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The orgy of violence and war crimes being inflicted on Iran over the past week is truly shocking. Yet it is not surprising. This is what an empire that repeatedly commits genocide does.

The U.S.-backed Israeli genocide that has been going on constantly for more than two years in Gaza is now expanding to Iran. The Trump administration is openly talking about destroying Iran and its people. Tehran and other cities across Iran are enduring carpet bombing.

“It is not only a war against Iran – it is a war against the UN Charter, against all of us, against civilization,” commented the renowned international legal expert Alfred de Zayas. His voice has resonated with the anger and disgust of billions of people around the world, including many citizens in the United States.

This is an abomination, an affront to humanity.

In a detailed legal assessment, Professor De Zayas enumerates that the U.S. and Israeli military attacks on Iran have violated multiple treaties and statutes, including the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions.

The world is witnessing barbarism on a massive and flagrant scale. Iran is responding defiantly with the legal and moral right of self-defense.

The crimes against peace and humanity perpetrated by the U.S. and Israel are staggering in their brutality and offense against basic human morality. What is even more odious is that the crimes are being committed with an insane religious conviction that American President Donald Trump is “appointed by God.”

More sickening still is that Trump and the Western and Zionist ruling class are representative of the Epstein Class, the global elite that have been implicated in unspeakable sex crimes against children. It is consistent, albeit vile, that the Western capitalist elite who have been raping children with impunity are now massacring them with bombs, as they have been doing in Gaza. It is perverse beyond words.

The aggression against Iran has been going on for decades, with murderous economic warfare – euphemistically called “sanctions”. When the latest episode of aggression started last Saturday, February 28, American and Israeli warplanes deliberately bombed an elementary school, killing 165 children. Multiple precision strikes hit the building. Since then, several other schools have also been destroyed.

Hospitals, residential districts, and cultural sites have been methodically bombed. In six days, the death toll has surpassed 1,200 and is rapidly rising. This is a war of extermination.

Trump and his senior aides, like the maniacal Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, are reveling in the destruction.

Trump speaks like a crazed crime syndicate boss, saying that he wants to “clean out” Iran after assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a cowardly, obscene act of bombing his residence in Tehran last Saturday, murdering the spiritual leader and his family. Trump has subsequently warned that he must personally approve of any new leader acceptable to U.S. interests.

Paradoxically, the display of despicable criminality betrays a desperate weakness that spells doom for the U.S. empire.

The Empire of Lies and corruption is exposed before the eyes of the world. There is growing worldwide contempt and condemnation of the United States and its Western partners. The people of the world, including citizens in the U.S. and other Western countries, realize who the enemy of peace and morality is.

Trump’s shifting claims about why he ordered the attacks on Iran only betray and expose the cynical lies.

All U.S. wars over the decades have been carried out on the pretext of lies. Millions of people from scores of countries on every continent have perished in the charnel house of imperialist violence, their blood sacrificed for the god of capitalist greed. But what is significant now is that the lies are so transparent. The evil is no longer concealed. Even the usual Western media conformity cannot obscure the blatant criminality.

We are seeing the U.S. empire and its vassals engaging in wholesale mass murder and destruction. This was already happening in Gaza. It is now being magnified in Iran and Lebanon.

European politicians like Britain’s Starmer, France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz are acting like lieutenants in America’s fascist blitzkrieg. Their complicity is damning.

Here’s the thing, however. The Western imperialist system has dug its own grave. Trump and Israel’s madman Netanyahu have opened the gates of hell, but they cannot control what is coming. For one thing, Iran’s firepower looks like it will overwhelm the U.S. and Israeli defenses and bring the world economy to a shuddering collapse. The debt-ridden U.S. and Western economies are facing a long-overdue day of reckoning from implosion.

There is no doubt that the U.S. and Israeli military power is inflicting a maelstrom of destruction and suffering. The psychopathic arrogance of its leaders is astounding and a cause of despair for many people. But there is also a foreboding sense that this is a desperate storm before the imperial system finally collapses from its own inherent corruption.

The Zionist fanatics of the empire who fantasize about “bringing the end of times” are facing an end of sorts, but far from the twisted kind they envisage.

Iran has been planning its military strategy for decades. It is exhausting the wildly extravagant death arsenal of the U.S. empire and its Israeli attack dog. All the accumulated evil of wars and genocides that the Western system has perpetrated for decades with impunity is appearing. A day of judgment is here, and the world must decide once and for all to abolish the enemy – the Western imperialist system – and push it into its own grave.

Humanity has to realize, and is realizing, that for the world to survive in peace, the United States and its Empire of Lies must be defeated.

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No hay forma de alegrarse con la guerra defensiva de la República Islámica de Irán, provocada por los bombardeos criminales de Estados Unidos e Israel. Entiendo a quienes lloraron a las víctimas del genocidio en Gaza, pero ya es hora de ir más allá del llanto. Aunque Hamás haya impuesto duras derrotas e impedido la consecución de los planes sionistas para Palestina, la reacción de Irán al ataque que sufrió es mucho más devastadora para Israel y Estados Unidos, y eso solo puede animar a quienes se oponen a la esclavitud impuesta a los pueblos de Oriente Medio por la dominación imperialista.

De hecho, la guerra de los iraníes es una guerra por la independencia completa de su país y de la región, y esta guerra antiimperialista y popular es una guerra revolucionaria. Una guerra revolucionaria como la de Hamás en Gaza desde octubre de 2023, pero de proporciones mucho mayores. Al destruir la infraestructura militar de Estados Unidos en la región, Irán está dando una contribución sin precedentes a la expulsión de las fuerzas imperialistas de Oriente Medio y, por lo tanto, a la liberación de todos los países de la región del yugo colonial de la OTAN.

Es una guerra contra todo el sistema imperialista internacional. Y el imperialismo europeo lo sabe, lo que quedó demostrado en la declaración conjunta de Francia, Reino Unido y Alemania en apoyo a Estados Unidos y amenazando con intervenir directamente en el conflicto. O en el envío del portaaviones Charles de Gaulle al Mediterráneo, en el pronunciamiento público de Keir Starmer y en las declaraciones de Friedrich Merz. Existe un apoyo total de las llamadas “democracias” europeas a la acción ilegal, terrorista y colonial de Estados Unidos.

Teherán comprende que está librando una guerra contra todo el régimen imperialista. Y tiene el coraje de librarla. Bombardeó objetivos franceses (Camp de la Paix, en Abu Dabi), italianos (al servicio de la OTAN en la base de Ali Al-Salem, en Kuwait) y británicos (la base aérea de Akrotiri, en Chipre), además de instalaciones estadounidenses en los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, Arabia Saudita, Catar, Kuwait, Jordania, Irak, Baréin, Omán, Siria y Chipre. Creo que todavía no se puede garantizar que todos los ataques hayan ocurrido o que hayan sido realizados por Irán —como, por ejemplo, las acusaciones de que intentó atacar objetivos en Turquía—, pero es innegable que los iraníes tienen el objetivo de generar el máximo de daños a la presencia imperialista, si no expulsarla totalmente. Instalaciones civiles, como embajadas, pertenecientes a las potencias agresoras también están siendo alcanzadas —y es sabido que la infraestructura civil sirve de apoyo a la dominación colonial, que no es solamente militar, sino también política y económica.

Estos ataques tienen una serie de consecuencias potenciales extremadamente positivas. Si destruyen esa infraestructura, las naciones imperialistas no tendrán cómo operar plenamente en la región. No tendrán apoyo logístico para sus misiones de infiltración, espionaje, soborno, subversión y control militar y político. Su personal militar tendrá que ser trasladado fuera de Oriente Medio o, como mínimo, encontrar instalaciones improvisadas sin la infraestructura adecuada para su trabajo. Irán está desorganizando completamente la columna vertebral de la presencia imperialista en la región, que son sus bases militares. Las bases militares, con tropas, equipos, aviones y otros vehículos, son como un cuchillo en el cuello del país anfitrión: si su gobierno se sale de la línea impuesta por el imperialismo, será derribado por un golpe sin la menor dificultad. Ese instrumento de presión y chantaje está desmoronándose.

