Category Archives: Deep State

What lies behind Benjamin Netanyahu’s lies and Hamas’s evasions

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On September 22, 2023, 16 days before the attack by the Palestinian Resistance, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations in New York. He brandished a map of the “New Middle East” on which Israel had absorbed the Palestinian Territories.

By Thierry Meyssan

Source: Voltairenet.org

We are reacting to the attack on Israel on October 7 and the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza on the basis of the information available to us. However, we feel that the official version of the Israeli government and Hamas is a lie.

Seven major questions remain unanswered:

1. How did Hamas manage to dig and build 500 kilometers of tunnels at a depth of 30 meters without arousing suspicion?

 Tunnel-drilling equipment is considered to have both civilian and military uses. It is not manufactured in Gaza and cannot be brought in under any circumstances, unless there is complicity within the Israeli administration.

 The excavated earth (1 million m3) was not detected by aerial surveillance. Even supposing it had been scattered in many different places and mixed in with the soil from other construction sites, it is impossible for the Israeli intelligence services not to have detected anything for twenty years.

 Tunnel ventilation equipment is not considered to be for military use. It is possible to bring it into Gaza, but the quantity required should have attracted attention.

 The reinforced concrete needed to solidify the walls is not manufactured in Gaza. It too is not considered military equipment, but the quantity required should have attracted attention.

2. How could Hamas stockpile such an arsenal?

 Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has large quantities of rockets and handguns at its disposal. Hamas may have manufactured parts of the rockets itself, but it has managed to import thousands of handguns into Gaza, mainly from the Ukraine, despite high-performance scanners. This seems impossible without complicity within the Israeli administration.

3. Why did Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed all those who warned him?

 Egypt’s Minister of Intelligence, Kamel Abbas, personally phoned him to warn of a major Hamas attack.

 His friend, Colonel Yigal Carmon, Director of Memri, personally warned him of a major Hamas attack.

 The CIA sent Israel two intelligence reports warning of a major Hamas attack.

 Defense Minister Yoav Galland was fired in July because he warned the government of the “perfect storm” prepared by Hamas.

4. Why did Benjamin Netanyahu demobilize the security forces on the evening of October 6?

 The Prime Minister had authorized the Security Forces to stand down for the holidays of Sim’hat Torah and Shemini Atzeret. At the time of the attack, therefore, there were no personnel available to monitor the security fence around Gaza.

5. Why did security officials remain locked up at Shin Bet headquarters that morning?

 The Director of Counterintelligence (Shin Bet), Ronen Bar, had called a meeting of the heads of all the security services for 8 a.m. on October 7, to examine the second CIA report warning of a major Hamas operation in preparation.

However, the attack began at 6.30 a.m. on the same day. Security officials didn’t react until 11am. What did they do during this interminable meeting?

6. Who triggered the “Hannibal directive” in this way, and why?

 When the Security Forces began to react, the IDF was ordered to apply the “Hannibal directive”. This stipulates that enemies must not be allowed to take Israeli soldiers hostage, even if it means killing them. An Israeli police investigation confirms that the Israeli air force bombed the crowd fleeing the Supernova Rave Party. A significant proportion of those killed on October 7 were therefore not victims of Hamas, but of Israeli strategy.

 In theory, the “Hannibal directive” only applies to soldiers. Who decided to bomb a crowd of Israeli civilians, and why?
It is not possible today to determine with any certainty which Israelis were killed by the attackers and which were killed by their own army.

7. Why are Western forces threatening Israel?

 The Pentagon has deployed two naval groups, around the USS Gerald Ford and the USS Eisenhower, and a cruise missile submarine, the USS Florida. Haaretz even mentioned a third aircraft carrier. America’s allies (Saudi Arabia, Canada, Spain, France, Italy) have installed fighter-bombers in the region.

These forces are not installed to threaten Turkey, Qatar or Iran, which the Western press accuses of being involved in the Hamas attack, but off the coast of Israel, in Beirut and Hamat. They are encircling Israel. And Israel alone.

WHAT LIES BEHIND THESE MYSTERIES?

Obviously the version defended by both Hamas and Israel is false. We must consider other possible explanations so as not to be manipulated by either one or the other.

Let’s formulate a hypothesis. There is nothing to say whether it is the correct one, but it is compatible with the factual elements, which is not the case with the version shared today by everyone. So it’s better than that one. It is obviously extremely shocking, but only those who are able to answer the previous 7 questions can dismiss it.

This interpretation is based on an analysis of the complex structure of Hamas, whose rank-and-file fighters are unaware of what their leaders are up to. There it is :

The entire operation of Hamas and Israel is led by Americans, perhaps under the direction of the Straussian Eliott Abrams [1] and his Vandenberg Coalition (Think Tank which succeeded the Project for a New American Century). The Muslim Brotherhood and the Revisionist Zionists, who apparently are waging a cruel war, are in reality accomplices at the expense of the rank-and-file Hamas fighters, the Palestinian people and Israeli soldiers. Here is their plan: Hamas is presented as the only effective resistance force to the oppression of the Palestinians, but it lets Israel liquidate the hope of a Palestinian state, while the Muslim Brotherhood, crowned with the sacrifice of the Palestinians, takes power in the Arab world.

The heads of Hamas’s military and political branches are both subordinate to the Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, the successor to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, yet nobody talks about him. From his point of view, the Brotherhood will be the big winner of the “Flood of Al-Aqsa”, even if Gaza is razed to the ground and the Palestinians driven from their land.

Hamas is now divided into two factions. The first, under the leadership of Ismaël Haniyeh, follows the Brotherhood’s line. It seeks neither to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation, nor to found a Palestinian state, but is dedicated to building a Caliphate over all the countries of the Middle East. The second, under the leadership of Khalil Hayya, has abandoned the Brotherhood’s ideology, and is fighting to put an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israelis.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a political secret society, organized by British intelligence services on the model of the United Grand Lodge of England [2]. It was gradually taken over by the CIA to the point of being represented on the US National Security Council. After the collapse of the Islamist regimes of the Arab Spring, the Brotherhood fractured into two trends. The London Front, led by Guide Ibrahim Munir (who died a year ago), proposed a way out of the crisis by leaving the political arena and securing the release of prisoners in Egypt. The Istanbul Front, led by interim leader Mahmoud Hussein, advocates, on the contrary, changing nothing and continuing the struggle to establish a Caliphate. A third group is attempting to establish an intermediate position, putting forward the idea of abandoning politics until the prisoners have been released, only to return to it at a later date.

The Muslim Brotherhood is fighting to seize power in all Arab states, as it did in Egypt in 2012-13.
It should be remembered that, contrary to widespread opinion in the West, Mohamed Morsi was never democratically elected President of Egypt; that was General Ahmed Chafik. However, after the Brotherhood threatened to kill members of the Electoral Commission and their families, the latter, after 13 days of resistance, declared Morsi elected, despite the results of the ballot box. Subsequently, in 2013, 40 million Egyptians marched against him, calling on the army to deliver them from the Muslim Brotherhood. General Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi did just that.

