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55815
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: does a state which commits genocide of another deserve democracy? (NT)
| (NT) |
Responses:
[55816] [55823] [55826] [55835] [55842] [55849] [55845] [55847] [55851] [55852] [55863] [55848] [55844] [55843] [55846] [55836] [55827] [55829] [55887] [55831] [55834] [55832] [55837] [55840] [55841] [55828] [55830]
55816
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: provocative question, yes but
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There's so much concern about the US loosing its democracy with another trump presidency. I'm not attempting to minimize the threat, but I find it interesting that the same folks here terrified by that prospect express zero concern and outrage for our country's continuous participation in a now year- long ethnic cleansing campaign which has now killed over 41,000, mostly women & children. Israel is literally targeting refugee camps and has only amped up its slaughter in Gaza, not to mention Lebanon. The disconnect is palpable. You demand democracy at home, while supporting suppression and genocide outside your safe and secure borders. |
Responses:
[55823] [55826] [55835] [55842] [55849] [55845] [55847] [55851] [55852] [55863] [55848] [55844] [55843] [55846] [55836] [55827] [55829] [55887] [55831] [55834] [55832] [55837] [55840] [55841] [55828] [55830]
55823
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: 42,000+(NT)
| (NT) |
Responses:
[55826] [55835] [55842] [55849] [55845] [55847] [55851] [55852] [55863] [55848] [55844] [55843] [55846] [55836] [55827] [55829] [55887] [55831] [55834] [55832] [55837] [55840] [55841] [55828] [55830]
55826
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
| you are talking to yourself...that is a sign of some kind of mental problem...i might put it off on the stress of what you just went through but you were doing it before the helene disaster...you offer no workable solutions...you are like the israelis, come in with your machine gun blasting everything in sight, without stopping to consider the big picture...certainly the loss of innocent lives is horrific...but perhaps these actions are preventing the loss of many more......perhaps the people involved asked for this experience...i don't know and neither do you...i do know that your approach to addressing the problem does not seem to be helping at all, and you are wasting your energies with your incessant outbursts of angst and frustration... |
Responses:
[55835] [55842] [55849] [55845] [55847] [55851] [55852] [55863] [55848] [55844] [55843] [55846] [55836] [55827] [55829] [55887] [55831] [55834] [55832] [55837] [55840] [55841] [55828] [55830]
55835
From: old timer, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
|
“perhaps the people involved asked for this experience” what the hell does that mean? are you implying the women and children who are the victims of the genocide asked for it??? hope you don’t mean that as that sounds like some holocaust denier shit as long as the us continues to support this genocide everyone in this country should be speaking up about it as akira is currently doing. now israel is destroying parts of lebanon and trying to expand the war. when do you think you will be willing to speak up against the ongoing genocide and war that israel is trying to draw us into? |
Responses:
[55842] [55849] [55845] [55847] [55851] [55852] [55863] [55848] [55844] [55843] [55846] [55836]
55842
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
|
You're obviously not evolved enough to understand, ot. Other peoples suffering is none of your concern. Do nothing. Say nothing. Unless of course you have the perfect solutions to the world's problems, then by all means, do share. Otherwise shut the fuck up. Warning: Opinions are welcome, but only if they harmonize with the Bopp's. |
Responses:
[55849] [55845] [55847] [55851] [55852] [55863] [55848] [55844] [55843] [55846]
55849
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
|
Warning: Opinions that are not akira's or old timer's are seen by them as enacting the agenda of *eliminating* their own... The fact that other people's input and responses, with differing opinions, might *mitigate, or apply substantively to, or otherwise advise their points in ways they disagree with* is entirely sidestepped out of hand...in favor of the hilarious notion that their points *cannot be done-to that way,* and if anyone's trying to suggest anything different than their opinions, they are... ...wait for it... ...trying to eliminate, or censor, or otherwise rob them of their precious perspective... They just can't seem to fathom that the perspectives of others might have some validity... Pretending this has *claim of unfairness* has some kind of solid intellectual basis is one of the saddest and funniest things I've seen in a long time... |
Responses:
None
55845
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
| if it could be different, it would be different... |
55847
From: old timer, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
|
what kind of nonsense is that? and why don’t you apply that doublespeak to other issues you speak so passionately about? if trump is reelected will you say “if it could be different, it would be different” to all the butthurt lefties that will lose their minds? or does that nonsense only apply to subjects your don’t really care about when you criticize others for speaking up for what is right? |
55851
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
|
LOL...speaking of butthurt, that's kinda what you're sounding like already. That comment is mega-funny coming from you, OT. Need us to send you some Prep-H? Hope you feel better soon. |
55852
From: old timer, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
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trolls gotta troll i guess still remember the old days when you used to say worthwhile things without attacking people. i have a good memory because that was long ago |
Responses:
[55863]
55863
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
