[noir]

[Zag Note: General discussion of other topics about Israel/Palestine should be made in the proper subforum. Only discussion relating to the US move is appropriate in this thread]

[noir]

You don't seem to be aware that most Palestinian Muslims are bad people and most people living in Israel are good people.

They were not born bad people, it's decades long of hate cult and indoctrination funded by UN and EU.

Gaza reaction to Trump move. Death cult

[noir]

Historical changes in the Arab Islamic world

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/blog/ ... i-academic

Saudi academic defends Trump's Jerusalem move, saying Arabs should accept Israel's 'historic right'

Date of publication: 17 December, 2017

A Saudi academic has defended the controversial US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, calling on Arabs to 'accept' Israel's claim to the holy city. Tags: Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, Palestine, Trump, Israel.
A Saudi academic has defended the controversial US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital and called on Arabs to "accept" Israel's claims to the holy city.

Abdulhameed Hakeem, the head of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies in Jeddah, made the remarks on US-based al-Hurra Arabic-language TV channel on Saturday.

"The decision will prompt a positive shock towards moving the stagnant water surrounding negotiations," Hakeem said.

"Us, as Arabs, have to come an understanding with the other side and know what its demands are so that we can succeed in peace negotiation efforts," he said.

Hakeem's comments come after President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that the US would break with international consensus and move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel.

The Saudi royal court has slammed Trump's announcement as "unjustified and irresponsible" but has been muted in its criticism of the move since.

It has led many to ask where Riyadh stands on the issue.

"We have to admit and realise that Jerusalem is a religious symbol for the Jews that is just as holy for them as Mecca and Medina are for Muslims," Hakeem said.

"Arab mentality must free itself from the heritage of Gamal Abdel Nasser and political Islam of both the Sunni and Shia sects, which has instilled for purely political interests the culture of hating Jews and denying their historic right in the region."

Hakeem's comments have prompted angry responses on social media and many Twitter users have harshly condemned what they consider an appeal for the "normalisation of relations" with Israel.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates' deep distrust of Shia power Iran is shared with Israel and has helped thaw relations.

Saudi Arabia denies it has any official relations with Israel, despite a deluge of recent reports claiming rapprochement between the two states.

Israel seized control of the eastern part of Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and sees the whole of Jerusalem as its undivided capital, something not accepted by the international community.

The Palestinians view the east as the capital of their future state, according to the 1993 Oslo Accords, but Trump's move puts this hope in serious jeopardy.

[foxdemon]

India seems to have changed they position in recent years. I guess the Islamists are doing a good job uniting the world against them.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-prison-escape/u-s-citizen-recaptured-after-bali-jail-break-idUSKBN1EC09E


India's muted response to Trump's Jerusalem move stokes Arab unease
Sanjeev Miglani
4 MIN READ
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A dozen Arab ambassadors have asked India to clarify its position on the U.S recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, diplomatic sources said, after New Delhi’s muted response suggested a shift in support for the Palestinian cause.

Protestors shout slogans during a protest, organised by various religious organisations, against the U.S. decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in New Delhi, India, December 17, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Countries around the world, including U.S. allies Britain and France, criticized Trump’s decision, but India did not take sides.

SPONSORED


Instead, the Indian foreign ministry in a brief statement, said India’s position was consistent and independent of any third party.

The bland statement made no reference to Jerusalem and prompted criticism at home that it was insufficient, vague and anti-Palestinian.

Israel maintains that all of Jerusalem is its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state and say Trump’s move has left them marginalized and jeopardized any hopes of a two-state solution.


ADVERTISING


Last week, envoys from Arab states including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait based in New Delhi met Indian junior foreign minister M.J. Akbar to brief the government about an Arab League meeting on Dec. 9 condemning the U.S. decision, a diplomatic and an Indian government source said.

The envoys also sought a more forthright Indian response, the sources said.

But Akbar gave no assurance and the Indian source said the government had no plans for a further articulation on Jerusalem, which is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Protestors burn posters of U.S. President Donald Trump during a protest, organised by various religious organisations, against the U.S. decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in New Delhi, India, December 17, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
“Akbar did not promise anything,” the diplomatic source briefed on the meeting said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

India was one of the earliest and vocal champions of the Palestinian cause during the days it was leading the Non-Aligned Movement while it quietly pursued ties with Israel.

But under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, New Delhi has moved to a more open relationship with Israel, lifting the curtain on thriving military ties and also homeland security cooperation.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist ruling group views Israel and India as bound together in a common fight against Islamist militancy and long called for a public embrace of Israel.

Modi in July made a first trip to Israel by an Indian prime minister and did not go to Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority and a customary stop for leaders trying to maintain a balance in political ties.