Today, the Muslim Brotherhood is only in power in Tripolitania (western Libya), where it was brought to power by NATO. They are only welcome in Qatar and Turkey (which is not an Arab state). They are banned in the majority of Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia (whose monarch they tried to overthrow in 2013) and the United Arab Emirates (involving the crisis between Qatar and the other Gulf states). And above all in Syria (whose government they tried to overthrow in 1982 and to which they waged war, from 2011 to 2016, alongside Nato and Israel). They are about to do the same in Tunisia (which they ruled for a decade).

If the real objective of this massacre is not the status of Palestine, but the governance of Arab states, we can expect a wave of regime changes in the Middle East, each time to the benefit of the Brotherhood – in short, a kind of second “Arab Spring” [3].

As during the Arab Spring, the British services are responsible for the Brotherhood’s communications. We remember the way they promoted Brother Abdelhakim Belhaj in Libya [4] or the magnificent logos they designed for the host of jihadist groups in Syria. Leaks to the Foreign Office confirmed all this. This time, they created a new character, Abu Obeida, the spokesman for the fighting organization in Gaza. This man, unknown until recently, has suddenly become a star in the Muslim world, where posters of him are being snapped up. Well-trained in public speaking, he handles symbols with an ease unprecedented among Sunni leaders.

Arab governments are therefore acting cautiously, supporting the creation of a Palestinian state while keeping their distance from Hamas. While Hamas is doing everything to make the creation of a Palestinian state impossible.

Translation
Roger Lagassé

Neocons Blame Endless Wars On Those Who Oppose Endless Wars

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In yet another Orwellian inversion of reality, Raytheon stooge turned Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently posited that the real problem with American foreign policy isn’t decades of imperialist aggression waged by the military industrial complex, but rather non interventionalists who promote peace.

By Ron Paul

Source: The Free Thought Project

Over the weekend Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explained to the American people what’s really wrong with US foreign policy. Some might find his conclusions surprising.

The US standing in the world is damaged not because we spent 20 years fighting an Afghan government that had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11. The problem has nothing to do with neocon lies about Iraq’s WMDs that led untold civilian deaths in another failed “democratization” mission. It’s not because over the past nearly two years Washington has taken more than $150 billion from the American people to fight a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine.

It’s not the military-industrial complex or its massive lobbying power that extends throughout Congress, the think tanks, and the media.

Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California’s Simi Valley, Austin finally explained the real danger to the US global military empire.

It’s us.

According to Secretary Austin, non-interventionists who advocate “an American retreat from responsibility” are the ones destabilizing the world, not endless neocon wars.

Austin said the US must continue to play the role of global military hegemon – policeman of the world – because “the world will only become more dangerous if tyrants and terrorists believe that they can get away with wholesale aggression and mass slaughter.”

How’s that for reason and logic? Austin and the interventionist elites have fact-checked 30 years of foreign policy failures and concluded, “well it would have been far worse if the non-interventionists were in charge.”

This is one of the biggest problems with the neocons. They are incapable of self-reflection. Each time the US government follows their advice into another catastrophe, it’s always someone else’s fault. In this case, as Austin tells us, those at fault for US foreign policy misadventures are the people who say, “don’t do it.”

What would have happened if the people who said “don’t do it” were in charge of President Obama’s decision to prop-up al-Qaeda to overthrow Syria’s secular leader Assad? How about if the “don’t do it” people were in charge when the neocons manufactured a “human rights” justification to destroy Libya? What if the “don’t do it” people were in charge when Obama’s neocons thought it would be a great idea to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically-elected government?

Would tyrants and terrorists have gained power if Washington did NOT get involved? No. Tyrants and terrorists got the upper hand BECAUSE Washington intervened in these crises.

As Austin further explained, part of the problem with the US is democracy itself. “Our competitors don’t have to operate under continuing resolutions,” he complained. What a burden it is for him that the people, through their representatives, are in charge of war spending.

In Congress, “America first” foreign policy sentiment is on the rise among conservatives and that infuriates Austin and his ilk. He wants more billions for wars in Ukraine and Israel and he wants it now!

And our economic problems? That is our fault too. Those who “try to pull up the drawbridge,” Austin said, undermine the security that has led to decades of prosperity. Prosperity? Has he looked at the national debt? Inflation? Destruction of the dollar?

There is a silver lining here. The fact that Austin and the neocons are attacking us non-interventionists means that we are gaining ground. They are worried about us. This is our chance to really raise our voices!

The Costs and Casualties of Government’s Information Total War

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By Emily Burns

Source: Brownstone Institute

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,”

This phrase, misattributed to Voltaire, has largely come to dominate—and confuse—our understanding of the importance of free speech in a free society. That misunderstanding seems to be at the heart of the very lukewarm response elicited by the exposure of “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history” unearthed through discovery in Missouri v. Biden now before the Supreme Court.  

The trouble with this framing of free speech is that it focuses on hateful speech, framing the imperative to defend the utterance of hateful speech as a form of polite, reciprocal tolerance, necessary for the smooth functioning of a liberal society. If ever there were a framing that caused one to miss the forest for the trees, this is it.

The primacy free speech enjoys here in the US has nothing whatever to do with some dewy-eyed ideal of tolerance. Rather, it owes its primacy to pragmatism. Freedom of speech is the best tool we have to ascertain the truth of any given matter. Like a sculptor transforming a shapeless piece of marble into a work of art, free and open debate chisels away at the falsehoods and misapprehensions in which the truth lays embedded. Restrict debate, and the gradual emergence of that truth will be delayed or deformed, with the result imperfect at times to the point of monstrosity.

The reason we must “defend to the death” the right to utter “intolerable speech,” is that failure to do so results in the swift and certain condemnation as “intolerable” all speech that diminishes the power or legitimacy of those in power. More succinctly, we must defend the pariah’s right to speak or everyone who crosses the regime, conveniently becomes a pariah. You either do as the ACLU did in 1978, defend the Nazi’s right to speak, or you have an explosion of government-designated “Nazis.” You may perhaps have noticed an exponential rise in the prevalence of “Nazis” and an ever-expanding panoply of -ists since our country’s commitment to free speech faltered? Yeah, me too.

No matter the political leanings or the content of the criticism, all those who have dared to critique the diktats of those in power for the last several years have been swiftly moved outside the pale, designated often times literal Nazis. It is this that explains the awesome scope of the censorship exposed in Missouri v. Biden, now before the Supreme Court.

We’re experiencing an information total war, resulting in blanket shutdown of any and all debate on each and every topic the government would prefer not to discuss. The cost to truth from this censorship carpet-bombing has been enormous. Lacking the refinement that comes from criticism and debate, the policies issuing from this informational hellscape are brutal and barbaric.

