MULTIPLE ARTICLES Russia, Isis, Palestine, Israel, Terrorism....

Russia strikes ISIS targets in Syria from sub in Mediterranean for first time (VIDEO)

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 09:40 PM PST 

(RT) – Russia has, for the first time, targeted Islamic State targets in Syria with Kalibr land-attack cruise missiles launched from a submarine in the Mediterranean Sea, according to Russia’s Defense Minister.

The 3M-54 Kalibr missiles were launched from the Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine “Rostov-on-Don”, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

Russia’s warships based in the Caspian and Mediterranean seas launched similar missiles targeting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) positions in late November. This is the first time that Russia has targeted IS in Syria from a submarine.

“[The missiles] targeted two major terrorist positions in the territory of Raqqa,” he said.

“We can say with absolute confidence that significant damage has been inflicted upon ammunition warehouses and a mine production plant, as well as the oil infrastructure.”

Earlier on Tuesday, a source within the Russian Ministry of Defense revealed that the Rostov-on-Don, equipped with modern Russian Kalibr cruise missiles, had appeared near the Syrian coast.

Shoigu stated that in the past three days Russian Air Forces have carried out over 300 sorties hitting 600 terrorist targets.

“In the past three days, the operation involved Tu-22 planes as well as warplanes from the Khmeimim airbase.  In total we carried out 300 sorties and hit 600 various targets,” he said adding that all sorties were performed with the backing of Su-30 fighter jets.

Speaking to the president, Shoigu also said that the flight recorder of the Russian Su-24, recently downed by Turkey near the Syrian-Turkish border, has been found and presented it to Putin.

Putin told Shoigu that it should be opened only in the presence of international experts.

Russia has been conducting airstrikes targeting Islamic State (IS, former ISIS, ISIL) militants and other terrorist groups in Syria since September 30. The air campaign was launched after a formal request from Damascus. Russian jets have been carrying out sorties from Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia.

Turkey has been insisting that it downed the Russian Su-24 bomber on November 24 because the jet had violated its airspace for “17 seconds” and said that the jet’s crew had been repeatedly warned prior to the attack.

Moscow has denied Ankara’s claims, saying that the Turkish F-16 attacked the Su-24 without warning and over Syrian territory. The surviving Russian pilot, Konstantin Murakhtin, stated that neither he nor Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Peshkov, who was killed by Turkmen rebel machine gun fire after ejecting, had received any radio or visual warning.

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Thousands attend funeral of Palestinian teen slain in Duheisha Refugee Camp

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 06:44 PM PST

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Thousands of Palestinians attended the funeral of 19-year-old Malik Akram Shahin on Tuesday morning, hours after he was shot dead by Israeli forces during a detention raid into Duheisha refugee camp south of Bethlehem.A Ma’an reporter said the funeral procession set off from Beit Jala governmental hospital at 10:30 a.m. for Shahin’s home in Duheisha camp where his family paid their last respects. The 19-year-old youth had four sisters.Mourners joining the funeral procession chanted slogans condemning the Israeli violations against the Palestinians.Shahin was shot in the head during a predawn detention raid into the refugee camp on Tuesday morning. Local residents said that Israeli soldiers fired live rounds, tear gas canisters, and stun grenades “indiscriminately” through the camp’s  arrow alleys.

Friends of Malek Shahin, a 19 year-old Palestinian who was killed in clashes with Israeli security forces, carry his body during his funeral procession in the Dheisheh refugee camp near the West Bank town of Bethlehem on December 8, 2015. (AFP/Musa al-Shaer) 

After soldiers shot Shahin, he was reportedly “left bleeding for long before he was evacuated to the public hospital in Beit Jala, where medics pronounced him dead,” locals said.An Israeli army spokesperson had no information of his death, but she said that Israeli soldiers had opened fire after Palestinians threw “pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails” at them. The left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine later said that Shahin had been one of its supporters. The group said in a statement that he fell “during fierce clashes with Israeli troops who raided the camp to detain young men affiliated to the PFLP.”

Following his death, a Bethlehem committee announced a halt to all business across the district and stores and government institutions were closed. Clashes were reported to have broken out in Tuqu village in Bethlehem after schools were closed, although no injuries were reported. At least 114 Palestinians have now been killed in just over two months of unrest across the occupied Palestinian territory. 

Originally appeared at Ma’an News Agency

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Blood for Oil: Syria Is the Ultimate Pipelinestan War

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 06:00 PM PST

What’s certain is that, geo-economically, Syria goes way beyond a civil war; it’s a vicious Pipelineistan power play in a dizzying complex chessboard where the Big Prize will represent a major win in the 21st century energy wars 

by Pepe Escobar

Syria is an energy war. With the heart of the matter featuring a vicious geopolitical competition between two proposed gas pipelines, it is the ultimate Pipelinestan  war, the term I coined long ago for the 21st century imperial energy battlefields.

Image credit: Strategic Culture Foundation

It all started in 2009, when Qatar proposed to Damascus the construction of a pipeline from its own North Field – contiguous with the South Pars field, which belongs to Iran – traversing Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria all the way to Turkey, to supply the EU.