| I remember too |
Responses:
None
55848
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
|
What kind of nonsense is every word you’ve just said, dude? …lol…ignore me all you like… ;) …but you seem to forget that we here have been very well-trained in spin detection by the veritable king of spin…and I’m afraid he’s tainted the waters for you by running every imaginable spin trajectory into the ground…to a point where we not only know them all but smell them coming quite a long way off… Twisting words cannot squeeze the truth out of them no matter how hard you try, and complex subtleties within complex issues *do not oversimplify themselves* to conform to your need to see them so… |
Responses:
None
55844
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
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Playing dumb is so beneath you, akira...especially when you pay such a high price... Or maybe I'm mistaken, and it's not... |
Responses:
None
55843
From: old timer, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
|
he wants everyone to conform with his views but i simply do not understand why he objects to people speaking up about a genocide paid for with our tax dollars. the solution is simple, stop the killing now. that certainly won’t solve all the middle east issues but why the hell would anyone objects to people speaking up about genocide that we are paying for?? |
Responses:
[55846]
55846
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
|
That's not what's happening, old timer. This is how *you need to see* what's happening...but that's only *your perspective* -- a concept I see you haven't quite worked through in its totality, yet, in your mind... ...but if I can just say...to suggest that "your simple solution of just stopping the killing" is somehow something *actionable,* POSSIBLE given the complexities of the REALITY of what's happening over there...and that we're eejits who're just choosing not to take note of you and akira's perfeclty golden workable solutions on a silver platter...is just plain ridiculous... And then those of us whose perspectives of the situation fit the complexities happening just a bit more realistically, you see as unfairly forcing you to "conform to our views"... What an odious wad of shite, old timer...lol... |
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None
55836
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
| can't help you ot, you'll have to look for and find your own answers... |
Responses:
None
55827
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
|
you've become nutty, bopp. I'm like Israelis? Sounds like you have plenty of your own mental health issues. And I HAVE offered solutions over and over again. Why can't you hear them? What's up with you? |
Responses:
[55829] [55887] [55831] [55834] [55832] [55837] [55840] [55841] [55828] [55830]
55829
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
| the only solution i have heard you offer is to stop sending arms to israel...a black and white proposal that has all kinds of tangential consequences... |
Responses:
[55887] [55831] [55834] [55832] [55837] [55840] [55841]
55887
From: ao, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: 42,000+
| when asked for a solution she said Joe Biden should commit suicide. |
Responses:
None
55831
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: dare ya
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identify those ' tangential consequences' you're so keenly aware of |
55834
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: dare ya
|
Akira, how exactly is it that you imagine you know *all that is necessary to know* at all levels of The MidEast Reality, that you think *you* are qualified to call anyone else to account for their perspective of things? You act like you can know things you cannot…and you and the GOPers here seem to be the only ones who are choosing not to comprehend that… |
Responses:
None
55832
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: dare ya
| loss of only ally in the area...emboldened mideastern coalition (including russia and china) attacking eastern and southern europe...much larger war and many millions of deaths...chaos and civil war in america...there's a few for ya...not surprised you cannot see them with those huge blinders you're wearing... |
55837
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Precedent: America Has Pressured Israel Before—and Can Do It Again
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An expert's point of view on a current event. America Has Pressured Israel Before—and Can Do It Again In 1991, President George H.W. Bush outraged Israeli leaders by conditioning aid and placing U.S. interests first. By Alia Brahimi, a nonresident senior fellow within the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. MARCH 29, 2024 On March 25, the United States took the highly unusual step of abstaining in a vote at the U.N. Security Council that called for a cease-fire in Gaza after six months of a relentless Israeli military campaign. However, immediately and controversially, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. made sure to deem the resolution “nonbinding.” Other Biden administration officials have also taken pains to “talk down” the significance of the vote. The curious imbalance in the U.S.-Israel relationship has come into focus in recent weeks as the Biden administration slowly sharpens its criticism of Israel —and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains defiant. Israel continues to restrict aid trucks carrying water, food, and medicine to the 70 percent of Gazans facing a catastrophic, man-made famine. Despite representing the world’s preeminent military power, on whom Israel depends for weapons, funds, and diplomatic cover, U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have resorted to performative workarounds, airdropping aid and building a floating pier off the shores of Gaza. But there is an alternative. Rather than undertaking symbolic half-measures, the Biden administration could draw upon vast U.S. leverage and take its cue from a Republican Party predecessor: former President George H.W. Bush. In 1991, Bush Sr. and his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, made it clear that if Israel wanted to receive an aid package of $10 billion in loan guarantees, it had to stop using U.S. money to build Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. The ensuing faceoff between the White House and the Israeli government, involving presidential veto threats and furious congressional lobbying from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was one of the most fraught periods in U.S.