This information total war has been largely successful. Regime critics have been swiftly censored, defamed, and marginalized. The result is that most of the population continues to believe that the criticisms of government policies and actions over the past several years were levied by a bunch of cranks whose objections were largely based on gut level assumptions, political affiliation, or knee-jerk reactions. That many of those criticisms and warnings ended up being accurate is attributed to dumb luck. Thus, the public has little sympathy for the targets of government censorship, precisely because of the success of the censorship, and its complement, the propaganda generated to fill the vacuum left by the disappearance of truth. However, the public itself is harmed in myriad ways by this censorship, and not in any abstract fashion.

First and foremost, this censorship regime has harmed the public because the suppression of dissenting views resulted in the creation and deployment of a `whole` host of truly awful policies. Certain of its omniscience the government repeatedly censored, defamed and marginalized those who raised objections to its policies. Contrary to the propaganda narrative used to justify its censorship, the arguments against various strands of the government policies were based on sound reason, science, and data, the opponents often highly credentialed in the relevant field.

How many people know that one of the first critics of our maximalist approach to COVID was one of the most well-respected, frequently-cited scientists in the world, Stanford’s John Ioannidis? Or that his criticisms mirrored the guidance of the US’s actual extant pandemic plans?

How many people know that even from the very first, the opposition to masking was in fact based on its known futility, citing research from the CDC itself, published in May of 2020 (and recently vindicated by another systemic review by Cochrane)? Or that the most vocal opposition came from industrial hygienists (1, 2, 3) and others whose explicit job is to create specifications for safe work environments, including PPE? 

Source: U.S. CDC, Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures. May 2020

How many people know that the opposition to the hysteria around hospital capacity was based on acknowledgement by hospital executives that 30 percent of COVID patients were in the hospital with COVID, versus for COVID? Or that this inflationary mis-characterization was incentivized by government payouts? Or that they were using HHS’s own data showing hospital capacity to have been no issue whatsoever in the US except in extremely localized areas and for extremely short periods—and hence easily remediable.

How many people know that the opposition to vaccine mandates, beyond being based on the obvious, and perfectly reasonable objection that there was no long-term data on their safety, was also based on published research showing no relationship between vaccination rates and disease transmission? 

Source: European Journal of Epidemiology, September, 2021 Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States

Or the concern that “original antigenic sin” could lead to mass vaccination resulting in negative efficacy, and that early published researched was demonstrating exactly that trend? Or that one of those who opposed vaccine mandates on ethical grounds was the director of medical ethics at one of the largest UC campuses?

The answer to all of these questions is, far too few. The sole reason for this widespread ignorance is government censorship. We have censorship to thank for the creation and implementation of divisive, harmful, and unjust policies. Lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports all find their origins in the truth-starved, debate-deprived offices of our behemoth bureaucracies. Their continuance well after their futility was demonstrated empirically, and the harms they would cause already beginning to manifest can likewise be attributed to the same benighted bedfellows.

In addition to being harmed by the content of these censorship-protected policies, the public was further harmed by the division they created. Because these policies were propped up by censoring dissent and defaming dissenters, the debate was no such thing. Instead, framing it in Manichean terms of good and evil, the censors cast large groups of the population as enemies of the people, effectively engaging in a government-executed hate crime targeting tens of millions of people.

This censorship-fueled division didn’t just tear the country apart, it cut straight through the center of families, yielding countless divorces, and many millions of families estranging loved ones–all due to government-promoted lies. The polarization that has so demoralized us was a feature, not a bug, of the policies implemented by our politicians and bureaucrats.

Through the pervasive action of this wide-ranging government censorship/propaganda effort, vast swathes of the American people have been and continue to be weaponized against their fellow Americans. The faith these people had in institutions has been perverted to serve the institutions, not the people. This credulity-weaponization encompasses not just Joe Schmoe on the street, but extends all the way to the Supreme Court, where in oral arguments last year, several justices made claims whose easily verifiable falseness would have made them blush, if they weren’t so wholly taken in by the censorship and propaganda operations of the broader US government.

By acting as the witting or unwitting dupes of this vast censorship/propaganda operation, the credibility of virtually every civic institution in the US has been eroded possibly to the point of no return. Those whose credibility can be salvaged will be decades in the doing. Unfortunately, many, if not most, of our institutions and their denizens remain the censor’s reliable handmaidens, now seeming to hope the censors might somehow hide the gushing efflux of their credibility.

Among the harms that have been visited upon the American people through this censorship operation, vaccine injuries must also be counted. Our government not only censored questions and concerns, it acted as the marketing department for the vaccine manufacturers. However, there was one very important difference—if the manufacturers had been doing their own marketing, each ad would have had the long list of potential side effects and counter-indications that is required of all other pharmaceuticals. These risks were simply not communicated, except at the time of injection in the form of a long list of contra-indicated conditions.

However, if at that time one were to realize that one had one of the contra-indicated conditions, in many parts of the country, one would still have had no choice but to get the shot. Doctors who granted medical exemptions were threatened by the state to such a degree as to make exemptions virtually inaccessible, regardless of a doctor’s medical judgement. Vaccine mandates made getting the shot a requirement for engagement in public life and countenanced no exceptions.

This coercion effectively nullified informed consent for the entire American public, and thus, any adverse reaction ought to be considered fair game for redress. But it is the young and those who had already had COVID who present a picture of unalloyed harm. For these groups, the vaccines provided no benefit—only risk. Thus, every single adverse event incurred in these groups must be viewed as direct, personal harms caused by a government-sponsored censorship operation. That this particular strain of censorship benefited private companies at the same time that it harmed the American people adds grievous injury to the ongoing insult.

It is particularly demoralizing to realize that the polarization deliberately fomented by our government seems likely to protect its perpetrators from accountability. Everywhere, we see polls and articles about how fatigued people are by politics. And yet we have no other recourse to address this vast “censorship leviathan.” It is now the go-to tool with which our government effects policy.

The only way to change it is to remove from power those people who support this censorship regime and to dismantle the regime’s complex apparatus. Ultimately, government censorship reduces our society to just two groups of people: the censors and the censored. While it remains in place, the ranks of the censored will be ever-expanding as the censors require ever more censorship to ensure people continue to disbelieve their lying eyes.

Israel’s leadership urge Netanyahu to Ignore “international demands” and exterminate the Gazans.

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By Eric Zuesse

Source: The Duran

Increasingly, Netanyahu’s own cabinet and advisors are urging genocide there against Gazans. (Actually, this viewpoint has long been popular among Netanyahu’s voters — well prior to the October 7th Hamas attack.)

The legal basis for such a solution comes from many decades of apartheid laws there:

As Jonathan Cook, a great independent journalist on Palestinian affairs, observed:

In today’s United States or Europe, any argument that citizenship privileges should be assigned to a group because of its ethnicity or religion would be considered overtly racist. That nonetheless is precisely the position of all the Jewish parties in the Israeli parliament – without exception.