Damascus, instead, chose in 2010 to privilege a competing project, the $10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria, also know as «Islamic pipeline». The deal was formally announced in July 2011, when the Syrian tragedy was already in motion. In 2012, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed with Iran.

Until then, Syria was dismissed, geo-strategically, as not having as much oil and gas compared to the GCC petrodollar club. But insiders already knew about its importance as a regional energy corridor. Later on, this was enhanced with the discovery of serious offshore oil and gas potential.

Iran for its part is an established oil and gas powerhouse. Persistent rumblings in Brussels – still unable to come up with a unified European energy policy after over 10 years – did account for barely contained excitement over the Islamic pipeline; that would be the ideal strategy to diversify from Gazprom. But Iran was under US and EU nuclear-related sanctions.

That ended up turning into a key strategic reason, at least for the Europeans, for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear dossier; a «rehabilitated» (to the West) Iran is able to become a key source of energy to the EU.

Yet, from the point of view of Washington, a geostrategic problem lingered: how to break the

Tehran-Damascus alliance. And ultimately, how to break the Tehran-Moscow alliance.

The «Assad must go» obsession in Washington is a multi-headed hydra. It includes breaking a Russia-Iran-Iraq-Syria alliance (now very much in effect as the «4+1» alliance, including Hezbollah, actively fighting all strands of Salafi Jihadism in Syria). But it also includes isolating energy coordination among them, to the benefit of the Gulf petrodollar clients/vassals linked to US energy giants.

Thus Washington’s strategy so far of injecting the proverbial Empire of Chaos logic into Syria; feeding the flames of internal chaos, a pre-planed op by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with the endgame being regime change in Damascus.

An Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline is unacceptable in the Beltway not only because US vassals lose, but most of all because in currency war terms it would bypass the petrodollar. Iranian gas from South Pars would be traded in an alternative basket of currencies.

Compound it with the warped notion, widely held in the Beltway, that this pipeline would mean Russia further controlling the gas flow from Iran, the Caspian Sea and Central Asia. Nonsense. Gazprom already said it would be interested in some aspects of the deal, but this is essentially an Iranian project. In fact, this pipeline would represent an alternative to Gazprom.

Still, the Obama administration’s position was always to «support» the Qatar pipeline «as a way to balance Iran» and at the same time «diversify Europe’s gas supplies away from Russia.» So both Iran and Russia were configured as «the enemy».

Turkey at crossroads

Qatar’s project, led by Qatar Petroleum, predictably managed to seduce assorted Europeans, taking account of vast US pressure and Qatar’s powerful lobbies in major European capitals. The pipeline would ply some of the route of a notorious Pipelineistan opera, the now defunct Nabucco, a project formerly headquartered in Vienna.

Courtesy Strategic Culture Foundation

So implicitly, from the beginning, the EU was actually supporting the push towards regime change in Damascus – which so far may have cost Saudi Arabia and Qatar at least $4 billion (and counting). It was a scheme very similar to the 1980s Afghan jihad; Arabs financing/weaponizing a multinational bunch of jihadis/mercenaries, helped by a strategic go-between (Pakistan in the case of Afghanistan, Turkey in the case of Syria), but now directly fighting a secular Arab republic.

It got much rougher, of course, with the US, UK, France and Israel progressively turbo-charging all manner of covert ops privileging «moderate» rebels and otherwise, always targeting regime change.

The game now has expanded even more, with the recently discovered offshore gas wealth across the Eastern Mediterranean –  in offshore Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. This whole area may hold as much as 1.7 billion barrels of oil and up to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And that could be a mere third of the total undiscovered fossil fuel wealth in the Levant.

From Washington’s point of view, the game is clear: to try to isolate Russia, Iran and a «regime-unchanged» Syria as much as possible from the new Eastern Mediterranean energy bonanza.

And that brings us to Turkey – now in the line of fire from Moscow after the downing of the Su-24.

Ankara’s ambition, actually obsession, is to position Turkey as the major energy crossroads for the whole of the EU. 1) As a transit hub for gas from Iran, Central Asia and, up to now, Russia (the Turkish  Stream gas pipeline is suspended, not cancelled). 2) As a hub for major gas discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean. 3) And as a hub for gas imported from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq.

Turkey plays the role of key energy crossroads in the Qatar pipeline project. But it’s always important to remember that Qatar’s pipeline does not need to go through Syria and Turkey. It could easily cross Saudi Arabia, the Red Sea, Egypt and reach the Eastern Mediterranean.

So, in the Big Picture, from Washington’s point of view, what matters most of all, once again, is «isolating» Iran from Europe. Washington’s game is to privilege Qatar as a source, not Iran, and Turkey as the hub, for the EU to diversify from Gazprom.

This is the same logic behind the construction of the costly Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, facilitated in Azerbaijan by Zbigniew «Grand Chessboard» Brzezinski in person.

As it stands, prospects for both pipelines are less than dismal. The Vienna peace process concerning Syria will go nowhere as long as Riyadh insists on keeping its weaponized outfits in the «non-terrorist» list, and Ankara keeps allowing free border flow of jihadis while engaging in dodgy business with stolen Syrian oil.

What’s certain is that, geo-economically, Syria goes way beyond a civil war; it’s a vicious Pipelineistan power play in a dizzying complex chessboard where the Big Prize will represent a major win in the 21st century energy wars. 