P.R. Kumaraswamy, a leading Indian expert on ties with Israel at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, said a “major shift” on India’s policy had been evident since early this year when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited New Delhi.

“With the Palestinian president standing by his side, Prime Minister Modi reiterated India’s support for Palestinian statehood but carefully avoided any direct reference to East Jerusalem,” he said.

For decades, India’s support for a Palestinian state was accompanied by an explicit reference to East Jerusalem being the Palestinian capital. But Delhi has moved to a more balanced position, refusing to take sides in an explosive dispute, he said.

During the meeting last week, the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia and the Palestinian Authority spoke, the diplomatic source said. Besides the dozen envoys there were charges d‘affaires from several other countries in the region.

“They were expecting more from India, perhaps to denounce Israel and the U.S.” said former Indian ambassador to Jordan and Anil Trigunayat. “But would it really make a difference, adding one more voice?”

Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Editing by Nick Macfie

[starman2003]

The only ethnic cleansing in the ME is this.

Long ago, an Iraqi jewish woman said the synagogue she knew in Iraq was burned down, but by the regime as alleged but by local zionists who wanted to scare the people into leaving for Israel.
But let's assume what transpired in arab states was ethnic cleansing. One key difference between that and what Israel is doing or is poised to do, is we in the US didn't subsidize the former. We shouldn't be backing a state which does this, especially given the risk of enflaming the region and harming our own interests. Continued backing, under internal pressure, will call the present system into question...

[Hindsite]

They were not born bad people

They are raised as children to be bad people because of their Satanic religion of Islam.

[noir]

They are raised as children to be bad people because of their Satanic religion of Islam.

Many children are born and raised as Muslims and didn't become jihadi children like the Palestinians. The Palestinians are unique case because they are incited and funded by all over the world (UN, EU, Arab world) to stay as they are, the springhead of Islamic jihad. They are the only people in the world, who can inherit their refugess statues (economical benefits) to the end of the generations, and receive per man much more than any other refugee in the world.

You can see in this thread, how the cause is important to the non Arab, non Palestinian as well. It's the ultimate anti Western Jihad. Sadly also to all sort of western Nazis, fascists and antisemites

[skinster]

noir, with your incessant Muslim bashing you sure do display yourself as a hasbara troll. Keep going.

I am aware of Mr Finkelstein's arguments.

Actually you're not because you wouldn't demand dumb shit like Palestinians have to "recognize" the colonial state that military occupies, blockades and continues to expand into Palestinian territory. I mean, Palestinians recognize it for its settler-colonialism but I guess that's not limited to Palestinians.

Why doesn't Israel recognize a state of Palestine? Israel is already there, and it's constantly expanding (which is why it has no legal borders) and is constantly eating up Palestinians and their homes as well as land in other countries (Syria). Palestinians don't have to recognize shit, legally or morally, and you'd know that if you knew what international law dictates, which Israeli violates every day with its constant and consistent expansion, every day war crimes and with it's lonely attempt to claim sovereignty over the entirety of Jerusalem, which to date no international legal body has recognized. My guess is Israel's own supreme court hasn't recognized this move, as it tends to oppose the settlements, with words as usual only.

Anyway...

Canaanite Arabs, including in Palestine, have inhabited our land continuously and with no interruption for over 40k years, the age of our cities like, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Jericho is over 11k years. In our time of existence, our land faced many projects of foreign occupation and colonization, but none ever succeeded.

The Hebrew tribes invasion from Egypt, if it actually even happened, lasted for less than 250 years and only in small locations in Palestine. The Greek occupation lasted 215 years. The Roman occupation lasted 565 years, the longest foreign occupation in our history. The Crusader occupation lasted only 88 years, except in the coast were it lasted for another 100 in a few cities. The Ottoman occupation lasted 400 years exactly. British occupation lasted 30 years.

The current Zionist occupation has lasted 70 years, do you think it will last longer than the Crusader occupation of Jerusalem at 88?

All foreign occupation periods in our people's history amount to 1700 years; that is less than 4% of the 40k years Canaanite Arabs have continuously lived in our region and successfully resisted invasion. Do you think that the Anglo-Zionist Crusade can exterminate us from our land? Can they do better than the Romans and last over 500 years?

We live in the age of computers, the age of exponential trajectories, when social experiments and change are happening at rapid speeds; can the Zionist Supremacist ideology modelled for 1700s sensibilities exist for longer in this age?

Rejoice! Palestine will be free very soon! Our people and our cities have been given promises by the coming storm: that it will rid the standing tree trunks of all the fake branches; as Mahmoud Darwish said in his poem.