All of them believe, for example, that it is essential that Israel has two differentiated citizenship tracks. One, the Law of Return of 1950, allows all Jews in the world to automatically immigrate to Israel. The other, the Citizenship Law of 1952, bars almost all Palestinians from ever returning to their homes in what is now Israel. It also denies Israel’s 1.8 million Palestinian citizens, a fifth of the population, a basic human right: to marry a Palestinian non-citizen and live with them in Israel.

And that’s actually putting it mildly, because right from the start, Israel was based upon ethnic cleansing to get rid of the existing population; or, as Ben-Gurion said in 1937, “We must expel the Arabs and take their place” because (mythologically but definitely not historically) God gave that land to “the Jews.” In other words: Ben-Gurion was saying that what he thought of as “our tribe” owns that land because that tribe’s myth says it does. And acting on that ethnocentric instead of humanistic basis, progressive-minded Jews such as Albert Einstein condemned as “fascists” Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and other leaders of the settler movement who carried out Ben-Gurion’s racist-fascist plan, and so those racist-fascists (or ideological nazis) produced Israel. They were smart enough to lie constantly about what their intentions actually were, but in recent times the surviving documents that Israel’s Government hadn’t yet been able to destroy totally, have become ‘resurrected’ to point the finger of blame clearly at the Government of Israel as the aggressor in this war. Christians had started Hitler’s war against all Jews, but racist-fascist Jews then went to Palestine and created their own racist-fascist Israel, based, at its very start, and clearly now even until the present, on a final solution to Israel’s Arab problem. The only difference between Europe’s Nazis and Israel’s nazis is that it’s by a different tribe and against a different tribe. The actors are different, but the play is the same.

On November 20th, Jonathan Ofir headlined at mondoweiss.net, “Influential Israeli national security leader makes the case for genocide in Gaza”, and he reported:

——

Since October 7, there has been no shortage of genocidal calls from Israeli leaders, as well as clear plans, also at ministerial level, for the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And while the usage of biblical euphemisms like Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “Amalek” reference may appear too vague for some, even if the story suggests killing infants, on Sunday retired Major General Giora Eiland, former head of the National Security Council and current advisor to the Defense Minister, decided to spell out genocide more explicitly.

In a Hebrew article [published November 19th] on the printed edition of the centrist Yedioth Ahronoth titled “Let’s not be intimidated by the world,” Eiland clarified that the whole Gazan civilian population was a legitimate target and that even “severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.” His bottom line leaves no doubt as to his view:

“They are not only Hamas fighters with weapons, but also all the ‘civilian’ officials, including hospital administrators and school administrators, and also the entire Gaza population that enthusiastically supported Hamas and cheered on its atrocities on October 7th.”

Eiland speaks against humanitarian concern and the whole principle of distinction:

“Israel is not fighting a terrorist organization but against the State of Gaza.”

Therefore, per Eiland, “Israel must not provide the other side with any capability that prolongs its life.”

Eiland mocks the idea of “poor women” as the representation of uninvolved civilians:

“Who are the ‘poor’ women of Gaza? They are all the mothers, sisters or wives of Hamas murderers”.

The formulation is reminiscent of the far-right former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who, during the 2014 onslaught, suggested that Israel’s enemy was the entire Palestinian people:

“Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. 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.”

Eiland speaks against surrendering to American sensibilities. Humanitarian pressure (that is, cutting off all basic life necessities) is a legitimate means of war, he claims:

“The Israeli cabinet must take a harder line with the Americans, and at least have the ability to say the following: as long as all the hostages are not returned to Israel, do not talk to us about the humanitarian aspects”.

Also, the rest of the international community, with its humanitarian concern, must be resisted – even the spread of severe epidemics is a legitimate means of warfare:

“The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics. We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers” …

Eiland’s outrageously genocidal piece was endorsed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who tweeted the full article and said he “agreed with every word.” Smotrich is known for, among other things, calling to “wipe out Huwwara” in the West Bank, so it should come as no surprise that he would now endorse Eiland’s call to do the same in Gaza.

A concentration camp

Eiland has a long history of being surprisingly forthright about his view on the state of the Gaza Strip. In 2004, then as head of the National Security Council, he regarded the Gaza Strip as “a huge concentration camp” as he advocated for the U.S. to force Palestinians into the Sinai desert as part of a “two-state solution.”

As per a U.S. diplomatic cable leaked to Wikileaks here:

Repeating a personal view that he had previously expressed to other USG visitors, NSC Director Eiland laid out for Ambassador Djerejian a different end-game solution than that which is commonly envisioned as the two-state solution. Eiland’s view, he said, was prefaced on the assumption that demographic and other considerations make the prospect for a two-state solution between the Jordan and the Mediterranean unviable. …

——

Ofir’s article closes by presenting an English translation of Eiland’s piece, “Let’s Not be Intimidated by the World.”

That 31 March 2004 WikiLeaked cable, which Ofir linked to, also said:

There are 11 million people in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip, and that number will increase to 36 million in 50 years.  The area between Beer Sheva and the northern tip of Israel (including the West Bank and Gaza) has the highest population density in the world. Gaza alone, he said, is already “a huge concentration camp” with 1.3 million Palestinians.  Moreover, the land is surrounded on three sides by deserts.  Palestinians need more land and Israel can ill-afford to cede it.  The solution, he argued, lies in the Sinai desert.

13. (C) Specifically, Eiland proposed that Egypt be persuaded to contribute a 600 square kilometer parcel of land that would be annexed to a future Palestinian state as compensation for the 11 percent of the West Bank that Israel would seek to annex in a final status agreement.  This Sinai block, 20 kms of which would be along the Mediterranean coast, would be adjacent to the Gaza Strip.  A land corridor would be constructed connecting Egypt and this block to Jordan. (Note:  Presumably under Egyptian sovereignty.  End Note.)  In addition, Israel would provide Egypt a 200 square km block of land from further south in the Negev.  Eiland laid out the following advantages to his proposed solution:

— For the Palestinians:  The additional land would make Gaza viable.  It would be big enough to support a new port and airport, and to allow for the construction of a new city, all of which would help make Gaza economically viable.  It would provide sufficient space to support the return of Palestinian refugees.  In addition, the 20 km along the sea would increase fishing rights and would allow for the exploration of natural gas reserves.  Eiland argued that the benefits offered by this parcel of land are far more favorable to the Palestinians than would be parcels Israel could offer from the land-locked Negev.

Consequently: whereas back in 2004, Eiland was NOT urging that “The Israeli cabinet must take a harder line with the Americans,” but was INSTEAD advising to take into account “the Americans” (who at that time would not have favored Israel’s extermination of Gazans), he now DOES urge Netanyahu to go all the way to — like was Hitler’s goal regarding Jews — exterminate Gazans (even to use biological warfare to kill them off).