Originally appeared at Strategic Culture Foundation

About the author: Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).  His latest book is Empire of Chaos. He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

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Armed to the teeth: Amnesty slams US & allies for weapons falling into ISIS’ hands

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 04:29 PM PST 

(RT) – Islamic State’s campaign of terror in Iraq and Syria is being aided by the weapons indirectly supplied by the very countries trying to fight them, with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 giving the terrorist group access to “a large and lethal arsenal.”

The claims were made in a study by Amnesty International, entitled ‘Taking Stock: The arming of Islamic State,’ which was released on Tuesday. Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) acquired most of its munitions by raiding weapons depots of the Iraqi government army. However, the capture of weapons on the battlefield, defections and an illicit trade have helped to keep their supplies well-stocked.

Islamic State's arsenal has 100+ weapon types from 25 countries – find out how: https://t.co/NtMfkpBRV1 #ArmsTreaty pic.twitter.com/moXewPq0vD

AmnestyInternational (@AmnestyOnline) December 8, 2015

The report states how, after capturing Iraq’s second largest city Mosul in 2014, IS terrorists were able to acquire “a windfall of internationally manufactured arms from Iraqi stockpiles, including US-manufactured weapons and military vehicles.” The terrorist group was quick to show off the captured loot as they paraded the hardware on social media.

“Decades of free-flowing arms into Iraq meant that when IS took control of these areas, they were like children in a sweetshop. The fact that countries including the UK have ended up inadvertently arming IS should give us pause over current weapons deals,” said Amnesty UK’s arms program director, Oliver Sprague.

Risks need to be far more carefully calculated, and we shouldn’t wait for this worst case scenario to happen before acting to prevent sales of arms which could fuel atrocities.”

Among the advanced weaponry in the IS arsenal are man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), guided anti-tank missiles and armored fighting vehicles, as well as assault rifles like the Russian and Chinese-produced Kalashnikov series and the US M16 and Bushmaster, the report states.

“The vast and varied weaponry being used by the armed group calling itself Islamic State is a textbook case of how reckless arms trading fuels atrocities on a massive scale,”said Patrick Wilcken, researcher on Arms Control, Security Trade and Human Rights at Amnesty International.

“Poor regulation and lack of oversight of the immense arms flows into Iraq going back decades have given IS and other armed groups a bonanza of unprecedented access to firepower,” he added.

However, it seems Washington is refusing to learn from its past mistakes. Between 2011 and 2013, the US signed billions of dollars’ worth of arms contracts with the Iraqi government, and by 2014 it had delivered more than $500 million worth of small arms and ammunition.

Congress also passed a bill in December 2014 giving the green light to $64 billion in funding for overseas war ventures in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. However, the White House was left with its tail between its legs after a $500 million program to train ‘moderate’ rebels ended in abject failure, with just a handful of fighters making the grade.

Even more disastrous was the fact that a stockpile of weapons given to the US-trained rebels ended up in the hands of terrorists, after the so-called ‘moderates’ willingly handed it over to groups such as Al-Nusra Front soon after crossing into Syria.

“My concern from the beginning was that we were going to end up unwittingly aiding and abetting terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda,” Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, told Sputnik news agency in October, adding: “I am sorry that my concern turned out to be true.”

Sunjeev Bery, the advocacy director for Middle East North Africa at Amnesty International USA was equally scathing, saying, “In its rush to ‘degrade and destroy’ the Islamic State armed group, the Obama administration must not trample its international human rights obligations,” while also adding that this was “simply opening the floodgates” to put more weapons into the hands of armed groups who have “committed serious human rights abuses in both Iraq and Syria.”

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Terrorism and Some Hard Truths – An Analysis by Lawrence Davidson

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 11:30 AM PST

Image: International and domestic terrorism 

To really make the U.S. safe from Middle East terrorism, Washington will have to dump Israel, play hardball with Saudi Arabia, and swear off the regime-change policy that has so disastrously driven its actions in Iraq, Libya and Syria.   

by Dr. Lawrence Davidson 

Part I – World War on ISIS

I was waiting for a doctor’s appointment with only the magazine rack for company. I usually don’t pay much attention to news magazines, seeing as how the range of politically acceptable points of view are pretty narrow in such sources. However, with time on my hands, I picked up Time magazine (November 30 – December 7 issue), the cover of which announced, “World War on ISIS.” 

I focused on a particularly interesting (and mercifully short) piece on this topic entitled, “ISIS Will Strike America.” No doubt millions of readers will focus on this bit of prognostication. It is written by Michael Morell, former Deputy Director of the CIA. Morrell begins by telling us he has been an intelligence officer for 33 years and in that capacity his job is to “describe for a President threats we face as a nation” and then “look the President in the eye when his policies are not working and say so.” Given that Morrell managed the staff that produced George W. Bush’s briefings, one wonders if he ever practiced what he preached.  

In any case, Morrell now figuratively looks his readers in the eyes and tells them that “ISIS poses a threat to the homeland” through “its ability to radicalize young Americans [why just the young?] to conduct attacks here.” In truth, this potentiality has been known for years and various police agencies and the FBI have even been involved in setting up various entrapment schemes to prove the point. One might assume that they had to do this to counter the fact that an American’s chance of being harmed by Muslim terrorists is less than his or her chance of being struck by lightning.

