high-quality growth. China’s total retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of the country’s consumption strength, climbed 7.2 percent year on year to reach 47.15 trillion yuan (about 6.63 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2023, an obvious sign of the Chinese people’s growing readiness to purchase.

China Consumer-spending in CNY hundred million

The last of many spurious remarks

To reduce the falling birthrate, he prefers exhorting young women to stay home and have more babies as their patriotic duty.

Another insulting remark to a nation’s president. Falling birthrate is a problem in all advanced nations, and no country seems to have a solution. A mendacious and callous WaPo distorted Xi’s words. At a recent All-China Women’s Federation meeting, President Xi Jinping told the cadres:

…to “guide women to play their roles in carrying forward the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation” and “in establishing good family traditions.” They should “actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and child-bearing” among women, so they can “respond to the aging of the population.”

Big difference between WaPo’s interpretation and the actual spoken words.

The experts on Xi Jinping China follow up the bashing with tools for him to use, and advice on how Xi can extricate himself and his nation from the damage he caused. Imagined failures solicit imagination of how to cure a patient who is not sick. Noting that, since 1978, except for one year during the COVID-19 epidemic, China had no recessions, while the U.S. suffered a recession every ten years, I doubt the Chinese government needs lectures on how to run their economy. China has a major housing crisis, not much different in scope than the 2008 mortgage crisis in the United States. The latter crisis provoked a huge banking crisis and sent the U.S. into a major recession. China’s housing crisis is now several years old and has not provoked a banking or economic crisis.

Describing people in a totally negative manner and not reciting known positive characteristics is biased editorializing. Xi has guided China to become the leading world power outdistancing the U.S. in the more important GDP/PPP.

Gross Domestic Product at Purchasing Power parity ($Trillions)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

Xi probably was not personally involved and criticizing him for “the world’s most draconian COVID-19 restrictions at the end of 2022,” is a subjective appraisal. An objective appraisal mentions his administration’s holding the number of Covid cases to 503,302 and deaths to 5,272 compared to U.S. cases of 111,426,318 and deaths of 1,199,436. Use per capita figures of 90,273 cases/1 million population and 896 deaths/1 million population for China and 333,802 cases/1 million population and 3,582 deaths/1 million population for the United States, and a bright light shines on China’s president.

The WaPo editorial, “Mr. Xi is tanking China’s economy,” is informative. It informs us that WaPo cannot be trusted. It has an agenda and will distort, lie, do somersaults, and deceive its audience to pursue the agenda.

When will we be free from China bashing?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Progressive economists connect meager wage growth to limited purchasing power ─ one cause of the 2008 crash ─ and increased concentration of wealth to cautious job growth in the post-crash years. Their conclusions have engineered debates on how to achieve equitable distributions in wages and wealth and raise middle-class wages, and the roles private industry, government, and labor unions play in achieving a more equitable society.

If private industry refuses to meet its obligations to readjust the divide, Thomas Piketty recommends increasing taxes on high earners and large estates and coupling them with a wealth tax. This method for resolving income inequality gives government a major role in correcting the unequal distributions of income and wealth.

In previous decades, unions had a larger membership, greater clout, and more strength to move management to meet wage demands. Government lacks a mechanism to force corporations to transfer productivity gains into wage gains. Only corporations can do the trick. Not likely. Corporations do not realize the social and economic benefits of decreasing income inequality and increasing middle-class purchasing power. Lowering remunerations to those in top pay brackets and increasing them for lower-income workers is more than a moral obligation; it has direct benefits to the economy for everyone. It is a requirement for achieving a stable economy.

Social costs due to less equitable income and wealth distributions

Rationalizing poorly distributed wealth by noting the American poor are wealthier than the middle class in many developed nations is deceiving. Poverty is defined as an absolute number but its effects are relative. The lower wage earners in the United States are unaware of what they earn in relation to foreigners; they are aware of what they do not earn in relation to others living close to them. The wide disparity in wealth creates resentment and tension and leads to psychological and emotional difficulties. Minimizing social problems means combining giving more to the lower classes and taking less by the upper classes.

The social problems and associated costs in developed nations that have wide distributions of income and wealth are well-documented — elevated mental illness, crime, infant mortality, and health problems. One statistical proof is that the United States, classified as the most unequal of the developed nations, except Singapore, had the highest index of social problems. The graph below from 2010-2011 and an earlier article, Health is a Socio-Economic Problem, describe the important relationships.

Every citizen suffers from and pays for the social problems derived from income inequality, an unfair condition in a democratic society. Private industry has an obligation and an opportunity to fix the problem it has caused. If not, Uncle Sam, whom they don’t want on their backs, will reach into their pockets, redistribute the wealth and resolve the situation.

Income inequality produces wealth concentration and political consequences. Wealthy individuals have increased control of the political debate, more influence in selection of candidates, tend to place their interests before national interests, and determine the direction of political campaigns. Skewing the electoral process distorts government and the decisions that guide social and economic legislation. Severe disparities in the concentration of wealth reduce democratic prerogatives, fair elections, and equality before the law.

The Sunlight Foundation, in an article, The Political 1% of the 1% in 2012 by Lee Dustman, June 2013, presents a fact-filled discussion of this topic.
Note: Although statistics are from ten years ago, they are interesting statistics and are relevant today.

More than a quarter of the nearly $6 billion in contributions from identifiable sources in the last campaign cycle came from just 31,385 individuals, a number equal to one ten-thousandth of the U.S. population.

Of the 1% of the 1%’s $1.68 billion in the 2012 cycle, $500.4 million entered the campaign through a super PAC (including almost $100 million from just one couple, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson). Four out of five 1% of the 1% donors were pure partisans, giving all of their money to one party or the other.

These concerns are likely even more acute for the two parties. In 2012, the National Republican Senatorial Committee raised more than half (54.2 percent) of its $105.8 million from the 1% of the 1%, and the National Republican Congressional Committee raised one third (33.0 percent) of its $140.6 million from the 1% of the 1%. Democratic party committees depend less on the 1% of the 1%. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised 12.9 percent of its $128.9 million from these top donors, and the Democratic Congressional Committee raised 20.1 percent of its $143.9 million from 1% of the 1% donors.

To the many billionaires who are tilting election campaigns, add the political contributions by super-sized corporations and industries, and electoral control by the wealthy becomes complete. Campaign contributions from the financial sector, the same financial sector that increased its liabilities from 10 percent of GDP in 1970 to 120 percent of GDP in 2009, and shifted investment from manufacturing to rent-seeking ─ making money the new-fashioned way ─ leads the way.

The Sunlight Foundation article also states:

In 1990, 1,091 elite donors in the FIRE sector (finance, insurance, and real estate).contributed $15.4 million to campaigns ─ a substantial sum at the time. But that’s nothing compared to what they contributed later. In 2010, 5,510 elite donors from the sector contributed $178.2 million, more than 10 times the amount they contributed in 1990.

The Debt of each sector as a percentage of GDP tells the story of the financial sector.
Note: 2022 GDP = $25.4T
          2022 Q4 Debt at the following:
          Total = $89.5T, Household = $19.4T, Business = $20.8T, Finance = $19.3T, Government= $26.8
2022 Percent of GDP at the following:
Household = 72.4%, Business = 81.9%, Finance = 76.8%, Government= 105.5%

The graph shows that the FIRE sector increased its wealth by borrowing money, making the economy work for it rather than working for the economy. The credit enabled the financial industry to grow until it led the nation into the 2008 economic disaster.

The Economic Consequences of Wealth Concentration

What has occurred with wealth concentration? A previous decade indicated a deflection of investment from dynamic industrial processes to static rent situations, from industries that employ workers to make goods to industries that employ money to make money. Graphs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) record the trend.

Note: In 2023, Financial sector employment was 9.2M and manufacturing employment was 12.9M.

The graphs plot employment in the manufacturing and financial sectors, Manufacturing had a slow deterioration during the Reagan presidency, followed by stability during the Clinton administration and a sharp decline during the George Bush era. Some deterioration in manufacturing employment is understandable; administrative jobs (clerical, administration) have been displaced by information technologies and these fields have added jobs; factory floor work of consumer goods has been displaced by machines (robot, numerical control) that have their own factory floors; and labor has been transferred from highly labor-intensive manufacturing to service industries. However, the employment loss is excessive and bewildering when compared to the increase in financial employment. Can a healthy economy result from a steady growth in financial workers and a consistent decrease in industrial workers?

Beginning in the Reagan era, until economic collapse in 2008, employment in the financial sector monotonically increased, except for slight blips during the 1991 recession and a few years of the Clinton administration. From a ratio of 1/3 in 1986, financial sector employment rose to 2/3 that of manufacturing employment by 2014, and increased by more than the changes in their respective additions to the Gross Domestic Product. Since the 2009 mini-depression, employment in the financial industry has remained relatively static. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows the value added by each industry.

Manufacturing rose from $1390.1 billion in 1997 to $2079.5 billion in 2013, an increase of 50 percent.
Finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing rose from $1623.1 billion in 1997 to $3293.2 billion in 2013, an increase of 100 percent.

A comparison between salaries of engineers, those who contribute directly to industrial growth, and financiers, those who drive active and passive investments, also reveals the importance given to those who make money from money.

One of the contributors to Capital, Thomas Philipson, in an article Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry: 1909-2006, NBER Working Paper No. 14644, January 2009, shows that wages for the financial sector started a steady growth during the Reagan administration, and eventually exceeded engineering wages, especially for those who had advanced degrees from the elite universities.

As the FIRE industry expands, the purchasing power contracts, one reason being that part of the rent-seeking covets higher returns and gets sidetracked into endless speculation; money rolling over and over and never available to purchase anything but pieces of paper. Millions of arbitrage transactions per second can earn thousands of dollars per second, which adds up to 3.6 million dollars per hour ─ no positive effect on the economy; only paper dollars continually created.

Stagnant labor wages and weak purchasing power force expansion of credit to increase demand, The wealthy respond to credit expansion with accelerated demand for larger houses, larger cars, and more luxury goods, spending that raises asset values and places middle-class earners at a disadvantage. The bottom ninety percent on the income scale desperately pursue debt to give themselves a temporary share of prosperity. Debt must eventually be repaid. Real wealth remains with a privileged few and others remain stagnant.

What is the Result?

Thomas Piketty has reshaped the thinking of the Capitalist system. Economics enables the understanding of how and when to increase demand, enable sufficient purchasing power, and the true meaning of profit.  A better understanding of economics may come from less regard for the conventional economics of modern theorists and more regard for the classical economics of the fathers of political economy ─ Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. The latter provided a controversial concept ─ wages provide purchasing power, and beyond what is bought by that purchasing power is surplus, whose value allows profit.

Pledge your support

Piketty shows that profits are being sidetracked into passive investments that produce only more capital and not useful goods, into the accumulation of excessive personal wealth, and into financial speculation that features the constant churning of paper money, which removes dollars from the market and creates difficulties for manufacturing to grow. Accumulation of excessive wealth generates social problems, diminishes the quality of life, and burdens the middle class when taxes are used to seek relief.

Capturing the political system by those most responsible for the problems ─ the privileged wealthy who manipulate a portion of the electoral process for their advantage ─ hinders routes to ameliorating the deterrents to a fair and successful economy. Due to their financial and political clout, the wealthy have their voices more easily heard in Congress and before federal agencies.

Karl Marx claimed that Capitalism contains the seeds of its destruction. Those who foster severe income inequality and inequitable wealth distribution apparently want to prove his statement is correct.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Major U.S. foreign policy decisions after World War II — Vietnam War, Lebanon intrusion, Somalia incursion, Afghan/Soviet War, Afghan occupation, Iraq War, support for Shah of Iran, and Libyan Wars — have been counterproductive, not resolving situations and eventually harming the American people. The one-sided relationship the United States has with Israel is another counterproductive policy that is harmful to the American public

Persistent attention to Israel and its dubious position in the world may seem overkill, except this attention is one of the most important, mortally affecting the U.S. public. Until a complete report of fatal relations with Israel is placed on the desks of U.S. congresspersons and they act positively upon the contents, attention to the issue is incomplete and peril continues. Surveying U.S. policies that favored Israel collects a horrendous list of American fatalities, economic havoc, international terrorism, political misalignment, hatred, and aggression against fortress America.

Two questions. How have the expensive arrangements, Velcro attachments, and highly supportive measures for Israel benefitted the United States? What has Israel done for Americans, not for American politicians, but for those who vote them into office? A convenient means for obtaining the answer is to have a leading “think tank” in the United States supply the information. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which “seeks to advance a balanced and realistic understanding of American interests in the Middle East and to promote the policies that secure them” has a 2012 article on the topic, “Friends with Benefits: Why the U.S.-Israeli Alliance Is Good for America,” by Michael Eisenstadt and David Pollock, Nov 7, 2012, and is a likely source. Some of its major recommendations:

U.S.-Israeli security cooperation dates back to heights of the Cold War, when the Jewish state came to be seen in Washington as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the Middle East and a counter to Arab nationalism….Israel remains a counterweight against radical forces in the Middle East, including political Islam and violent extremism. It has prevented the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the region by thwarting Iraq and Syria’s nuclear programs.

(1) The reason the Soviet Union acquired influence in the Middle East was Washington’s refusal to sell arms to the Arab nations, while “indirectly supplying weapons to Israel via West Germany, under the terms of a 1960 secret agreement to supply Israel with $80 million worth of armaments.“ Less secret deliveries of MIM-23 Hawk anti-aircraft missiles in 1962 and M48 Patton tanks in 1965 told the Arab nations they could not collaborate with a government that armed their principal adversary and they should seek military assistance elsewhere.
(2) Arab nationalism has developed, and developed, and developed; so, how did Israel counter Arab nationalism? Did Israel stimulate Arab nationalism?
(3) What has Israel done to protect others as a “counterweight against radical forces in the Middle East, including political Islam and violent extremism?” The answer is nothing. Radical forces, political Islam, and violent extremism emerged immediately after Israel’s formation and grew, and grew, as Israel grew.
(4) Iraq and Syria sought nuclear weapons to counter Israel’s nuclear weapons developments, which the U.S. could have and should have prevented. No nukes in Israel; no nukes in Syria or Iraq. Why did the U.S., dedicated to preventing nuclear proliferation, allow Israel to obtain the atomic bomb?

Dozens of leading U.S. companies have set up technology incubators in Israel to take advantage of the country’s penchant for new ideas. In 2011, Israel was the destination of 25 percent of all U.S. exports to the region, having recently eclipsed Saudi Arabia as the top market there for American products.

(1) U.S. companies have subsidiaries worldwide and hire talent in all nations. What’s significant about Israel?
(2) “In 2011, Israel was the destination of 25 percent of all U.S. exports to the region…” Was that good? In 2022, U.S. exports to Israel were $20.0 billion and imports were $30.6 billion, adding $10.7 billion to Washington’s trade deficit, not a good economic statistic. Without Israel’s trade, the U.S. exported $83 billion in goods and services to Middle East nations and had a trade surplus of $5.3 billion, a better statistic.

U.S. companies’ substantial cooperation with Israel on information technology has been crucial to Silicon Valley’s success. At Intel’s research and development centers in Israel, engineers have designed many of the company’s most successful microprocessors, accounting for some 40 percent of the firm’s revenues last year. If you’ve made a secure financial transaction on the Internet, sent an instant message, or bought something using PayPal, you can thank Israeli  researchers.

These bites of public relations win the all-time Pinocchio award. Is The Washington Institute a legitimate “think tank” or a covert lobby?

(1)    “Israel has been crucial to Silicon Valley’s success.” Next, we’ll hear that Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mt. Whitney.
(2)    “At Intel’s research and development centers in Israel, engineers have designed many of the company’s most successful microprocessors, accounting for some 40 percent of the firm’s revenues last year.” Intel has 131,000 employees in 65 countries — 11,000 in Israel, 12,000 in China, and approximately 7,500 employees at its 360-acre Leixlip campus in Ireland. The company develops the processors, not the country or specific engineers; it can develop the same processors anywhere in the world and has capably developed its major microprocessors for 45 years in the good old United States of America.
(3)    “If you’ve made a secure financial transaction on the Internet, sent an instant message, or bought something using PayPal, you can thank Israeli researchers.” Another Pinocchio award. Let’s be more accurate: “If you’ve been scammed in a financial transaction, had your messages hacked, or had someone purchase an item with your PayPal account, thank Israeli researchers.”

In its one-sided presentation, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy does not show the U.S.-Israeli alliance is good for America. The Institute has not considered the other side, the harm that Israel has visited upon its most essential partner. Reality shows the U.S. government and its people have dealt with Israel in a suicidal manner and in a zero-sum game, where the U.S. is the “zero,” or actually minus, and Israel receives the sum of all the benefits.

Recognition of Israel

From its inception, Israel betrayed the United States and the U.S. betrayed its commitment to a just and peaceful post-WWII world. President Harry S. Truman’s recognition of the new state, only 11 minutes after its declaration, did not consider its composition, signified a pardon of the excesses committed by Irgun and Haganah militias against civilian populations, and certified the exclusion of a Palestinian voice in the new government. Truman never asked who represented the 400,000 indigenous Palestinians in the declared Israeli state that was almost equal in population to the 600,000 Jews, most of whom were recent immigrants and not decidedly permanent.

Suez Canal War

Several years later Israel again betrayed its principal benefactor. While President Eisenhower attempted to broker a peace agreement between Egypt and France and Great Britain that would resolve the crisis emerging from Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, Israel held secret consultations with the British and French. Considering Nasser a threat to its security, desirous of incorporating the Sinai into its small nation, and with a plan to extend Israel to the Litani River in Lebanon, Israel devised a strategy with the two European powers that permitted its forces to invade Egypt and advance to within 10 miles of the Suez Canal. Pretending to protect the vital artery, Britain and France parachuted troops close to the canal. An enraged Eisenhower threatened all three nations with economic sanctions, which succeeded in having all three militaries withdraw their forces and relinquish control of the canal to Egypt.

Six-Day War

The six-day war brought the first American blood in the U.S. commitment to Israel. On June 8, 1967, Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, an intelligence-gathering vessel patrolling in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, 17 nautical miles off the northern Sinai coast. The crew suffered thirty-four (34) killed and one hundred seventy-three (173) wounded. A declassified Top Secret report details the CIA version of the attack and exonerates Israel by claiming mistaken identity. This has not satisfied USS Liberty survivors, who felt Israeli pilots had many opportunities for proper identification and performed the attacks to prevent the ship from obtaining important intelligence information.

1973 Yom Kippur War

Next came the 1973 Yom Kippur War and an economic catastrophe for the American people. The U.S. maintained it needed Israel to offset Soviet influence in the Arab world. The combined Egyptian and Syrian attempt to retake lands lost in the 1967 war prompted the Nixon administration to use taxpayer money and supply massive shipments of weapons to the beleaguered Israel state. An excuse for providing the armaments shipments ─ Israel might use the Samson option and nuke its adversaries ─ is regarded as a manipulation to pacify opponents of the arms deliveries. The controversy is reported in Wikipedia.

Dayan raised the nuclear topic in a cabinet meeting, warning that the country was approaching a point of “last resort.” That night, Meir authorized the assembly of thirteen 20-kiloton-of-TNT(84 TJ) tactical nuclear weapons for Jericho missiles at Sdot Micha Airbase and F-4 Phantom II aircraft at Tel Nof Airbase. They would be used if absolutely necessary to prevent total defeat, but the preparation was done in an easily detectable way, likely as a signal to the United States. Kissinger learned of the nuclear alert on the morning of 9 October. That day, President Nixon ordered the commencement of Operation Nickel Grass, an American airlift to replace all of Israel’s material losses.

The U.S. contribution in enabling Israel to achieve a decisive victory resulted in an oil embargo that drove up oil prices, set Americans into a frantic rampage in trying to keep their cars on the road, a stagnant economy, and huge inflation, which the Federal Reserve stopped by raising interest rates to record highs and led to the 1982 recession.

Lebanon War

Despite a truce with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and wanting to rid Lebanon of the PLO and Syrian dominance in Lebanon affairs, Israel used a failed assassination of Shlomo Argov, Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, as an excuse to invade Lebanon on June 6, 1982. Where Israel went, U.S. diplomacy was sure to follow, and the U.S. joined a multinational peacekeeping force.

U.S. presence in Lebanon had detractors. On April 18, 1983, a car bomb destroyed the U.S. embassy in West Beirut, killing dozens of American foreign service workers and Lebanese civilians. On October 23, 1983,  after U.S. gunships in the Mediterranean shelled Syrian-backed Druze militias in support of the Christian government, a truck crashed through the front gates of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut and exploded. Beirut barracks were destroyed and 241 marines and sailors were killed in the explosion. Soon after, President Reagan withdrew all U.S. forces from Lebanon.