Apparently, during the 19-year interim between 2004 and now, the U.S. body-politic has moved in step along with Israel’s, toward Hitler’s views (but against different extermination-targets than his), so that Netanyahu now is being advised to go all the way to a final solution, regardless of what “The international community” will say about it.

Americans spend annually $3.8 billion in tax-dollars (that’s paid to Israel’s Government each and every year — and Biden now wants $14B added to that for Israel this year immediately) being donated to Israel’s Government, at least $3.3 billion of it each and every year to be paid then by Israel’s Government to purchase from Lockheed Martin and other U.S. weapons-makers the tools to carry out Israel’s invasions, up to and including genocide (because how those weapons are to be used is under the control of Israel’s Government, not of America’s). American voters are being offered as prospective future public officials to vote for, only candidates who are neoconservative; i.e., who represent and vote for the interests of the investors who control and profit from America’s weapons-manufacturers — the firms that sell to the U.S. Government instead of to the public. Rather than the weapons-makers serving the Government, the Government serves the weapons-makers; i.e., it serves their owners. So, those people (the individuals who control those firms) share with Israel’s Government the guilt for this extermination that’s now occurring in Gaza. And Americans who vote in national elections find these candidates acceptable to vote for. This is not Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s America; it is Harry Truman’s, and it has produced a string of atrocious U.S. Presidents uninterrupted except possibly for JFK whom they got assassinated (so the fear in any decent person running for America’s top political office needs to be recognized). It’s by now clear that America’s billionaires won’t go down without a fight. Politics is hardball — like being played with depleted uranium ‘balls’. It is war by other means. And this is NOT democracy.

West Admits Ukraine is Losing Proxy War

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By Brian Berletic

Source: New Eastern Outlook

After nearly 2 years of portraying the ongoing conflict in Ukraine as unfolding in Kiev and the collective West’s favor, a sudden deluge of admissions have begun saturating Western headlines noting that Ukraine is not only losing, but that there is little or nothing its Western backers can do to change this fact.

What had been a narrative of Ukraine’s steady gains and indomitable fighting spirit has now been replaced by the reality of Ukraine’s catastrophic losses (as well as net territorial losses) and a steady collapse of morale among troops. What had been narratives of Russian forces poorly trained and led, equipped with inadequate quantities of antiquated weapons and dwindling ammunition stockpiles, have now been replaced by admissions that Russia’s military industrial base is out-producing the US and Europe combined while fielding weapon systems either on par with their Western counterparts, or able to surpass Western capabilities entirely.

Ukraine’s Catastrophic Losses 

Ukrainian losses, especially after 5 full months of failed offensive operations, are almost impossible to hide now.

The London Telegraph in its article, “Ukraine’s army is running out of men to recruit, and time to win,” published as far back as August of this year admitted:

The war in Ukraine is now one of attrition, fought on terms that increasingly favour Moscow. Kyiv has dealt admirably with shortages of Western equipment so far, but a shortage of manpower – which it is already having to confront – may prove fatal.

The article also claimed:

It’s a brutal but simple calculation: Kyiv is running out of men. US sources have calculated that its armed forces have lost as many as 70,000 killed in action, with another 100,000 injured. While Russian casualties are higher still, the ratio nevertheless favours Moscow, as Ukraine struggles to replace soldiers in the face of a seemingly endless supply of conscripts.

The article paints a bleak picture of continued Ukrainian military operations that are almost certainly unsustainable.

The claim of 70,000 killed in action among Ukrainian troops is a gross underestimate, while claims that “Russian casualties are higher still” are not only unsubstantiated, but contradicted elsewhere among Western sources.

Mediazona, a media platform maintained by US government-backed Russian opposition figures, has tracked Russian casualties from February 2022 onward by allegedly tracking public information regarding the death of Russian soldiers.

Its numbers cannot be entirely verified, but on the few occasions the Russian Ministry of Defense released Russian casualty numbers, they were relatively close to Mediazona’s claims versus the cartoonish claims made by Ukraine’s General Staff – claims that are often unquestionably repeated by Western governments and media organizations.

A more recent article published by Business Insider in late October titled, “Ukraine official says it can’t properly use its Western kit because it has so few soldiers left, report says,” confirms that Ukraine’s losses and resulting manpower crisis is only getting worse.

The article reports:

A Ukrainian official said Ukraine’s army is suffering a manpower shortage that is hampering its ability to use Western-donated weapons, Time magazine reported. Since the start of the war, several Ukrainian officials have blamed their difficulty repelling Russia’s invasion on the slow pace of deliveries by its allies. 

However, in the Time report, an unnamed source identified as a close aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy highlighted a different problem. “We don’t have the men to use them,” the aide said in reference to the Western weapons. Although Ukraine doesn’t give public figures, Western estimates suggest it has suffered in excess of 100,000 casualties.

In addition to irreversible losses in manpower, Ukraine is also losing territory despite 5 months of intensive offensive operations and the fact that the Russian military leadership has repeatedly stated Russia’s goal is to eliminate Ukraine’s military, not take territory.

The New York Times in a September article titled, “Who’s Gaining Ground in Ukraine? This Year, No One,” would note:

Ukraine’s counteroffensive has struggled to push forward across the wide-open fields in the south. It is facing extensive minefields and hundreds of miles of fortifications — trenches, anti-tank ditches and concrete obstacles — that Russia built last winter to slow Ukrainian vehicles and force them into positions where they could be more easily targeted. When both sides’ gains are added up, Russia now controls nearly 200 square miles more territory in Ukraine compared with the start of the year.

Along with steep losses in manpower and a net loss in territory, Ukraine suffers from an equally damaging loss of equipment. Compounding materiel losses is the fact Western military industrial production is incapable of replacing these losses.

Military Industrial Production: West Running Out as Russia Ramps Up 

Last year, Western politicians and the Western media promoted the idea that superior Western military equipment would easily sweep aside Russia’s dwindling numbers of supposedly antiquated weapon systems. One article published by the London Telegraph in early June of this year was even titled, “British-made tanks are about to sweep Putin’s conscripts aside.”

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Instead, Russian military equipment has proven itself capable if not superior to Western weapon systems and, together with Russia’s massive military industrial base, it has both outnumbered and outfought Ukrainians trained and equipped by the West.

This was admitted in the New York Times’ September article, Russia Overcomes Sanctions to Expand Missile Production, Officials Say,” which noted:

Russia is now producing more ammunition than the United States and Europe. Overall, Kusti Salm, a senior Estonian defense ministry official, estimated that Russia’s current ammunition production is seven times greater than that of the West.

The article admits that Russia has doubled tank production, increased missile production, and is producing at least as many as 2 million artillery shells a year – more than the US and Europe combined currently produce and more than the US and Europe combined if and when they meet increased production targets between 2025-2027.