Nonetheless, the probability of Morrell’s prediction coming true is certainly not zero, as the massacre in San Bernardino demonstrates. Yet, comparing attacks which have possible radical Islamic connections to the almost weekly gun-related attacks in schools, health clinics, court houses, movie theaters, domestic scenes and various street corner venues, we still have a very long way to go before ISIS becomes our number one source of domestic violence. However, Morrell does not put his “threat assessment” in this context – either to his reading audience or, one can assume, to the presidents with whom he has made eye contact.

 Part II – Republican Presidential Candidates 

I have the uncomfortable feeling that every Republican presidential candidate has also read this edition of Time magazine, because suddenly they are all aping the cover page’s battle cry of “World War on ISIS.” The trigger here is the recent tragedy in San Bernardino, California. According to the New York Times (NYT) of 5 December 2012 the San Bernardino attack has taken a “diffused and chaotic” Republican campaign and “reordered” it around the threat of Islamic terrorism. Thus, Chris Christie of New Jersey pronounced that “Our nation is under siege:… What I believe is we’re facing the next world war.” Ted Cruz of Texas said, “This nation needs a wartime president.” Jeb Bush of Florida, sounding a lot like his brother (whose foreign policy incompetence started this epoch with the U.S. invasion of Iraq), described “Islamic terrorism” as “having declared war on us” and being “out to destroy our way of life” while “attacking our freedom.”  

In the same 5 December issue of the NYT, James Comey, Director of the FBI, said that the San Bernardino massacre “investigation so far has developed indications of radicalization [of] the killers and of potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations.” Actually, it sounds as if something is missing here. Certainly, the husband-and-wife team who carried out the attack were seriously agitated and had built for themselves a small arsenal of firearms and bombs. However, according to the FBI there is “no evidence that the killers were part of a larger group or terrorist cell.” Only late in this game, on the day of the attack, did one of the killers “pledge allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post.” So it might be useful to ask if there were personal grievances that disaffected them and then, later, a “radicalization” process supplied additional justification for their acts? None of these fine points will mean much on the national stage.The Republicans are in full apocalyptic exaggeration mode and no doubt the Democrats will soon be swept along. 

 Part III – Guns

n truth there is a dual nature to the present “threat against the homeland.” The first and major aspect of the threat is the utterly insane nature of the country’s gun laws (or lack thereof), which allows practically every adult to arm him or herself to the teeth. The claim that it is access to all manner of assault weapons that keeps us all safe in our homes defies common sense and really constitutes an example of Orwellian doublespeak. In my estimation there is no organization in the world, including ISIS, more dangerous to American society than the National Rifle Association which insists that we all still live in some variant of the Wild West.  

  

Of course the Republicans dismiss the gun issue out of hand. Marco Rubio of Florida made the comment “As if somehow terrorists care about what our gun laws are. France has some of the strictest gun laws in the world and they have no problem acquiring an arsenal to kill people.” Actually, Rubio is wrong about France. If you want to see strict gun control you have to go to the UK, Canada, Japan or Australia (none of which, incidentally, prohibit hunting weapons). Of course, he is correct that terrorists don’t care about gun laws. However, his definition of who is a terrorist is woefully inadequate. 

Rubio and his fellow Republicans think that terrorism is only the violence associated with Islamic radicals, but that is just nonsense. Try to put yourself in the minds of those being attacked. If you are a child in a classroom or student on a college campus, a doctor or nurse in a health clinic, a judge and other official in a courtroom, a patron in a movie theater, or someone in any of a hundred other public and private American venues being shot up in ever more frequent episodes, does the religion or ideology of the attacker matter, in any way, to the terror you feel? No. And it wouldn’t matter to Mr. Rubio either if he found himself a victim. 

So here is the truth of the matter: the ubiquitous presence of guns suffuses our society with the constant potential for terrorist violence (and the U.S. being one of the largest gun merchants to dubious governments abroad does much to transfer the potential throughout the world). The motivation of the one who triggers this violence is irrelevant to the terror it releases. The result is indeed an epidemic of terrorism in the United States that needs to be addressed, but that cannot be done by singling out ISIS. All that can do is make things worse by directing public concern against the least of the factors endangering them. 

Nonetheless, that is what the politicians will do. They will take up the cry of Islamic terrorism because it frees them from any immediate need to take on the real – and politically dangerous – problem of gun control. Most of them are cowards when it comes to hard truths and the difficult need to lay them convincingly before the public. It is always more expedient to rile the masses than educate them.

  

Part IV – Conclusion

Much of the present breast-beating over Islamic terrorism is politically motivated exaggeration. Yet even here the U.S. government will not do much other than spy on its own citizens with ever greater intensity. To really make the U.S. safe from Middle East terrorism, Washington will have to dump Israel, play hardball with Saudi Arabia, and swear off the regime-change policy that has so disastrously driven its actions in Iraq, Libya and Syria.  