Otra consecuencia es que, dada la facilidad con que estas instalaciones civiles y militares están siendo alcanzadas, sectores de la élite política y militar de cada uno de estos países comiencen a cuestionar la eficacia de la tecnología comprada a Estados Unidos y a sus aliados —cuyas negociaciones son impuestas y cuyo precio es altísimo, perjudicial para las propias finanzas de estos países—. Irán está mostrando —como lo mostró el propio Hamás con los ataques a Israel y como lo mostró Teherán en la guerra del año pasado— que los sistemas de defensa vendidos por las naciones imperialistas son dinero tirado a la basura. Los dirigentes políticos de estos países títeres fueron engañados por Estados Unidos y engañaron a sus subordinados para poder realizar esos acuerdos multimillonarios.

Más importante aún que abrir la mente de las élites políticas y militares, que no pasan de ser lacayos de Estados Unidos e Israel, es concienciar y politizar a los pueblos de estos países oprimidos. E Irán está haciendo eso, como ya lo hizo la Resistencia Palestina desde 2023. Aquellos que oprimen a estos pueblos —las fuerzas de ocupación y sus títeres— no son invencibles. Son gigantes con pies de barro. O, como decía Mao Tse-Tung: el imperialismo es un tigre de papel. Aunque todavía consiga mantener un gran poder de destrucción y opresión, esa fuerza se está desgastando rápidamente desde la revolución talibán de 2021. La Operación Militar Especial de Rusia lo mostró muy bien. Incluso la Operación Diluvio de Al-Aqsa reveló las fragilidades del dominio imperialista. Y ahora la guerra liberadora de Irán.

El gobierno estadounidense está gastando casi mil millones de dólares por día en la guerra. ¿Quién recuerda lo que ocurrió tras años de la Guerra de Vietnam? Una bancarrota extraordinaria en la economía estadounidense y en el mercado internacional. Pero hace 50 años el sistema financiero imperialista todavía tenía algún margen. Hoy ya no es así. La deuda pública de Estados Unidos se está volviendo insostenible y los temblores en el mercado de materias primas y de algunos de los ítems más preciosos para la economía capitalista, como el petróleo y el gas, tienden a generar una crisis de mayores proporciones que aquella. La economía estadounidense no soporta otra guerra prolongada como la que la nación persa está dispuesta a imponer al imperialismo.

Ya se habla de una escasez inminente de armas, municiones y equipos para la agresión contra Irán. Estados Unidos perdió mucho incluso contra los descalzos y valientes hutíes; qué decir de lo que está por venir contra la poderosa Guardia Revolucionaria Islámica. Las guerras genocidas llevadas adelante por Estados Unidos e Israel y sus más abominables métodos criminales esconden que la presencia imperialista se está debilitando cada día en Oriente Medio. Esa tierra será la tumba del imperialismo mundial. Sobre todo cuando las organizaciones revolucionarias se adhieran abiertamente a la guerra de independencia, como están esbozando Hezbolá y las Fuerzas de Movilización Popular de Irak —o como se está gestando una rebelión dentro de los regímenes títeres del sionismo, como en Baréin.

La expresión es bien conocida, pero nunca está de más recordarla: Oriente Medio es un barril de pólvora. Y está a punto de explotar. Esa explosión hará saltar por los aires toda la dominación imperialista y liberará finalmente a los pueblos de esa región. Todo eso gracias a la acción revolucionaria de Irán.

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Existe un mito propagado por los principales medios de propaganda imperialista (el “periodismo”) según el cual Donald Trump es una anomalía fascista en un régimen democrático como el de los Estados Unidos. Y por eso esa anomalía sería repudiada por los representantes legítimos de la democracia, como Kamala Harris y el Partido Demócrata. O por los gobiernos de Europa Occidental. Emmanuel Macron se habría convertido en el gran baluarte de la democracia europea y de la crítica al unilateralismo norteamericano, del cual los supuestos antifascistas y antiautoritarios del mundo entero se declaran enamorados. El Partido Laborista británico ha sido presentado como un paradigma de gobierno de izquierda, que administra un imperio, combate los extremismos y aplica la “censura del bien” en Internet. Incluso el conservador Friedrich Merz sería un ejemplo de derecha civilizada. Todos se opondrían al autoritarismo del lunático Trump.

Pues bien, todos se abrazaron con Trump y se pusieron a sus órdenes. “Tomaremos medidas para defender nuestros intereses y los de nuestros aliados en la región, potencialmente lanzando misiles y drones contra su origen” —dice la declaración conjunta de los tres patetas en respuesta a la guerra defensiva de Irán contra la agresión criminal desencadenada por Estados Unidos y por su apoderado apodado “Israel”. “Acordamos trabajar conjuntamente con EE. UU. y aliados en la región sobre este asunto”, completó la nota del trío europeo.

Está claro que uno de los pretextos centrales de esa alianza con el líder antidemocrático, misógino y extremista de Estados Unidos es derrocar al régimen antidemocrático, misógino y extremista de Irán.

“Jamenei era un dictador sanguinario que oprimió a su pueblo, humilló a mujeres, jóvenes y minorías, y fue recientemente responsable de la muerte de miles de civiles en su país y en la región. Por lo tanto, solo podemos satisfacernos con su muerte”, declaró la portavoz del gobierno francés —el mismo gobierno que hasta ahora buscaba presentarse como amigo de las naciones africanas, asiáticas y latinoamericanas, fingiendo oponerse a las agresiones de Estados Unidos para reciclar su imagen colonial después de que las tropas francesas fueran expulsadas del Sahel.

Sir Keir Starmer condenó a Irán por atacar países vecinos donde hay ciudadanos británicos, ignorando los ataques iniciales de EE. UU. e Israel y a los ciudadanos británicos que se encuentran en Irán. El guion ya está listo, el viejo guion de las agresiones imperialistas a gran escala: el culpable es Irán, por bombardear a sus vecinos, matar inocentes y violar los intereses de los países imperialistas en la región, que responderán en autodefensa y en defensa de sus aliados. “La única manera de detener la amenaza es destruir los lanzadores y depósitos de misiles” de Irán, dijo el primer ministro.

El político laborista, en el colmo de su hipocresía, aseguró que el Reino Unido no participará en ninguna “acción ofensiva”, sino que solo permitirá la utilización de sus instalaciones militares en Oriente Medio a pedido del gobierno estadounidense. La retórica de los halcones imperialistas —a ambos lados del Atlántico— es conocida desde hace décadas: bombardear a Irán, que se está defendiendo de la agresión de Estados Unidos e Israel, no es “acción ofensiva”, sino mera “autodefensa colectiva”. Y esa “autodefensa” será ejercida con participación directa de Londres únicamente si sus instalaciones son atacadas por Teherán.

Pero Irán ya declaró públicamente que cualquier instalación utilizada por Estados Unidos para atacarlo es un objetivo legítimo. Y si Irán ataca una instalación militar británica, Starmer tendrá una excusa para modificar su supuesto plan inicial y entrar de lleno en la guerra de agresión. Por eso, en su discurso a la nación, escogió bien las palabras: “no nos uniremos a acciones ofensivas AHORA”.

Esa misma noche llega la noticia de un ataque con drones contra la base aérea británica de Akrotiri, en Chipre. Puede ser el Pearl Harbor o el Tonkín de Starmer.