A more recent article published by The Economist titled, “Russia is starting to make its superiority in electronic warfare count,” admits that Russia has developed an “impressive range of EW [electronic warfare] capabilities to counter NATO’s highly networked systems.” It explains how Russian EW capabilities have rendered precision-guided weapons provided by NATO to Ukraine ineffective, including GPS-guided Excalibur 155mm artillery shells, JDAM guided bombs, and HIMARS-launched GPS-guided rockets.

The article also discusses the impact Russian EW capabilities have on Ukrainian drones which are lost by the thousands week-to-week. And as Russian EW capabilities disrupt Ukraine’s ability to use guided weapons and drones on and over the battlefield, the article admits Russia is able to produce at least twice as many drones as Ukraine giving Russia yet another quantitative and qualitative advantage.

Despite much of the hype surrounding talk of equipping Ukraine with NATO-provided F-16 fighter aircraft, more sober Western analysts have gradually admitted that between Russia’s vast and growing aerospace forces and its superior integrated air defense systems, NATO-provided F-16s will fare no better than the Soviet-era aircraft Ukraine had and lost throughout the duration of the Special Military Operation.

After months, even years of “game-changers” sent to Ukraine only to prove incapable of matching let alone exceeding Russian military capabilities, the game is indeed revealed to have been changed – in favor of Russia and a military doctrine built on vast military industrial production, cheap-but-effective weapon systems, and most importantly, a doctrine built to fight and win against a peer or near-peer adversary.

This stands in stark contrast to a West who has shaped its military for decades to push over developing or failed states around the globe in military-mismatches, atrophying the technological, industrial, and strategic capabilities the US and its allies would have needed to put in place years ahead of time to “win” their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

The “solution” to Russia’s now admitted advantage in terms of quality and quantity on and over the battlefield is to “increase production” and “collect data” on Russian capabilities to then “develop counters to them.” However, these are processes that could take years to yield results, all while Russia continues expanding its capabilities to maintain this qualitative and quantitative edge.

And as this process continues to unfold, the US continues simultaneously seeking a similar conflict with China, which possesses an even larger industrial base than Russia.

One wonders how many lives could have been spared had these recent admissions across the Western media regarding Russia’s actual military capabilities been presented long before provoking conflict with Russia in the first place through Washington and Brussels’ long-standing policy of encroaching upon Russia’s borders. One wonders how many lives may yet be saved if the collective West learns from its current mistakes before repeating them all over again in a senseless conflict triggered by efforts to likewise encroach upon and provoke China.

Gaza War Crimes Make a Mockery of Western “Democracy”

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By Margaret Kimberley

Source: Black Agenda Report

The term “free world” was a mainstay of the cold war lexicon for decades. Although the United States and its NATO allies still portray themselves as paragons of free thought and action and declare anyone they don’t like as laggards in regard to human rights. They make quite a show of bragging about being democracies but their actions prove otherwise. 

The U.S. and Israel continue their killing spree in Gaza which now totals 11,000 fatalities of men, women, and children. While the President of the United States claimed to have seen confirmation that Hamas beheaded children, Palestinians in their sorrow display the broken bodies of their children, some of them headless or limbless as Israel bombs homes, hospitals, and ambulances. The U.S. and the European Union are steadfast in their support of the bloodletting.

Of course most of the world has unambiguously condemned the ongoing crime. Millions of people have protested on every continent to express their outrage and revulsion as the sick plot to kill Palestinians en masse and force the survivors to leave their homes intensifies by the day.

Eight nations, including South Africa, Bolivia, and Colombia have cut diplomatic ties with Israel. In Washington DC, headquarters of the aiders and abettors of the genocide, an estimated 300,000 people took to the streets in just one protest. Similar numbers were seen in London and other European capitals.

But these displays of empathy and solidarity pose a problem for the nations known as the collective west. The U.S. and its friends in NATO are committed to imposing their will on the rest of the world and they don’t want to hear from pesky citizens who point out their wrongdoing.

France and Germany both banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations and yet thousands marched anyway. The United Kingdom actually charged two young women with a terrorism offense for wearing images of a Hamas hang glider on their jackets as they marched in London. In the U.S., doxing, job termination, and even the censure of a member of Congress, Representative Rashida Tlaib, are all used to silence anyone who strays from official narratives. 

Lest anyone think this assessment is overly harsh, consider that Joe Biden is proposing that any additional military aid to Israel be discussed in secret without any congressional oversight. Biden has little reason to fear rejection when even many “progressives” join in giving billions of dollars to the military industrial complex. Clearly something else is afoot that the people don’t want. Perhaps they want to put more U.S. boots on the ground in Israel and attack another nation. No one knows for sure but something very serious is in the offing. The desire to keep what ought to be public under very tight wraps ought to give everyone pause.

It must be pointed out that the repression of protests on Palestine is not occurring in a vacuum. The “democratic” nations are nothing of the sort. They are under the rule of capital which means that the popular will must be subverted. NATO nations are obligated to spend at least 2% of GDP on military spending, which means that people’s needs are not met in the way that they want. The European Union also demands austerity as a condition of membership. 

The U.S. oligarchy is quite clear that even minor efforts to do what people want will be rejected. There is no Build Back Better, no minimum wage increase, no student loan debt relief. All of these options are off the table. Of course it has been proven that the U.S. electoral system provides smoke and mirrors but little else. Americans are harangued into voting but the results rarely result in the changes they seek. 

The same is true in the rest of the collective west. The last thing they want is an energized citizenry making political demands they have no intention of fulfilling.

Palestine is the flashpoint now, but it is not the only crisis facing the fake democracies. Joe Biden’s re-election prospects are diminished as long as he is Israel’s genocide co-conspirator. He may churn out blather about Bidenomics but he has failed to live up to the phony “most progressive since FDR” trope and he can’t live down his role in perpetrating a slaughter that most Americans want to end. The fact that it hasn’t ended is further proof that political leadership are committed to ignoring whatever the people want.

The repression will only intensify as conditions worsen. Protesters in Atlanta who oppose the Cop City militarized policing project have been shot and killed by police, and charged as RICO conspirators. That heavy hand is a harbinger of what is potentially in store for everyone who dares to speak up. The repression isn’t fake, but any claims of true democracy are.

Why the US needs this war in Gaza

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By Pepe Escobar

The Global South was expecting the Dawn of a New Arabian Reality. 

After all, the Arab street – even while repressed in their home nations – has pulsed with protests expressing ferocious rage against Israel’s wholesale massacre of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. 

Arab leaders were forced to take some sort of action beyond suspending a few ambassadorships with Israel, and called for a special Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit to discuss the ongoing Israeli War Against Palestinian Children. 

Representatives of 57 Muslim states convened in Riyadh on 11 November to deliver a serious, practical blow against genocidal practitioners and enablers. But in the end, nothing was offered, not even solace.  