Even if by some political magic we are able to get rid of ISIS and its propaganda, we would still face domestically bred terrorism. And this, of course, is the nature of the vast majority of our mass violence and mayhem. The fault is in ourselves, be it with economic inequality, recurring racism, xenophobia, or just a pervasive culture of callousness ameliorated by nothing better than scattered volunteerism and a constant demand for charity. And behind it all is what the New York Times now calls “the gun epidemic” – an epidemic that weaponizes a society that seems incapable of dealing with its own failures. 

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Back to Basics: Clearing the Fog of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

Posted: 08 Dec 2015 06:19 AM PST 

                                

Any discussion, coverage, analysis, or debate of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that sidesteps the nature and ideology of the Israeli state is not only disingenuous and lacks credibility, but also contributes to the deepening of the conflict, the continuous suffering of its victims, and the illusion of finding a potential just and peaceful outcome.

SAMI AL-ARIAN 

                                                                                                  

(Counterpunch) – In his novel 1984 George Orwell introduced the lexicon of Big Brother’s Doublespeak in which “War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.” In today’s Western political circles and mainstream media coverage of Palestine/Israel and political Zionism, one may add a host of other phrases to this Orwellian Newspeak. Expressions that would fittingly describe this coverage might include “racism is democracy, resistance is terrorism, and occupation is bliss.”

If individuals were to rely solely on Western media outlets as their source of information regarding the increasingly volatile situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, especially Jerusalem, they would not only be perplexed by the portrayals of victims and oppressors, but also confused about the history and nature of the conflict itself. For instance, in the past few weeks, in their coverage of the latest Palestinian uprising, most Western mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times, CNN, FOX, and BBC, virtually omit the words “Israeli occupation,” or “illegal Israeli settlements.” Seldom if ever do they mention the fact that has been under illegal Israeli control for the past 48 years, or that the latest confrontations were set off as a result of Israeli attempts to change the status quo and force a joint jurisdiction of the Islamic holy sites within the walls of old Jerusalem.

Theodore Herzl

Oftentimes Israel and its enablers in the political and media arenas try to obfuscate basic facts about the nature and history of the conflict. Despite these attempts, however, the conflict is neither complicated nor has it existed for centuries. It is a century-old modern phenomenon that emerged as a direct result of political Zionism. This movement, founded by secular journalist Theodore Herzl in the late 19th century, has incessantly attempted to transform Judaism from one of the world’s great religious traditions into a nationalistic ethnic movement with the aim of transferring Jews around the world to Palestine, while ethnically cleansing the indigenous Palestinian population from the land of their ancestors. This is the essence of the conflict, and thus all of Israel’s policies and actions can only be understood by acknowledging this reality.

It might be understandable, if detestable, for Israel and its Zionist defenders to circulate false characterizations of history and events to advance their political agenda. But it is incomprehensible for those who claim to advocate the rule of law, believe in the principle of self-determination, and call for freedom and justice to fall for this propaganda or to become its willing accomplices. In following much of the media coverage or political analyses of the conflict, one is struck by the lack of historical context, the deliberate disregard of empirical facts, and the contempt for established legal constructs and precedents. Are the Palestinian territories disputed or occupied? Do Palestinians have a legal right, embedded in international law, to resist their occupiers, including the use of armed struggle, or is every means of resistance considered terrorism? Does Israel have any right to old Jerusalem and its historical and religious environs? Is the protraction of the so-called “cycle of violence” really coming proportionally from both sides of the conflict? Is Israel a true democracy? Should political Zionism be treated as a legitimate national liberation movement (from whom?) while ignoring its overwhelmingly racist manifestations? Is Israel genuine about seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict? Can the U.S. really be an honest peace-broker between the two sides as it has persistently promoted itself in the region? The factual answers to these questions would undoubtedly clear the fog and lead objective observers not only to a full understanding of the conflict, but also to a deep appreciation of the policies and actions needed to bring it to an end.

Occupation, Self-Determination, and International Law

There should be no disputing that the territories seized by Israel in June 1967, including east Jerusalem, are occupied. Dozens of UN resolutions have passed since November 1967, including binding Security Council resolutions calling on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, which the Zionist State has stubbornly refused to comply with. In fact, if there were any “disputed” territories, they should be those Palestinian territories that Israel took in 1948, through a campaign of and military conquests, which resulted in forcefully and illegally expelling over 800,000 Palestinians from their homes, villages, and towns, in order to make room for thousands of Jews coming from Europe and other parts of the world.

Consequently, UN Resolution 194 mandated that these Palestinian “refugees wishing to return to their homes … should be permitted to do so.” This resolution has now remained unfulfilled for 67 years. There is also no dispute in international law that Israel has been a belligerent occupier triggering the application of all the relevant Geneva Conventions as the Palestinian people have been under occupation since their “territory is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.”

Furthermore, the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people and their right to resist their occupiers by all means are well established in international law. In 1960, UN resolution 1514 adopted the “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.” It stated that, “All peoples have the right to self-determination”, and that, “the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights and is contrary to the Charter of the United Nations.” Ten years later the UN adopted Resolution 2625 which called on its members to support colonized people or people under occupation against their colonizers and occupiers. In fact, UN Resolution 3246 reaffirmed in 1974 “the legitimacy of the peoples’ struggle for liberation form colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle.” Four years later UN Resolution 33/24 also strongly confirmed “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, particularly armed struggle,” and “strongly condemned all governments” that did not recognize “the right to self-determination to the Palestinian people.”