International Terrorism

For several decades, al-Qaeda, the most prominent international terrorist organization, posed the most serious threat to America’s peace and stability. On August 7, 1998, al-Qaeda associates bombed the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in Africa. Twelve Americans were among the two hundred and twenty-four people who died in the terrorist actions. Three years later, the September 11 attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. caused 2,750 deaths in New York and 184 at the Pentagon. Forty more Americans died when one of the hijacked planes crashed into the ground in Pennsylvania. In addition, 400 police officers and firefighters perished in attempts to rescue people and extinguish the fires at the New York Trade Center.

Where did it all start? Why, and how did master terrorist Osama bin Laden develop his plans? There is no one factor, but, in several documents, bin Landen mentions Zionist control of Middle East lands and its oppression of an Arab population as significant factors. America’s support for Israel was one of bin Laden‘s principal arguments with the United States. The al-Qaeda leader revealed his attitude in the last sentences of a “Letter to America.”

Justice is the strongest army, and security is the best way of life, but it slipped out of your grasp the day you made the Jews victorious in occupying our land and killing our brothers in Palestine. The path to security is for you to lift your oppression from us.

During the 1990s, two other documents,“Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” and the “Declaration of the World Islamic Front,” retrieved from Osama bin Laden, jihad, and the sources of international terrorism, J. M. B. Porter, Indiana International & Comparative Law Review, provide additional information on bin-Laden’s attachment of his terrorist responses to Zionist activities.

[T]he people of Islam have suffered from aggression, iniquity, and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist/Crusader alliance … Their blood was spilled in Palestine and Iraq. The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon, are still fresh in our memory.

So now they come to annihilate … this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. … if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.

Afghanistan

The hunt for Osama bin Laden and efforts to annihilate the al-Qaeda organization led to the invasion of Afghanistan and a twenty-year clash between the U.S. and the Taliban. Result: 2,402 United States military deaths, 20,713 American service members wounded, and Taliban regaining control.

Iraq

It’s difficult and punishing to agree with Osama bin Laden, but he may be correct or have a perspective that needs more examination. Did Bush order the invasion of Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, which any child could ascertain he could not possibly have, or did the Neocons, Israel’s voice in the administration, convince him to use Americans, their resources, and their money to rid the Middle East of Israel’s most formidable enemy? Was George W. Bush’s uncalled-for war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq another example of sacrificing U.S. lives to advance Israel’s interests? Other international terrorist operations emerged during the Iraq war and brought U.S. military personnel into more battles. Finally, in 2019, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the best-equipped and largest of all the terrorist factions, which caused havoc in Syria and Iraq, was defeated, and international terrorism moved out of the Middle East and into parts of Africa.

Iran

It is taken for granted that Iran and the United States are natural enemies, except the hostility may be manufactured and the factory might be in Tel Aviv. Iran has a government and internal problems that disturb the U.S., but so do many other nations, especially Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. maintains relations with these nations. Confrontations have occurred and are escalating and that demands toning down rather than ratcheting up, and more diplomatic confrontations to prevent the physical confrontations. Sanctions that harm Iran’s economy and people, assistance to Israel in assassinating Iranian scientists, and use of the powerful computer worm, Stuxnet, to cause mayhem in Iran’s nuclear program are counterproductive provocations. The U.S. has no specific problem with Iran that cannot be ameliorated. Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and incursions into the Haram al-Sharif are problems that Iran has with Israel, and they cannot be ameliorated until the oppression stops. Cunningly, Israel has tied its problems with the Islamic State to U.S. problems with Iran and uses the U.S. to challenge Iran.

Other

·         In defiance of U.S. restrictions and the U.S. supplying Israel with advanced military equipment, Israeli companies sold weapons to China without a permit.

·         The U.S. gives Israel the sum of $3.1 B every year to purchase advanced weapons, from which Israel became a major exporter of military equipment and has been able to compete effectively with its patron.

·          Israeli governments have scoffed at all U.S. entreaties to halt settlement expansion, even insulting then Vice-President Joe Biden by authorizing settlement expansion one day before Biden arrived for talks.

·         Two Navy SEALs are missing and assumed dead after a maritime operation to intercept weapons from Iran heading to Houthi fighters. This episode is a result of the U.S. participating in Israel’s war against Gaza.

·         The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has been attacking air bases housing U.S. and Iraqi troops in western Iraq “as a part of a broad resistance to the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, as well as a response to Israel’s operations in Gaza.”

Toward the Abyss

The verdict is clear; the United States derives no benefit from its close relationship with Israel. Maybe, during the confusing Cold War, desk strategists determined the Soviets had an influence with Middle Eastern nations and thought it wise to have a place where the Pentagon would be welcome. Soviet influence disappeared after the 1979 Camp David Accords; Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement and Soviet diplomats and military vanished from the desert sands.

From September 11, 2001, to October 7, 2023, the U.S. continually suffered fatalities, economic havoc, international terrorism, political misalignment, hatred, and aggression against Fortress America. Why did U.S. administrations pursue a “special relationship” with Israel and find themselves victims of the “war on terror” and involved in numerous wars? The current U.S. administration, which did not use its clout to prevent the October 7, 2023 attack in Israel, has permitted Israel’s self-inflicted problems to bring the U.S. people into supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people, promoting the U.S. as the leading killer of indigenous peoples.

It took a long time to turn the murmurs of genocide in Palestine into a forceful expression that others would accept and fearlessly repeat. Murmurs of sabotage and treason by elected government officials are being heard, but they are legal terms for crimes, and, legally, U.S. legislators’ activities may not be considered in those categories. Treachery is a better word, gaining federal office by treacherous means — pandering to those that represent the interests of a foreign power to obtain campaign funds and press coverage — and using that office to satisfy the wants of the foreign power, despite the damage done to American constituencies. Past and present U.S. executives and legislators are guilty of treachery and that word should be shouted in the halls of Congress. Sound the alarm, get them out before it is too late, and elect into office those who represent the American people and not a foreign government. MAGA – MAKE AMERICA GOOD AGAIN.

Aiding the genocide has put the U.S. in severe moral decline; escalating internal divisions are leading to social and political decline; and an economy that can no longer compete in the international markets, together with increasing resistance to use of the dollar, is leading to economic decline. The signs of civil strife have yet to appear and when they do they will push the U.S. off the edge of the cliff and into the abyss.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Recognized Contemporary Genocides

In Rwanda, the larger Hutu population (85%) felt dominated by the smaller (15%) and wealthier Tutsi ethnicity. Independence led to Hutu control, followed by massacres of Tutsis, and forced displacement of 400,000 by the ruling government that portrayed Tutsis as threats to Rwanda.

The April 6, 1994 downing of a plane carrying Rwanda’s President Habyarimana and Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira prompted extremist Hutus to blame Tutsi rebels from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) for the attack and deaths of the two Hutu presidents. Rwanda’s Hutu militia organized attacks against all Tutsis. Assisted by forces in neighboring Uganda and Tanzania, the RPF successfully engaged the Hutu militia, captured the country, and gained control of the government. The victory did not stop a three-month Hutu rampage that randomly murdered an estimated 500,000 – 900,000 Tutsis.

In Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist nation, Rohingya people are an ethnic and religious minority of Muslim and Indo-Aryan origin. Despite tracing their presence in Myanmar to before the 18th century, the government considers them “Bengali, with no cultural, religious, or social ties to Myanmar,” and denies them citizenship and services. A conflict between the Rakhine people and the Myanmar authorities spilled over into the ongoing conflicts between Rohingya and their Rakhine neighbors and the Myanmar military. In 2017, the violence caused an excess of 10,000 Rohingya killed and more than 300 villages destroyed. About 700,000 of an estimated 1.4 million Rohingya people fled to nearby countries, mostly to Bangladesh.

Cambodia found itself drawn into the Vietnam War when U.S. forces expanded their military operations into Cambodia to combat Vietnamese communist forces seeking sanctuary. Prince Sihanouk severed relations and the U.S. initiated a U.S.-backed coup that dethroned Sihanouk and brought General Lon Nol to power as President of the Khmer Republic. An exiled Sihanouk joined forces with the North Vietnamese and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge communists, defeated the Lon Nol army, and captured Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. Guided by leadership from Pol Pot, the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) instituted a series of purges that evacuated cities, killed previous Lon Nol officials, brutally persecuted Buddhist monks and ethnic minorities, and attempted to eliminate dissidents to the regime. In 1979, Pol Pot’s previous ally, victorious North Vietnam, now a unified Vietnam, invaded Cambodia, overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime, and created the People’s Republic of Kampuchea.

The Cambodian genocide was not conventional; more of a super killing field, reminiscent of Robespierre’s terror campaign during the French Revolution.

The World War II genocide started with severe persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany during the pre-war years and emerged in Poland during the early war years. A complete genocide, known as the Holocaust, reached maximum intensity with the slaughter of Jews after their forced transfer from all of Europe to labor camps. The most severe statistic has only 3.5 million of the 9.5 million Jews who lived in Europe before the war listed as survivors. An agreement between the Zionists in Palestine and the Nazi regime enabled some 53,000 Jews to emigrate from Germany to Palestine. About 170,000 displaced persons migrated to Israel after the war. Jews are now accused of genocide of the Palestinian people.

Armenians have suffered genocidal violence throughout their history. According to Britannica:

Anti-Armenian feelings erupted into mass violence several times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When, in 1894, the Armenians in the Sasun region refused to pay an oppressive tax, Ottoman troops and Kurdish tribesmen killed thousands of Armenians in the region. Another series of mass killings began in the fall of 1895, when Ottoman authorities’ suppression of an Armenian demonstration in Istanbul became a massacre. In all, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed in massacres between 1894 and 1896, which later came to be known as the Hamidian massacres. Some 20,000 more Armenians were killed in urban riots and pogroms in Adana and Hadjin in 1909.

These atrocities were a prelude to the 1915 genocide that some estimate caused 1-1.5 million Armenian deaths by Turkish Ottoman authorities who claimed that questionable loyalty of the Armenian population necessitated their transfer away from the neighboring Russian enemy. Turkish officials asserted that the massacres occurred from enraged populations and not from a design by the Turkish Ottoman government.

Uniqueness of the Palestinian Genocide

Most of the previously recognized genocides occurred spontaneously, involved local people, were relatively short, and ended abruptly. In their essential feature, the government accused a minority of not having social and cultural ties with the majority and being intruders in the land. No foreign governments or foreign people assisted in the genocide and assisted the oppressed people. The genocide of the Palestinian people does not share these characteristics.

Zionists were not part of the local population; they intruded into the area and were a small minority at the time they started the Palestinian genocide. An established Israeli government slowly increased the genocide process, has continued it for a lengthy time, and is now providing a planned path to conclusion. Whereas, other genocides occurred quickly — Rwanda Tutsi, Armenian, Rohingya — or were not readily apparent — World War II Holocaust — the Palestinian genocide is occurring for a long period and in full view of the world. Several foreign governments, mainly the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, and Jewish and Evangelical people and institutions actively aid the genocide. On the other hand, several Middle Eastern governments and people throughout the world recognize the desperate plight of the Palestinians and valiantly fight to protect them from destruction. The unique characteristics, no visible end to the catastrophe, involvement of external actors in perpetrating the genocide, and increasingly violent reactions indicate that this genocide will provoke unavoidable clashes. More destruction will be visited upon other innocents.

Beyond the Genocide

The South African delegation gave a convincing presentation to the International Court of Justice at The Hague’s case of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.

More than 23,000 people in Gaza have been killed during Israel’s military campaign, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. That toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Nearly 85% of Gaza’s people have been driven their homes, a quarter of the enclave’s residents face starvation, and much of northern Gaza has been reduced to rubble.

The response from U.S. and Israeli authorities certified the genocide.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the accusation of genocide “meritless.” National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby said, “That’s not a word that ought to be thrown around lightly, and we certainly don’t believe that it applies here.”

John Kirby is correct. “Genocide is not a word that ought to be thrown around lightly.” Normal, serious, and compassionate people don’t lightly reject the accusation, don’t immediately call it meritless, and listen carefully to the pleadings. Simple adjectives and adverbs are not a reply and point-by-point refutation to exacting statements is the only acceptable answer. By judging before listening, American officials indicated they could not reply and the charge of genocide is accurate. Surprisingly, the Israeli government’s reply was more damaging to its defense. Its defense lawyer uttered, “Genocide is one of the most heinous acts any entity or individual can commit, and such allegations should only be made with the greatest of care. Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas’s terrorist acts — acts that Hamas has vowed to repeat again and again until Israel is completely destroyed.” Israel insisted that its war in Gaza was a legitimate defense of its people and Hamas militants were guilty of genocide who want to wipe out all Jews.

This war is an offensive war and not a defensive war. Israel is not defending itself, it is offending all of Gaza and its population. Can any knowledgeable and competent individual believe that Hamas, with its peashooters and 15,000 fighters, can repeat and repeat its October 7 action, destroy nuclear-armed Israel, commit genocide on the Israeli people, and wipe out all Jews? Only a twisted mind can offer those reasons as an excuse for the daily murder of the Gazans and the destruction of their housing, institutions, hospitals, and will to live.

Realizing the oppression cannot force the Palestinians to submit or leave and has no foreseeable end, the Israeli government took advantage of the October 7 single event (it will become a remembrance date throughout the Western world) to convince the world that the Palestinians are mass murderers and therefore mass murder of millions of them is acceptable. How will this eventually play out? Noting the enormity of the last 75 years of destruction throughout the Middle East, North Africa, Western nations battle against international terrorism, and Israel’s intensification of its assaults in Gaza and the West Bank, anticipated future destruction throughout the world, which includes strikes against Israel’s principal opponents, will be vast.

Start with Gaza

Israeli leaders have twittered and tittered with vague propositions that Gazans have a choice of either leaving the area or remaining surrounded and confined. President Biden recommends the Palestinian Authority (PA) govern Gaza; the PA that cannot support itself, is not popular with the Palestinian people, cannot stop the daily aggression against its citizens in the West Bank, and subsidized 1/3 of the budget of Hamas ruled Gaza, is the PA that is going to tend to two million Palestinians in a barren Gaza.

Another suggestion is for the United Nations (UN), which has supplied succulence to the Gazans for 75 years, to govern (by a Trusteeship Council???) and increase succulence by several magnitudes. This is the UN that passed a myriad of resolutions for administrating the chaos and has not been able to implement any of them. The UN Trusteeship Council consists of the five permanent members of the Security Council — China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States — few of whom trust one another. UN peacekeepers have rarely been able to keep the peace in any areas of their presence.

In a previous article, The Fate of the Palestinians, the writer described a depressing scenario for Gaza’s future.

In this gigantic plantation, where a huge population cramps into an area that cannot contain it, labor will be plentiful and jobs will be scarce. Gazans will work for low wages and receive a marginal life. With every aspect of their lives controlled by an outside force, they will be unable to control their destiny; population increase will be regulated and population decrease will be ruthlessly managed…until extinction.

I have not seen another serious scenario that capably contradicts this drastic scenario. One feature of those contending the Palestinian genocide is that they are mostly retroactive and not proactive; few actions prevent events and many actions only recite events. What are the possible scenarios? What is expected to happen? Preparing for certainty is preferred to waiting for Godot.

West Bank

Israel has addressed the Palestinians in the West Bank territory in a different manner than addressed in Gaza. Arranging the West Bank Palestinians for their demise requires another approach. The Gazans live in one contiguous area; West Bank Palestinians live in separate enclaves. No settlements or settlers in Gaza; many of both are in the West Bank. No soldiers, checkpoints, or roadblocks in Gaza; daily occurrence in the West Bank. No recognized authority that Israel will deal with in Gaza; PA in the West Bank.

Expanding settlements, periodic stealing of Palestinian lands, and daily encroachment on Palestinian lives indicate that Israel is not amenable to having Palestinians between the river and the sea. Recent events show Israel is attempting to quell all resistance, no matter how minor. From October 7, 2023, to January 11, 2024, more than 2,650 Palestinians in the West Bank have been arrested. According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, “some 300 West Bank Palestinians have been killed. Based on military estimates, the vast majority of those killed since October 7 were shot during clashes amid arrest raids.” Two problems exist that prevent Israel from completing its plans.

(1)    Palestinians have not budged and their population has not reduced.

(2)    Military opposition grows stronger each day. Iran advances in all warfare technology — drones, long-range missiles, and nuclear weapons.

Israel has a dilemma — should Palestinians be removed before addressing the military problem or is it wise to silence enemies before they develop capability to defend themselves? Israel’s strategists realize their foes may be able to challenge the expulsion and once the foes are eliminated the expulsion becomes easier. Look at history and find Iran and Hezbollah as the last-standing antagonists who can prevent the Zionists from accomplishing their objectives. Other antagonists have been sidetracked.

The Sudan, a perceived Israel antagonist, which had potential of becoming a major nation, has been carved into two hapless nations, much due to U.S. actions. The U.S. invasion, urged by Israel’s fifth column, the Neocons, overthrew Saddam Hussein and prevented Iraq from becoming a major power in the Middle East and a threat to Israel. Libya, another Israel antagonist, has been destroyed and driven to anarchy by NATO’s incomprehensible and falsely driven military actions. Egypt and Jordan have been pacified.

Israel expected Syria’s Assad would be defeated and a new government would eschew relations with Iran and Hezbollah. Overthrow of the Assad regime and replacement by a new government would have deprived Hezbollah of a compatible border and access to its Iran ally. In Iraq or Syria, a Kurdish success in establishing an independent state would have given Israel a friend on the borders with Iraq and Iran. Because none of these expectations have been realized, a new approach to debilitating Iran and Hezbollah and assuring they do not have weapons to cause great danger to Israel is being processed.

Iran is the last man standing. Hezbollah and the Houthis are irritants that will become ineffective once Iran has been destroyed. Provoking Iran into serious military action has not occurred and the Islamic Republic is not falling for the bait, which means the provocations will become stronger and stronger until Iran has no choice. The Islamic Republic also has internal enemies and restless ethnicities who seek independence. Arranging the dominos and churning the pot are everyday tasks for Israel’s Mossad; assuredly, they have been hard at work on the problem. Once the massive strikes from sea and air hit Tehran and other cities, other internal land strikes will scorch the countryside. Iran will become an inferno of external war, religious war, civil war, and tribal rebellions.

With Iran subdued, Israel will turn its intention to the recalcitrant Palestinians, whom the government will accuse of siding with Iran and cannot be trusted. Expulsion of three million indigenous people, who had tilled the soil for generations, and replacing them with foreign newcomers, who had walked city streets for generations, is difficult. Israel cannot evict the Palestinians. The separation of the Palestinian population in several and widely separated cities in the West Bank does not allow forcible eviction. Israel will find another means and the most logical is covertly administrating population decline.

The CIA publishes interesting statistics (they do some helpful things) and the population and economic statistics reveal the precarious life of the Palestinians on their home grounds.

WEST BANK POPULATION STATISTICS

The present statistics don’t favor Israel’s approach to getting rid of those pesky Palestinians. High birth rates and low death rates offset ultra-high maternal and infant mortality rates and a high migration rate. The Palestinian population continues to increase at 2.3%/yr. So, how can Israel engineer a severe population decline? This was previously discussed in an article, “Ever Again.” Changing the statistics to be more favorable to decreasing Palestinian presence in the West Bank is another way.

Make life more brutal, which Israel will do, and the migration rate, already high for young males, will greatly increase. This will lower the number of marriages and births. Families will also leave. The Palestinian economy is not well developed, with no major industries, mainly services (77.6%, 2017 est.), agriculture, and small industry. Unemployment is at 25 percent. Imports absorb one-half of the GDP. In 2022, Palestinian imports of goods and services were $8.20 billion and exports were $1.58 billion and much of the trade was with Israel. Imports from Israel were $4.64 billion and exports were $1.40 billion.

Israel has a stranglehold on Palestinian lives and economy — appropriating land reduces agriculture and animal husbandry output and increases demand for food imports; lowering Palestinian labor in the Israel economy augments Palestinian unemployment; crime and violence follow unemployment and urge people to leave, harassment and physical attacks create anxiety, leading to escalating illness, deaths, and miscarriages.

Continually encroached on and reduced to diminishing living space, agriculture, water, and resources, life for Palestinians will become unbearable. Will the Palestinians continue to live at lower and lower subsistence levels? Migration will escalate.

If the population decreases by 5 percent annually, in 14 years, the population is halved, and, in 50 years, the population decreases to 10 percent of its initial amount. By these methods, the West Bank Palestinian population can be reduced from 3 million to 300,000. The remaining Palestinians will be faceless and wandering people among the many millions of Israelis.

Physical destruction is noticeable. Psychological, cultural, political, social, cultural, and economic havoc (oil embargos) go unnoticed.