The OIC’s final statement will always be enshrined in the Gilded Palace of Cowardice. Highlights of the tawdry rhetorical show: we oppose Israel’s “self-defense;” we condemn the attack on Gaza; we ask (who?) not to sell weapons to Israel; we request the kangaroo ICC to “investigate” war crimes; we request a UN resolution condemning Israel.  

For the record, that’s the best 57 Muslim-majority countries could drum up in response to this 21st-century genocide.  

History, even if written by victors, tends to be unforgiving towards cowards.

The Top Four Cowards, in this instance, are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Morrocco – the latter three having normalized relations with Israel under a heavy US hand in 2020. These are the ones that consistently blocked serious measures from being adopted at the OIC summit, such as the Algerian draft proposal for an oil ban on Israel, plus banning the use of Arab airspace to deliver weapons to the occupation state.

Egypt and Jordan – longtime Arab vassals – were also non-committal, as well as Sudan, which is in the middle of a civil war. Turkiye, under Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once again showed it is all talk and no action; a neo-Ottoman parody of the Texan “all hat, no cattle.” 

BRICS or IMEC? 

The Top Four Cowards deserve some scrutiny. Bahrain is a lowly vassal hosting a key branch of the US Empire of Bases. Morocco has close relations with Tel Aviv – it sold out quickly after an Israeli promise to recognize Rabat’s claim on Western Sahara. Moreover, Morocco heavily depends on tourism, mainly from the collective west.  

Then we have the big dogs, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Both are stacked to the rafters with American weaponry, and, like Bahrain, also host US military bases. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) and his old mentor, Emirati ruler Mohammad bin Zayed (MbZ), do factor in the threat of color revolutions tearing through their regal domains if they deviate too much from the accepted imperial script.  

But in a few weeks, starting on 1 January, 2024, under a Russian presidency, both Riyadh and Abu Dhabi will expand their horizons big-time by officially becoming members of the BRICS 11. 

Saudi Arabia and UAE were only admitted into the expanded BRICS because of careful geopolitical and geoeconomic calculations by the Russia-China strategic partnership.

Along with Iran – which happens to have its own strategic partnership with both Russia and China – Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are supposed to reinforce the energy clout of the BRICS sphere and be key players, further on down the road, in the de-dollarization drive whose ultimate aim is to bypass the petrodollar.  

Yet, at the same time, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi also stand to benefit immensely from the not-so-secret 1963 plan to build the Ben Gurion canal, from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Eastern Mediterranean, arriving – what a coincidence – very close to now devastated northern Gaza. 

The canal would allow Israel to become a key energy transit hub, dislodging Egypt’s Suez Canal, and that happens to dovetail nicely with Israel’s role as the de facto key node in the latest chapter of the War of Economic Corridors: the US-concocted India-MidEast Corridor (IMEC).

IMEC is a quite perverse acronym, as is the whole logic behind this fantastical corridor, which is to position international law-breaking Israel as a critical trade hub and even energy provider between Europe, part of the Arab world, and India.  

That was also the logic behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN charade in September, where he flashed the whole “international community” a map of the “New Middle East” in which Palestine had been totally erased. 

All of the above assumes that IMEC and the Ben Gurion Canal will be built – which is not a given by any realistic standards.  

Back to the vote at the OIC, US minions Egypt and Jordan – two countries on Israel’s western and eastern borders, respectively – were in the toughest position of them all. The occupation state wished to push approximately 4.5 million Palestinians into their borders for good. But Cairo and Amman, also awash in US weapons and financially bankrupt as they come, would never survive US sanctions if they lean too unacceptably towards Palestine.

So, in the end, too many Muslim states choosing humiliation over righteousness were thinking in very narrow, pragmatic, national interest terms. Geopolitics is pitiless. It is all about natural resources and markets. If you don’t have one, you need the other, and if you have none, a Hegemon dictates what you’re allowed to have. 

The Arab and Muslim street – and the Global Majority – may rightfully feel dejected when they see how these “leaders” are not ready to turn the Islamic world into a real power pole within emerging multipolarity. 

It wouldn’t happen any other way. Many key Arab states are not Sovereign entities. They are all boxed in, victims of a vassal mentality. They’re not ready – yet – for their close-up facing History. And sadly, they still remain hostage to their own “century of humiliation.”

The humiliating coup de grace was dispatched by none other than the Tel Aviv genocidal maniac himself: he threatened everyone in the Arab world if they don’t shut up – which they already did.

Of course, there are very important Arab and Muslim brave-hearts in Iran, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. While not a majority by any means, these Resistance actors reflect the sentiment on the Street like no other. And with Israel’s war expanding each day, their regional and global clout is set to increase immeasurably, just as in all of the Hegemon’s other regional wars.

Strangling a new century in the cradle 

The catastrophic debacle of Project Ukraine and the revival of an intractable West Asian war are deeply intertwined. 

Beyond the fog of Washington’s “worry” about Tel Aviv’s genocidal rampage, the crucial fact is that we are right in the thick of a war against BRICS 11.      

The Empire does not do strategy; at best, it does tactical business plans on the fly. There are two immediate tactics in play: a US Armada deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean – in a failed effort to intimidate Resistance Axis behemoths Iran and Hezbollah – and a possible Milei election in Argentina tied to his avowed promise to break Brazil-Argentina relations. 

So this is a simultaneous attack on BRICS 11 on two fronts: West Asia and South America. There will be no American efforts spared to prevent BRICS 11 from getting close to OPEC+. A key aim is to instill fear in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi – as confirmed by Persian Gulf business sources.  

Even vassal leaders at the OIC show would have been aware that we are now deep into The Empire Strikes Back. That also largely explains their cowardice. 

They know that for the Hegemon, multipolarity equals “chaos,” unipolarity equals “order,” and malign actors equal   “autocrats” – such as the new Russian-Chinese-Iranian “Axis of Evil” and anyone, especially vassals, that opposes the “rules-based international order.” 

And that brings us to a tale of two ceasefires. Tens of millions across the Global Majority are asking why the Hegemon is desperate for a ceasefire in Ukraine while flatly refusing a ceasefire in Palestine. 
Freezing Project Ukraine preserves the Ghost of Hegemony just a little bit longer. Let’s assume Moscow would take the bait (it won’t). But to freeze Ukraine in Europe, the Hegemon will need an Israeli win in Gaza – perhaps at any and all costs – to maintain even a vestige of its former glory. 

But can Israel achieve victory any more than Ukraine can? Tel Aviv may have already lost the war on 7 October as it can never regain its facade of invincibility. And if this transforms into a regional war that Israel loses, the US will lose its Arab vassals overnight, who today have a Chinese and Russian option waiting in the wings. 

The Roar of the Street is getting louder – demanding that the Biden administration, now seen as complicit with Tel Aviv, halt the Israeli genocide that may lead to a World War. But Washington will not comply. Wars in Europe and West Asia may be its last chance (it will lose) to subvert the emergence of a prosperous, connected, peaceful Eurasia Century.