As for occupied Jerusalem, the UN Security Council adopted in 1980 two binding resolutions (476 and 478) by a vote of 14-0 (the US abstained and did not veto either resolution.) Both resolutions condemned Israel’s attempt to change “the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure, (and) the status of the Holy City of Jerusalem.” It also reaffirmed “the overriding necessity to end the prolonged occupation of Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem,” and called out Israel as “the occupying power.” It further considered any changes to the city of Jerusalem as “a violation of international law.”

A Palestinian man is detained by members of the Israeli security forces.

The Use of Violence, Resistance, and the Deceptive Peace Process

Living under brutal occupation for almost half a century without any prospect for its end, the Palestinian people, particularly in Jerusalem, have, since late September, embarked on new mass protests against the latest Israeli incursions on their holy sites and revolted once again against the ceaseless occupation. As a consequence, the Israeli army, aided by thousands of armed settlers roaming the West Bank, have intensified their use of violence, which resulted in over 100 deaths, 2200 injuries, and 4000 arrests in less than two months. The Israeli army and the settlements-based armed gangs, though forbidden under international law and the Geneva conventions, have regularly employed various violent means in order to force Palestinian exile or compel submission to the occupation. The Israeli harsh tactics include: settler violence and provocation under full army protection,targeting children, including kidnapping, killing, as well as arresting children as young as 5 , burning infants alive, the constant use  of collective punishment and house demolitions, the use of excessive prison sentences for any act of defiance including throwing rocks, storming revered religious sites, and the deliberate targeting of journalists who dare to challenge Israeli hegemony.

The Palestinian people, whether under occupation or under siege, in exile and blocked by Israel from returning to their homes, or denied their right to self-determination, have the legitimate right to resist the military occupation and its manifestations such as the denial of their freedom and human rights, the confiscation of their lands, or the building and expansion of  on their lands. Although most Palestinians opt for the use of nonviolent resistance as a prudent tactic against the brutality of the occupation, international law does not, however, limit their resistance only to the use of peaceful means. In essence, the right to legitimate armed resistance, subject to international humanitarian law, is enshrined in international law and cannot be denied to any people including the Palestinians in their struggle to gain their freedom and exercise their right to self-determination. Furthermore, international law does not confer any right on the occupying power to use any force against their occupied subjects, in order to maintain and sustain their occupation, including in self-defense. In short, aggressors and land usurpers are by definition denied the use of force to subjugate their victims. Consequently, as a matter of principle embedded in international law and regardless of any political viability, strikes against military targets including soldiers, armed settlers, or other tools and institutions of the occupation are legitimate and any action against them, non-violent or otherwise, cannot be condemned or deemed terrorism.

Furthermore, the argument regarding the validity of using armed struggle against oppression and denial of political rights by tyrannical and colonial regimes is well established in its favor. Patriot Patrick Henry rallied his countrymen prior to the American Revolution in 1775 in his famous call “give liberty or give me death.” Civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. even rejected pacifism in the face of aggression. He only questioned its tactical significance when he stated “I contended that the debate over the question of self-defense was unnecessary since few people suggested that Negroes should not defend themselves as individuals when attacked.  The question was not whether one should use his gun when his home was attacked, but whether it was tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized demonstration.” Mahatma Gandhi saw active resistance as more honorable than pacifism when he said “I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defence her honour than that she would, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.” Nelson Mandela reflected on this debate when he asserted that he resorted to armed struggle only when “all other forms of resistance were no longer open”, and demanded that the Apartheid regime “guarantee free political activity” to blacks before he would call on his compatriots to suspend armed struggle. Accordingly, the debate over whether the use of armed resistance against Israeli occupation advances the cause of justice for Palestinians is not a question of legitimacy, but rather of sound political strategy in light of the skewed balance of military power and massive public support from peoples around the globe for their just struggle.

Yet, the reality of the conflict actually reveals that the Palestinian people have overwhelmingly been at the receiving end of the use of ruthless Israeli violence and aggression since 1948. With the exception of the 1973 war (initiated by Egypt and Syria to regain the lands they lost in the 1967 war) every Arab-Israeli war in the past seven decades (‘48, ’56, ‘67, ’78, ’82, ’02, etc.) was initiated by Israel and resulted in more uprooting and misery to the Palestinians. Still, since 2008 Israel launched three brutal wars against Gaza with devastating consequences. In the 2008/2009 war, Israel killed 1417 Palestinians and lost 13 people including 9 soldiers. In the 2012 war, Israel killed 167 Palestinians and lost 6 including 2 soldiers. And in the 2014 war, Israel killed 2104 Palestinians, including 539 children, with 475,000 people made homeless, 17,500 homes destroyed, while 244 schools and scores of hospitals and mosques damaged. In that war Israel lost 72 including 66 soldiers. In short, since late 2008 Israel killed 3688 Palestinians in its three declared wars and lost 91 including 77 soldiers. Shamefully the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children has been amply documented as over two thousand have been killed by Israel since 2000. This massive Israeli intentional use of violence against the Palestinians, especially in Gaza (which has been under a crippling siege since 2007) was investigated, determined to constitute war crimes, and condemned by the UN in the Goldstone Report, as well as by other human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The 1993 Oslo process gave rise to the promise of ending decades of Israeli occupation. But the process was rigged from the start as many of its participants have recently admitted. It was an Israeli ploy to halt the first Palestinian uprising and give Israel the breathing room it needed to aggressively and permanently colonize the West Bank including East Jerusalem. It was an accord with a lopsided balance of power, as one side held all the cards and gave no real concessions, and a much weaker side stripped of all its bargaining chips. During this period the number of settlements in the West Bank more than doubled and the number of settlers increased by more than seven fold to over 600 thousand including in East Jerusalem.