Hesitatingly murmured is that descendants of those who suffered the World War II genocide are committing the present genocide. The Israeli Jewish population has a strong voice in a democratic nation and has not expressed indignation; they, and a great number of Jews throughout the world are supporting the genocide. Are those who suffered and died during the Holocaust being used to shadow another genocide? Have the decades of abundant references to the Holocaust been an emotional preparation to have others accept the ongoing genocide? Have the lessons of World War II, which should have been used to prevent further community destruction, been subverted to enhance destruction? Have contemporary Jews betrayed their ancestors who lie buried in the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Mauthausen, Ravensbruck, Sobibor, and others?

Reactions to the gathering genocide have already occurred. The extent to which they grow and affect the Jewish people remains undetermined. Will they be short-lived and mildly punishing or will they grow in intensity, be gravely punishing, and last from here to eternity?

A relatively small clique determines America’s future, who succeeds and who fails, who receives and who is denied, who gets pardoned, and who gets punished. American democracy in action.

In the Middle East, it has become “who lives and who dies.”

From Plymouth Rock to Western Wall granite, the American dream shapes the fate of people and skews world history.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

German forces conquered France and Roosevelt realized the need to help Britain. His help considered British soldiers fighting the war with U.S. armaments and not together with U.S. soldiers. The entrance of the Soviet Union into the war increased the president’s belief that the joint Anglo-Soviet forces, aided by U.S. war materials, would be able to defeat Germany without the U.S. entering the war. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reorganized the war map and Roosevelt found his nation forced into battle.

The U.S. declared war on imperial Japan and not on Nazi Germany. After Germany declared war on the U.S., considered one of the most strategic blunders ever made by a country at war, the U.S. returned the favor and entered the European theater of war. In December 1941, the U.S. military was unprepared and suffered quick losses from an advancing Japanese army. Preoccupied with stopping the Japanese, U.S. strategists had no will to fight on two fronts. However, they did. In the finest years of their history, the American people sacrificed everything, stood united as never before and never since, produced armaments at a record pace — a warship each day ─ and, together with the Soviet Union, liberated Europe and Asia from aggression and oppression.

To those who observe events from a socio-economic perspective, America fought in World War II to prevent German and Japanese economic dominance and assure American hegemony. Those familiar with FDR and America of that time have a different perspective — Roosevelt was an internationalist who believed no country should dominate and no country should be dominated. At Yalta, he knew that the United States and the Soviet Union would emerge as the dominant world powers and to prevent clashes, each needed its sphere of influence and defensive perimeter. Being dominant did not mean dominating and Roosevelt, maybe naively, expected that the Socialist Soviet Union would treat all nations in its sphere of influence as an equal partner. He titled the war effort “America, the arsenal of democracy,” assuring, by morality and military might that liberty and freedom would be made available to all.

Future U.S. presidents betrayed Roosevelt’s vision. The U.S. achieved dominance and fought to preserve it. The glow of the shining World War II years began to dim and was extinguished by President Biden’s actions at the start of Israel’s war on Gaza. Americans were now supporting tyranny that had many elements to what they had fought against, willing accomplices to an apartheid Israel that supposedly arose from the ashes of the Holocaust and developed from embers that characterized Nazi Germany — ultra-nationalism, racism, militarism, irredentism, belief in the unique folk, and perpetuation of genocide. List the characteristics of nations and compare apartheid Israel with Nazi Germany and the two nations have many similar characteristics, while apartheid Israel shows little relation to Western democracies. Not everyone will agree with the comparisons made with the writer’s knowledge and honest effort. Others can construct their comparison tables and gather their conclusions.

• Israel does not have the totalitarian rule that characterized Nazi Germany but, during the last decades, extreme right governments have governed. Critics of China’s government rail at Xi Jinping’s extended rule after a 10-year presidency of two terms. Benjamin Netanyahu ruled for 11 years and has ruled again for the last year.
• Israel does not have a corporate state (Fascist economy), where the government exercises strict control over corporate behavior and essentially regulates the economy. Social control is much less in Israel but existent. Modern techniques allow Israel’s intelligence agencies to conduct greater surveillance of the population, more than the intrusions that existed in Nazi Germany.
• Israel is not nearly at the sinister level of the brutal Nazi system that murdered, plundered, and brought chaos to all of Europe but its policies have usurped Palestinian lands, held the Palestinians in captivity, destroyed their tools for having a decent life, reduced their feelings of security, and are directed to diminish their will to live; policies that are genocidal.

Assisting the development of apartheid Israel into acquiring characteristics associated with Nazi Germany and rewarding it for its brutal activities are one part of contemporary U.S. governments’ betrayal of World War II efforts to combat tyranny. The other part allows the memory and deaths of those who died in the World War II Holocaust to be used to advance Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.

Hundreds of books, films, plays (the Holocaust Theater Catalog has chronicled over 950 theater works from around the world relating to the Holocaust), TV dramas, radio broadcasts, and streaming videos on the Holocaust are available. A new performance appears every year. In 2022-2023, the silver screen featured The Zone of Interest, a loose film adaptation of Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, which describes, in fiction, the domestic life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess and his family. Hasn’t this genre been done before, except the locales were on southern plantations? Who can be interested in the make-believe day-to-day walking around of a family with whom nobody has sympathy?

Tom Stoppard’s LEOPOLDSTADT (Vienna’s Jewish Quarter) played on Broadway from September 2022 to July 2023. Set in Vienna, the play follows the lives of one extended and prosperous Jewish family from 1899, through the war years and into the middle of the twentieth century.

An opera, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, based on a 1962 book and a later film, had a short run in Manhattan in 2022.  A brief description.

The Garden of The Finzi-Continis is set on the eve of World War II and tells the story of an aristocratic Italian-Jewish family, the Finzi-Continis, who believe they will be immune to the changes happening around them.  As they make a gracious haven for themselves in their garden, walling out the unpleasantness of the world outside, Italy forms its alliance with Germany and begins to enforce anti-Semitic racial laws.  But the Finzi-Continis discover too late that no one is immune, no one is untouchable.

I don’t expect any artistic presentations on the 75-year ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, which has enough tragic stories to fill Broadway theaters for 15 million years, but how about something on Rohingya, Cambodia, Darfur, or Armenians, just one presentation? If events during WWII are appreciated, why not more in the visual arts that feature the heroism of American soldiers and the effects of the war on the American people — powerful dramas that inspire, encourage, and renew patriotism?

The extensive concentration on one particular atrocity captures each generation and accumulates material that can be revived after many years. For what purpose? It cannot be for an entertainment purpose ─ these are not themes that can be entertaining. Can’t be for commercial purposes ─ these stories don’t stimulate the box office. Can’t be for educational purposes ─ they have not prevented other mass atrocities or genocides, which is an important consideration. The cultural expressions of the WWII Holocaust serve to emotionally attach viewers to one ethnicity as perpetual victims and sympathize with them in the creation of a state that is also always a victim and must use pulverizing force against the worldwide army of anti-Semites who are conspiring to destroy that state.

The plethora of Holocaust dramas that suffocate the senses is not enough to rally Americans to support Israel. We also have museums. In twenty-six states there are sixty-six Holocaust museums and educational centers.

In the U.S. there are two prominent World War II history museums — The National WWII Museum, in New Orleans and The National Museum of the Pacific War, in Fredericksburg, Texas. Two other museums, World War II American Experience, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and the Wright Museum, located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, “recognize and honor the contributions and enduring legacy of WWII-era Americans.” In addition to the two major and minor museums, there are another 128 museums and exhibits in the U.S. that focus on or relate to some aspect of World War II. Strange that the U.S. gave priority to constructing the Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1980 on prime and reserved land for federal buildings and did not finish construction of the World War II memorial (a World War I memorial is now being constructed) until 2004, 24 years after establishing the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Unfortunately, the National WWII Museum has not escaped the clutches of the holocaust industry; for some unknown reason, it includes lectures, such as, “Why Did ‘Kristallnacht’ Happen? Teaching the History of European Antisemitism.” Why does a study of events that occurred before WWII, that are discussed in other venues, that is one part of a European history that has religious wars, and has no direct relation with Americans, appear in a national museum of World War II?

Why do U.S. authorities give little attention to an important period in U.S. history and give excessive attention to a tragic occurrence in a foreign country visited upon foreign people? We know Americans have not reacted to the World War II Holocaust and used their might to prevent other genocides. Do Americans enjoy any of these lugubrious, doleful, and depressing presentations of man’s inhumanity to man? Maybe, yes. The Native Americans constructed a museum of affirmation in Washington, DC, with exhibits describing the cultures of existing and living tribes. The museum does not highlight the genocides visited upon the indigenous peoples. The initial reaction to its presentation was not encouraging, Americans expected more blood and battle.

We could give Americans what they may want by converting the Holocaust Memorial museums into museums that describe the genocides of the indigenous tribes. Better than that ─ turn the Holocaust Memorial museums into inspirational museums, where Americans learn of the heroism, wisdom, and sacrifices of American people and institutions who fought for peace, justice, and freedom. American museums for Americans — museums that inform, give hope, arouse optimism, make Americans feel good, bring Americans together, and make them want to work united, as they did during the difficult World War II years.

Reverse what is now drastically wrong. Stop the special interests that manipulate and control the American people. If Israel carries out the genocide, which seems more likely each day, the World War II sacrifices and Holocaust deaths will have been in vain, the Statue of Liberty will signify hypocrisy, and the American Republic, established in 1789, will have reached its end.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

How do we know this is an exaggerated problem; a succeeding paragraph tells us nothing happened, and, after casually informing us there have been no disruptions, the authors take a five thousand mile leap to tie together a trivial hacking and the brewwwwwwiiiiing conflict in Taiwan.

None of the intrusions affected industrial control systems that operate pumps, pistons or any critical function, or caused a disruption, U.S. officials said. But they said the attention to Hawaii, which is home to the Pacific Fleet, and to at least one port as well as logistics centers suggests the Chinese military wants the ability to complicate U.S. efforts to ship troops and equipment to the region if a conflict breaks out over Taiwan.

Without citing a fact that relates some trivial hacking to a diabolical scheme or showing the hacking was more than a nuisance, the article informs us that the hacking, “suggests the Chinese military wants the ability to complicate U.S. efforts to ship troops and equipment to the region if a conflict breaks out over Taiwan.”

Did this read correctly: “Chinese military wants the ability to complicate U.S. efforts to ship troops and equipment to the region if a conflict breaks out over Taiwan?” Fellow Americans, do you know that our government intends to send troops to fight for Taiwan? Don’t be concerned, any war in Taiwan will be over before any ship left U.S. waters with battle-ready American soldiers ready to fight the yellow peril.

Who are these hackers? “Hackers affiliated with China’s People’s Liberation Army have burrowed into the computer systems of about two dozen critical entities over the past year, experts said.” ‘Affiliated’ is a vague word and, without having specifics, there is doubt that China’s People’s Liberation Army knew about the hacking.

The imagination of the government sources that provided the information for the article does not just leap continents, it reaches into the barren outer space with over-dosed suppositions.

Some of the victims compromised by Volt Typhoon were smaller companies and organizations across a range of sectors and “not necessarily those that would have an immediate relevant connection to a critical function upon which many Americans depend,” said Eric Goldstein, CISA’s executive assistant director. This may have been “opportunistic targeting … based upon where they can gain access” — a way to get a toehold into a supply chain in the hopes of one day moving into larger, more-critical customers, he said.

The hackers are looking for a way to get in and stay in without being detected, said Joe McReynolds, a China security studies fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a think tank focused on security issues. “You’re trying to build tunnels into your enemies’ infrastructure that you can later use to attack. Until then you lie in wait, carry out reconnaissance, figure out if you can move into industrial control systems or more critical companies or targets upstream. And one day, if you get the order from on high, you switch from reconnaissance to attack.”

Lots of words that say the cyberattacks have accomplished nothing but could be a training ground for more advanced activities, similar to shooting ducks could be terrorist training for shooting down airplanes.

Adding zero information to zero information forms a mighty conclusion.

The disclosures to The Post build on the annual threat assessment in February by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which warned that China “almost certainly is capable of launching cyberattacks that would disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure, including oil and gas pipelines and rail systems.

The report, which shows some Chinese have basic knowledge of cyberattacks, leads to a conclusion of major capability ─ China “almost certainly is capable of launching cyberattacks that would disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure, including oil and gas.” To my knowledge, no strategic facility is on the Internet; they are all on private networks and cannot be hacked unless the hacker sets up transceivers around the facility that can intercept the communications, decode them, retrieve vital information, such as passwords, and transmit hacking messages into the networks computers. This is a complicated procedure and is difficult to shield from exposure. No revelations that “hackers affiliated with China’s People’s Liberation Army” have set up shop around the private networks have been mentioned.

This investigation of the investigation may sound trivial and provoke a big yawn and a “so what.” Don’t be fooled, the WAPO article reveals a major problem confronting Americans ─ U.S. foreign policies are not developed from facts and reality; they are developed from made-up stories that fit agendas. Those who guide the agendas solicit support from the population by providing made-up and exaggerated stories that rile the American public and define its enemies. This diversion from facts and truth is responsible for the counterproductive wars fought by the U.S., for Middle East turmoil, for a world confronted with terrorism, and for the contemporary horrors in Ukraine and Gaza. U.S. foreign policy is not the cause of all the problems, but it intensifies them and rarely solves any of them.

U.S. administrations have been involved in much of China’s internal affairs — Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, South China Sea, Belt and Road, Uyghurs — without showing how China’s internal affairs affect the U.S. and why the U.S. and not Tanzania should be involved. What has this interference accomplished? Nothing! Absolutely nothing, and, except for the South China Sea disputes, nothing that arouses concerns seems to be occurring. If the U.S. administrations spent time, energy, and tax dollars on affairs more directly connected with U.S. operations, they may learn that their obsession with China’s affairs hindered acceptable resolutions and prevented attention to their own and more meaningful problems. Oh, and it might prevent World War III.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Face-to-face in November 2007 revealed an organized and thoughtful Hezbollah without traces of being fanatical.

They speak English, carry I-pods, and listen to Santana and Guns and Roses. They don’t approach with anger and don’t behave overbearing. They are well-educated, mostly from Beirut’s American University, relaxed and alert to world happenings. They impress as being more secular than pious. They are spokespersons for Hezbollah – the Party of God.

Maybe they are a selected group of well-trained talkers for foreigners; a subtle means to convince the unwary that Hezbollah’s followers are just everyday guys and gals. Maybe, but observations and events were inconsistent with the media’s drastic descriptions of the militant Lebanese Shiite movement.

The Party of God has insufficient support for exercising political control of Lebanon and knows it doesn’t have the numbers or the strength to turn the Levant into an Islamic Republic. Hezbollah’s clerics don’t indicate they intend to force Shari’a upon their constituencies. More an amalgam of differing viewpoints – religious, social, political, and militant – Hezbollah is solidified by a common struggle for the dispossessed and a battle against corruption. Meetings with Hezbollah and Lebanese officials together with a trip to southern Lebanon, as a member of a Council for National Interest peace delegation, revealed much about the nature of the Party of God.

The voyage started in Beirut, at a tenement building that is indistinguishable from the adjoining buildings in the Shiite district. Hezbollah followers crowd the sidewalk to greet and lead to a simple apartment on an upper floor. Sayyid Nawaf Al-Musawi, the head of Hezbollah’s International Relations, is dressed in conventional clothes.

The only indication of religious fervor is the beads he rotates in his right hand. He sits relaxed but talks seriously and with conviction. The female translator’s minor errors and dubious translations of colloquial expressions are politely excused. The head of Hezbollah’s International Relations has a lot to say – about everything.

Region

In Iraq there is a severe humane problem – same as in Palestine. The West Bank is now a prison. The US gives no importance to the Iraqi people. US policy is based on Israeli safety and Middle East oil. America is creating chaos and the region is under its hegemony. The regime is increasing the problems rather than resolving them. Now they are talking about a new war in Iran. Iraq was weak, but Iran is strong and it will be a much harder war. A barrel of oil and a barrel of gunfire will create a catastrophe that is beyond comprehension. A disaster is happening and Americans are giving a story that is false. They were lying about WMDs in Iraq and now they are lying about nuclear issues in Iran. They told the people that the Iraqis would welcome them as liberators. This is an example of a delusion to the citizens of the US. American citizens deserve to know the truth. Colin Powell gave false information to the UN but he thought it was the truth. When someone tries to find the truth he is called a terrorist. America operates on misleading evidence.

Governing Lebanon

The one who rules must be accepted by all the others. Now the minority is ruling, but this is supported by the U.S. Why does the U.S. want this? For the benefit of the Israelis. We are a movement only against Israeli attack and Israeli occupation. We support unity. We encourage consensus. The Vatican, the Arabs want unity in Lebanon, but the American influences in Lebanon do not want this. We want a multi-ethnic nation and not as in Israel, which calls itself a Jewish country even though ¼ of its citizens are Christians and Muslims. We cannot have an election with 50% plus one because the text of the constitution is clear – there has to be a 2/3 majority. A person elected by 50% plus one is not the President and only an impostor.

Israel

Hezbollah will never recognize Israel. Israel (Palestine?) should be a democratic nation where all religions exist together and have equal freedom. In the 1919 Paris meeting, the Zionists presented a document which coveted South Lebanon and delineated four river basins they wanted to own.

Sayyid Nawaf Al-Musawi ended his conversation with prophetic expressions.

We don’t judge you on the basis of your stand on Israel. Do not judge us on that issue. There are natural ties between Shia Lebanon and Iran. They have the same source. The fifteenth century Iranian studies came from Lebanon. The geography of Lebanon enabled the Shia to stay. It is tough to conquer Southern Lebanon because of its geography.

Leaving Beirut for the South of Lebanon is similar to leaving any metropolis – traffic jams, new expressways, and roadways that cut through residential areas. The Paris of the Middle East has lost much of its charm. It is heavy until the view of the blue-green Mediterranean waters calm the atmosphere. Banana groves, similar to those that camouflaged the Hezbollah rocket carriers during the 2006 summer war, are prominent. Also prominent are posters of Rafiq Hariri, the assassinated and previous Prime Minister. After the Sunni city of Sidon, the peaceful countryside of groves and orchards is marked with newly repaired bridges that cross ready-to-be-paved roads. The war-damaged roads lead to Tyre.

The Shiite city has freshly sanded beaches and a picturesque seaside promenade. The posters have changed – they now feature Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s political leader, Tyre is the home of Sheik Nabil Kaook, Hezbollah commander of South Lebanon, who narrowly escaped death when Israeli warplanes bombed his home in the 2006 war.

In his presence, women are not greeted with handshakes, but with hands respectfully placed over the heart. The women sit veiled and separate from the men. The cleric is well-groomed and well-tailored – his white turban shows his status and his brown cloak matches the brown chair on which he sits.

Harsh and accusatory, interspersed with feelings for the dispossessed, the Hezbollah Sheik has one succinct message: “The United States took the decision to go to war and to continue the war. It treats Lebanon as just another occupation.”

Tyre is also identified with the Al-Sadr Foundation, which manages an orphanage under the control of Rabab al-Sadr, sister of disappeared Shiite cleric Sayyid Musa al-Sadr. Shi’a clerics who have the title of Sayyid claim descent from Muhammad. Sayyid Musa al-Sadr is more famous than his designation. His life, a story of dedication, success, and an eventual mystery reveal strong links between Shiites from Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon.

Born in Qom, Iran in 1928 to a Lebanese family of theologians, Musa al-Sadr studied theology in Najaf, Iraq. Being related to the father of Iraq’s Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraq was another home for him. In 1960 Musa al-Sadr moved to Tyre, his father’s birthplace. He soon became recognized as a strong advocate for the economically and politically disadvantaged Shi’ite population. His role in establishing schools and medical clinics throughout southern Lebanon led to the 1974 founding of the Movement of the Disinherited, whose armed wing became Amal, the other Shiite party in Lebanon.

While successfully improving economic and social conditions for a disenfranchised Shiite population, Sayyid Musa al-Sadr made enemies of landlords, corrupt officials, political establishment, and members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. His eventual disassociation with, what was then, a corrupt Amal, created other groups, some of whom later coalesced into Hezbollah. On February 16, 1985, an “Open Letter to the Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World,” alerted the world to Hezbollah’s formal existence. Musa al-Sadr was not present. In 1978, when attending a conference in Libya, Musa al-Sadr mysteriously vanished. No clue to his disappearance has surfaced.

Elegant chalets grace the barren hills of southern Lebanon. Many of them are homes of expatriate Lebanese, who have always been principal contributors to Lebanon’s economy. Expatriates from Sierra Leone, the Gulf States, Dearborn, Michigan, and other U.S. cities send funds to their Lebanese relatives who purchase properties throughout Lebanon. Southern Lebanon has many retired Dearborns who have returned to their families and to a land they always cherished. But that’s not all, informed persons claim Southern Lebanon has diamond and drug smuggling that help finance Hezbollah and local communities.

The elegant chalets emphasize the destruction of villages during the 2006 summer war. Bint Jbiel, “the daughter of the mountain,” rested in the path of the invading Israeli army. Israel’s military dropped leaflets that ordered the population to leave the village. The inhabitants obeyed the order and now the old city, not the new part, is 70% destroyed; a mound of rubble that includes the 600-year-old mosque.