Esa postura, natural y previsible, de las tres grandes potencias imperialistas de Europa, demuestra de manera irrefutable y por enésima vez que no es solo el gobierno de Estados Unidos ni tampoco únicamente Donald Trump el gran enemigo de los pueblos del mundo.

Demuestra también la inexistencia de la dicotomía entre democracia y fascismo. Los supuestos demócratas son los gestores y sostenedores del fascismo. La década de 1930 lo demostró, con todo el apoyo financiero, político y propagandístico de los grandes capitalistas mundiales a Hitler y con la copia de sus métodos por Churchill en la India o por Roosevelt y sus campos de concentración para japoneses en EE. UU., así como la aniquilación instantánea de cientos de miles en Hiroshima y Nagasaki mediante las bombas atómicas autorizadas por Truman.

Pero Stalin celebraba la “victoria de la democracia y de la paz” contra el fascismo.

Pasados ochenta años, se sigue difundiendo el viejo mantra de la lucha existencial de la democracia contra el fascismo, incluso después de que la democracia haya instalado dictaduras fascistas en América Latina, empleado una guerra terrorista en Argelia y destruido Vietnam, Irak y Afganistán.

El genocidio en Gaza, llevado a cabo por el fascista Netanyahu con la total complicidad, armamento, financiamiento e incentivo de los demócratas estadounidenses y europeos, ha abierto los ojos de mucha gente en todo el mundo. La guerra imperialista colectiva de demócratas y fascistas estadounidenses y europeos derribará ese mito de una vez por todas. Sobre todo cuando los pueblos oprimidos de todo el mundo, empezando por los de Oriente Medio, se levanten en armas contra los verdaderos tiranos sanguinarios que los esclavizan en nombre de la defensa de las minorías, de los derechos humanos y de la democracia.

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Tech giant Apple has quietly paid nearly $2 billion for a ‘pre-speech’ tech company whose employees helped Israel commit genocide in Gaza.

And Apple has paid this money, the second-biggest deal in its history, for a company that doesn’t have a product, doesn’t have any revenues and whose website is a single page containing 15 words.

The company, Q.ai, is developing sensors which map the imperceptible movements of a human face to determine the words someone is thinking before they’re spoken.

They call it silent speech.

Or pre-speech.

And it’s exactly as sinister as you think it is.

Q.ai was founded by Aviad Maizels, Avi Barliya and Yonatan Wexler, all of whom honed their skills by testing technologies of apartheid on Palestinians. Maizels is a former commander of Unit 81, the IDF division which builds Israel’s offensive cyber weapons. Barliya, according to his LinkedIn, was an intelligence officer in the Israeli air force, while Wexler is a former Unit 8200 agent.

Apple’s genocide intake

In a blog post announcing the deal, Tom Hulme, an executive at Google Ventures, one of the company’s early investors, revealed that 30% of Q.ai’s more than 100 staff were called up to participate in the genocide of Gaza.

This admission means dozens of people implicated in genocidal acts who served under the political command of Yoav Gallant, an ICC indicted war criminal, are now Apple employees.

It should be a huge scandal. The biggest company in the US, one of the world’s most recognisable names, has folded into its staff dozens of people who served in a military during the period it committed genocide, according to all of the world’s most acclaimed rights experts.

But every single mainstream article which covered news of the deal, from Reuters to the FT, ignored this fact.

Mainstream coverage also ignored a number of other extremely cogent elements to the story, including the nature of the deal and the technology itself.

Apple has paid two billion dollars for something that barely appears to exist.

Q.ai’s website consists of just 15 words.

To find out exactly what the company does you have to look beyond the press releases to the patents Q.ai and its founders have filed.

And these patents read like plot lines from the bleakest dystopian futures.

Sensing silent speech

Q.ai’s technology centres around silent speech.

This is the idea that before we vocalise words and move our mouths to emit sounds, our brain has already sent signals to muscles in our throat and face determining what we’re going to say. Q.ai claims to have invented infrared sensors that can pick up these pre-speech micro-movements.

One filing talks about a “sensing device configured to fit an ear of a user, with an optical sensing head which senses light reflected from the face and outputs a signal in response. Processing circuitry processes the signal to generate a speech output.”

Tech bloggers have suggested Apple has bought the company to enable non-verbal control of an iPhone and other devices via its airpod earphones or smart glasses. An annotated diagram included with the patent shows a person wearing glasses and an earpiece integrated with the technology.

Indeed Apple is no stranger to adopting the technologies of Israeli apartheid, and in fact the company is extremely familiar with Maizels himself.

In 2013, Apple bought Maizels’s first company, PrimeSense, a developer of 3D sensing technology. PrimeSense technology went on to become the foundation for Apple’s Face ID system on its newer iPhone and iPad models.

Nonetheless, two billion dollars for a non-existent technology and a three-year old company, is unprecedented. What isn’t unprecedented, however, is a US tech giant overpaying for an Israeli company.

Overpriced Israeli tech

At this price, however, Israel received a huge $5 billion tax windfall. At the time Zionists crowed it would help the country buy more warplanes and missiles to commit genocide.

The deal for Q.ai, while a lot smaller, will still generate significant tax income for Israel’s struggling economy.

And Israel is critical to Apple.

The company has a large R&D campus in the country, its second-biggest outside the US, into which large numbers of Unit 8200 and Unit 81 graduates are funnelled. Apple CEO Tim Cook is a devoted Zionist, has visited Israel on numerous occasions, and in 2018 received an award from Zionist lobby group the ADL for his efforts to censor anti-Israel speech. Apple has made good on that promise over the last two years, sacking staff for expressing pro-Palestine, anti-genocide views. Cook has never spoken about Gaza.

The price for a ghost company with a few patents, then, looks as much about politics as it does about technology.

That’s not to say Q.ai’s technology won’t be commercialised for consumer applications. It probably will be. And if the tech is realised, the implications for privacy and data collection are frightening.

As are the security state and military applications.

A pre-crime future

A few days after the Q.ai deal, the head of neurotechnology at Israel’s directorate of defense research and development, the country’s equivalent to the US’s DARPA programme, gave her first-ever interview to Israeli media. In the interview she referenced Q.ai and said the Israeli military is working on similar technology. The US has a DARPA project known as Silent Talk which is also working to develop pre-speech sensing and non-verbal control technologies.

Once the technology is developed, and pre-speech established as a legitimate biological human function, how far behind will pre-crime be?

Given the frenzied efforts we’ve seen to shut down and criminalise criticism of Israel under the guise of antisemitism, one can easily imagine a future of pre-speech sensing technology being rolled out to identify would-be critics of Israel. Or the US. Or Europe. Or imperialism in general.

You can imagine it now. “Based on our silent speech detector we have determined you were going to say something hateful or antisemitic or un-American and are therefore under arrest.”

The most dystopian technologies continue to flow out of Israel. And they continue to flow because Israel is empowered by the US and Europe to maintain a system of apartheid built upon invasive and authoritarian technologies of control.

It is therefore no surprise that the creators of Q.ai are veterans of Israel’s genocidal military security state, or that the largest company in the US sees these technologies as essential to its AI future.

And while this story may be no surprise, we should never get used to, and must resist, technologies of apartheid and genocide, and their creators, becoming embedded in our devices, our economies and our lives.

Original article: donotpanic.news

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Amid the largest genocide of this century in Gaza and the violent ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, two prominent Jewish historians believe that one democratic secular state in Palestine is not only achievable but inevitable, writes Stefan Moore.

Two prominent Jewish historians have recently written from different perspectives — one economic and political; one largely theological and moral — that the state of Israel is doomed and living on borrowed time.

Despite coming in the midst of the largest genocide of this century in Gaza and the violent ethnic cleansing on the West Bank, they believe that one democratic secular state in Palestine is not only achievable but inevitable.