The world has none other than  to acknowledge that Israel has no intention of withdrawing or ending its occupation. After serving his first stint as a prime minister, Netanyahu (shown here in a leaked video) while visiting a settlement in 2001, admitted to his true intention of grabbing as much as 98 percent of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and halting the fraudulent Oslo process. Believing that the camera was off, he spoke candidly to a group of settlers about his strategic vision, plans, and tactics.

Netanyahu: This is how I broke the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians

On his vision he assured them that “The settlements are here. They are everywhere.” He stated, “I halted the fulfillment of the Oslo agreements. It’s better to give two percent than 100 percent. You gave two percent but you stopped the withdrawal.” He later added, “I gave my own interpretation to the agreements in such a way that will allow me to stop the race back towards the 1967 borders.” As for the tactics, Netanyahu freely confessed his strategy of causing so much pain to the Palestinians that they would submit to the occupation rather than resist. He said, “The main thing is to strike them not once but several times so painfully that the price they pay will be unbearable causing them to fear that everything is about to collapse.” When he was challenged that such a strategy might cause the world to consider Israel as the aggressor, he dismissively said, “They can say whatever they want.” He also implied how he was not concerned about American pressure. To the contrary he asserted that he could easily manipulate Israel’s main benefactor when he stated “America is something you can easily maneuver and move in the right direction. I wasn’t afraid to confront Clinton. I wasn’t afraid to go against the UN.” Even though world leaders consider Netanyahu a “liar” and they “can’t stand him” as shown in this exchange between former French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Barak Obama, no Western leader has stood up to Israel, even though a British parliamentarian stated that 70 percent of Europeans consider it a “danger to world’s peace.” But the obstructionist posture and expansionist policies of Israeli leaders are not restricted to the Israeli right. Former Labor leader Ehud Barak was as much determined in 2000 at Camp David not to withdraw from the West Bank, Jerusalem, or dismantle the settlements.

For decades the world waited for Israel to decide its destiny by choosing two out of three defining elements: its Jewish character, its claim to democracy, and the lands of so-called “greater Israel.” If it chose to retain its Jewish majority and claim to be democratic, it had to withdraw from the lands it occupied in 1967. If it insists on incorporating the lands and have a democracy it would have to integrate its Arab populations while forsaking its Jewish exceptionalism in a secular state. Yet sadly but true to its Zionist nature, Israel chose to maintain its Jewish exclusiveness over all of historical Palestine to transform itself into a manifestly Apartheid state.

Political Zionism and the True Nature of the Israeli State

For over a century political Zionism has evoked intense passions and emotions on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: its ardent supporters as well as its critics and hapless victims. Zionists hail their enterprise as a national liberation movement for the Jewish people while its opponents condemn it as a racist ideology that practiced ethnic cleansing, instituted racial and religious discrimination, and committed war crimes to realize its goals.

On November 10, 1975 the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 3379 that determined Zionism as a “form of racism and racial discrimination.” However, it was revoked 16 years later under tremendous pressure from the U.S. and other Western countries in the aftermath of the first Gulf war in 1991. Oftentimes, the public is denied unfiltered information about the true nature of political Zionism and its declared state. And unfortunately the media conglomerates rarely cover that aspect of the conflict, which contributes to the public’s confusion and exasperation.

Since its creation in 1948, Israel has passed laws and implemented policies that institutionalized discrimination against its Arab Palestinian minority. In the aftermath of its 1967 invasion, it instituted a military occupation regime that has denied basic human and civil rights to millions of Palestinians whose population now exceeds the number of Israeli Jews in the land within historical Palestine. In addition, in defiance of international law, Israel has obstinately refused to allow the descendants of the Palestinian people that it expelled in 1948 and 1967 to return to their homes, while allowing millions of people of other nationalities the right to become citizens of the Israeli state upon arrival simply because they are Jewish.

Zionist leaders from Ben-Gurion to Netanyahu have always claimed that Israel was a democracy similar to other Western liberal democracies. But perhaps the best way to examine this claim and illustrate the nature of the modern Zionist state is through a comparative analogy (a similar example could also be found in Israeli historian Shlomo Sand’sbook).