Homes along a nearby dirt road are pocked with shell and bullet holes, evidence of tanks having discharged random fire at empty houses for no apparent reason except they were close to the path of the tank. A total of eighteen Israeli tanks broke down, crashed, or were destroyed by Hezbollah ambushes during the Israeli invasion.

From a hill close to the mined border with Israel, the deputy mayor of Marjayoun pointed to the verdant fields of Northern Israel. He claimed that in 1948 Israel seized one kilometer of Lebanese territory and that the houses in the distance are mainly empty.

Damage-weary Lebanon is not confined to the border area. Timur Goksel, former senior advisor to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), who has been in Lebanon for twenty years, noted he had never witnessed so much wanton destruction. He said that Iran funds an Iranian Hezbollah that has no connections with Lebanese Hezbollah. Five hundred million dollars of these funds are being used to repair war-damaged southern Lebanon. In contrast, the U.S. is contributing 34 million dollars to repair a large bridge.

Timor Goksel refutes the March 14 majority party charge that Hezbollah is obstructionist: “The Shiites (not all Hezbollah) are 30% of the country and cannot rule on their own. They want to have a role in the government and they want to be a mainstream party.” Principal leaders in the Lebanese government support Goksel’s evaluation. Former general Michel Aoun, Christian head of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc, wants what Hezbollah wants; a new parliament where the new majority will be accepted. Aoun’s bloc has a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Hezbollah. He insisted the MOU is not an alliance but a strategy for integrating Hezbollah into a mutual defense of Lebanon. Former General and then Maronite President of Lebanon, Emil Lahoud, agreed with Hezbollah’s determination to follow constitutional law and only elect a president with a 2/3 quorum.

The Lebanese president describes Hezbollah as “one hundred percent Lebanese. Hezbollah takes material assistance from Iran and would take it from the devil if necessary to protect their country. They are not terrorists.” Fawsi Salloukh, Lebanon’s Minister of Foreign Affairs talked from a prepared

document that severely criticized Israel and the United States. He also wants a new election and not a litigious issue. He doesn’t believe Iran wants to dominate Hezbollah and stressed its natural for Shiites in Lebanon and Iran to establish good relations.

Forgotten amidst the rhetoric, but mentioned by Michel Aoun and Emil Lahoud are simple facts: Hezbollah has had electoral alliances with Saad Hariri’s Future Movement, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, and Noah Berri’s Amal. In 1999, Hezbollah members of Lebanon’s engineering syndicate formed a coalition with the Phalange Party, a rightist Christian group, and the National Liberal Party, both allies of Israel during the civil war.

The Halifee restaurant in the Dahieh neighborhood is considered a popular dining place for Hezbollah followers; only two blocks from the Haret Hreil Hussineyeh mosque, whose senior cleric is Hezbollah religious leader Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. Israeli bombers, during the July 2006 war, leveled the cleric’s home, as well as part of the surrounding area. The restaurant crowds with people enjoying the food, enjoying the elegant surroundings, enjoying the evening. There is no indication of a particular type of person; no sign of a distinctive Hezbollah character.

La Terrase is a restaurant located on Hadi Nasrallah, a street, named after leader Hasan Nassrallah’s deceased son. Huge craters from Israeli bombing remain in the adjacent neighborhood. Enter la Terrase and first have a choice of a coffee bar. Go deeper and there is a cafeteria. Further in is a small restaurant. Climb the stairs and enter a huge restaurant surrounded by couches on which linger multitudes of young couples; drinking coffee, engaged in conversations and quiet embraces – not the ordinary media images of Hezbollah life.

Innocent Americans were killed on September 11, 2001, by Al-Qaeda terrorists who considered the World Trade Center to be imperialist land – the center of the U.S. establishment. Innocent Lebanese were killed on July 15, 2006, one day of many bombardments that contributed to the vast destruction of the Dahieh district by Israeli military who considered Dahieh to be Hezbollah land – the center of the Hezbollah establishment.

The U.S. and Hezbollah establishments still exist. Many innocents died in both places. The U.S. remembers the day 9/11 as a bitter memory. Lebanon had a mid-summer nightmare of smaller 9/11’s; angry memories the residents of Dahieh will forever retain. The Western world rightfully memorializes America’s tragedy but neglects Lebanon’s equal tragedies.

It is that neglect which created Hezbollah, sustained Hezbollah, and made Hezbollah popular throughout the Arab world. Years of punishing emergencies in Lebanon — refugees from the Syrian civil war, Hezbollah’s attachment to the Syrian strife, the 4 August 2020 explosion of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut that caused at least 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, $15 billion in property damage, and left an estimated 300,000 people homeless, followed by economic collapse have polarized the Lebanese and may have affected contemporary Hezbollah’s operations and its acceptance by the Lebanese population.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Discussing the 2008 Annapolis Conference, in face-to-face talks with the prime ministers, foreign ministers, and non-government officials (NGOs) of Israel, Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, revealed how far we are from achieving peace in the Middle East, and how far Annapolis is from the Earth that others walk upon. As part of a delegation of six intrepid fact finders, supported by the Council for the National Interest (CNI), a Washington-based NGO that labors intensively to determine paths towards Middle East peace, I found a hopeful wind that moved Israelis and Palestinians to portray optimism. This hopeful wind slowly reduced in force in Jordan, quickly diminished when meeting Syrian vice-presidents, and turned to an ill wind in meetings with the then Lebanese president, prime minister, and foreign minister.

The search for Middle East peace started on a discordant note at a meeting with Gush Shalom (peace bloc) spokesperson Uri Avnery, the most notable advocate for a just peace with the Palestinians. Uri used the words “unsure” and “window dressing” to describe the conference. He didn’t sense that Hamas, with whom he has close contacts, would agree to a piece of paper and voiced the opinion that Hamas would “only make a truce and not a peace pact.”

Kadima’s Knesset member Amira Dotan spoke of “Annapolis as a symbol,” with its “success defined as starting a process.” Deputy Speaker Dr. Ahmed Tibi said: “The U.S. should create the conditions for making it a success. Its failure will strengthen Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian/Syrian axis.” Other official sources were more open; expressing views that Israel is an army that has a state and Defense Minister Barak is the major culprit in preventing any peace initiative.

The Ramallah landscape of enormous white brick housing developments against the brown dirt background disguises the actual despondency and poverty of the Palestinian people. Palestinian Authority (PA) officials, especially Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki, tried to be optimistic about the Annapolis conference. Prime Minister Salam Fayed’s words were more cautious. “We want a complete agenda with final talks, but have become more motivated by fear of failure than promises of success, and are being forced into unwanted compromises just to justify a meeting.” President Abbas’ Chief of Staff Rafiq Husseini insisted that Israel must move the separation wall to the Green Line. Interior Minister Abdel Razzah al-Yahya reiterated that “there will be no two-state solution if Israel does not withdraw to the 1967 boundaries and does not give the Palestinians oxygen to breathe.”

The lack of oxygen stifles the Palestinians, who are already torn by internecine warfare between Fatah and Hamas and by conflict with organizations in Nablus that are a combination of criminals, protesters against social and economic negligence, and militants against Israel’s occupation. The Palestinian Authority is powerless and it is not obvious how it can negotiate anything and receive approval from a majority of Palestinians, especially when they continue to experience Israel’s brutal occupation of the West Bank.

Illegal settlements have destroyed Palestinian life in central Hebron. When the Israeli military attempted to evict the settlers, the settlers broke windows and ruined the Palestinian shops. For an incomprehensible reason, the settlers have returned to their illegal positions and Palestinian shops and houses are now empty. To enforce the settler presence, Israeli security checkpoints have been installed at all former entrances to the market.

These settlers claim properties “taken” from Jews during riots against Hebron Jews back in 1929,” with a sign over emptied Palestinian shops, but do not display any rights of inheritance or deeds to any of the properties. Can this claim of a ‘collective right’ have a legal basis? Contrast the Hebron settlers’ illegal positions and false claims with Palestinians, who have legal deeds to properties in Israel, and are prevented from recovering their properties.

A separation wall winds through West Bank territory and completely encircles West Bank cities, such as Qualqilya and Abu Dis. Residents are hindered from leaving these cities, going to schools, and cultivating lands. The wall has also caused accumulations of water and created puddles in Palestinian neighborhoods. The obstructive wall includes 580 fortified checkpoints, one occurring, on average, every five miles. There are also flying checkpoints, settler bypass roads, a planned super highway for Israelis only, blocked Palestinian village roads, and travel restrictions to Jerusalem. These restrictive conditions have separated Palestinian communities and families, choked the Palestinian economy, and obstructed daily exchanges between peoples. Highways slice through Palestinian lands and completely separate farm homes from agriculture. The inhumanity of all these installations and regulations is beyond belief. Chief of Staff, Rafiq Husseini, summed the PA attitude with a sigh and said, “Don’t worry, this is the land of miracles. What we need is a prayer meeting.”

Jordan is also a land of miracles, its capital city Amman spanning hills with an advanced network of bridges, tunnels, and super highways. Traffic is horrific and only moves because there are few traffic lights in the entire city. Jordan’s increasing prosperity and touchy stability depends upon Western investment, special export privileges, and friendly relations with neighbors, especially Israel.

Dependence upon foreign investment, coping with the 500,000 – 700,000 Iraq displaced persons, still contending with the integration of the massive Palestinian population within, and maintaining friendly relations with Israel guide Jordan’s foreign policies. Foreign Minister Abdelelah al-Khatib, similar in outlook to most Middle East leaders, considered the Israel/Palestinian conflict as the core issue to be resolved before peace and stability can arrive in the Middle East. He volunteered that Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s’ Russian immigrant hardliner, has become most influential in the “peace process.” A highly important Jordanian official was blunt. He was not positive on Annapolis, believes Israel does not want peace, does not have the political will to seek peace, and wants to shift the burden of more displaced Palestinians to Jordan. Minister of Planning Suhair al-Ali, as gracious as a woman can be, noted that deceased “King Hussein was into politics,” but the new King Abdullah “is more into development.” She had one plea: “No matter the results of Annapolis, don’t demonize Islam.”

Damascus is a surprise. Expect a faded gray and ancient city, still struggling with the 20th century, and find a lively, advanced city with some sparkling new neighborhoods, highways that don’t interfere with the city’s appearance, and a population that is amicable and sympathetic; never a harsh look, never a bitter word, although Syria remains a totalitarian government that does not allow much free expression. To its credit, Syria has succored Palestinians forced from Israel, who have established their own neighborhoods, but still remain committed to return to their homeland. Added to its credit is the recent sacrifice in allowing an estimated 1.2 million Iraqi displaced persons (similar to Jordan, Syria refuses to call them refugees) to move among its population and secure housing, free education, and entry to the health system. Syria deserves commendation for acting as a safety valve to the calamities resulting from displaced Palestinians and Iraqis, innocent casualties from several wars.

Not surprisingly, Syrian vice-president of Foreign Relations, Farouk Sharaa, didn’t have much expectation for the Annapolis conference, believes all Israel’s political parties fear peace, and senses that U.S. policies encouraged Israel to attack Lebanon and continue the conflict. “Israel is on a suicide path, and, if Israel is a decision-maker in the U.S. then the U.S. loses.” The vice president contradicted an accepted belief that Syria will not accept direct assistance for the Iraqi displaced persons. NGOs and the U.S. government are welcome to contribute their assistance. CNI made news by revealing to the U.S. Press a Syrian commitment to screen Iraqi displaced persons for entry into the U.S.

The Vice president of Cultural Affairs, Najah al-Attar, exhibited welcoming smiles, and sensitivity and empathy for oppressed peoples. She spoke of “there not being peace without justice,” made references to the destruction of the Palestinians, and noted that Jews lived in peace in Syria, where they were prosperous and accepted members of the parliament. A small Jewish community survives in Northern Syria, and a Rabbi is flown in each week from Turkey to perform the rabbinical rites and assure the food is kosher.

Not kosher was a clandestine trip to meet a “minor” Hamas official, who turned out to be Khalid Meshal, an official leader of Hamas, exiled in Damascus. The world became more aware of Meshal when Israel’s Mossad tried to assassinate him in Amman. Jordan’s King Abdullah forced Israel to immediately supply an antidote to the poison given to Meshal by threatening to publicly hang the Mossad agents who tried to kill the Hamas leader. Meshal does not fill the Western media description of a wild-eyed fanatic. On the contrary, he is a friendly, deliberate, and well-spoken person who makes sense to those who subscribe to similar positions.

He said that Israel does not want peace and both negotiating parties aren’t strong enough to market their results to their people. Meshal doesn’t delineate Hamas’ position, but defers to a Palestinian position that accepts 1967 borders and an Arab position that has accepted the two-state solution. Since 2002, Bush has repeatedly spoken of support for a two-state solution, but where is it? The Hamas leader expects the region to be more explosive. Nevertheless, if the PA feels the Palestinian rights have been fulfilled, Hamas will welcome that. He has proposed a Hudna (truce), and if Israel responds positively, Hamas will not be an obstacle to peace. If the Right of Return is the only remaining problem, Hamas will compromise, and accept the will of the people. He claims Hamas does not encourage militancy, does not desire a theocratic state, is a national liberation movement, and will let the Palestinian people decide their own government.

Lebanon greets the visitor with an ominous view of the famous Mdairej Bridge, the highest bridge in the Middle East, and the pride of Lebanon. The mid-section of its elegant span remains gone, destroyed by Israeli jets on the first day of the war.

Beirut and Southern Lebanon still show scars of the war; destroyed bridges, damaged roads, and huge holes in Beirut sections. The old section of Bent Jabal (daughter of the mountain), which was invaded by Israeli troop, is completely damaged. It is now a rubble of ancient rocks.

Lebanon was again in one of its perpetual crises; an inability to reach a parliamentary consensus and elect a new president. Although some are quick to blame Syria and Hezbollah for creating a climate of fear and for the lack of consensus, major Lebanese officials don’t agree that Hezbollah is the culprit for the impasse, just the opposite, the majority holds power by an archaic law and fears becoming a minority

The majority is most represented by billionaire Member of Parliament (MP), Saad Hariri, son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. Saad Hariri senses a significant negative shift in Israel’s attitude towards wanting peace after Rabin’s assassination. Nevertheless, he feels Abu Mazen wants peace and Annapolis, even if delayed, must still happen. “The two sides can reach an agreement.” He is less optimistic concerning his nation: “Money and arms are pouring into the arms of the allies of Syria.” Hariri had not moved about Beirut for 2 ½ years and had received death threats. Fifty of his fellow MPs were barricaded in the Phoenician hotel, fearful of their lives. Except for Prime Minister Siniora, who accuses Syria and Hezbollah of creating this fear, of being uncooperative and wanting to keep situations unresolved so that Hezbollah can maintain its arms, the other principal government officials support Hezbollah’s position.

Former General and MP, Michael Aoun, described the year 2000 law that gerrymandered the nation so that the March 14 Party and its allies acquired a majority of 72 parliament seats, although receiving only 1/3 of the vote. This makes the 2007 government illegitimate and favors Hezbollah’s proposition that the only fair solution to the impasse is a new election law, followed by a new election that will award seats in proportion to yhe popular vote. President Emil Lahoud claims the present parliament majority has the backing of the major Western powers and is working against the constitution. For this reason, the opposition, meaning Hezbollah, has the right to avoid reaching consensus. Foreign Minister Fawzi Sallougkh read carefully from a prepared document. He doesn’t believe Iran wants to dominate Lebanon and believes the U.S. should establish good relations with Iran.

Lebanese leaders were particularly angered with Israel’s aggressive attitude towards the Arab world and what they perceived as U.S. support for this attitude. They are most concerned with the negotiations that will decide the fate of the Palestinian refugees, the reason being that the refugees cannot receive citizenship in Lebanon and have created social and economic havoc for decades. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was more sanguine and more universal in his characterization of what he termed to be an Arab/Israeli conflict. He considered Israel to be guilty of the situation and leading the world into a catastrophe that will affect all peoples. He allowed permission to quote him, and my notes show these remarks:

“The Arab/Israel conflict is the maker of most problems and control of Jerusalem is a paramount issue. The conflict consumes most efforts in the region, is not restricted to the Middle East, and diverts attention from other meaningful issues in all regions. The conflict started from the Balfour Declaration, arose from the extent of injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian people, is leading to further frustration in the Arab world, and is generating extremism. The Israeli 1980 invasion created Hezbollah and a new set of problems. Now, Syria, and other parties (meaning Hezbollah), are not showing cooperation and want to keep issues unresolved. Nevertheless, President Bush has been unfair to Lebanon, Arab nations, and also to his own United States. The U.S. keeps preaching democracy but defends dictatorships.”

Hezbollah, the Party of God, remains the contentious focus of Lebanon politics. Nevertheless, the Lebanese government has denominated Hezbollah as a resistance movement rather than a militia so that they can keep their arms, despite the truce agreement that banned militias. Hezbollah leaders are firm that they will never recognize Israel. Surprisingly, they favor a single democratic state where all peoples are equal and all religions can be practiced without interference. They claim to be politically secular and their government operations don’t contradict that thesis.

Annapolis is 50 miles from the nation’s capital, but it is light years away from the hearts and minds of Arab peoples who want assurance of peace and stability in the Middle East. That is one observer’s conclusion from travels through the Middle East capitals.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

From the devastation emerges a chilling vision of a new world order — a nationalist, militarist, irredentist, far-right command of governments, kept in play by obedient media that shape information and exercise mind control. Coincidental with Israel’s attack on Gaza’s population and the West Bank Palestinians, Argentina and the Netherlands elected far-right leaders who are ardent supporters of Israel’s government, adding to established far-right governments in Italy and Hungary.

Post-World War II featured 45 years of a Cold War, of Capitalism contending Communism, followed by democratic neo-liberalism extending its reach worldwide, and igniting populist movements against globalization and liberalism from ultra-conservatives and authoritarians. The responses have graduated to a worldwide battle between those who believe everyone has the right to live freely, peacefully, equally, and without oppression and those who compose a ‘might make right’ force that acts with license to commit genocide. Revelations from an Israeli intelligence ministry document and a pronouncement by the director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights certify the intended genocide.

Although not entirely authoritative, the Asia Times has discovered “What Gaza might look like ‘the day after’ the war.”

Less than a week after Hamas’s devastating attacks on October 7, Israel’s intelligence ministry produced a chilling document. It advocated that Israel remove all of Gaza’s Palestinian population and forcibly resettle them in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. What is more likely is that Israel will indefinitely occupy parts of Gaza, while seeking to eschew responsibility for civilian governance.

Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, resigned and said, “The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs … leaves no room for doubt that this is a text book case of genocide.”

Hamas’ attack was more due to failure of Israeli border security than the well-prepared and well-coordinated Hamas militia. Failure has consequences and attempts to circumvent consequences and properly address failure may lead to greater failures, and this has happened. A rational government that placed its people before embarking on a mission of ‘might make right’ and  ’might cannot fail’ would  have:

(1)    Operated behind the scenes and obtained agreement to release all captives. Each day that women and children are captive is a day of mental and physical deterioration leading to lifelong illnesses and possible death.

(2)    Immediately secured the border in a firm and organized manner so there is no possibility of another Hamas attack.

(3)    Carefully ascertained the reasons for the attack, determined what may follow, and learned if the attack might be part of a larger campaign that includes other adversaries. Gather the facts before facing the facts.

News reports have not shown that Israel prioritized captive release and firm border security before waging destruction.

The media uses the word ‘war’ instead of ‘destruction.’ Where is the war, where is anybody able to contest Israel’s unilateral actions? Buildings and civilians do not fight and wage war; they are victims of destruction. Why does Israel wage destruction? The answer is obvious ─ Israel considered Hamas’ vicious attack as an opportunity to advance its agenda of physically and psychologically destroying the Palestinians. Keeping the conversation on the Hamas massacre alive while Israel mobilized its forces for its intended massacre and constantly referring to the brutality of the hostage-taking suppressed complaints to Israel’s genocidal tactics. But not for long. International protests to Israel’s deranged actions and an internal outcry at the neglect of the hostages forced Netanyahu to grant a temporary truce and trade captives.

To give a twisted rationale to Israel’s genocidal plan, Israeli officials and its worldwide media companions embarked on a media campaign that dehumanized the Palestinians and aroused sympathy for Israeli suffering. The Israeli propaganda machine worked quickly, using rumors and unverified stories to replace demon ISIS with new demon Hamas. Stop here for a moment of contention. Does the brutality of Hamas’ vicious attack permit unverified stories to circulate and prevent the airing of narratives that contradict the accepted narratives?