In his latest book, Israel on the Brink: Eight Steps for a Better Future, llan Pappé writes that Israel is self-destructing economically, militarily and politically as it finds itself abandoned internationally.

According to Pappé, the farcical two-state solution is “a rotting corpse” and the only way forward is decolonisation, the return of Palestinian refugees to their land, accountability for those who have committed crimes and a new model of statehood for Palestine and the region.

A corollary to Pappé is the moral and religious critique of Zionism by Canadian Jewish historian and biblical scholar Yakov Rabkin who holds that the Zionist movement is a death trap for Jews, the region and the world.

In his recent book, Israel in Palestine: Jewish Rejection of Zionism and his earlier work, What is Modern Israel, Rabkin relates how the Jewish state represents a complete repudiation of the most fundamental values of Judaism.

In Israel, he says, values such as tolerance, morality and humility have been replaced with a new muscular Jewish identity that extols nationalism, aggression, violence and conquest. Traditional Jewish culture is looked upon with contempt.

Rabkin recounts how Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the terrorist Jewish militia Irgun, described transforming the “Yid” from the shtetels of Eastern Europe into the New Hebrew:

“Our starting point is to take the typical Yid of today and to imagine a diametrical opposite…because the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks decorum, we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty. The Yid is trodden upon and easily frightened and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to be proud and independent. … The Yid has accepted submission and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to learn how to command.”

If you hear echoes of Nazi master race philosophy, it’s no accident. Jabotinsky is channeling the views of early Zionist eugenicists such as Arthur Ruppin who sought “the purification of the [Jewish] race” and “maintained his ties with the German theoreticians of racial science even after the National Socialist regime took power.”

As for the Jewish religion, Rabkin dismantles the Zionist myth that the land of Israel was a God-given promise to the Jews – a claim “based on a literal interpretation of the bible that diverged drastically from the teachings of Rabbinical Judaism.”

Yakov M. Rabkin, 2017. (Alexandr Shcherba /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

To begin with, he explains, Palestine was never a homeland for Jews who, in fact, came from Mesopotamia and Egypt and migrated to Canaan (Palestine).  There, according to the Talmud (the foundational source of Jewish theology) Abraham and his descendants were instructed by God to disperse to the four corners of the earth and never to return “en masse and in force” to the land of Israel until they had become spiritually purified.

In other words, until the coming of the messiah, Jews should stay where they are, which, in fact, is exactly where they have been.

Ashkenazi Jews have lived in Europe since Roman times and had been thoroughly assimilated into European culture.  In the 19th century, many were socialists, communists and members of the Jewish Labour Bund which emphasized the right to thrive in their own culture, speak their own language (Yiddish) and fight for justice in the countries they inhabited, Rabkin says.

As a result, when Zionism emerged as a movement at the end of the 19th century, most Jews viewed it as a reactionary cult and a bourgeois adventure opposed to the interest of the Jewish working class, the author argues.

But some of the strongest opposition, Rabkin writes, came from religious Jews who believed Zionism is in direct conflict with the values of Judaism, which teaches that the Torah (the Jewish bible), and not a nation, is what binds Jews together. In the words of one Orthodox Jewish scholar, Zionism was “a spiritual corruption…that borders on blasphemy,” Rabkin says.

The opposition to Zionism, of course, was muted with the Holocaust — a genocide that Zionists immediately seized upon as an opportunity for nation building in Israel.  Not only did Zionists actively thwart Jews from emigrating to other countries during and after the war, they used the Holocaust as a lever to bolster the Jewish population in Palestine, argues Rabkin.

In fact, Nazi anti-Semites and Zionists became joined at the hip. “The anti-Semites wished to be rid of the Jews, the Zionists sought to gather the Jews in the Holy Land,” writes Rabkin.

Leopold von Mildenstein in Palestine in 1933. (Wikimedia Commons/ Public Domain)

In 1933, Rabkin recounts, the high-ranking Nazi SS officer Baron Leopold Elder von Mildenstein travelled to Palestine with his good friend German Zionist Federation leader Kurt Tuchler. After his return, Mildenstein wrote laudatory articles about the Zionist enterprise and a special medal was coined to commemorate his visit.  On one side was a Swastika, on the other, The Star of David.

Today, the Zionist ideology first espoused by Theodore Herzl in 1896 and transmitted through every Israeli leader from David Ben-Gurion, Menahem Begin, Ariel Sharon and onward has morphed into the most right-wing, militant and genocidal government in Israel to date.

The rabidly racist cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir are now followers of a new messianic movement called National Judaism – what Rabkin describes as “the dominant ideology of vigilante settlers who have harassed, dispossessed and murdered Palestinians in the West Bank and encourage the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”

“Since its inception in the late 19th century, critics of Zionism warned that the Zionist state would become a death trap, endangering both the colonisers and the colonised alike,” writes Rabkin. “For those voices…the Zionist experiment was seen as a tragic mistake [and] the sooner it ended … the better for humanity as a whole.”

Concluding with his own reflection as an observant Jew he writes:

“Jewish teachings frequently attribute the root causes of communal suffering to internal moral failings. In this light, Israel’s current trajectory –- marked by impunity, hubris and cruelty, all of which contradict Jewish values –- appears destined for moral and political ruin.”

One Democratic, Multiethnic State

Ilan Pappe at the University of Exeter, April 2023. (Fjmustak/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pappé shares Rabkin’s view that Israel is in a suicidal spiral that will ultimately lead to its collapse. But, then, he takes a giant leap into the future to look at what he envisions emerging from the ruins – one democratic, multiethnic state in Palestine.

Israel on the Brink starts with the disastrous events from the time of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the founding of the Israeli state in 1948 to the rise of the religious right settler movement in recent years.

Like a building engineer surveying a crumbling structure, Pappé points out the fatal cracks in the foundations of the Israeli state that will ultimately widen and lead to the collapse of the Zionist project – an event that he believes “could well change the course of world history in this century.”

Crack No. 1 — a very big one, according to Pappé — is the rise of messianic Zionism — the belief the Holy Land was given to the Jewish people by God to hasten redemption. Pioneered by Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook (1865-1935) it was

“the most extreme form of Zionism: a fusion of messianic ideas with unashamed racism towards the Palestinians and contempt for secular and Reform Judaism.”

Kook’s disciples form a direct line from his son, Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook to today’s far-right West Bank settlers and the dominant political coalition including ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

This movement, writes Pappé, represents one of the most serious cracks in Israel’s unstable political foundations –- a schism between religious right and political Zionists that, ironically, despite their differences, shares the same goal of maintaining Jewish supremacy in Palestine.

Other foundational cracks exposed by Pappé are: the “unprecedented support for the Palestinian cause around the world,” deepening economic troubles as the wealth gap widens, investment dries up and the most affluent professionals flee the country (estimated to be over half a million since 2023).

Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook with Israeli forces at the Western Wall shortly after Israeli forces captured it in 1967. (Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

Added to the list are the “glaring inadequacy” of the Israeli military that, while capable of bombing Gaza to rubble, is not trained for real combat and unable to defeat Hamas; and the crumbling civilian apparatus that is incapable of adequately housing the thousands of Israelis displaced by the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

Finally, there’s the biggest crack of all – the rise of a new Palestinian Liberation Movement at the same time that the Zionist project “is careening towards a cliff edge.” This is a movement of energised young Palestinians who, “instead of pursuing a two-state solution, as the Palestinian Authority has done fruitlessly for several decades, … are seeking a genuine one-state solution.”

The challenge, according to Pappé, will be to meld youthful fervour with a clear political agenda. “Every successful revolution in history arrived when the creative energy of the masses met the programmatic vision of a confident organisation that could voice their demands,” he writes, “what Leon Trotsky described as ‘the inspired frenzy of history.’”