-Israeli relations. Of course, the starting points of the two cases are different, in that Israel was not engaged in a full-scale war in 1991. However, political courage in Washington is arguably more necessary in wartime—particularly as charges of war crimes, including genocide, are taken seriously by the International Court of Justice and even in U.S. courts. But unlike Biden and Blinken, Bush Sr. and Baker were firm in conditioning aid to Israel on respect for international law. The president told journalists in 1992 he would “not give one inch.” Washington should summon similar resolve today. THE FRAYING TIES BETWEEN THE TWO NATIONS—which then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir would later describe as a “major explosion”—began in May 1991, when Israel’s ambassador to Washington warned the Bush administration that Israel would soon be requesting $10 billion in loan guarantees. The money would be used primarily to help Israel in its absorption of Soviet Jews, a task that would inevitably involve building more housing in the occupied territories as part of the Shamir government’s hardline settlement expansion policy. However, Baker believed that providing loan guarantees to Israel at that time, for that purpose, would be detrimental to U.S. interests. A $400 million U.S. loan had been agreed the year before on the condition that it would not be used to build settlements on Palestinian land, but the Israelis violated this commitment as soon as the loan was released. Indeed, Israel’s settlement policy was moving forward at breakneck speed; in 1990 alone, under Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Sharon, between 6,000 and 7,000 Israelis settled in the occupied territories. But Baker was also diligently laying the ground for a Middle East peace conference to be convened in Madrid that October—and he knew the prospect of billions of dollars of U.S. aid funding illegal Israeli settlements would certainly alienate the Arab delegates. Baker called Shamir on Sept. 1, asking him to delay his request for the $10 billion. Shamir said no—and that he would continue to expand settlements as well. Bush Sr. then called a press conference to announce that he would ask Congress to defer action on any Israeli loan request for 120 days. Immediately, the Israelis put in the loan request. Simultaneously, pro-Israel organizations went into overdrive, mobilizing a thousand AIPAC supporters to march on Capitol Hill. READ MORE U.S. President Joe Biden at the Israeli war cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel on Oct.. 18, 2023. U.S. President Joe Biden at the Israeli war cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel on Oct.. 18, 2023. Why Biden Can’t Force a Truce on Israel—or Won’t The United States has intervened in past Mideast wars, but this one is different. ANALYSIS | AARON DAVID MILLER, ADAM ISRAELEVITZ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confers with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during their meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in Tel Aviv. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confers with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during their meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden in Tel Aviv. Biden-Netanyahu Tensions Roil U.S.-Israel Ties American abstention on a U.N. vote this week caused a major public spat between the two partners. SITUATION REPORT | JACK DETSCH, ROBBIE GRAMER U.S. President Joe Biden, wearing a dark suit and holding sunglasses, embraces Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photographers and other people are seen around them. U.S. President Joe Biden, wearing a dark suit and holding sunglasses, embraces Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photographers and other people are seen around them. Israel Is a Strategic Liability for the United States The special relationship does not benefit Washington and is endangering U.S. interests across the globe. ARGUMENT | JON HOFFMAN As Bush Sr. described it at the time, “I’m up against some powerful political forces. … We’ve got one lonely little guy down here doing it.” The president appeared on national television on Sept. 12, making the impassioned argument that Israel’s insistence on the loan request was a threat to peace and that he was prepared to veto the legislation if it was passed by Congress. He also noted how U.S. soldiers had recently risked their lives in the Gulf War defending Israel against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles, and how in that fiscal year alone, the U.S. government had provided the equivalent of $1,000 in aid to every Israeli man, woman, and child. Arguing that he was not going to shift U.S. national policy for political expediency, Bush Sr. said the question wasn’t “whether it’s good 1992 politics … I don’t care if I get one vote. I’m going to stand for what I believe.” Although Israel and its supporters went into a frenzy, with one Israeli cabinet minister calling the U.S. president an “antisemite” and a “liar,” Bush Sr. prevailed. On Oct. 2, 1991, the U.S. Senate formally acceded to Bush’s request for a 120-day postponement. Furthermore, because of Shamir’s determination to expand settlements, the loans were not released until well beyond the postponement period, after the election of a more moderate Israeli government led by Yitzhak Rabin. When I spoke to him in 2003, Baker told me, “We said to Rabin, ‘we’ll release the $10 billion if you agree to substantially restrict settlement