CNN commentator, Erin Burnett, interviewed  Yasmin Porat, an Israeli woman taken hostage. Ms. Porat related her witnessing the killings, being taken hostage, and being used as a human shield, but not really, she wasn’t a shield for a gun-toting killer; Yasmin Porat shielded a defenseless Hamas operative from being killed by Israeli forces before surrendering. Cutting the interview at its most crucial point, when Ms. Porat was prepared to reveal information inconsistent with published reports demonstrated how the media manipulates the message. In a radio interview, which can be heard below, the Israeli woman gave additional details of her capture.

AnIsraeli woman gave details of her capture at msn.com, which summarized her radio interview.

Yasmin Porat spoke in an exclusive interview about the events she witnessed. Amid the chaos of heavy crossfire and the ominous sound of tank shells exploding, Porat made a shocking claim: Israeli forces didn’t spare anyone in their path. “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” Porat said during her conversation with Israeli radio.

Her account paints a picture where the hostages, instead of being rescued, were caught in a deadly crossfire instigated by the very forces meant to save them. The event turned from a potential rescue operation to an unfortunate catastrophe where lives from both sides were lost.

In a surprising revelation, Porat also mentioned that Palestinian fighters treated the hostages with humanity. Despite the volatile situation, they offered the hostages hope, hinting at a safe passage to Gaza.

This act of compassion stands in stark contrast to the later chaos where the hostages found themselves caught between warring factions. Yet, the revelation hasn’t found widespread coverage. Porat’s testimony mysteriously disappeared from the “Haboker Hazeh” program, leading to rampant speculation about censorship.

Israeli official interpretation of the events made the Gazans who voted for and supported Hamas equally guilty in the slaughter and deserving equal retribution. By similar logic, this makes the slaughtered Israelis who voted for the present government, equally guilty in the destruction of the Palestinians. Although Hamas attacked and kidnapped Asian workers, and Hamas would have acted the same if Israelis were Mormons, Israel insisted Hamas was intent on committing genocide of world Jewry. The Hamas military wing of supposed 50,000 warriors, which has few armored vehicles, no air force, no naval force, and already demonstrated that it cannot penetrate Israel for more than a few kilometers without being demolished, is considered able to defeat the fourth most powerful military in the world and destroy world Jewry. Meanwhile, Israel’s military is committing genocide against the Palestinian people, and “powerful” Hamas is unable to prevent the catastrophe.

Hamas committed a despicable massacre and deserves the most serious condemnation. Israel commits continuous massacres plus human crimes plus human rights violations that daily impinge on the survival of the Palestinians. Add them up and Israel has committed a massacre that has a beyond comprehension magnitude.

The physical nature of the genocide is apparent but its numbers are relatively small, not what is expected in a genocide. Not apparent is the psychological genocide — the anxiety Israel creates for the Palestinians, the violence that causes traumas and deadens spirit and emotions. This is the major component of the genocide. Two examples:

After the release of Palestinians held in Israel’s prisons, the Israeli military forbade the Palestinian families to celebrate. Denying expression of joy after internalizing grief maintains the grief. No relief for the suffering.

Randomly, Israeli soldiers will stop an auto, take the driver, beat him senselessly, and throw him down on the road; the purpose being to terrorize Palestinians, show they are powerless, cannot control their lives, and have nobody to protect them. This practice enraged one young Palestinian who suffered a random beating. The next day he shot dead an Israeli soldier in what was described as a terror attack. The Israeli military followed the ‘“terror attack” with their usual practice of demolishing the “terrorist’s “ home, causing more trauma to those in the extended family.

After tying together the usual spurious charge of anti-Semitism, substituting killings of Jews for killing of Israelis, and associating the violence with the WWII Holocaust (worst attack on the Jewish community since the Holocaust), the pro-Israel contingent introduced a new sorrowful element to grab the twisted sensibilities of their legions of dishonor. Israel, which has the backing of the most powerful forces in the universe and gets more attention than other nations, is alone, nobody considers Jewish suffering, and the Jews are the lonely people of history.

Yossi Klein Halevy, an American-born Israeli author and journalist, who led a confusing and peripatetic intellectual life, had an initial attraction to the extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, eventually supported the two-state solution, and criticizes the Israeli settler movement, wrote an article titled, The Lonely People of History in the November 16, 2023 edition of the Times of Israel. The article received excessive attention and mass circulation. Some excerpts that describe the Israeli mind.

But now we are at one of those defining moments in Jewish history when we find ourselves at a moral disconnect with much of the international community. As we struggle to absorb the enormity of the October 7 massacre and to confront a global wave of antisemitism, the trauma of aloneness has returned.

Instead of delving into self-pity and victimization, Halevi should find reality. The moral disconnect comes from Halevi’s cohorts’ refusal to recognize and halt the oppression of the Palestinian people – resolve that situation and the “global wave of antisemitism” will disappear.

During the Second Intifada, when the IDF fought suicide bombers in Palestinian towns and villages, an exasperated Kofi Anan, then secretary-general of the UN, demanded: “Can the whole world be wrong and only Israel is right?” Israelis unhesitatingly replied: Absolutely.

A sure way to become alone.

Speaking at the gravesite, Yonadav’s brother called on the government to resist world pressure and persevere. He invoked Israel’s first prime minister: “David Ben-Gurion said that it doesn’t matter what the gentiles say, only what the Jews do.”

Really? Can any rational person accept David Ben-Gurion’s bigoted and egocentric statement?

More disconcerting than Halevi’s separatist attitude that invites exclusion were comments to the article that indicate paranoia, delusion, and mental aberration.

“We are always alone. On a good day, we are tolerated. When we suffer enough, we receive sympathy from some. But accepted? Never.”

“When Jews suffer, nobody sees it. That is going for 2 thousand of years. And suddenly Israelis do not have rights to protect themself. Just be quiet and do not resist! This is a new Muslim norm!

The Israeli mind

It is impossible for a rational and thoughtful human being to be unable to recognize that Israel intends to totally destroy the Palestinian community. Where will the Gazans go after hostilities end? Almost all of North Gaza, which is mainly Gaza City, is destroyed. There will be few places to live, less agricultural land to provide food, no work to find, few places to shop, nowhere to relax, and fewer schools to attend. The already crowded Gazan prison will have six times the number of people in a square mile. The precarious life of a Gazan will become many times more precarious. What mind prepares a future of pain and anguish leading to death for a community of millions? It is a distorted mind, characterized by the actions of Jewish settlers in the West Bank. From https://www.972mag.com/hebron-area-settler-violence-expulsions/.

At 10 p.m. on Oct. 13, I received a phone call from Amer Abu Awad, a Palestinian resident of Khirbet Al-Radeem, a small rural community south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. “The settlers attacked me,” he told me in a frightened voice. “Some of them were wearing army uniforms.”

“They assaulted me, beat my elderly father, pushed him to the ground, dragged him through the puddles, and pointed weapons at us,” Abu Awad continued, pausing to catch his breath. “They said I had to leave by morning, or my family and I will be finished.”

Early the next day, Abu Awad called me again. “I want to leave, but the roads are closed.” After hours of interventions, he managed to escape with his family of five along with his flock of sheep to the town of As-Samu, leaving behind his house, furniture, livestock barracks, and grain for the sheep. Abu Awad and his family had to carry all their belongings by foot; the Israeli army would not allow any vehicles to enter the area.

Palestinians in the rural communities surrounding Hebron live marginal and peaceful lives. They need assistance to enrich their living standard. Instead of giving assistance, the Jewish settlers, strangers to the land and for no valid reason, push the marginal Palestinians to desperation, hopelessness, and impoverishment, leaving them bare of means to survive, all done with blessing from the apartheid Israeli government.

Incidents of bodily injury to Palestinians in the United States indicate how pro-Israel media foments terrorism. In the south Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge, men, waving Israeli flags, attacked a Palestinian man, three Palestinian students were shot in Vermont and a Muslim-American child was stabbed to death in Illinois by a man enraged against Muslims.

Those who demonstrate against the genocide are accused of anti-Semitism; those who support the genocide are defending the Jews who commit the genocide. Students for Justice in Palestine has been banned or suspended by Brandeis, Columbia, and George Washington University. Columbia University suspended a student chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) after JVP held demonstrations that Columbia said, “repeatedly violated university policies.” Universities are defending the initiators of genocide and protecting those who approve of the genocide.

Getting it backward does not lead to a path forward. Permitting right-wing extremists to engineer a front-seat genocide cannot be accomplished without thought control and threatens all civilization. The Israeli Jews and their Western supporters must be challenged, stopped, and removed from positions of power. One manner of challenge spreads information that reveals the truth of the genocide. Tough to find when Israel blocks and assassinates reporters in Gaza and the West Bank.

Al Jazeera manages to have on-site correspondents and receives videos, images, and reports from locals. Click on LIVE and receive Al Jazeera TV.

Another means is economic boycott, guidance from the BDS movement and other institutions that highlight companies that actively support Israel. BDS is reached at here; another list is available from Innovative Minds.

Keep it up, support the demonstrations, spread the word, and shout it loud,

STOP THE GENOCIDE OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

For 75 years and still counting, on each day and in full view to the world, the Zionists have progressed with their plan of a more racially pure state that includes the genocide of the Palestinian people. For 75 years, no effort has halted the destruction and, from contemporary events in Gaza and the West Bank, no power or movement is available to prevent the inevitable.

A Zionist-controlled media reaches out to hundreds of millions in the Western world, each fortifying the newspeak of the other, all paralyzing the minds and actions of an innocent world. How many Americans are aware of the reality of apartheid Israel’s actions?

The Zionists have determined how to construct a more racially pure state and extinguish the Palestinian presence in the country without the world reacting to the genocide — break their bones and break their will to live.

Words cannot halt the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. Only decisive and well-planned actions can reclaim the world for the billions of honorable, just, and peace-loving people who contend a relative minority of racist murderers that create victims by playing victim. If xenophobe assassins carry out their genocide of the Palestinian people, the world will remain unsafe and in turmoil until collapse.

Let the world peoples, who have knowledge and interest in the Middle East strife, vote on who is the aggressor and who needs to be contained; assuredly, at least 70 percent would cite the Israelis as the aggressor that has to be contained. Yet, a relatively small minority controls the information and decides the outcome. How can that be?

I felt the full impact of this information and mind control while viewing the PBS News Hour. The interviewers beat the drum for apartheid Israel’s aggression and acted snide with those who defended the Palestinian position. The most upsetting moment came when a PBS commentator displayed an image on an outside wall at George Washington University where Students for Justice in Palestine had projected, “Free Palestine, From the River to the Sea.”

The commentator then asked another commentator, “How do you feel when you see they want to destroy Israel from the river to the sea and all Jews?” The reply to this fabricated and twisted remark should have been that the message does not remotely intimate that sentiment and the truth is that the Zionist Jews have destroyed Palestine and are seeking to destroy all Palestinians from the river to the sea.

The initial deception led to the next deception ─ that the projected image is part of a pattern of anti-Semitism that is growing in the world. If this slogan is an example of anti-Semitism, then anti-Semitism is a good thing and all those who believe in justice are anti-Semites. Time to distribute tee shirts displaying the words, “I am a proud anti-Semite.”

Apartheid Israel calls itself the Jewish state, contains one-half of the world’s Jews, and Jews throughout the world support Israel’s genocidal policies. Is it unusual for some people to identify Jews with the atrocities committed against the Palestinians and feel justified in verbally and physically attacking them? Muslims were unfairly attacked after the violent attacks on 9/11, but there was no identification of the Muslim street with the attacks and indications of sympathy with the al-Qaeda cause. Not so with the Jewish street, most of whom celebrate apartheid Israel and the Zionist cause. Zionism, Israel, and Jews are linked together.

Despicable comments by Israel supporters reinforce the harsh attitude toward Jews. Here are some.

“God will protect the Jewish state from horrible Islamic rats.”
“Who in their right mind would support a Palestinian agenda that seeks death and annihilation of a tiny Jewish nation, using lies and the death of their own children to further their evil cause?”
“The people of Gaza made their bed by OVERWHELMINGLY electing terrorist Hamas as their leaders, they knew what they wanted even though the billions that flowed to Gaza were wasted on weapons, anti-Semitic education, terrorism not making lives of the people better, no tears for them.”

Nowhere in the contemporary Western world have leaders uttered the repulsive words attributed to the leaders of the “Jewish state,” words expected from leaders of ISIS and al-Qaeda.

Rationalizing the slaughter of innocent Gazan civilians by connecting them with the quasi-Hamas government backfires. If the Gazan citizens are responsible for the violent actions of Hamas and deserve to be killed, then Israeli citizens are responsible for the genocidal actions of their elected officials and also deserve to be killed. The Israeli citizens are the children of the Zionists who stole the land, pillaged the resources, murdered the inhabitants, and ethnically cleansed the land of Palestinians, and they are directly involved in the continued oppression of the Palestinians and the intended genocide. Not much innocence there.

A third part of the deception package that diverts the world from recognizing that “demolishing Hamas is an excuse for Israel’s excessive bombings of innocent civilians and driving the Palestinians into psychological defeat with traumas that cause the children to lose a sense of security and a will to live is the significant reason for the carnage,” ties the attack on Israelis to the World War II Holocaust. Images of Hamas’ devastating attack and interviews with relations of the captured Israelis capture the eyeballs, sounds of exploding rockets hitting Israel capture the audio senses, and repetitive references to “this was the worst loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust,” tugs the emotions.

Investing time, money, and energy to bring the 80-year-old Holocaust into everyone’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner must give the Zionists dividends. Attending to the dead and ignoring those they kill, placing one genocide above all other genocides, avariciously seeking compensation from the death of those who cannot be compensated, and miserly extending it to therapy for grandchildren have brought hatred to Zionist Jews from those who react with scorn at the use of the Holocaust victims for monetary, military, and political gain.

An unholy trinity of bludgeoning public relations that

(1)    Circulates outrageous disinformation that has Israelis playing victim, has a nuclear-armed Israel and its mighty army defenseless against a loose bunch of Hamas fighters who are prepared to eradicate Israel (Can Nicaragua conquer the United States?), and convinces the world that the Middle East crisis is solved by liquidating the people in crisis. U.S. Secretary of State, Zionist Anthony Blinken, “Meets With Palestinian and Iraqi Leaders in Bid to Contain Gaza War,” meaning that Tony Blinkers strives to ensure that nobody intervenes to assist the hapless Palestinians until Israel has completed its vicious deed. Secretary Bonkers, which is preferred for solving the problem ─ slaughtering the oppressed people so they are no longer a problem or halting the oppression and bringing about a just solution so the oppressors are no longer a problem?

The slick pro-Israel constituency always wants those who condemn Israel’s actions to condemn Hamas’ actions, intimating that the condemners have an agenda that favors Hamas. Big difference. Condemning Hamas cannot reverse Hamas’ criminal actions, condemning Israel is meant to prevent Israel’s criminal actions. By having simultaneous condemnation, the pro-Israel lobby expects that the genocidal pattern of Israel’s actions will be subdued and not given its warranted attention.

(2)    Makes anti-Semitism the issue, a trick that has fooled the public for centuries; a clever arrangement and an elegant winner. By regarding every attack on Jews as anti-Semitism, the words anti-Jewish have been eradicated from the lexicon. Being anti, or against someone, even an ethnicity is not necessarily evil — people honestly believe the religious right are ignorant hypocrites, Mormons follow illicit practices, Catholics have weird ceremonies, and Jews’ reference to being God’s chosen people is offensive and a deceptive means to exercise control. During the time Russian Jews inhabited the Pale of Russia, local citizens accused Jews of controlling gambling, usury, alcohol delivery, and prostitution, and causing bankruptcy of Russian peasants. Because anti-Jewish has morphed into anti-Semitism and the latter is only associated with mean-spirited hatred, no words have been available to criticize offensive practices by Jews. Challenging the practices elicits the counter charge of anti-Semitism and that dominates the discussion.

A recent byline in the November 6 New York Times verifies how legitimate actions are used to make Jews the victims.

Dagestan Riot: A New York Times analysis of Telegram posts shows how a false rumor about the resettlement of Israelis in Dagestan that led to an antisemitic riot at an airport was shared online for longer and more widely than previously reported.

A legitimate protest by Dagestan Muslims who do not relish Israelis coming to their territory is turned into an anti-Semitic riot. Planes have flown into Dagestan from Israel without incident for years. What was different on that particular day? Could it be that the people in Dagestan do not sympathize with those who represent a country that commits genocide on others? How did anti-Semitism creep into the conversation?

Zionist Jews love anti-Semitism; the more anti-Semitism the more Jews they can attract to apartheid Israel and the easier it is for them to deceive people into believing their criminal actions have justification.

(3)    Continually emphasizes the almost century-old Holocaust to emotionally capture new generations and further Zionist interests. What purpose has the intensive concentration on the World War II Holocaust served; the excessive attention has not prevented other genocides. Why aren’t we equally aware of the multitude of other genocides that occurred in Africa by German colonists, in Asia by British colonists, and in the Americas by Spanish colonists? Why is one of a multitude of genocides favored? Could it be because every time Israelis commit aggression against Palestinians, we need another Holocaust headline and cover-up story to lessen the impact of the aggression?

The Holocaust industry has crowded out news of other genocides — Rohingya and Rwanda Tutis — and played a role in preventing the world from adequately approaching those genocides. Zionists and their allies have used the World War II Holocaust to purposely disguise the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. Israel’s supporters have a decisive role in attacks on Muslims.

Examine the stabbing of a 6-year-old Chicago-area boy who, officials say, was killed because he was Muslim. What personal relation did the assailant have with foreign Israelis in the Hamas attack that prompted him to punish an American Muslim child for the attack? Evidently, he had been nurtured to react aggressively when he learned that Jewish people had been killed and Muslims were involved in the attack. It takes a lot to create a Pavlovian response and this incident is indicative of how much the Zionists have invested to shape American minds and trigger a violent response from a distorted mind. In addition to banning guns, we should include banning Zionist propaganda.

A Call to Action

Huge demonstrations and protests that specifically highlight apartheid Israel’s decimation of the Palestinians have charged the world community into action. Already, President Joe Biden, whose principal attribute, when compared to adversary Donald Trump, was his decency, no longer has that appearance. Biden’s support for the Israeli killing machine has shifted his appearance from decent to murderous; he has lost his advantage and, according to polls, has no chance of winning the next election, even if Marjorie Taylor Greene runs.

That swing heralds a new look at what results from catering to the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), the most significant contributor to skewing the American public into ardent support for Israel. Other elected officials may now realize that support for apartheid Israel is more of an election liability than an asset and these officials may be reexamining their dedication to the apartheid state.

The demonstrations, especially by Jewish peace and justice groups have accomplished much, and the momentum cannot stop and must grow. Despite the valiant efforts, no truce is in sight, and apartheid Israel, aided and abetted by the U.S. government continues to pulverize the helpless Palestinians. Time is running short. Previously mentioned and not sufficiently distributed are the words, “The Zionists have determined how to construct a more racially pure state and extinguish the Palestinian presence in the country without the world reacting to the genocide — break their bones and break their will to live.” It would be encouraging to learn that Palestinian heroism is able to survive all threats. The reality is that In both Gaza and the West Bank, the psychological damage to the inhabitants, overlooked in the discussion, has been enormous, and reduced many lives to a crawl for survival.

The street has taken the call to stop the genocide to the halls of government; it is advisable to take it to the institutions that advance the genocide — to the Arlington, Virginia headquarters of public Broadcasting, whose WETA and WGBH stations promote the genocide,  to the German Embassy that has been prominent in arming Israel and suppressing demonstrations that favor the Palestinians, to the institutions that behave as Israel’s spokesperson, the Anti-defamation League (ADL) and synagogues that proudly boast. “We stand with Israel” in its destruction of the Palestinian community.

Missing in the response to apartheid Israel’s violence is countering the most powerful tool for converting and controlling the masses ─ repetitive propaganda that shapes minds and controls actions. Why do football fans at a National Football League game take a minute of silence for killed Israelis and not a second grieving for the Syrians, Rohingya, Armenians, Mexicans, and populations in almost every African nation who have suffered greatly in the last years and continue suffering today?

Why do Americans give deference to Israelis when Israel insults American leaders, uses Americans to die in wars that advance Israel’s interests, causes havoc that brings injury to U.S. relations with other nations,  and sucks money ($3.1 billion) from U.S. taxpayers to support its apartheid and oppressive policies? Look at the record.

·         On June 8, 1967, during the 5-day war, Israeli torpedo boats and airplanes attacked the intelligence ship USS Liberty in international waters, killed 34 Americans, and wounded 171.

·         In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the U.S. supplied arms to Israel that reversed the course of the war. Arab nations responded with an oil embargo that caused huge inflation in the United States, punished the American consumer, and harmed the American economy.

·         Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon prompted the U.S. administration to quickly resolve the conflict. The U.S. offer of assistance did not stop the Israelis from advancing into Beirut and resulted in a suicide bombing of the Marine barracks and the killing of 241 American service personnel. Ignoring the U.S. pursuit for peace, the Israelis allowed Maronite militiamen to enter the Sabra and Shatilla camps and massacre Palestinian civilians.