The guiding principle at the centre of this revolution is justice —transitional justice which involves legally addressing systemic human rights violations and holding the guilty accountable and restorative justice to provide restitution to their victims, Pappé says .

First and foremost, this means giving the 6 million Palestinian refugees who were driven off their land since 1948 the right of return to their towns and villages.

Next, is the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Isolated outposts occupied by fanatical settlers will require total demolition but the sprawling urban settlements built since 1967 will present bigger challenges.

In any case,

“transitional justice will involve deconstructing the legal framework of the apartheid state and supplanting it with one that does not discriminate between Jews and non-Jews in property ownership, urban planning and land use.”

But perhaps Pappé’s most sweeping vision of all is reconnecting Palestine with the entire Eastern Mediterranean, the Mashreq, “which were organically linked to each other by cultural, social, economic, historical and ideological ties dating back centuries.”

This entire region, where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in relative harmony for thousands of years before the European colonial powers carved it up with artificial boundaries, could be reconnected with Palestine inspiring “a wider revolution in all the Mashreq.”

In regard to the millions of Jews who will remain living in post-Israel Palestine, Pappé believes they will be willing to contribute to the building of this new future: “The way other Jewish communities elsewhere in the world view themselves as part of their respective countries can be replicated in post-Israel Palestine.”

Envisioning a Future

Gaza solidarity demonstration in Berlin on Nov. 4, 2023, organized by Palestinian and Jewish groups. (Streets of Berlin – Free Palestine will not be cancelled/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 2.0)

Israel on the Brink concludes by conjuring up a post-Israel Palestine in the form of a fictional diary where Pappé is both observer and participant in the building of a future society — beginning in 2027 and culminating in 2048, 100 years after the founding of the Israeli State.

Over this time, he witnesses Israel becoming increasing isolated internationally; the nations of the world imposing crippling sanctions and cutting off diplomatic relations; the mass exodus of Israeli citizens; towns and streets being given back their Arab names; new political coalitions being formed between Palestinian and Jewish parties; fears that the capitalist model will leave power in the hands of an affluent Jewish and Palestinian elite creating a new form of apartheid; the creation of a new educational system and the recognition of returning Palestinian refugees as full citizens.

Is this just wishful thinking to imagine the brutal, racist stain of Zionism will be washed away in the foreseeable future and a new democratic state emerge in its place?

The roadblocks are formidable  –-  from the continued military occupation of Gaza under Trump’s Orwellian Board of Peace to the massive 82 percent support among Jewish Israelis for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, making Israel what American political scientist Norman Finklestein calls “a whole society that has been effectively Nazified.”

Neither Ilan Pappé nor Yakov Rabkin are under illusions about the obstacles; they only believe that the creation of the State of Israel was a tragic historical mistake and, in the interest of the Palestinian people and all humanity, it must come to an end.

One way, as Palestinian author Ghada Kharmi has written is that, “The U.N. that made Israel must now unmake it, not by expulsion and displacement as in 1948, but by converting its bleak legacy into a future of hope for both peoples in one state.”

This would certainly be a first step on the road to the one-state solution that Pappé and Rabkin envision – one that we can only hope to see the beginnings of in our lifetime.

Original article:  consortiumnews.com

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US empire managers have been making some surprisingly honest admissions in recent days, with Senator Lindsey Graham saying the wars of the future are being planned in Israel and Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for a return to old-school western colonialism.

US empire managers have been making some surprisingly honest admissions in recent days, with Senator Lindsey Graham saying the wars of the future are being planned in Israel and Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for a return to old-school western colonialism.

During a Monday press conference in Tel Aviv after a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Graham said that “I’ve been coming here every two weeks whether I need to or not.”

Why is a South Carolina senator traveling to Israel every two weeks, rain or shine? The bloodthirsty warmonger answers this question in short order.

“The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel,” Graham said. “Because if you’re not one step ahead of the enemy, you suffer. The most clever, creative military forces on the planet are here in Israel.”

Graham salivated about the possibility of a US war with Iran, acknowledging that such a war could absolutely result in American troops in the region being struck by Iranian missiles but saying the US should go to war anyway.

“Could our soldiers be hit in the region? Absolutely, they could. Can Iran respond if we have an all-out attack? Absolutely, they can,” Graham said, arguing that “the risk associated with that is far less than the risk associated with blinking and pulling the plug and not helping the people as you promised.”

During a speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the mask all the way off in an unsettling rant about the need to return to the good old days when western powers dominated the global south without pretense or apology.

“For five centuries, before the end of the second world war, the West had been expanding — its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe,” Rubio said. “But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.”

Rubio, a notoriously anti-communist gusano, is here admitting that socialism played a leading role in pushing back against the abusive colonialism and empire-building of the western world in recent decades. A normal person would take this as a strong argument in favor of socialism, but Rubio says it like it’s a bad thing.

Rubio urged Europeans to join their white Christian brethren in the United States in re-conquering the brown-skinned communists and heathens who have been insisting upon their own sovereignty and the advancement of their own interests:

“Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.

“For the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.

“We are part of one civilization — Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”

It takes a special kind of psychopath to look back with fondness upon five centuries of unchecked western colonialism and imperialism and then advocate a return to those horrific days. Mass genocides across entire continents. The African slave trade. The violent subjugation and enslavement of entire populations. That is what Rubio is looking back on and sighing with nostalgia.

And this is of course to say nothing of the savagery his beloved “Western civilization” is perpetrating in the present day. This is the civilization of the Gaza holocaust. The civilization that cannot exist without constant war, exploitation and extraction. The civilization that is presently strangling Cuba to death and preparing for war with Iran. The civilization that still to this day violently subjugates and robs the global south. The civilization of ecocide. The civilization of Epstein.

Western civilization is the most depraved and abusive civilization that has ever existed. It doesn’t need a return to its prime, it needs to be stopped in its tracks and made healthy. This is obvious from a glance at the deranged empire managers this civilization has been elevating to positions of leadership.

Original article:  caitlinjohnstone.com.au

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“We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”

An investigation conducted by Al Jazeera based on evidence collected by the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip has concluded that nearly 3,000 Palestinians have been “evaporated” by Israel through the use of thermal weapons—some of them supplied by the US.

As reported by Al Jazeera on Tuesday, the investigation found that 2,842 Palestinians were killed due to Israel’s “systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit].”

The heat generated by these weapons is so intense, investigators noted, that they leave behind almost no detectable human remains other than blood stains or pieces of flesh.

Israel’s use of such weapons was flagged last year in a social media post by Omar Hamad, a Gaza pharmacist who posted a video purportedly showing a thermobaric bomb being detonated in Beit Hanoun.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Gaza Civil Defense, said hat the investigation was not a mere estimate of Palestinians incinerated by thermal and thermobaric weapons, but the result of painstaking forensic work.

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Israel’s government is completely evil

It is not for nothing that most of the world both abhors and condemns Israeli behavior, whether it be measured by the never-ending genocide in Gaza or the similarly driven terrorizing and deportation of the Palestinian population on the West Bank. Israel is intent on taking full control of historic Palestine and is willing to do whatever it takes to bring that about and unfortunately the United States has been its all too often enthusiastic accomplice in that effort. Beyond that, Israel has bombed and otherwise killed its neighbors in Lebanon and Syria while also enticing Washington to join in the effort to attack Iran and bring about regime change in Tehran. Apartheid Israel, which has declared itself legally and ethnically a Jewish state, intends to become that in reality by eliminating all non-Jews from its ever expanding territory and it is willing to do whatever it takes to bring that about.