The Roots of Radicalism and the Structure of Evil

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By Edward Curtin

Source: Behind the Curtain

My title is redundant for a reason, since the root of the word radical is the Latin word, radix, meaning root.  For I mean to show how the use and misuse of language, its history or etymology, and ours as etymological animals as the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gassett called us, is crucial for understanding our world, a world once again teetering on the edge of a world war that will almost inexorably turn nuclear as events are proceeding.  If our language is corrupted, as it surely is, and political propaganda flourishes as a result, the correct use of our language and the meaning of words becomes an obligation of anyone who uses them – that is, everyone, especially writers.

The United States government exists to wage war.  In its present form, it would crumble without it; and in its present form, it will crumble with it.  Only a radical structural change will prevent this.  For war-making is at the core of its budget, its raison d’être – 816.7 billion for the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act alone – a deficit-financed sum that tells only part of the story.  This amount that finances the military-industrial complex and its blood money is for a country that has never been invaded, is bordered by friendly neighbors, and is oceans away from the multitude of countries its leaders attack and call our enemies.  The U.S. wages wars around the world because killing is its lifeblood, its structural essence.

In writing of the misuse of language, George Orwell wrote, “It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”  So with these words Orwell slyly places us within the enigma of the chicken and the egg, a conundrum or paradox that relates to my theme in a weird way, but which I will directly ignore.

By radical I do not mean the widespread political usage as in radical-right or radical-left or radical meaning one who plays the role through dress or demeanor.  I am using the word in its primary meaning – a radical is one who is rooted in the earth, which means everyone.  Everyone therefore is mortal, human not a god, and comes from the earth and returns to it.  Everyone is radical in this sense, although they may try to deny it.  And the more one feels alive the more one senses one will die and doesn’t like the thought, therefore many tamp down their aliveness in order to reduce their fear of death.  The best way to do this is to disappear into the crowd, to become a conventional person.  To act as if one didn’t know that one’s political leaders were in love with death and killing and were not obedient cogs in a vast systemic killing machine.  Maybe the unconscious assumption is that these “leaders” can kill death for you by killing vast numbers of people and make you feel someone has control of this thing called death.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who stood strongly against the Vietnam War and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put the basic sense of radical well when he said:

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. . . . get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

To be radically amazed that we exist is to be equally amazed that we will die.  And there’s the rub.

Yesterday I got in our car and drove away to meet a journalist friend.  It was evening and my wife had previously used the car.  I had just spent time following all the dreadful news about the massive slaughter by Israel of Palestinians in Gaza, including the death of more than 3,000 children whose numbers are climbing fast.  Visions of those children and babies played havoc with my spirits, and I kept thinking of my own children and the love and tenderness that comes with being a  parent.  A musical cd that my wife had been listening to started playing.  The case was on the console.  It was Sacred Arias by Andrea Bocelli.  He of the majestic voice was singing Silent Night.  I was overwhelmed with tears by his passionate words:

Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
round yon Virgin Mother and Child,
Holy infant so tender and mild,
sleep in Heavenly peace!
sleep in Heavenly peace!

I saw nights in Gaza as Israeli bombs burst and shattered everyone and everything to bits, all the holy infants, the children and adults.

I felt beside myself with grief, a U.S. citizen driving down a safe country road contemplating the savagery of my nation and its support for the Israeli government’s brutality and mass killings of Palestinians for all the world to see on screens everywhere.

I felt ashamed to live in a land where justice is a game reserved for rhetoric alone as it joins in the massacre of the innocent, as it always has, now together with the apartheid Israeli regime.

I thought of all the compromised politicians who pledge their allegiance to the killers, Biden and all his presidential predecessors, now including the aspirant Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a man with a conscience on many important issues whom I have supported in his quest for the presidency, but a man whose conscience has abandoned him when it comes to the Palestinians, as Scott Ritter has recently documented.  I have privately urged Kennedy to reconsider his “unwavering, resolute, and practical” support for the Israeli government following the Gaza breakout of October 7, but to no avail.  In fact, I have been trying to get him to withdraw his unconditional support for Israel since the summer when he withdrew his support for Roger Waters, marched with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in the Israel parade in NYC, and allowed Boteach to say that Sirhan Sirhan had killed his father without correcting him since he knew it was an egregious lie.  My failure in this regard deeply saddens me.

I felt betrayed again – perhaps you will call me naïve – as when I was young and last put my trust in voting for a US presidential candidate in 1972.  I thought I had learned to radically grasp the systematically corrupt nature of the U.S. warfare state.  Now more than three weeks have passed and Bobby Kennedy has remained silent, only to ask for our prayers for the victims of the mass shooting in Maine.  For the Palestinians, not a word. Although he considers the Israeli-Palestinian situation complicated, there is nothing complicated about genocide; it doesn’t necessitate long analyses and discussions with advisers.  The facts of the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza are evident for all to see, if they wish.  Bobby Kennedy has turned away.  And I have now sadly turned away from him.

I remembered the Gospel words I heard long ago about the fulfillment of the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loudly lamenting: it was Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they were no more.”  But this time it is not the Jewish Rachel, for Herod has assumed the name Netanyahu and his U.S. allies, and the weeping ones are Palestinian mothers and fathers.  Nothing can justify such slaughter, not the terrible killings of innocent Israelis on October 7 that I denounce; not the fear that the birth of messengers of peace might strike into Herod/Netanyahu’s heart – nothing!  Seventy-five years of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continues apace. The Jewish child Jesus, the radical preacher of love and peace for all people, didn’t die on a private cross, nor do the Palestinians.  So it goes.

I thought of the indescribable sweet wonder of holding your baby in your arms while realizing how many Palestinian parents have been holding their dead children in theirs.  Rage welled up in me at the obscenity of those who support this and those who shut their eyes to it and those who remain silent.

I realized that as a Christian I am baptized into the human family, not some special in-group, which is the opposite of Jesus’s message.  Every child is holy and innocent and to massacre them is evil.  And to remain silent as it happens is to be complicit in evil.

I remembered how these many ongoing weeks of terror started and thought of a poem that is succinctly apposite: Harlem by Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
and then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

And I thought that he could have omitted that final question mark because we have our answer, then and now.

Then the music stopped and I arrived at my destination to meet my friend.

Yes, to be radical is to be rooted in the earth and to realize all people are part of the human family, each of us made of flesh and blood and therefore sisters and brothers deserving of justice, peace, and dignity.  But this is just a first step in the grasping of the full dimension of the radical vision.  It can end in fluff if a second step is not taken: to use our freedom to uproot ourselves from the conventional government and mass media propaganda and mind control that clouds our understanding of how the world works. This takes study and work and an understanding of the historical and systemic roots of all the alleged “unprovoked” violence that ravages our world.

Thus the existential and socio-historical merge in the radical vision that allows us to grasp the structures of evil and our personal responsibility.

Today that obligation is clear: To oppose the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.

Otherwise we are guilty bystanders.