activity,’ and he did.” DURING THE GULF WAR OF 1990-1991, Israel had been, in Bush’s words, “very carefully placed outside the coalition” to keep Arab members on board, revealing the limitations of Israel’s strategic value in a strategic region. However, more importantly, Saddam had unleashed “the mother of all linkages” by suggesting that Iraq might withdraw from Kuwait if Israel withdrew from all occupied Arab lands. While this parallel was rejected outright by U.S. officials, Saddam’s opportunism did highlight the similarities between the two cases. The linkage resonated more widely, including in the statements of British, Italian, and Australian leaders. The United States had, after all, justified its military intervention in Iraq based on the self-determination of Kuwaitis, and the Palestinians claimed an identical right. Furthermore, if invasion, occupation, and annexation were wrong somewhere, surely they were wrong everywhere. As then-French President François Mitterrand observed in October 1990, in a statement with contemporary resonance: “[O]ne cannot try to defend human rights here and neglect them there. Rights are rights.” There was also an overarching moral framework in play. In September 1990, with the end of the Cold War, Bush Sr. himself had heralded the emergence of a so-called new world order, “a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. … A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.” Global consensus against Iraq’s aggression in Kuwait inspired some optimism. However, Arab leaders were quick to announce their skepticism, pointing to a flagrant double standard with Israel. Almost immediately, the credibility of Bush’s vision was at stake. On Oct. 8, 1990, Israeli police committed a massacre at Haram al-Sharif, also called the Temple Mount, marking the bloodiest day in Jerusalem since 1967. A radical Jewish group had been trying to reclaim the site for Jews alone in defiance of the Israeli Supreme Court. Palestinians gathered to protect their holy space. As tensions soared, Israeli police opened fire on the crowd, killing 21 unarmed Palestinians and wounding 150 more, including children. In the face of wall-to-wall criticism globally, Israeli leaders remained unmoved. “What do you want us to do? Give them presents?” asked Sharon, then Israel’s housing minister. French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas worried that failure to condemn Israel would be proof of Western hypocrisy. The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that condemned the Israeli security forces and requested a mission to report on protecting Palestinians. Not only did the Bush Sr. administration vote in favor of the strongly worded resolution— having only ever voted for two Security Council resolutions censuring Israel—but it had introduced it. “I was personally aggrieved when the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] killed a lot of people it didn’t have to kill,” Baker told me. THE GEORGE H.W. BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S unapologetic determination to reclaim its status as the senior partner in the U.S.-Israeli relationship contrasts markedly with the permissive stance of the Biden administration, which has only drifted from outright support toward mild rebuke after the killing of 32,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children. However, there are remarkable historical parallels. In 1991, Saddam’s aggression in Kuwait was the backdrop; today, there’s the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the same perception in the global south of an intolerable double standard benefiting Israel. Back then, there was the new world order at stake; now, it’s the West’s supposedly reinvigorated commitment to defending democracy and the rule of law. With his legacy on the line, one former U.S. president flexed the muscles of a superpower —defending its national interests and refusing to capitulate to a client state. I asked Baker in 2003 what his abiding motivation was for withholding the loan guarantees, despite all the risk and the drama. “Because it was the right policy,” he answered. With the stakes so much higher now, the Biden administration has yet to show signs of that same moral clarity. My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In |
55840
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: response to your claims
|
So, according to you, if the US threatened to cut off all financial & military aid to Israel if it continued with its genocide campaign, the following would happen: loss of only ally in the area bullshit. See article above. So if the US put human rights conditions on weapons and US tax dollars, Israel won’t like us any more? If we don’t defend human rights, we are a weak, immoral nation. It’s a bullshit argument. Plenty of previous presidents have done just that. Biden is the weakest, most ineffective president (at least foreign policy-wise) in my lifetime. emboldened mideastern coalition (including russia and china) . Please clarify. That might have been true 20 or 30 years ago. Not so sure it would be now. attacking eastern and southern europe... Huh? Who would be doing the attacking? much larger war and many millions of deaths... Are you blind? WE ARE THERE NOW, thanks to US-backed Israel aggression over the past year chaos and civil war in america... please explain how the US making aide to Israel contingent on good behavior create ‘chaos and civil war in america’ ? That one’s a doozie to unravel. Please, you first. |
Responses:
[55841]
55841
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: US Weapons Used by Israel in VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL/US LAW
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U.S.-Made Weapons Used by Government of Israel in Violation of International Law and U.S Law I don't know how many times I've posted this. I doubt you've read it or that you even care. Your far to evolved to be bothered. right? |
Responses:
None
55828
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: bopp STILL won't address the issue of US complicity? Why?