There is something that is a tad peculiar about the Jewish state’s sense of identity in that it does not regard killing those who are non-Jews by any means possible as either a crime, or, more to the point, as a sin in spite of the prohibition included in its own Ten Commandments. Nor does Israel consider any agreements it enters into with other countries to be in any way binding on it and its leaders, witness the regular violation of the two ceasefires that Tel Aviv has entered into over Gaza, or its behavior regarding similar arrangements with neighbors Lebanon and Syria. In Lebanon and Syria, Israel is currently spraying “unidentified” though apparently toxic chemicals on farmland near the border to drive away local residents through destruction of their livelihoods. Israel does what Israel does and the United States, which was a guarantor of all the ceasefires as well as of the ongoing peace process, never says a word when Israel breaks the agreements and goes about killing more local inhabitants.

Israel’s latest ploy is to bring about a United States attack on Iran to destroy that country’s ability to strike Israel, making the Jewish state by default the regional dominant military and political power. Israel reportedly convinced Donald Trump not to attack Iran several weeks ago because there was concern that Iran would, as part of its defense, attack targets inside Israel that had the ability to support the American effort. In other words, Israel was seeking a solution to Iran that would not put itself at risk and would instead put the onus on the United States. One might point out that this is hardly the appropriate behavior for a country that is repeatedly praised as Washington’s “best friend and closest ally.” It is anything but that while Trump and the politicians are either too stupid or corrupted to realize that, or too intimidated by the Lobby, to respond as they should if the US interest were truly their priority in relationship to an Iran which does not threaten America in any way.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now called for a meeting with Donald Trump for later this week, which would be the ninth meeting between the two since Trump’s inauguration, far more than with any other foreign politician. Netanyahu has asked to meet with Trump to discuss options for the ongoing indirect discussions with the Iranians. Netanyahu’s office released a statement that “The prime minister believes that all negotiations must include limiting the Iranian ballistic missiles, and ending support for the Iranian axis” of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, which Israel perceives at the principal threats against it.

In any event, it is generally conceded that Trump will do what Israel wants. Netanyahu will also be seeking a plan of action whereby the US will attack and bring about regime change in Iran while also neutralizing its offensive capabilities. Israel meanwhile will stay out of the fight to avoid any damage from the Iranian arsenal. Neat, and any dead Americans resulting from that formula, most probably on US bases in the Persian Gulf region, will just be the cost of doing business with Netanyahu who will be leaving from his sessions with Trump with a smile.

Netanyahu is smiling because he always wins when dealing with American presidents while simultaneously treating the United States like a bit of dirty laundry that can easily be discarded or ignored whenever it is is not useful as a source of money, weapons and protection. Note the disregard for the damage done to the United States by the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy which was without question a major blackmail operation up to the US presidential level run by Mossad to favorably influence policies towards the Jewish state. Even now with many incriminating documents revealed there is total resistance on the part of the Trump regime and the opposition Democrats to honestly expose what was done by our “good friends” in Israel.

But I have described Israel as uniquely evil and there is plenty of evidence for that outside of its treatment of the United States of America as some kind of vassal state that is a source of money and political and military support. As observed above, Israel has never complied with any agreement that it makes with foreign countries. During the course of the current ceasefire it has blocked the entry of food or medicines while also continuing to bomb and shoot Gazans, killing close of 600, including many children. Meanwhile, far from withdrawing its army from Gaza it has increased its foothold in the Strip, occupying close to 60% of the total area as a “Yellow” security zone, presumably leaving the rest as eventually intended for the Trump Gaza Resort or for Israeli settlers who have been appearing in the area in increasing numbers and even staking out new settlements.

As a gesture to indicate some measure of compliance with the ceasefire, last week Israel agree to partially open the Rafah Crossing from Gaza to Egypt which it controls, and the first to pass through were supposed to be those Gazans suffering from injuries and wounds requiring advanced medical treatment. Something like 22,000 Gazans were registered or lined up seeking passage and a long line of ambulances from the Egyptian side were waiting to help. Israel then closed the Crossing in spite of its commitment to open it and reportedly only let 150 injured Gazans pass through it with 50 Gazans who were already in Egypt allowed to return home from the other side.

Another story making the rounds is how the Israeli military has now conceded that its multi year offensive in Gaza has killed approximately 70,000 Gazans, a number that is being praised in some circles because it is considered an honest, though unfortunately brutal, appraisal. Some believe, however, it is meant to throw out a lower number so the real number will never be revealed. The 70,000 number is much higher than what has appeared in the Zionist controlled western media up until now but it is far below other estimates from reliable sources like the British medical journal The Lancet that place the deaths at 186,000, with most of the bodies still buried under the rubble. Some other conservative estimates believe that fully 12% of the original 2 million Gazan population has been killed, meaning close to 240,000.

And when one speaks of how evil Israel is, there is another issue which might be considered. Israel is sometimes described as the leading country in providing resources for organ replacements, a procedure sometimes euphemized as “organ harvesting.” That appears to be true because the thousands of Palestinians who are held without charges in Israeli prisons are treated abominably, to include having their organs removed for marketing purposes if they die and even when they are still living. The evidence for that horrific behavior consists of the bodies of Palestinians that are released from prisons and given to their families for burial. Those bodies frequently have what are presumed to be their viable body organs as well as corneas or even skin removed prior to being returned. The organs are then marketed worldwide. The result is that organ donation in “Israel” is among the highest in the world, despite some religious restrictions and a relatively small population.

So I rest my case. These are not the sorts of things that countries with any sense of morality or respectability embrace. And unfortunately Israel is able to drag Donald Trump and the US Congress along with it, even making Washington do the real dirty work when it comes to confronting nations like Iran. But there are signs that the American public has become tired of the whole charade and Israel’s role in it. The litmus test will come with the handling of the situation with Iran and we should be seeing what will happen there in the next week or two.

Original article:  www.unz.com

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There is a lot of talk about getting rid of the massive agreement that guarantees Israel billions of dollars in military aid each year. And it’s not just critics of Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Senator Lindsey Graham have even said they want to “taper off” the money because Israel is ready to stand on its own two feet.

But while a debate over the annual package would be a most welcome one given the enormous sums of American taxpayer money that has flowed to Israel’s wars in recent years, it is important to keep an eye on what might be a bait and switch: trading one guarantee for a set of others that might be less transparent and more expensive than what’s on the books today.

When President Bill Clinton announced the first Memorandum of Agreement, a 10-year, $26.7 billion military and economic aid package to Israel, he expressed hope that it would complement the advancement of the Oslo Accords, the peace process he had shepherded between the Israelis and Palestinians earlier in his term.

The peace process tied to Oslo pretty much fell apart after expected Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank as outlined in the Wye River Agreement in 1998 never happened; today Israeli settlements considered illegal under international law have exploded, with more than 700,000 settlers living there today and Israelis controlling security in most of the territory. But the 10-year MOU lived on.

Not only has it been renewed through the Bush and Obama administrations; the total outlays have increased. The current one, signed in 2016, pledged $38 billion over the decade, just under $4 billion a year and now all of it military aid. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Israel is by far the biggest recipient of U.S. aid in history, some $300 billion since its founding, with the greatest proportion coming from those MOUs.

Supporters of the aid say it comes with military and strategic partnerships that are supposed to help keep the neighborhood safe for the U.S., Israel, and its “allies” (there are no treaty allies in the region), but the last 40 years have been pockmarked with wars and waves of human displacement and misery. Beyond financially and militarily supporting Israel’s wars, the U.S. has been bombing, regime-changing, occupying, and fending off terrorist insurgencies created by its own policies in Central Asia, the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East since 1999. Today, with Israel’s encouragement, President Donald Trump is poised to bomb Iran for the second time in his current term in office.