What if a Western country claiming to be a democracy, such as the U.S. or the U.K., were officially to change its constitution and system to become the state of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs)? Even though its African, Hispanic, Asian, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim citizens as well as other minorities would still have the right to vote, hold political offices, and enjoy some civil and social rights, they would have to submit to the new nature and exclusive character of the WASP state. Moreover, with the exception of the WASP class of citizens, no other citizen would be allowed to buy or sell any land, and there would be permanent constitutional laws that would forbid any WASP from selling any property to any members of other ethnicities or religions in the country. Its Congress or parliament would pass laws that would also forbid any WASP from marrying outside his or her social class, and if any such “illegal” marriage were to take place, it would not be recognized by the state. As for immigration, only WASPs from around the world would be welcome. In fact, there would be no restrictions on their category as any WASP worldwide could claim immediate citizenship upon arrival in the country with full economic and social benefits granted by the state, while all other ethnicities are denied. Furthermore, most of the existing minorities in the country would be subjected to certain “security” policies in order to allow room for the WASPs coming from outside. So in many parts of the country, there would be settlements and colonies constructed only for the new WASP settlers and consequently some of the non-WASP populations would have to be restricted or relocated. In these new settlements the state would designate WASP-only roads, WASP-only schools, WASP-only health clinics, WASP-only shopping malls, WASP-only parks or swimming pools. There would also be a two-tier health care system, educational system, criminal justice system, and social welfare system. In this dual system for example, if a WASP assaults or kills a non-WASP he would receive a small fine or a light sentence that would not exceed few years, while if a non-WASP murders a WASP, even accidentally, he would receive a harsh or mandatory life sentence. In this system, where the police is exclusively staffed by WASPs, the Supreme Court would routinely sanction the use of torture against any non-WASP, subject to the judgment of the security officers. Such a system would clearly be so manifestly racist, patently criminal, and globally abhorred that no one would stand by it or defend it. But could such a regime even exist or be accepted in today’s world? (I realize that some people may argue that many of these practices had actually occurred in the past against certain segments of the population in some Western societies. But no government today would dare to embrace this model or defend its policies.)

Yet, because of the Zionist nature of the Israeli state, this absurd example is actually a reality with varying degrees for the daily lives of the Palestinian people, whether they are nominal citizens of the state, live under occupation or under siege, or have been blocked for decades from returning back to their homes, towns, and villages. Such a system would not only be condemned but no decent human being or a country that respects the rule of law would associate with it or tolerate it.

From its early days, prominent Jewish intellectuals have condemned the racist nature of the Zionist state. Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt wrote in 1948 condemning Zionist leaders of Israel who “openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state.” Israeli scientist and thinker Israel Shahak considered Israel as “a racist state in the full meaning of this term, where the Palestinians are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin.” Renowned American intellectual Noam Chomsky considers Israel’s actions in Palestine as even “much worse than Apartheid” ever was in South Africa. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé argues that “The Zionist goal from the very beginning was to have as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible,” while American historian Howard Zinn thought that “Zionism is a mistake.” American academic and author Norman Finkelstein has often spoken out against the racist nature of the Zionist state and condemned its manipulation of the Nazi Holocaust to justify its colonization of Palestine. British historian Tony Judt described Israel as “an anachronism” because of its exclusive nature in comparison to its “non-Jewish citizens.” Former UN Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine Professor Richard Falk called Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories “a crime against humanity” and compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi treatment of the Jews and has said, “I think the Palestinians stand out as the most victimized people in the world.” Very recently, prominent American Jewish academics posed the question: “Can we continue to embrace a state that permanently denies basic rights to another people?” Their answer was an emphatic call for a complete boycott against the Zionist state.

Furthermore, Israeli politicians and religious leaders regularly use racist rhetoric to appeal to their constituents and articulate their policies. In the last Israeli elections in March, Prime Minister Netanyahu tweeted to the Israeli public, “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.” Former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman advocated new ethnic cleansing through “the transfer” of Palestinian citizens from the state. One prominent Rabbi considered “killing Palestinians a religious duty,” while another declared that “It is not only desirable to do so, but it is a religious duty that you hold his head down to the ground and hit him until his last breath.” Former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, one of the most senior religious leaders in Israel ruled that “there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza.” Racism in Israel is so pervasive that a Jewish settler stabbed another Jew, and another settler killed a fellow Jewish settler not because the perpetrators were threatened, but because the victims looked Arab. Israeli racism is so widespread among its population that noted journalist Max Blumenthal, who investigated the Israeli society’s attitudes towards the Palestinians, was himself surprised to “the extent to which groups and figures, remarkably similar ideologically and psychologically to the radical right in the US and to neo-fascist movements across Europe, controlled the heart of Israeli society and the Israeli government.”

In short, the ideology of political Zionism, as it has amply been demonstrated within the state of Israel, with its exclusionary vision and persistent policies of occupying the land and subjugating its people, has proven without any doubt that it represents a relic of a bygone era that utterly lacks civilized behavior or claims to a democratic system. Therefore, any discussion, coverage, analysis, or debate of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that sidesteps the nature and ideology of the Israeli state is not only disingenuous and lacks credibility, but also contributes to the deepening of the conflict, the continuous suffering of its victims, and the illusion of finding a potential just and peaceful outcome. 

Originally appeared in Counterpunch 

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About the author: Dr. Sami Al-Arian is a Palestinian academic and intellectual. He lived for four decades in the U.S. before relocating to Turkey in 2015. Because of his long activism for the Palestinian cause and defending human and civil rights, he was a political prisoner in the U.S. and spent over a decade in prison and under house arrest until the charges were dropped in 2014. He can be contacted at nolandsman1948@gmail.com

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