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you continue to avoid the issue -record amount of military support ensuring Netanyahu's ethnic cleansing continues unimpeded. Why is that, Bopp? why won't you respond to THAT? Again, without US support this genocide would not be possible. That suggests a clear, decisive solution, one of them. But you don't see that, do you? |
Responses:
[55830]
55830
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: bopp STILL won't address the issue of US complicity? Why?
|
here's some nuance for ya...has a slant, but fairly accurate imo... October 9, 2024 The Agony and Ecstasy of an Empire: The United States in the Middle East M. Reza Behnam Over the past year, mindful that I have been blessed to live under Oregon’s tranquil skies, I reflect upon the Palestinians and Lebanese who begin and end theirs days under skies fraught with drones and bombers. I also think of the Israeli pilots who have since 8 October 2023 dropped over 70,000 tons of bombs on a densely populated strip of land about the size of Las Vegas. Have they considered the reality of their missions? Do they see themselves in the German SS soldiers who turned on the gas in the death chambers of Auschwitz? And what of American politicians and corporate media’s complicity in Israel’s year-long genocide? These questions, and more, led me to recall a well-known statement made in 1925 by the 30th president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge; a statement that has come to define U.S. policy at home and abroad: “The chief business of the American people is business.” Economic hegemony has been the cornerstone of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf since the end of the Second World War. America’s “special relationship” with Israel, a term first coined by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, is founded on business. Economic supremacy was also at the heart of the oil-for-security bargain that the United States sealed with oil-rich Saudi Arabia after World War II. The raison d’être for the United States and Israel in the region has been carpetbaggery—they have become the two-headed serpent of the Middle East. For the United States the goal has been domination of the region’s energy resources and vital trade routes. For the Zionist Israelis, it has been the establishment of colonies on stolen land and use of all of Palestine’s water and other resources for the sole benefit of Jewish colonists. Israel has been America’s regional enforcer, assassinating leaders and terrorizing countries that refuse to abide by its rules. As General Alexander Haig, then-secretary of state, averred in 1982, “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk.” Washington’s landed carrier is a projection of U.S. imperial power in the Middle East. It has been the linchpin of America’s ongoing doctrine of force and economic imperium for a half-century. In return for Israel’s services, Washington has invested heavily in its security, providing huge sums in military aid ($3.8 billion annually), supplying and co-producing advanced weaponry, security and intelligence systems, and giving diplomatic cover against Israel’s numerous violations of international humanitarian law. The U.S. imperial plan to create a “new” reality in the Middle East has been in progress for some time. Force and economic incentives have been its bedrock. When warfare has failed, as has been the case in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Washington has placed greater emphasis on economic incentives, like the Abraham Accords, to subjugate the region. Since the late 1970s, Israel has been central to U.S. imperial strategy. As the military and economic hub of the region, it was positioned to protect and buttress “American” interests. The reality envisioned by Washington also included removing any and all obstacles to U.S. hegemony. The geopolitical alignment of the United States and Israel can be sourced to 1962 when Washington began providing missiles to Israel. And in 1974, when the Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful) movement was formed to promote Jewish religious settlement on the occupied West Bank, the United States failed to take effective action, as it has to this day. Throughout the 1970s, the United States sought to protect its interests through its Twin Pillars policy, by acting through and empowering regional enforcers, Iran and Saudi Arabia. With the Iranian Revolution of 1979, that policy collapsed as did the regime of the Shah of Iran. This landmark event gave birth to the 1980 Carter Doctrine, declaring that the United States would use every means, including military force, to protect “its” vital interests in the Persian Gulf. With the loss of its “stable” pillar in Tehran, Washington looked increasingly to Israel, as well as Saudi Arabia, to uphold its regional interests. Then-Senator Joe Biden, in 1986, made America’s objectives explicit, declaring that Israel was the best $3 billion (annual) investment the United States has ever made, and that if Israel did not exist, the United States would have to invent it to protect American interests in the region. American imperial power was manifested when the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. President George W. Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, explained the objectives of the invasion in an editorial for the Washington Post in August of that year. She wrote, “Today, America and our friends and allies must commit ourselves to a long-term transformation in the…Middle East.” The devastation, failure and upheaval that followed Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to remake the region through force have not lessened Washington’s determination to engineer a “new” Middle East aligned with Israel. The large cadre of business-minded, monied interests surrounding President Donald Trump (2017-2021) concluded that regional integration/transformation could be achieved through economic manipulation. To that end, the Trump administration brokered the 2020 Abraham Accords, normalizing diplomatic and economic relations among Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. President Joe Biden has invested in strengthening the accords, pushing for further military and economic integration. By September 2023, Washington and Tel Aviv were confident that they were on the cusp of achieving their objectives and that Saudi Arabia could be persuaded to agree to normalization. The administration also presumed that Palestinians had been marginalized and their cause forgotten, and that the Axis of Resistance—Iran, Syria, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansar Allah in Yemen, Islamic Resistance in Iraq had been weakened. Confident of success, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brazenly presented the U.S.-Israeli plan at the 78th session of the U.N. General Assembly in September 2023. He described their scheme as “monumental and transformative,” and that their agreements would usher in an era of security and prosperity across the region. He held up a map titled “The New Middle East,” depicting Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea—without any trace of the occupied Palestinian territories. Netanyahu boldly stated that the Palestinians should not stand in the way of future normalization agreements, and preened that Israel was close to an historic agreement with Saudi Arabia. As part of the “new” Middle East economic initiative, Netanyahu also hailed the advent of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), an expansion on the Abraham Accords. The IMEC—America’s largest geopolitical project for the region—was unveiled by President Biden at the September 2023 G20 summit in New Delhi. The proposed trade venture fit into Washington’s strategic agenda to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and to cement relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The BRI (New Silk Road) route connects Asia to Europe via the Middle East and Africa, with Central Asia, Iran and Turkiye the essential links. Conversely, the U.S.-designed route —a seamless infrastructure of ports, railways and roads linking India with the Middle East and Europe—relied on Israel as a link between east and west. Israel’s port at Haifa would have become a consequential economic hub. In addition to extending U.S. power in the region, the project was viewed as laying the foundation for a “new era” of integration and cooperation among Israel and U.S regional janissaries. The power politics behind the trade initiative was revealed in the exclusion of Palestine, Turkiye, Iraq, Iran, Qatar and Oman. October 7, however, torpedoed the U.S.-Israeli agenda. It has undermined, if not ended, the IMEC enterprise and weakened normalization plans. The incursion also revealed a weakened U.S. imperium, desperate to keep Israel, its largest investment and landed aircraft carrier in the Middle East afloat. The war on Palestinians in Gaza is remaking the Middle East, but not in the way the United States and Israel had hoped. The seeds of catastrophe were planted in the heart of the Islamic world 107 years ago when the British regime unceremoniously promised the land of Palestinians to the Jews of Europe. Since then, untold numbers have been killed, heritage sites destroyed and ecosystems devastated. It has escaped the United States and Israel that they cannot bomb the resistance into submission; they cannot exploit the region’s resources; and most importantly, they cannot change it. For one-year, the intrepid resistance of the Palestinians has given the region hope for a new direction—one free of Zionism and imperialism, militarism, corporatism and those who reap but do not sow. That time will come, inshallah, when this catastrophe ends and Palestine returns to its roots. |
Responses:
None
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