On February 3 the Congress passed the latest installment of the current MOU—$3.3 billion. It was a bipartisan affair, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer assuring a group of Jewish leaders the previous weekend, that “I have many jobs as leader … and one is to fight for aid to Israel, all the aid that Israel needs.”

But not everyone is on board with the open spigot. And a spigot it is. According to CFR, the U.S. gave $16.3 billion (which included its annual $3.8 billion outlays) to Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. Israel’s retaliation for those attacks, which killed 1,200 Israelis, has resulted in more than 71,000 recorded Palestinian deaths in Gaza so far, a blockade that has left the 2 million population there largely homeless, starving, sick, and unsafe. Americans have reacted by rejecting the prospects of further aid, with a plurality now—42 percent—saying they want to decrease if not stop aid altogether. That is up from the mid-20 percent range in October 2023.

Beyond Americans’ aversion to funding the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, a conservative fissure over continued, unconditional support for Israel has opened wide over the last year, exposing another rationale for discontinuing the aid: It is not “America First.” It not only siphons off aid from much needed renewal at home, but forces Washington to aid and abet another country’s foreign policy, which is increasingly counterproductive and contrary to our own politics and values.

The region is not safer, and moreover, it has not allowed for the United States to reduce its military footprint as guarantor of security there.

One then-congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), was vocal in her opposition to this aid. Israel, she pointed out, has nuclear weapons and is “quite capable of defending itself.” She has pointed out Israel’s universal health care and subsidized college tuition for its citizens, “yet here in America we’re 37 trillion dollars in debt.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY.) posted on X that he voted against the spending bill on February 3 in part to deny Israel the $3.3 billion in aid. He has said the aid takes money out of Americans’ pockets and proliferates human suffering in our name. “Nothing can justify the number of civilian casualties (tens of thousands of women and children) inflicted by Israel in Gaza in the last two years. We should end all U.S. military aid to Israel now,” he said in May of last year.

In an interview with The American Conservative last week, he said he is speaking for his Kentucky district and despite a retaliatory 2026 primary challenge driven largely by Trump and donors linked to the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he will continue to raise the issue in Congress. He said he has asked his GOP constituents every year whether to maintain, increase, or cut Israel annual aid since 2012.

“I’ve polled that [question] every election cycle in my congressional district among likely Republican voters, and this was the first year that a majority of people answered nothing [no aid] at all, or less,” said Massie. “It’s not a third rail back home. It’s a third rail inside of the Beltway.”

According to reports last month, Israel is “preparing for talks” with the Trump administration to renew the MOU for another 10 years. One might be flummoxed to hear, however, that Netanyahu is giving interviews in which he says he wants to “taper off” American aid in that decade “to zero.” Israel has “come of age” and “we’ve developed incredible capacities,” he said in January.

Immediately after, Graham, who seems to spend more time in Israel than Washington these days, said he heartily agreed and hoped to end the aid sooner. “I’m going to work on expediting the wind down of the aid and recommend we plow the money back into our own military,” he said. “As an American, you’re always appreciating allies that can be more self-sufficient.”

The idea of self-sufficiency and furthermore the concept of Israel releasing itself from any “ties” that might come from the aid is not a new one among supporters here and especially the hardline right in Israel. “Cut the US aid, and Israel becomes fully sovereign,” Laura Loomer charged on X in November. In March of last year, the Heritage Foundation called for gradually reducing the direct grants in the next MOUs starting in 2029 and transitioning gradually to more military cooperation and then finally arms transfers through the Foreign Military Sales by 2047.

Israel, the report concludes, should be “elevated to strategic partner for the benefit of Israel, the United States, and the Middle East. Transforming the U.S.–Israel relationship requires changing the regional paradigm, specifically advancing new security and commercial architectures.” The plan also leans heavily on future Abraham Accords ensuring trade and military pacts with Arab countries in the neighborhood.

Therein lies the fix, say critics. The reason these staunch advocates of Israel including Netanyahu, the most demanding of its leaders over the last 30 years by far, is willing to forgo MOU aid, is that they envision it will come from somewhere else, less politically charged.

“The emerging plan is to substitute formal military funding—known as Foreign Military Financing—with greater U.S. taxpayer-funded co-development and co-production of weapons with Israel,” says the Institute for Middle East Understanding, which adds that instead of extricating from Israel’s messes, the U.S. will be further “enmeshed” in them.

The think tank points out that the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), the most unreconstructed pro-Israel organ in the United States, came out with its own report on the aid, and surprise, also advocated phasing out the MOU. In addition to a commitment by Israel to spend more of its GDP on defense and other co-investments with the U.S. on research and development, the U.S. would “provide Israel $5 billion each year through what would be known as a Partnership Investment Incentive—or PII. This PII would provide funding via existing foreign military financing (FMF) mechanisms that Israel would use to procure American military hardware.” The difference would be that it would have to be spent entirely in U.S. industry and on cooperative partnerships in the region, all while maintaining Israel’s “Qualitative Military Edge.”

Geoff Aronson, longtime Middle East analyst and occasional TAC contributor, said the aid has been “an important if not vital competent in ensuring American and Israeli hegemony in the region” and is linked intrinsically to balancing U.S. strategic relations and normative Israeli peace with Egypt and Jordan, which gets billions in military aid (not as much) from the U.S. too. None of this is going to go away, he surmised to TAC.

“The question that is being posed is how can we continue to support Israel’s ability to work its will in the region without committing ourself to X, Y, Z or committing to a new partnership, a new agreement,” he said. “Watch what you wish for, because it might come true.”

Original article:  www.theamericanconservative.com

Segue nostro Telegram.

Nelle ultime due settimane sono stati trasmessi all’Iran due messaggi significativi, entrambi respinti.

Uno proveniva dagli Stati Uniti e l’altro da Israele. Il primo era: “Noi [gli Stati Uniti] effettueremo un attacco limitato e voi dovreste accettarlo; o almeno, dare solo una risposta simbolica”.

Teheran ha respinto questa richiesta, affermando che avrebbe considerato qualsiasi attacco come l’inizio di una guerra su vasta scala. Il messaggio di Israele, trasmesso attraverso uno dei vari mediatori, era: “Non parteciperemo all’attacco americano”. Chiedeva quindi all’Iran di non prendere di mira Israele. Anche questa richiesta ha ricevuto una risposta negativa, insieme alla chiara precisazione che se gli Stati Uniti avessero avviato un’azione militare, Israele sarebbe stato immediatamente attaccato.

Parallelamente, l’Iran ha informato tutti gli Stati della regione che qualsiasi attacco lanciato dal loro territorio o spazio aereo avrebbe comportato un attacco iraniano contro chiunque avesse facilitato tale azione militare statunitense.

Come contesto, la percezione iraniana della minaccia di un’azione militare statunitense è passata dal livello di una minaccia gestibile a quello di una minaccia esistenziale. Di conseguenza, scrive l’analista iraniano Mostafa Najafi, la leadership iraniana ha “concluso che un attacco statunitense, anche se di portata limitata, non porterebbe alla fine del conflitto… [Piuttosto, comporterebbe] il persistere dell’ombra della guerra e un aumento dei costi di sicurezza, economici e politici per il Paese. Su questa base, una risposta globale a qualsiasi attacco, pur accettandone le conseguenze, è vista come una strategia per ripristinare la deterrenza e impedire il protrarsi di una pressione militare sostenuta”.

Sembra, dato il rapporto di Hallel Rosen del Canale 14 israeliano sui colloqui tra il comandante statunitense del CENTCOM, il generale Cooper, e le sue controparti israeliane il 25 gennaio, che Cooper e il suo team abbiano detto ai loro colleghi israeliani che l’amministrazione statunitense

stessero cercando solo un’operazione “pulita, rapida e senza costi in Iran”, che non richiedesse un dispendio significativo di risorse, né comportasse il coinvolgimento degli Stati Uniti, né scivolasse in complicazioni diffuse all’interno dell’Iran. L’Iran, ovviamente, non è il Venezuela. Sembra che la ricerca di Trump di un’operazione di spicco “In-Boom-Out” per l’Iran si stia rivelando sfuggente.