·         Completely hidden from public knowledge is that America’s support for Israel was Obama bin Laden‘s principal argument with the United States. The al-Qaeda leader revealed his attitude in the opening sentences of a “Letter to America.”

·         George W. Bush’s uncalled-for war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is the best example of sacrificing U.S. lives to advance Israel’s interests. The cited reason ─ destroying Hussein’s weapons of destruction, whose evidence of developments the U.S. based on spurious intelligence ─ was a farce that no sensible person could believe. This “made for consumption” and fabricated story detracted from the real reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq — to prevent Iraq from becoming the central power in the Middle East and being able to threaten Israel.

·         The U.S. has problems with Iran but they can be ameliorated. Due to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and incursions into the Haram al-Sharif, Israel has problems with Iran which cannot be ameliorated until the oppression stops. In a cunning manner, Israel has tied its problem with Iran to the U.S. problem with Iran and uses the U.S. to combat Iran.

·         In defiance of U.S. restrictions and the U.S. supplying Israel with advanced military equipment, Israeli companies sold weapons to China ‘without a permit.’

·         The U.S. gives Israel the sum of $3.1 B every year to purchase advanced weapons, from which Israel has become a major exporter of military equipment and is able to compete effectively with its patron.

·         Israeli governments have scoffed at all U.S. entreaties to halt settlement expansion, even insulting then Vice-President Joe Biden by authorizing settlement expansion one day before Biden arrived for talks.

·         Israel undermined efforts to change South Africa’s apartheid policies by being the only Western nation to have close relations with the Botha government and aided South Africa in secret accords.

NATO gathered its forces to crush Serbia, subdue the Taliban, and depose Muammar Gaddafi in counterproductive exercises that killed wantonly and brought no peace. Where is the mighty defender of freedom and justice when Israel, by word, deed, and subterfuge, and without compunction, decimates the Palestinian community? Why is Israel and its ultra-national, racist, and militarist Zionist leadership protected?

The elephant in the room is the Jewish people. It is not said but obvious that the Jewish people in Israel, who are one-half of the Jewish world, are oppressing the Palestinians. They have allies in Jewish communities throughout the world, a large segment of the evangelical community, and the far right of the Republican Party. Western Jews have also been accused of controlling the media and acting as Israel’s enabler. The world does not seem to realize it, and nobody mentions it, but the facts show that a major part of the world is anguished by the Jewish community and considers it committing genocide. False charges of anti-Semitism will not rescue that community from its suicide. The world is in a lose-lose situation.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Want to rid the world of Hamas, rid the world of apartheid Israel. If apartheid Israel goes away assuredly Hamas will go away; after all, Israel says that Hamas’s only reason for existence is to eradicate apartheid Israel.

Want to stop the oppression and save the Palestinians from genocide, get rid of apartheid Israel; without the destroyer, there are no destroyed.

The Western world has shown it regards apartheid Israel as worth more than five million Palestinian lives, echoing former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, who informed us “We think the price of having 500,000 Iraqi children die is worth saving the world from Saddam Hussein.”

Two clarifications:

(1)    Doing away with apartheid Israel does not mean doing away with Israel; it means transforming apartheid Israel from an oppressive killing machine into a genuinely democratic government that operates with obedience to international law and respects human rights.

(2)    Israel oppressed and killed Palestinians long before Hamas. Israel has been killing and oppressing Palestinians throughout the existence of Hamas. Noting Israel’s continuous oppressive tactics in the West Bank, Israel will oppress and kill Palestinians regardless of Hamas. Prime Minister Netanyahu said the Palestinians will suffer for generations. Capture that remark ─ making innocent generations responsible for incidents that occurred long before they were born. Is that a remark from a responsible leader or a statement from a genocidal maniac?

Demolishing Hamas is an excuse for Israel’s excessive bombings of innocent civilians. Driving the Palestinians into psychological defeat with traumas that cause the children to lose a sense of security and a will to live ─ equivalent to the smallpox blankets that hastened the destruction of the Native Americans ─ is the significant reason for the carnage. The other reasons are to conveniently change the dialogue from oppression of the Palestinians to defense of Israel and to reboot the conflict so that it starts from now. The 75 last years and its tears no longer have any role in analyzing the conflict; that conflict ended and a new conflict started when Hamas attacked Israeli civilians.

These are the reasons for the Israeli attacks on innocent civilians and these reasons are leading to one of the most diabolical genocides conceived by mortals — break their bones and break their will to live. Hamas is a problem but annihilating Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement) cannot be used as an excuse for the devastation visited upon the innocent Palestinians.

This burst of angst was generated by watching discussion programs where “talking heads” offer solutions to the mayhem with unique suggestions such as, “The two peoples should learn to get along with each other,” and “Israel has a right to defend itself but should be careful and not cause too many civilian casualties.”

It was reinforced by the conventional U.S. media reports that continued to highlight previous killings of Israeli civilians and captive Israelis and broadcast prepared references to Jewish victimhood and the 80-year-old World War II Holocaust, programs ready to be aired when Israel needs some prepping, just as obituaries are ready to be printed when a known personality dies. It reached a crescendo upon constantly hearing, that this was the worst loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, words passed on from person to person, each repeating the same script.

Watching David Rubenstein’s program, History, resurrecta December 14, 2021 show that aired Jia Lynn Yang, a deputy national editor at The New York Times, discussing the American immigration system, and observing how Rubenstein steered Ms. Yang to indicate the falsehood that the 1924 Immigration laws were written expressly against Jews, which kept them locked up in  Europe to await their Nazi executioners, made me want to kick the first dog I saw.

Wall Street banker Rubenstein went on to solicit the spurious story of how people pleaded with President Roosevelt to help German Jews, which then led to the ill-fated St. Louis cruise ship that had  900 Jews on board who tried to enter Cuba and were not allowed. Also refused docking by U.S. authorities, the St. Louis returned to Europe. Contrary to Rubenstein’s low-voiced mention of 700 passengers sent to concentration camps and eventually killed, the ship docked in Antwerp, all passengers departed for other nations, and almost all of them survived the war. Would like to know how an editor at renowned PBS permitted this discrepancy to be spoken and why, after two years, it has not been corrected. PBS is regarded as one of the more accurate media.

To relieve my emotional distress, I’ll mention two more corrupt media episodes out of the hundreds I witnessed during the last week.

NBC showed an Israeli birthday Party for a missing 9-year-old Israeli boy, a captive of Hamas. Plenty of abducted and missing children in America. Never saw a birthday party for any of them. I gather NBC camera operators always wander through Israel and film birthday parties for American audiences. Maybe they should wander through Gaza and film posthumous birthday parties for missing Gazan children who will never return and never have another birthday party. By October 23, more than 2,000 Palestinian children are confirmed killed during the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip and 800 are missing. How many are traumatized for the rest of their lives?

In another episode, PBS interviewed students involved in the campus demonstrations, A pro-Israeli student talked of Hamas rapes, undressing women, and parading captives through the streets of Gaza. I’m sure PBS interviewed several students. Because none of the mentioned incidents have been proven to have occurred, why couldn’t PBS present a credible commentator?

The interview with the pro-Palestinian student was less shocking; she wanted to obtain a truce and end the violence on both sides. Why didn’t PBS interview a student alarmed at Israel’s deliberate escalation of the violence?

Israel’s efforts to make Hamas’ violent incursion into Israel the momentous event of the last 75 years and reboot the crisis so it starts on October 7 are succeeding. Israel has determined it has the solution to cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of all Palestinians and, at the same time, cripple Hezbollah and Iran so they can never be a threat, pernicious activities that receive no consideration from the “talking heads”.

Arrival at this “moment of truth’ occurred because the Zionist adventure has not been capably treated; too few of the world’s leaders have placed the key elements of the story and even when explained, don’t seem to have absorbed the significance.

The 1947 UN Resolution 181 used arm-twisting bribes and economic threats to obtain votes and, with these illegal acts, was barely passed. Is that mafia-type of performance acceptable? Without authority to enforce its provisions, the Resolution became a suggestion by a world body. Why would the Palestinians agree to surrender part of their land to foreigners who had just been washed ashore and why would they follow orders from Europeans who lived on the other side of the Mediterranean?

When UN Resolution 181 partitioned Palestine on 29 November 1947, the population statistics, described in the Table below and referenced to 1945, showed about 500,000 Jews and 1.1 million Arabs in the partitioned area. The Arab population was indigenous to the area with almost its entire population born to parents who had resided in the Levant. The Arab population also owned and occupied a major part of the territory with one area, the Negev, mainly inhabited by Bedouin tribes.

Data from the Report of UNSCOP: 3 September 1947: CHAPTER 4: A COMMENTARY ON PARTITION

Because neither state had official names at that time, Arab and Jewish states were used to map out contours of land where the major portions of the ethnicities would live. The Jewish state, which hastily became Israel just before President Truman recognized the state, failed at that moment of origin. Although the state was bi-national, a small Zionist group took control of all apparatus of the new state, and did that without consulting any Palestinian leadership. What leadership, well, no defined leadership, but place it all in proper context.

A census will have shown about 500,000 people described as Jews in the new state (another 100,000 in Jerusalem), but only a small portion of that group lived in the area for a long period of time and only a minor portion had much investment in its past, present, or future. Except for 40,000 earlier 20th-century Zionists, practically all of them had arrived within the previous 30 years and not necessarily to stay — some to work in the British Mandate, many fleeing Nazi Germany, many from refugee camps after World War II, and some adventurers. Relatively few Jews were native to the region and almost all were from foreign nations. The UN did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states -─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and a state composed of about 70 percent who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a small contingent of foreign Jews that had come as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine (200,000), and another larger contingent of foreign Jews (300,000) that arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate.  The Mandate was only a way station for Jews caught in the horrendous tragedies during the 1930s and World War II. If neither cataclysm occurred, would these Jews have gone to the Mandate? Without them, how many Jews would have been there in 1947? These refugees deserved protection, but should those who had been in the area for only two to twenty years, have counted equally in a population census with Palestinians who had centuries of generations in the same area? Did these Jews have a right to expel those who had provided them a measure of succulence? Didn’t they have a moral obligation to protect those who had been upset by their presence? Maybe the measures of refuge came unwillingly, but they were there and the refugee Jews survived. The normal response is to say, “Thank you, I will now leave and not bother you anymore,” and not repeat a crime by forcing exile on others, and, after doing that, grinding the true owners of the land into non-existence.

From that perspective, David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill-equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state. With seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — the Zionists cleansed the area of Palestinians and established Israel. Just one example, which I have substantiated ─ Irgun troops after entering a Palestinian village were told to seize 10 Palestinians and shoot them; a plan intended to frighten other Palestinian villagers to flee.

Assuredly, if there had been no ethnic cleansing and the UN-planned bi-national state had come into existence, many Jews would have left. Within a decade, the Palestinians would have had an overwhelming majority, and, when they looked across the border, would have exclaimed, “Why are we in two states, let’s make one state.”

During World War II, a few eyewitnesses relayed their findings to British authorities of an impending genocide of European Jews. During the 1940s, communication and transportation were not nearly as advanced as today — no spies in the skies and no surveillance drones. Closed borders and battlefields prevented people from moving around and surveying conditions. Unable to validate the information from only a few persons, occupied with their own problems, and not knowing any means to rescue those trapped in the catastrophe, the Holocaust ran its course. One phrase guided the activities of the World War II people ─ kill the other before they kill you. Saving anyone else was not on people’s minds.

In 2023, when everyone, billions, even those living in a remote part of Tasmania, daily witness the destruction of the Palestinian people and its genocidal conclusion, none of the world’s leaders, all of whom are fully aware of the impending genocide, and those who criticized the helpless World War II leaders for not stopping an unstoppable genocide, are readily permitting and abetting the ultimate genocide of the Palestinian people. A PBS program, The U.S. and the Holocaust, accused the United States, who rescued European civilization, of not doing enough to save European Jews. The program could not resurrect the dead and seemed to serve no purpose. Now, it has a purpose. PBS, where is your follow-up program on the United States abetting the genocide of the Palestinians and urging the U.S. to save Palestinian lives? What and who has caused this incomprehensible condition?

Israel’s dilemma has been how to construct a racially pure state and extinguish the Palestinian presence in the country without the world noticing the genocide. It has found the solution and the world takes no notice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Want to rid the world of Hamas, rid the world of apartheid Israel. If apartheid Israel goes away assuredly Hamas will go away; after all, Israel says that Hamas’s only reason for existence is to eradicate apartheid Israel.

Want to stop the oppression and save the Palestinians from genocide, get rid of apartheid Israel; without the destroyer, there are no destroyed.

The Western world has shown it regards apartheid Israel as worth more than five million Palestinian lives, echoing former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, who informed us “We think the price of having 500,000 Iraqi children die is worth saving the world from Saddam Hussein.”

Two clarifications:

(1)    Doing away with apartheid Israel does not mean doing away with Israel; it means transforming apartheid Israel from an oppressive killing machine into a genuinely democratic government that operates with obedience to international law and respects human rights.

(2)    Israel oppressed and killed Palestinians long before Hamas. Israel has been killing and oppressing Palestinians throughout the existence of Hamas. Noting Israel’s continuous oppressive tactics in the West Bank, Israel will oppress and kill Palestinians regardless of Hamas. Prime Minister Netanyahu said the Palestinians will suffer for generations. Capture that remark ─ making innocent generations responsible for incidents that occurred long before they were born. Is that a remark from a responsible leader or a statement from a genocidal maniac?

Demolishing Hamas is an excuse for Israel’s excessive bombings of innocent civilians. Driving the Palestinians into psychological defeat with traumas that cause the children to lose a sense of security and a will to live ─ equivalent to the smallpox blankets that hastened the destruction of the Native Americans ─ is the significant reason for the carnage. The other reasons are to conveniently change the dialogue from oppression of the Palestinians to defense of Israel and to reboot the conflict so that it starts from now. The 75 last years and its tears no longer have any role in analyzing the conflict; that conflict ended and a new conflict started when Hamas attacked Israeli civilians.

These are the reasons for the Israeli attacks on innocent civilians and these reasons are leading to one of the most diabolical genocides conceived by mortals — break their bones and break their will to live. Hamas is a problem but annihilating Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement) cannot be used as an excuse for the devastation visited upon the innocent Palestinians.

This burst of angst was generated by watching discussion programs where “talking heads” offer solutions to the mayhem with unique suggestions such as, “The two peoples should learn to get along with each other,” and “Israel has a right to defend itself but should be careful and not cause too many civilian casualties.”

It was reinforced by the conventional U.S. media reports that continued to highlight previous killings of Israeli civilians and captive Israelis and broadcast prepared references to Jewish victimhood and the 80-year-old World War II Holocaust, programs ready to be aired when Israel needs some prepping, just as obituaries are ready to be printed when a known personality dies. It reached a crescendo upon constantly hearing, that this was the worst loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, words passed on from person to person, each repeating the same script.

Watching David Rubenstein’s program, History, resurrecta December 14, 2021 show that aired Jia Lynn Yang, a deputy national editor at The New York Times, discussing the American immigration system, and observing how Rubenstein steered Ms. Yang to indicate the falsehood that the 1924 Immigration laws were written expressly against Jews, which kept them locked up in  Europe to await their Nazi executioners, made me want to kick the first dog I saw.

Wall Street banker Rubenstein went on to solicit the spurious story of how people pleaded with President Roosevelt to help German Jews, which then led to the ill-fated St. Louis cruise ship that had  900 Jews on board who tried to enter Cuba and were not allowed. Also refused docking by U.S. authorities, the St. Louis returned to Europe. Contrary to Rubenstein’s low-voiced mention of 700 passengers sent to concentration camps and eventually killed, the ship docked in Antwerp, all passengers departed for other nations, and almost all of them survived the war. Would like to know how an editor at renowned PBS permitted this discrepancy to be spoken and why, after two years, it has not been corrected. PBS is regarded as one of the more accurate media.

To relieve my emotional distress, I’ll mention two more corrupt media episodes out of the hundreds I witnessed during the last week.

NBC showed an Israeli birthday Party for a missing 9-year-old Israeli boy, a captive of Hamas. Plenty of abducted and missing children in America. Never saw a birthday party for any of them. I gather NBC camera operators always wander through Israel and film birthday parties for American audiences. Maybe they should wander through Gaza and film posthumous birthday parties for missing Gazan children who will never return and never have another birthday party. By October 23, more than 2,000 Palestinian children are confirmed killed during the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip and 800 are missing. How many are traumatized for the rest of their lives?

In another episode, PBS interviewed students involved in the campus demonstrations, A pro-Israeli student talked of Hamas rapes, undressing women, and parading captives through the streets of Gaza. I’m sure PBS interviewed several students. Because none of the mentioned incidents have been proven to have occurred, why couldn’t PBS present a credible commentator?

The interview with the pro-Palestinian student was less shocking; she wanted to obtain a truce and end the violence on both sides. Why didn’t PBS interview a student alarmed at Israel’s deliberate escalation of the violence?

Israel’s efforts to make Hamas’ violent incursion into Israel the momentous event of the last 75 years and reboot the crisis so it starts on October 7 are succeeding. Israel has determined it has the solution to cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of all Palestinians and, at the same time, cripple Hezbollah and Iran so they can never be a threat, pernicious activities that receive no consideration from the “talking heads”.

Arrival at this “moment of truth’ occurred because the Zionist adventure has not been capably treated; too few of the world’s leaders have placed the key elements of the story and even when explained, don’t seem to have absorbed the significance.

The 1947 UN Resolution 181 used arm-twisting bribes and economic threats to obtain votes and, with these illegal acts, was barely passed. Is that mafia-type of performance acceptable? Without authority to enforce its provisions, the Resolution became a suggestion by a world body. Why would the Palestinians agree to surrender part of their land to foreigners who had just been washed ashore and why would they follow orders from Europeans who lived on the other side of the Mediterranean?

When UN Resolution 181 partitioned Palestine on 29 November 1947, the population statistics, described in the Table below and referenced to 1945, showed about 500,000 Jews and 1.1 million Arabs in the partitioned area. The Arab population was indigenous to the area with almost its entire population born to parents who had resided in the Levant. The Arab population also owned and occupied a major part of the territory with one area, the Negev, mainly inhabited by Bedouin tribes.

Data from the Report of UNSCOP: 3 September 1947: CHAPTER 4: A COMMENTARY ON PARTITION

Because neither state had official names at that time, Arab and Jewish states were used to map out contours of land where the major portions of the ethnicities would live. The Jewish state, which hastily became Israel just before President Truman recognized the state, failed at that moment of origin. Although the state was bi-national, a small Zionist group took control of all apparatus of the new state, and did that without consulting any Palestinian leadership. What leadership, well, no defined leadership, but place it all in proper context.

A census will have shown about 500,000 people described as Jews in the new state (another 100,000 in Jerusalem), but only a small portion of that group lived in the area for a long period of time and only a minor portion had much investment in its past, present, or future. Except for 40,000 earlier 20th-century Zionists, practically all of them had arrived within the previous 30 years and not necessarily to stay — some to work in the British Mandate, many fleeing Nazi Germany, many from refugee camps after World War II, and some adventurers. Relatively few Jews were native to the region and almost all were from foreign nations. The UN did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states -─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and a state composed of about 70 percent who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a small contingent of foreign Jews that had come as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine (200,000), and another larger contingent of foreign Jews (300,000) that arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate.  The Mandate was only a way station for Jews caught in the horrendous tragedies during the 1930s and World War II. If neither cataclysm occurred, would these Jews have gone to the Mandate? Without them, how many Jews would have been there in 1947? These refugees deserved protection, but should those who had been in the area for only two to twenty years, have counted equally in a population census with Palestinians who had centuries of generations in the same area? Did these Jews have a right to expel those who had provided them a measure of succulence? Didn’t they have a moral obligation to protect those who had been upset by their presence? Maybe the measures of refuge came unwillingly, but they were there and the refugee Jews survived. The normal response is to say, “Thank you, I will now leave and not bother you anymore,” and not repeat a crime by forcing exile on others, and, after doing that, grinding the true owners of the land into non-existence.

From that perspective, David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill-equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state. With seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — the Zionists cleansed the area of Palestinians and established Israel. Just one example, which I have substantiated ─ Irgun troops after entering a Palestinian village were told to seize 10 Palestinians and shoot them; a plan intended to frighten other Palestinian villagers to flee.

Assuredly, if there had been no ethnic cleansing and the UN-planned bi-national state had come into existence, many Jews would have left. Within a decade, the Palestinians would have had an overwhelming majority, and, when they looked across the border, would have exclaimed, “Why are we in two states, let’s make one state.”

During World War II, a few eyewitnesses relayed their findings to British authorities of an impending genocide of European Jews. During the 1940s, communication and transportation were not nearly as advanced as today — no spies in the skies and no surveillance drones. Closed borders and battlefields prevented people from moving around and surveying conditions. Unable to validate the information from only a few persons, occupied with their own problems, and not knowing any means to rescue those trapped in the catastrophe, the Holocaust ran its course. One phrase guided the activities of the World War II people ─ kill the other before they kill you. Saving anyone else was not on people’s minds.

In 2023, when everyone, billions, even those living in a remote part of Tasmania, daily witness the destruction of the Palestinian people and its genocidal conclusion, none of the world’s leaders, all of whom are fully aware of the impending genocide, and those who criticized the helpless World War II leaders for not stopping an unstoppable genocide, are readily permitting and abetting the ultimate genocide of the Palestinian people. A PBS program, The U.S. and the Holocaust, accused the United States, who rescued European civilization, of not doing enough to save European Jews. The program could not resurrect the dead and seemed to serve no purpose. Now, it has a purpose. PBS, where is your follow-up program on the United States abetting the genocide of the Palestinians and urging the U.S. to save Palestinian lives? What and who has caused this incomprehensible condition?

Israel’s dilemma has been how to construct a racially pure state and extinguish the Palestinian presence in the country without the world noticing the genocide. It has found the solution and the world takes no notice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

An expression of sympathy for innocent Israeli civilians who suffered from the frightful assault is understandable. A one-sided rendition of the situation is unacceptable. We expected our president to give the necessary condolences and then use the awesome power of a U.S. president to engineer a peaceful solution to the crisis. We did not expect our president to intensify the killing by endorsing a revenge attack expected to be more brutal than the original attack.

Israel’s defense minister said “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” would be allowed into Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu punctuated the barbaric remark with, “events will reverberate for generations;” innocent Palestinian children will enter the world with physical and mental scars. The bar for war crimes has been raised; nations can use the slain to inflict more severe mass killings on the existing innocents. An ecstatic glee arises from the agony inflicted upon others.

By steering the situation to a personal war between Hamas and Israel and subordinating it to the real issue, you served Israel’s interests. The real and unmentioned issue ─ the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people in Gaza ─ those from the ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages of Al-Majdahl, Beit Daras, Falujah, Isdud, Qastina, Hamameh, and others, who did not end their excursion into misery with their arduous trips to Gaza — deserved consideration. Ethnic cleansing was an initial step before wholesale theft of property and valuables. Israel pushed two hundred thousand Palestinians into Gaza to live in tents, sleep on the ground, and exist from aid from Quaker organizations and wages from subservient labor. Internment in refugee camps, brutal occupation, military raids, destruction of facilities, destruction of crops and arable lands, prevention of fishing rights, denial of livelihood, and denial of access to the outside world continued to punish the Gazans without end —traumas that never go away.

A militarily futile Hamas, which has mainly terrorist-type tools, the usual weapons of a resistance movement, is accused of striving to destroy Israel. Still, a mighty and militarized Israel, which has advanced weapons, daily destroys the Palestinians. In retrospect, you and your compatriots have played a leading role in assisting Israel in advancing the oppression, which caused the emergence of Hamas. You are indirectly responsible for creating the building blocks of hate and aggression that led to the Middle East violence and the deadly attacks on innocent populations.

You repeated the words expressed by the most ardent Zionists, turning an extremist reaction to the physical and cultural destruction of the Palestinian people, into the usual emotional tugs of anti-Semitism, another Holocaust, einsatzgruppens, and usurping the words, “traumas that never go away. “

The Washington Post report that your false claim of having seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children,” came from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson proves that you were reading a document furnished to you.

Hamas may deserve condemnation for the brutal attack, but not acknowledging the brutality that Israel has visited on an innocent people and the brutality that America has visited on multitudes of peoples reduces your rhetoric to a “holier than attitude.” Watson Institute at Brown University reports that “A total of 432,093 civilians have died violent deaths as a direct result of the U.S. post-9/11 wars.” Include Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where more than one hundred thousand civilians were killed for one simple reason — to win a war.

Please explain why you mentioned going to Israel as a young Senator, and why a young Senator would go, at that time, to a little and insignificant country before going to more vital North American and Western European nations. Could it be that you were being subtly groomed by the Israeli Lobby who assured you their cooperation if you cooperated with them?

You recited Golda Meir (Isn’t she the ignorant who said there is no such thing as a Palestinian people, and “Land for people for people without a land?) and repeated her ridiculous statement “We have no place else to go,” capping it with a more ridiculous and false statement that “for 75 years Israel has stood as a guarantor of security for Jewish people throughout the world. “ These spurious and contrived statements have no place in the discussion of the present war and seem intentionally inserted to align the world with the always victimized Zionists. They need a rebuttal.

No place else to go? How about all of the Americas and Western Europe where Jews have been living better than any other group ─ minority and majority? Why are Israelis moving to Germany instead of staying in secure Israel?

Want to guarantee the security of the Jews? Get out of Israel. Weren’t 1,200 Jews killed in the last few days in Israel? Have we heard of any Jews being killed in the Western world during these days? Compare statistics of Jews killed after the establishment of Israel in “secure” Israel and the Western world. In Israel, after 1948, 8246 Jews have been killed and 22000 injured. I’m unsure of the statistics for the Western world and the American continent ─ my guess is less than 100 killed and less than 300 injured.

Want to find hatred of Jews – go to Israel, where the secular Jews despise the Orthodox Jews, the European Ashkenazi Jews are contemptuous of the Arab Mizrahi Jews and all discriminate against the Ethiopian Falasha Jews. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) claims that attacks on Jews (anti-Semitism ) are at an all-time high. If that is true, then the Zionist adventure has not solved the problem and has failed. The association of Jews with apartheid Israel is the principal reason for attacks on Jews. The Zionists have caused the very problem they promised to resolve.

The literature is saturated with prejudices by Israeli authorities against the Middle East and North African Jews, Yemenite Jews, and Ethiopian Jews (Falasha), and the difficulties these groups experienced in integrating into Israeli society. From the BBC: “Many of the Ethiopian Israelis live in the periphery of society that already grapples with issues of unemployment and scarce public resources, makes it more difficult for them to integrate, and causes friction with the more veteran population.”

In the year 2013, 60 years after the Middle East and North African Jews came to Israel, government studies conducted in conjunction with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that “a job applicant with an Ashkenazi-sounding name has a 34 percent higher chance of being hired by an employer than a person with a Sephardi-sounding name applying for the same position, [and also that] over 22% of employers openly stated that they actively discriminate against applicants with Arab-sounding names.”

From “Post-Zionism and the Sephardi Question” by Meyrav Wurmser, Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2005

The post-Zionist Mizrahi writers continue to live their parents’ insults and humiliations at the hands of the European Ashkenazi Jewish establishment that absorbed them in Israel after immigration. Discriminatory policies created a continuing social and economic gap between Mizrahi and Ashkenazim. These academics promote the view held by many young Mizrahi that discrimination did not end with their parent’s generation. The children — who, in large part, were born in Israel — continue to face discrimination and cope with social and economic handicaps.

The ADL statistics on prejudice against Jews, which they label anti-Semitism, are purposely exaggerated. The 2018 ADL report identifies 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents perpetrated throughout the United States in 2017. Included in the totals are 1,015 instances of harassment, many of which occurred in schools, such as “Anti-Semitic graffiti found at non-Jewish school.” The subjective term “vandalism” accounted for 952 incidents, most of them being the tumbling of cemetery tombstones and posting of Swastika drawings, such as “Swastika in Walgreens bathroom,” and  “Nazi flag discovered in housing complex,” which were not specifically directed against Jewish persons. Tombstone vandalism is mainly performed by teenagers and rarely has a direct link to a specific prejudice.

The ADL report has 19 assaults against Jews in 2017 – certainly more than a few is alarming. However, the statistic is less alarming when only six were considered as serious, and, of these, the two most serious were (1) Jewish family harassed at local Target, and (2)  A 12-year-old boy was attacked on his way home from outside a synagogue after Friday night prayers (no detail of injuries or if attacked because of being Jewish).

I intended to address this letter to the President of the United States. By reading this speech, you forfeited that title. You are Joe Biden, lackey for apartheid Israel

In this conflict, if Israeli tears fill a cup, Palestinian tears will fill an ocean.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The modern Israeli city of Ashkelon, 20 kilometers north of the Gaza border, presents a picturesque setting along the Mediterranean coast.

Sparkling white beaches matched by white-faced apartment buildings, green lawns, and several wide boulevards depict a tranquil and content city. Ashkelon, the modern city with a biblical name, is not peaceful. Grad rockets from Gaza have struck the city on several occasions. By arguments of war, the damage has not been extensive, but no damage can be ignored.

More noticeable is that Ashkelon has an important story, relating a narrative that describes the Middle East conflict. The story begins with the Canaanites of 1800 B.C.

Ashkelon’s archaeological park has a treasure; a Canaanite gate from the walled city that gave the modern city its name. The Canaanites constructed a port on the Mediterranean Sea and used the sea, together with city walls, to provide a unique defense against invaders. The archaeological park contains artifacts from the Canaanite and succeeding civilizations; Philistines, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, and Crusaders, all of whom eventually ruled the area until the Mamelukes destroyed Ashkelon in the year 1270 A.D.

Missing from the list of conquerors of Ashkelon are the Israelites. No substantiated history or archaeological finds describe Israelite administration of the coastal areas. This lack of coastal identification is surprising because, if the biblical claims of the extent of David and Solomon’s realms are true, would not these empires include seaports and fortifications close to the defendable Mediterranean Sea? A Canaanite gate from 1800 B.C. is extant, but not a single identifiable structure from the reported eras of David and Solomon has been uncovered along the coast.

This brings us to the year 1596 A.D. In that year, the Arab village of al-Majdal in the Ottoman Empire, located close to the ruins of ancient Ashkelon, had a population of 559 inhabitants. An industrious village, known for a weaving industry that produced silk for festival dresses, Al-Majdal’s population grew to 11,000 by 1948. The poetic naming of their fabrics: ‘ji’nneh u nar’ – ‘heaven and hell’, ‘nasheq rohoh’ – ‘breath of the soul’ and ‘abu mitayn’ – ‘father of two hundred, signified the pride and originality of the Al-Majdal weavers.

Al-Majdal and its citizens suffered the fate of many Palestinian villages that hoped to escape the hostilities but became engulfed in the 1948-1949 war. Its residents sustained more than the usual injustices that were committed after the passage of United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution 181, the Partition Plan for Palestine.

Not well recognized is that the territory awarded to the Palestinians in Resolution 181 extended along the coast to present-day Ashdod, 38 kilometers above Gaza. Al-Majdal had been awarded to the new Palestinian state. Also, not sufficiently explored is the reason that the Egyptian army, after its entrance into the war, refrained from entering deeply into territory awarded to the Jewish state because its purpose was to defend the Palestinian state against Israeli transgression. Egypt’s army captured the Yad Mordechai kibbutz, eight kilometers south of Al-Majdal, and stopped at Ashdod. Its army crossed the Negev (awarded to Israel) and attacked Jewish settlements in its advance. The Egyptian military proceeded to defend Beer Sheeva, which had also been awarded to a Palestinian state and continued through Palestinian territory to safeguard Hebron and other parts of the new Palestine state. Egyptian military attacked Tel Aviv by air and sea, but the Egyptian army did not occupy territory awarded to Ben Gurion’s government. Reasons given for the Egyptian failure to seize territory awarded to Israel include (1) damage done to the Egyptian army in a battle at Ashdod halted its advance, (2) four Messerschmitt aircraft delivered by Czechoslovakia to Israel alarmed Egyptian soldiers, and (3) battles with Negev kibbutzim deterred the Egyptian army. All of these reasons are conjecture and not sufficiently convincing.

Despite the over-expressed statement that the Egyptians, together with other Arab armies, intended to “throw the Israelis into the sea,” the Egyptians did not have the military strength to accomplish the task. The path taken by Egyptian troops indicates more of a defense of the new Palestinian state rather than an occupation of the new Jewish state. The inescapable reality is that the Israelis figuratively threw the Palestinians into the sea, or at least into refugee camps, by expelling 750,000 Arabs and barring their return to the lands and homes they had possessed for centuries. History needs a more in-depth analysis of Egypt’s intentions in entering the war.

With war raging in their midst, the citizens of Al-Majdal temporarily retreated 15 kilometers to a haven in Gaza. On November 4, 1948, Israeli forces captured the city. In August 1950, by a combination of inducements and threats, Al-Majdal’s 1000-2000 remaining inhabitants were expelled and trucked to Gaza. According to Eyal Kafkafi(1998), Segregation or integration of the Israeli Arabs – two concepts in Mapai, International Journal of Middle East Studies 30: 347-367, as reported in Wikipedia, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan promoted the expulsion while Pinhas Lavon, secretary-general of the Histadrut, “wished to turn the town into a productive example of equal opportunity for the Arabs.” Despite a ruling by the Egyptian-Israel Mixed Armistice Commission that the Arabs transferred from Majdal should be returned to Israel, this never happened. When I visited in 2010, I was told that only two Arab families live in Ashkelon today.

The nightmare for the expelled residents of Al-Majdal did not end with their arduous trip to Gaza. Without going into detail, the years from 1948 until the present have been years of internment in refugee camps, brutal occupation, constant strife, military raids in their neighborhoods, destruction of facilities, denial of everyday life, denial of livelihood, denial of access to the sea, denial of access to the outside world. In 1994, after the signing of the Oslo Accords, Israel constructed a 60-kilometer fence around the Gaza Strip and from December 2000 to June 2001 reinforced and rebuilt parts of the fence. Israel might be correct in presenting the fence as a necessary deterrence to infiltration, especially for terrorist acts. Personal bombings on southern Israel have declined dramatically but have been replaced by rocket bombings. Infiltration by Israeli forces into Gaza did not decline and bombings of Gaza homes and citizens continued. Whatever the reason, the lives of the surviving Al-Majdal refugees and their descendants evolved from being wards of the United Nations to virtual imprisonment in an overly crowded environment.

The Gazan wars are a coda to the horrific drama that plagued the Al-Majdal and other Palestinian refugees. The massive destruction inflicted upon the Gaza people is well documented and can be reviewed by searching the Internet. The accusations by Amnesty International and other agencies of war crimes committed by Israel are incomplete. Eyewitnesses verify the intentional destruction of small industrial businesses, educational institutions, animal husbandry, and withholding of irrigation that resulted in extensive strawberry crop losses; evidence that Israel also targeted the Gaza economy.

No discussion of Ashkelon is complete without reference to its neighboring Erez Crossing. For those entering northern Gaza, the crossing’s concrete walls and huge terminals, the traces of the 60-kilometer fence around the Gaza Strip in the distance, and an overhead balloon hanging in the sky like a full moon, evidently surveying the entire area, shock the senses.

A description by someone who exited Gaza through the checkpoint was so complicated that it was difficult to absorb and accurately report. The 100-meter walk along the empty road, remote control turnstiles, advanced body scanners, and other Kafkaesque security equipment are well described by my similar experience.

The Soviet Union previously set the bar for tyrannical control. Those who passed through a Soviet checkpoint between East Germany and Berlin during the Cold War know the fear and uncomfortable feeling of this control. Enter a barren room and gaze around in puzzlement. Finally, after several minutes, a slit in the wall opens and a voice announces, “Die papieren bitte.” Place the papers in the slit and wait in the room without knowing the time length of the wait. Realize that the room is wired and all words are heard while hidden eyes observe all movements. It is a sweating and terrifying experience. The exit from Gaza through Erez seemed magnitudes more terrifying. Israel has raised the bar on security control.

What happens when a Palestinian attempts to enter Israel from Gaza? A story related by a person, whose credentials are impeccable and whose words can be trusted, went like this.

A Palestinian, who had moved to Canada and had a Canadian passport, returned temporarily to Gaza. A friend in Ashkelon (who told me the story) invited the Palestinian with a Canadian passport for a visit. It took several weeks to prepare documentation, submit the necessary papers, and obtain approval from the Israeli military for the visit. With everything certified the Palestinian proceeded to the Erez Crossing for exit to Israel. His friend waited at the checkpoint and waited and waited. The Palestinian did not arrive. Six weeks later, the drama unfolded.

Israel’s security stopped the Palestinian, not because Israel suspected he had compromised its security – just the opposite – Israel compromised his security. If the man agreed to inform on his associates in Gaza, Israel would make life easy for him, allow him to travel, and his family would receive special conveniences. He was finally released after six weeks of being held incommunicado. Other Palestinians, who crossed the border, have complained of similar insidious activities.

The creation of modern Ashkelon and its consequences contain elements that have been subdued in public discourse but have been a major contributor to the Middle East conflict and a guide for one side of the struggle. We have Israel seizing control of an ancient area, which, for millennia, had been controlled by others. UN Resolution 181, which awarded the area to the Palestinian state, has been violated in the seizure. The original inhabitants are expelled without cause. The Arab town of Al-Majdal is mostly destroyed and memories of an Arab presence are erased. The town’s name is slowly changed, evolving from Al-Majdal to Migdal-Gad, Migdal-Ashkelon, and finally to Ashkelon; as if the city descended directly from the original bronze era seaport. The victims are consistently oppressed and reduced to impoverishment. Foreigners occupy the properties of the dispossessed. Sorrow, pain, and feelings of helplessness burst into violence against injustice and oppression. Although the violence is minimal, the retaliation is major. Al-Majdal has no escape from suffering.

Ashkelon has a story. It is the story of the Middle East conflict.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Placing Reaganomics in its realistic context displaces Republican rhetoric that extols the Great Communicator as the model for presidential performance. President Reagan had enviable accomplishments for which he deserves praise, the most significant being the dignity he brought to the office, the trust and stability he gave the American people, and his manner of communicating and connecting with the populace.

Reaganomics had four simple principles — reduce government spending, reduce income and capital gains marginal tax rates, reduce government regulation, and control the money supply to reduce inflation. Containing the Soviet Union and preventing the spread of communism dominated foreign policy.

Reduce Government Spending

The top graph shows federal debt increasing from $998 billion to $ 2.6 trillion during Reagan’s reign. The lower graph has total credit outstanding also almost tripling from $5 trillion to $14 trillion during the same period.

True, it was a Democratic Congress that initiated the federal deficit, but this occurred during his administration and he had some executive power to lower it.

Reagan’s administration’s fiscal policy directly opposed his stated objectives and those of the GOP. Credit throughout the nation and federal deficits started a fast rise in debt that determined America’s future economies.

Tax Reduction

The 40th president of the United States reduced income and capital gain taxes. Objectively, income tax rates determine the transfer of money between the government and taxpayers. Neither direction, taxes up or taxes down, adds or subtracts money to the economic system or allows more or less available spending to the economy; purchasing power stays the same, which means the total purchases of goods and services remain the same.

Individual workers and taxpayers benefit from tax cuts. Stimulating the entire economy with income tax breaks is a psychological phenomenon. The exaggerations, promises, and optimism generated by tax breaks fashion a more optimistic public that incorrectly assumes the cuts stimulate additional spending to an already combined consumer and government spending. Creeping into the debate are other false assumptions — those who have excess funds will purchase domestic goods, invest, and stimulate growth. Not considered is that individuals might purchase imports and invest in speculative ventures that only churn money, both decreasing available purchasing power in the domestic economy. Reagan’s tax cutters were also against government deficits and did not realize that the former leads to the latter.

New York Times, March 6, 2018, “In Blow to Trump, America’s Trade Deficit in Goods Hits Record $891 Billion.”

Money from the tax cuts helped Americans buy more imported goods than ever in 2018. In addition, to finance the tax cuts, the government needed to borrow more dollars, some of which came from foreign investors.

GDP has steadily grown, with a few bumps, and no relation to the lowering of taxes has been proven. A government report: Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates since 1945, Thomas L. Hungerford Specialist in Public Finance, September 14, 2012, concludes:

The top income tax rates have changed considerably since the end of World War II. Throughout the late-1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was typically above 90%; today it is 35%. Additionally, the top capital gains tax rate was 25% in the 1950s and 1960s, 35% in the 1970s; today it is 15%. The average tax rate faced by the top 0.01% of taxpayers was above 40% until the mid-1980s; today it is below 25%. Tax rates affecting taxpayers at the top of the income distribution are currently at their lowest levels since the end of the second World War. The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to how the economic pie is sliced, lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.

To fund government programs, Reagan signed tax increases into law every year Huge increases in FICA and signing of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, the “largest peacetime tax increase in American history,” describe Reagan’s ambivalence to tax reductions. If the budget was balanced, then a reasonable conclusion could relate the growth of GDP to a cut in taxes. The economic stimulus due to deficit spending and credit, coupled with the reduction of oil prices and interest rates, probably played more significant roles in the GDP rise.

Note that the graph of GDP coincides with the previous curves of credit outstanding and government debt. All these parameters started their huge increases during the Reagan administration.