Comporta un rischio troppo elevato di dare una cattiva immagine, di non apparire come un “vincitore”, soprattutto in un momento in cui il tasso di approvazione di Trump è in calo.

Gli inviati statunitensi Steve Witkoff e Jared Kushner erano arrivati in Israele (da Davos, dove si erano concentrati sia sull’Ucraina che su Gaza) per incontrare Netanyahu il sabato in cui il team del CENTCOM era in città.

Senza dubbio Witkoff ha comunicato a Netanyahu, da un punto di vista politico, le esitazioni di Trump riguardo al possibile attacco all’Iran che il generale Cooper stava delineando a Tel Aviv.

Il messaggio principale che Witkoff avrebbe portato era l’invito di Trump, lanciato lo stesso fine settimana sia a Netanyahu che a Putin, a partecipare al “Board of Peace” (Comitato di pace) di Trump (compresa la componente di Gaza).

Putin ha dichiarato di essere pronto a rispondere all’invito di Trump al Board of Peace, previa revisione dei documenti da parte del suo Ministero degli Esteri, e ha anche suggerito che Mosca potrebbe essere disposta a pagare la quota di 1 miliardo di dollari richiesta per l’adesione permanente attingendo dai beni russi congelati negli Stati Uniti, aggiungendo che ulteriori fondi congelati potrebbero essere utilizzati per ricostruire “i territori che hanno sofferto durante le ostilità tra Russia e Ucraina [–] una volta firmato l’accordo di pace”.

Putin ha dichiarato di voler sollevare queste ultime idee in una riunione il giorno seguente con Witkoff e Kushner, nonché con il presidente palestinese Abbas, che avrebbe dovuto visitare Mosca lo stesso giorno.

L’attenzione mondiale è concentrata sul progetto più caro a Trump: la ricostruzione di Gaza. Questo progetto faro promosso da Trump, scrive Anna Barsky su Ma’ariv (in ebraico), “mira a trasformare la Striscia in un’entità civile restaurata e prospera, sul modello degli Stati del Golfo. A guidare questa visione sono due dei suoi più stretti consiglieri: Jared Kushner e Steve Witkoff, che stanno esercitando pressioni su Trump affinché faccia pressione su Israele affinché accetti di avviare la ricostruzione nelle zone di Gaza attualmente sotto il controllo dell’IDF, all’interno della zona smilitarizzata”.

“Mentre i consiglieri più stretti del presidente Trump spingono per una rapida ricostruzione della Striscia, Israele insiste che senza un disarmo completo, reale e irreversibile di Hamas, non ci può essere alcuna ricostruzione, nemmeno nel territorio sotto il controllo dell’IDF… [Il piano Witkoff] rappresenta quindi un risultato completamente contrario alla visione del mondo di Netanyahu, secondo fonti israeliane… Secondo loro, il Primo Ministro non solo desidera impedire un simile scenario, ma dispone anche degli strumenti pratici per farlo“.

”Perché l’amministrazione Trump sta investendo così tante energie nella ricostruzione di Gaza?”, ha chiesto Nahum Barnea, decano dei corrispondenti politici israeliani, a un uomo che era al centro dei colloqui tra i due governi nel primo anno di Trump:

“Denaro”, ha risposto l’uomo. “È tutta una questione di affari. La ricostruzione di Gaza costerà centinaia di miliardi di dollari. Il denaro dovrebbe provenire dagli Stati del Golfo. Gli uomini d’affari vicini a Trump stanno cercando di ottenere la loro parte, in commissioni di intermediazione, in società di costruzione ed evacuazione, e in sicurezza e manodopera”.

“Aspetta”, disse [Barnea]. Pensavo che fossero la Turchia e l’Egitto a puntare ai fondi per la ricostruzione, non gli uomini di Trump. [L’uomo] sorrise. Entrambi. Ti sorprenderò, disse. Anche gli uomini d’affari israeliani stanno mostrando interesse. Credono che parte di questi fondi finirà nelle loro mani“.

Barnea era stupito: ”Coloro che hanno distrutto le case a Gaza ripuliranno le sue rovine e ricostruiranno le sue città. Un lieto fine!”.

Quindi qui è possibile vedere come si stanno mettendo le cose. La domanda che preoccupa l’élite politica israeliana è cosa succederà se Trump decidesse di promuovere il progetto di ricostruzione di Gaza senza il consenso israeliano:

Attenzione, “Kushner e Witkoff non si considerano ‘decorazioni’. Hanno una visione coerente per Gaza, che è in netto contrasto con quella israeliana”, cita Barsky riferendosi alla sua fonte di alto livello.

Barnea osserva ironicamente: “Netanyahu farà in modo di bluffare sulla fase due del piano”. Tuttavia, l’amico di Barnea ha sorriso: “Potrebbe non esserci ricostruzione, [ma] ci saranno i soldi”, ha affermato.

Il presidente Putin, senza dubbio, vede tutto questo. E indovinate un po’? Quando Witkoff e Kushner sono arrivati a Mosca, desiderosi di discutere l’accettazione di Putin come membro del Board of Peace, i primi erano accompagnati da Josh Gruenbaum, un altro investitore ebreo americano – un nuovo membro attivo del team di negoziazione di Trump – che era venuto per negoziare con Netanyahu il controllo post-militare di Gaza sotto il Board of Peace di Trump. (Gruenbaum è appena stato nominato consigliere senior del Board of Peace).

Witkoff, Kushner e Gruenbaum hanno chiaramente a cuore il progetto immobiliare a Gaza. Putin deve esserne consapevole.

Putin probabilmente ha il polso dell’amministrazione statunitense. È stato lui, dopotutto, a suggerire che alcuni dei fondi congelati della Russia potessero essere utilizzati per ricostruire “i territori che hanno sofferto durante le ostilità tra Russia e Ucraina”. Trump a Davos ha accennato a un fondo di ricostruzione di 800 miliardi di dollari per l’Ucraina, non come sovvenzione a fondo perduto (con grande disappunto di Zelensky), ma a condizione che l’Ucraina si ritiri dal Donbas, cosa che Zelensky rifiuta.

Zelensky, tuttavia, ha un disperato bisogno di denaro ora (da distribuire ai suoi sostenitori). Witkoff e Kushner necessitano del sostegno di Putin per sbloccare i fondi del Golfo per il “progetto faro” di Trump: la ricostruzione di Gaza. Hanno anche bisogno dell’appoggio di Putin per spingere Netanyahu ad avviare finalmente la Fase 2 di Gaza.

Putin ha incontrato il presidente Abbas poco prima del suo incontro con Witkoff, Kushner e Gruenbaum. Putin ha un vantaggio in questo caso; nella sua risposta iniziale al Board of Peace, ha sottolineato in modo particolare l’importanza delle decisioni del Consiglio di sicurezza delle Nazioni Unite sulla Palestina. Se Witkoff desidera che il peso politico di Putin porti alla ricostruzione di Gaza, contro l’interesse di Netanyahu, la dimensione palestinese dovrà entrare in gioco, in un modo o nell’altro.

Ushakov, assistente di Putin, ha anche osservato che è stata discussa la “situazione della Groenlandia”. Un ulteriore vantaggio? Lo sfruttamento congiunto dell’Artico da parte di Stati Uniti e Russia è stato prospettato al trio di imprenditori?

Nella geopolitica di Trump tutto è “business”.