Deregulation

True to his word, Reagan offered some deregulation. Was it beneficial?
The Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982, which deregulated savings and loan associations and allowed banks to provide adjustable-rate mortgages, contributed to the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s. William A. Niskanen, a member of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers has written that deregulation had the “lowest priority” of the items on the Reagan agenda.” Reagan “failed to sustain the momentum for deregulation initiated in the 1970s” and he “added more trade barriers than any administration since Hoover.”

Inflation

Reagan’s policies for controlling the money supply to reduce inflation were contradictory. Paul Volcker, who chaired the Federal Reserve from August 1979 through August 1987, resolved the anomaly.

It always seemed to me that there is a kind of common sense view that inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. You could oversimplify it and say that inflation is just a monetary phenomenon. There are decades, hundreds of years, of economic thinking relating the money supply to inflation, and people to some extent have that in their bones. So I think we could explain what we had to do to stop inflation better that way than simply by saying that we’ve got to raise interest rates. It was also true that we had no other good benchmark for how much to raise interest rates in the midst of a volatile inflationary situation. Then in October [1982], or whenever it was, the money supply (by some measures) was increasing again rather rapidly. We had a tough explanation to make, but I thought we had come to the point that we were getting boxed in by money supply data that was, in any event, strongly distorted by regulatory changes and bank behavior. We came to the conclusion that it was not very reliable to put so much weight on the money supply any more, so we backed off that approach.”

Decreasing income taxes and increasing the money supply by lowering interest rates and running deficits are not the recommended means to reduce inflation. So, why did inflation get tamed — chalk it up to greatly lowered oil prices and cheap imports from rising Japan and the rejuvenated China.

Reduced Unemployment

We come to the most often cited success of Reagan’s policies; an increase of 18 million jobs, but where? All of them were in the non-manufacturing sectors. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, shown below, reports 11 million growth in the service industries, 4.5 million in wholesale and retail trade, and 2 million in the financial industry.

Any employment increase is welcoming and significant. Few of these industries are export industries and are, in effect, supported by the surplus income of manufacturing workers. Banks don’t normally lend to consumers to buy hamburgers, and going to a doctor doesn’t increase assets. Services, trade, and finance create intangible assets and not the tangibles that have defined prices.

This leads to Reagan’s greatest failure; during an era of global prosperity, and while Japan and Germany enhanced their export industries, America started its monotonically increasing deficit in its surplus account. The graph below shows that 1983 was a fatal year for the United States; the year it became a global debtor nation.

During the Reagan decade, Japan’s current account balance went from a record deficit of $10.7 billion in 1980 to a record surplus of $87 billion in 1987 before declining to $57.1 billion in 1989. Similarly, the Federal Republic of Germany, after experiencing deficits during 1979–81, had its current accounts balance rebound to about a DM 9.9 billion surplus in 1982 and increase to DM 76.5 billion in 1986.

While Reagan talked mellifluously, the world’s principal nations trade (including an emerging China) flowed with honey. Examine all the graphs and tables and the conclusion becomes obvious: Reagan’s administration policies increased federal and private debt at exponential rates, decreased manufacturing employment, and turned a positive current account into an ever-mounting negative.

Cold War

Reagan talked tough and acted tough — excoriating the Soviet Union, militarily challenging Moscow by greatly increasing the defense budget, and covertly helping Pakistan intelligence in supplying arms to the Afghan Mujahedeen. His 1983 NSC National Security Decision Directive 75 stated that” a central priority of the U.S. in its policy toward the Soviet Union contains, and over time, reverses Soviet expansionism.” The directive noted: “The U.S. must rebuild the credibility of its commitment to resist Soviet encroachment on U.S. interests and those of its Allies and friends, and to support effectively those Third World states that are willing to resist Soviet pressures or oppose Soviet initiatives hostile to the United States, or are special targets of Soviet policy.” None of these pursuits intended to overthrow the Soviet Union, all were long-term, and did not provide mechanisms to end the Cold War.

The Reagan administration approached the 1986 Reykjavik Summit meeting as an informal exploratory session with a limited agenda and found Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev proposing dramatic reductions in strategic arms. Gorbachev led the negotiations between the two governments and led the Soviet Union into disintegration. An end to the Cold War automatically followed. Reagan’s involvement in the proceedings was more as an observer who did not discourage Gorbachev and refrained from interfering rather than a direct participant who engineered the outcome. He was not in office when Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, on December 8, 1991, signed the Belovezha Accords with President Kravchuk of Ukraine, and Chairman Shushkevich of Belarus, “recognizing each other’s independence and creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to replace the Soviet Union.”

Step away from Reagan’s relation to the decline of the Soviet Union and step forward to examine his policy of preventing communist expansion and his foreign policy initiatives appear troubling.

• Nicaragua ─ Use of the illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua was a major scandal.
• El Salvador ─ Despite the atrocities committed by the El Salvador governments, which Reagan never persuaded the Central American government to halt, he provided the Salvadoran government with substantial military aid and advisors.
• Guatemala ─ Reagan attempted to justify his shipments of military hardware to the repressive Rios Montt regime by claiming that Guatemala’s human rights conditions were improving. In May 2013, Ríos Montt was found guilty of genocide against Mayan Indian groups by a Guatemalan court. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison, 50 years for genocide, and 30 years for crimes against humanity.
• Grenada ─ Reagan misstated the construction of a civilian airport by Cuban laborers as a military airport for delivery of military hardware to Angolan rebels and used that as an excuse to invade defenseless Grenada and overthrow the leftist government. Casualties from the unnecessary invasion ─ 24 Cuban laborers killed and 59 wounded, the Grenadian Army suffered 21 killed and 58 captured, and 24 Grenadian civilians died during the operation. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the invasion as “a flagrant violation of international law” by a vote of 108 to 9.
• Angola ─ China originally assisted Jonas Savimbi and his National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which espoused Maoist thoughts. A later UNITA modified itself and aligned with Western capitalism, bringing Reagan to militarily support UNITA in its struggle with the communist-oriented Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). U.S. support for UNITA prolonged the conflict and caused havoc.
• Afghanistan ─ Reagan’s CIA’s assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through Pakistani intelligence, in a Civil war that was not part of the Cold War, and where the U.S. had no interest, proved fatal to America. Reagan’s assistance to Pakistani intelligence enabled the Taliban victory and the organization of al-Qaeda. Enough said.
• Philippines — The Reagan administration aligned itself with Dictator Ferdinand Marcos, through all his assassination of opponents, repression, corruption, and election rigging until military and government leaders abandoned Marcos.
• Libya ─ Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi did not ingratiate himself with Ronald Reagan, The tit-for-tat invectives and hostile actions exploded into Reagan ordering full-scale bombings by the U.S. air force of Libyan territory. By a vote of 79 in favor to 28 against with 33 abstentions, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that “condemns the military attack perpetrated against the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya on 15 April 1986, which constitutes a violation of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law.”
• Beirut ─ President Reagan sent U.S. troops to Lebanon as part of a peace-keeping force, dispatched to assist Lebanese armed forces in the “departure from Beirut of armed PLO personnel and to assist in the transition of authority to the Lebanese government in Beirut.” Troubles for the American-backed regime of President Amin Gemayel led US warships to shell Syrian and Druze militia positions outside Beirut, which Reagan explained as a military intervention to prevent the Middle East from being “incorporated into the Soviet bloc.” Several months later a bombing of the U.S. barracks in Beirut killed 241 U.S. Marines. Four months later, after one of the biggest debacles in U.S. history, Reagan ordered all U.S. forces to leave Lebanon.
• Iran Air Flight 655 ─ On July 3, 1988, surface-to-air missiles, fired by USS Vincennes, shot down a scheduled passenger plane over Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf and killed all 290 people on board. Excuses of misidentification intensified criticism of Reagan’s orders that sent U.S. military into war zones where they were not wanted or needed. As usual, Reagan used the Soviet bogeyman as a superficial reason for sending a U.S. warship close to Iran’s shores. President Reagan said that “increasing the American naval force and protecting the tankers are necessary to defend the principle of free navigation and to prevent the Soviet Union, which is leasing tankers to Kuwait, from establishing itself as a gulf power.”

Conclusion

President Ronald Reagan had a vision that serves one sector of today’s Republican Party, a vision of self-reliance, limited government, stout defense, and world leadership toward freedom. His administration contradicted that vision, using big government to expand the economy, expand the defense budget, and engage in useless assistance to anti-communist tyrants who crippled their defenseless peoples and stained America’s image as a democratic and peace-loving nation. Federal debt and trade deficits gained impetus during the Reagan presidency. A pledge to balance the federal budget never materialized in any of his eight years in office.

The Gipper can take some credit for propelling an already declining Soviet Union into total decline. The most significant contribution to the political environment of the time was himself. The nation was more united during his tenure in office, exhibiting bipartisan cooperation and not displaying the antagonisms, adversities, and lack of cohesion that characterize 21stcentury America. He connected with the populace, performed with dignity, and portrayed an optimism that energized the public. The contradictions he personally displayed mirrored the contradictions of his policies ─ at times Ronald Reagan seemed disengaged and disenchanted with his surroundings, but his private notes, policy directives, speech writings, and alertness when the U.S. was challenged indicate he was deeply involved in governing the United States of America. Similar to Ronald Reagan, the results of the governing are contradictory and depend upon perspective.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Soviet-style socialism did not patiently wait for capitalism to provide capital formation, industrial development, allocation of resources, and prosperity for its population. The Soviets struggled to house, clothe, and feed, in a short time, a deprived population that had barely survived World War II, which led to mismanagement, demotivation, shoddy construction, and misallocation of resources. By not following Karl Marx’s observations, which praised capitalist development and urged its necessity before socialist constructions, the Soviet system doomed itself to failure.

Capitalism has neared a peak, mostly using capital to generate more capital, unable to comprehend the challenges faced by its actions, going as far as it can go without intensifying the major problems it has created. Slowly and inexorably, the socio-economic system refutes a counter-productive capitalism, that is taking more than it is giving, that is destroying more than it is creating, and that has become more irresponsible than responsible. In the coming decades, cooperation will be preferred to competition, sharing preferred to taking, responsibility to all preferred to irresponsibility to one, socialization preferred to capitalization.

The anticipated changes do not arrive from ideological, economic, social, or political considerations; they arrive from the realization that the earth is on fire and only a strong-willed and collective community can dampen the conflagration. They come from realizing that private and civic initiatives cannot and will not resolve the forecasted problems, each will protect what they have and deny the challenges — greenhouse gas emissions that heat the atmosphere and petition a handover from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources; climate change that modifies coastlines and arable lands; robotics and artificial intelligence that change the factory floor, its administration, and the composition of the workforce; possibility of nuclear war in an atmosphere of intense international hostility and growing arms races; pandemics from new disease microbes that replicate quickly, defy conventional medicine, and spread beyond borders; security enhancements due to internal conflicts and external hostilities; political, economic and social polarizations that have stimulated populist movements; and population migrations that cause cultural conflicts and reassignment of resources.

These challenges have subsidiary challenges that each creates – reallocation of food sources and possible shortages in food supply; economic upheavals due to bankruptcies of resource and transportation industries and nations dependent upon fossil fuels; re-orientation of the workforce to prevent severe unemployment; forced arms controls to prevent global wars; sharing of resources to lessen predicted large scale migrations; international supervision and collective research to prevent the spread of disease; and more equal distribution of income to assure all have basics for survival in a quickly changing economic landscape.

Despite public awareness and concern for all the challenges, inertia is apparent. By default, escaping human extinction will require government intervention in all aspects of the socio-economic system.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The alarm has sounded. “Higher concentrations of greenhouse gases, and carbon dioxide (CO₂) in particular, are causing extra heat to be trapped and average global temperatures to rise. For most of the past 800,000 years the concentration of CO₂ in our atmosphere was roughly between 200 and 280 parts per million.” In 2022, the global CO₂ concentration was recorded at 417.2 ppm.

Containing carbon emissions demands regulation of all energy sources and severe changes in the air, sea, and ground transportations that use the energy sources. The latter change can be partially fulfilled by a shift to electric vehicles, which, due to elevated costs, will require government subsidies. Substitutes for the engines that drive air and sea transportation are not easily available and these transportation systems may face restrictions. Severe reductions in international transport and other industries that use fossil fuels for locomotion may occur.

Failure to limit carbon emissions leads to climate change.

Climate Change

NASA confirms climate change. “While Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history, the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years.” Predictions of heavier rainfall in some areas, droughts in other areas, loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise, and more intense heat waves are already happening.

Linked to addressing the effects of climate warming is the addressing of severe economic problems due to population, agriculture, and labor shifts, and a possible economic decline. The latter might result from lower and changing demand for products in companies engaged in fossil fuel extraction, petroleum refining, fossil energy transport, pipelines, and associated equipment manufacture. Fisheries, tourism, airlines, shipping, animal husbandry, recreation, investment, and plastics industries will also be affected. In directing investments so they factor climate change into their capital distribution, investment powerhouse, Black Rock, has already considered a makeover of the economic system.

Earth and its inhabitants have proved adaptable, surviving catastrophes and climate changes in previous epochs. The predicted rapidity of this climate change and the scientific analysis that attributes it to carbon emissions make it unlikely that, without more centralized planning and regimentation, the earth will be sufficiently prepared to ameliorate the climate shifts.

Food Supply

A UN Report states that “In the next 30 years, food supply and food security will be severely threatened if little or no action is taken to address climate change and the food system’s vulnerability to climate change.” Shifts in arable lands, increases in desert lands, a dwindling fish supply, and possible limits to meat production, due to less grasslands and restrictions on methane gas release from herds, will re-orient the food supply. Warmer water temperatures will cause changes in habitat ranges of many fish and shellfish species. Unless food production and distribution are carefully monitored and controlled, famines will occur. Sustainable farming will become a rule.

Water Resource

The United Nations World Water Development Report 2018 concludes,

The global demand for water has been increasing at a rate of about 1% per year over the past decades as a function of population growth, economic development and changing consumption patterns, among other factors, and it will continue to grow significantly over the foreseeable future….At the same time, the global water cycle is intensifying due to climate change, with wetter regions generally becoming wetter and drier regions becoming even drier. Other global changes (e.g., urbanization, de-forestation, intensification of agriculture) add to these challenges. At present, an estimated 3.6 billion people (nearly half the global population) live in areas that are potentially water-scarce at least one month per year, and this population could increase to some 4.8–5.7 billion by 2050.

Will private industry be able to regulate and equitably distribute available water resources? Only governments, acting in concert with one another and with international agencies will determine who gets what, when, and where.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) plus Robotics

Robotics clears the factory floor of workers and AI, by replacing much administration, clears the offices of managers who solve problems, clarify work schedules, and prepare and manage budgets.

New software and manufacturing industries will emerge, but will the tools of the new industrial age be used to satisfy the wants and needs of the populace or mainly the profits of entrepreneurs? Will the self-operating machines be able to generate income for all those who have left the factories; will there be sufficient income in the system to purchase all goods in the expanded market? Will supply exceed demand and profits become a mirage? Will AI and extensive Robotics be suitable companions to the workers of a new and less profit-oriented system, where wages can be coupons for a more equitably distributed national income? Arrangement between humans and the new machines reorders democracy and the social order; reorders society into Democratic Socialism.

Population Migrations

Already a major problem that has reached crisis proportions, a 2018 World Bank Group report has climate change enhancing the problem. The report “estimates that the impacts of climate change in three of the world’s most densely populated developing regions—sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America—could result in the displacement and internal migration of more than 140 million people before 2050.” A mass movement of that scale will need cooperative government actions and international agreements to prevent political and economic strife and enable continued development in the affected regions.

Nuclear war

Nations that rely on fossil fuel exports to maintain their economic system — Middle East, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and others — and nations destabilized by the effects of climate change — water scarcity, agriculture losses, food depletion — that cannot effectively compete and re-orient themselves in the changing world may become aggressive and seek opportunities by engaging in warfare, which could lead to use of weapons of mass destruction. A byproduct of the switch to renewable fuels and climate change — nations unable to compete or adapt in the new economic environment — behooves a means to accommodate those who might resort to military operations to survive. Arms controls and peaceful cooperation will replace arms races and aggressive behaviors.

Disease and Pestilence

The spread of the COVID-19 virus serves as a warning for future pandemics. Local actions can contain the pandemic but cannot prevent its spread. Centralized programs that mobilize agencies, institutions, and the public are necessary to coordinate activities and defeat the pandemic. National health plans, which enable every citizen to have adequate medical coverage, will ensure that everyone will be able to seek medical assistance quickly and halt the spread of diseases. Trends to increased isolation, remaining home, and ordering goods and foods online have changed lifestyles and affected commercial activities of retail stores, restaurants, entertainment, sports arenas, local transportation, and suburban malls. With more work from home, rather than from offices, rapid changes in urban environment, industry composition, and employment have appeared and necessitated government assistance to prevent business collapses and severe unemployment.

The COVID-19 virus pandemic is only the first of other forecasted toxic leaps from animals to humans. The planet has responded well to lifestyle changes and the socio-economic effects induced by the pandemic. The next wave or waves may be more toxic and create more demands on the governing institutions to supply relief to trapped populations.

Security Enhancements

Upheavals, scarcities, and economic shifts create masses of marginal and alienated peoples. Those who are not empathetic to the plights of others become their enemies. Terrorism and mass shootings from those who are mentally ill, feel estranged from society, and have been coopted by extremists will grow. Tighter law enforcement, increased surveillance, and privacy invasions will follow. Protection of others will replace self-protection. The placating phrase, “Big brother is watching for you,” will replace the chilling phrase, “Big brother is watching every part of you.” This will be a positive rearrangement of the surveillance that Google and a myriad of Internet-based companies, who acquire vast information about the birth, life, and habits of American citizens, perform daily. Store cameras, street cameras, doorbell cameras, garage cameras, office-building cameras, and public place cameras will be replaced by one big camera, an eye for moral and social obedience.

Political and Social Polarization

Modern democracies have given people freedom and hope, more of the air to breathe. In the process, groups have taken advantage of the freedoms and increased their concentration of wealth and power, which has led to oligarchies. Those who feel dominated, unable to express their longings, and feel they have been unfairly sidetracked from prosperity have sought refuge by gathering together in nationalist organizations and populist politics. The coming socialization poses a solution by implementing workplace democracy in which workers have a stake in corporate management and are able to receive a more equitable share of income and wealth. Grassroots politics will take hold; governance from ground up, rather than from top down, will prevail.

Conclusions

Natural disaster problems have always sought government intervention. A study found that climate-related disasters in ancient Mesopotamia “forced greater cooperation and a more widespread distribution of power across social sectors.” The convergence of several perils at one time strikes a new chord in domestic and international relations — cooperation before competition, survival of all before the survival of the fittest, limited material wealth before unlimited natural catastrophes.

From a constant badgering of the soul that associates socialism with central authority and mind control, a resistance to socialized governance has arisen. The words are internalized and their utterance brings a visceral response of scorn and doubt. Central authority? Isn’t the United States dollar the central and primary reserve authority for the global economy, which facilitates the United States borrowing money and arbitrarily imposing painful financial sanctions on Russia, Iran, and any adversary of the U.S. Don’t the U.S. and  Western nations control SWIFT, the centralized Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, “a secure financial messaging service used to execute international transactions among banks,” and gives the U.S. economic and political clout?  Mind control? Isn’t that what nationalist governments, such as the United States, do in their education system and the media giants do as purveyors of misinformation? Those caught in the grip of misinformation can choose between a path that may offend them but allows them to survive or a path that leads them to water up to their chins, figuratively and literally.

The MAGA contingent, that exclaims “Better Dead than Red” needs to transpose to  “Better Pink than Sink,” the new slogan for the Democratic and Socialist communities, pushed to leadership in order to prevent Capitalism’s latest offering — human extinction.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The recent and periodic arguments concerning the proposed federal budget, an entrance for initiating threats to “close the government,” highlight how both political sides of Congress wrongly portray the fiscal deficits that have become implicit in federal budgets. Two wrongs do not make a right, and, in this case, they have caused misunderstandings and problems.

Start with the Republican Party

Republicans refuse to admit that an expanded money supply is required to support the increased economic activity of a growing economy and increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP ). This does not mean that an increase in money supply will increase GDP; the implication is otherwise  ─ a given money supply is required to sustain a definite GDP. If production exceeds the money supply for purchasing the goods and cannot be cleared, prices will be cut and deflation will develop. A simple and accepted equation that describes the quantity theory of money certifies this proposition:

GDP = Money Supply x Velocity of Money

With the Velocity of Money constant, GDP cannot increase unless the Money Supply increases, and the Money Supply cannot increase without either banks issuing credit or the Federal Reserve purchasing government notes and bonds, both of which increase total national debt.

More appropriately:

GDP = Consumer spending + Business Investment + Government Spending + (Exports – Imports)

The United States has been running trade deficits for decades, and a portion of government spending equalizes the trade deficit.

TRADE BALANCE