It doesn't matter where anyone builds their diplomatic palaces. Jerusalem still speaks Arabic. I've heard her.

Hundreds of restaurants offer falafel, hummus, shawarma, pomegranate juice, and knafeh. Believe me. I've tried them all. But there aren't any delis. No corned beef sandwiches on rye. No bagel shops. No lox. Don't get me wrong. All those things are delicious. They're just not there. Because Jerusalem eats rice and yogurt with every meal. She uses bread as a spoon. She checks her teeth for leftover tabbouli. She's an Arab.

Certain aromas waft through the air. Cumin. Coriander. Nutmeg. Cinnamon. Turmeric. Sumac. Allspice. Those spices don't come from Poland and Brooklyn. Her women push their herbs in her markets. Thyme. Sage. Basil. Mint. Lots of mint. Those herbs don't come from Russia and Miami Beach. I've hung out with her. She drinks coffee that's almost too strong for human consumption. She eats parsley-infused meats. She sweats garlic like the rest of us. She's an Arab.

It's easy to get confused in her alleyways. They meander every which way, twisting and turning, each corner bringing a new little journey. But if you ask for directions from one part of the Old city to another, her children will just tell you, "Just go straight." Jerusalem is still an Arab. I promise you.
Look in her closets. She collects ornately embroidered gowns.

Visit her weddings. She "changes the light bulb" when she dances.

Go out to dinner with her. She fights over the bill.

Talk to her for more than five minutes. She asks you if you're married. And if you're not... Well, then prepare yourself for a much longer, and quite uncomfortable, conversation.

She wears a keffiyeh. Sometimes it's because she's protesting. And sometimes it's just to keep warm.
When she has some time for herself to listen to some music, she sings along with Fairouz, Abdel Halim, and Um Kalthum.

Jerusalem's been Arab for 1400 years. Crusader campaigns tried to change her. It didn't work. Israeli colonization, settlement, and profanity have tried to change her. They've failed terribly. Some stuttering speech about an embassy won't succeed either.

She's been through decades of foreign occupation, more than once. She has suffered the attempted theft of her heritage. She has watched the dispossession, expulsion, and looting of her children's lives, homes, and histories. She has even endured the propaganda that she still solely belongs to someone who doesn't remotely understand the beautiful creature she grown into today. Yet, despite these attempts to defeat her, Jerusalem still speaks Arabic. With a Palestinian accent.
She's one of us. Don’t worry. She can handle this.

[noir]

Canaanite Arabs,

Most of the Arabs in Palestine came; in the north from Syria and in the south from Egypt. They have nothing to do with the Canaanites.

[skinster]

Palestinian rage will rise to the surface in time
It is tempting to interpret the announcement of a delay, however brief, in US vice president Mike Pence’s visit to the Middle East this week as the ultimate travel warning. It follows an eruption of regional unrest over Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

On Friday, during protests, Israeli occupation forces killed four Palestinians and injured more than 250.

US officials, however, are not worried about the safety of Mr Pence, who is due in Israel on Wednesday. In fact, predictions of a third Palestinian uprising in response to Mr Trump’s Jerusalem declaration may be premature.

After decades of flagrant US bias towards Israel, Mr Trump has only confirmed to Palestinians what they already knew. Some even grudgingly welcomed his candour. They hope he has finally silenced US claims to being an “honest broker” in an interminable “peace process” that has simply bought time for Israel to entrench the occupation.

The Palestinians’ anger towards Israel and the US is a slow-burning fuse. It will detonate at a moment of their choosing, not of Mr Trump’s.

Rather, the hesitation in Washington over the vice president’s visit reflects the messy new diplomatic reality that the White House has unleashed.

Mr Pence was due here to smooth the path to Mr Trump’s long-promised peace plan and to highlight the plight of Christians in the Middle East. The door has now been firmly shut in his face on both counts. Palestinian officials have declared a boycott, as have Christian leaders in Palestine and Egypt.

Instead of cancelling Mr Pence’s visit or exploiting the extra days’ breathing space to try to reverse the damage, the bull-headed Trump administration is eager to break more of the china.

Following the diplomatic precedent set in May by his boss, Mr Pence is scheduled to visit the Western Wall on Wednesday night in Jerusalem’s occupied Old City and immediately below the Al Aqsa mosque plaza.

Described as “official”, his visit will be invested with far graver symbolism following Mr Trump’s designation of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The US policy change on Jerusalem has been a hammer blow to the three main pillars supporting the cause of Palestinian statehood: the Palestinian Authority, the European Union and the Arab states.
https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/pale ... e-1.685346

[QatzelOk]

You don't seem to be aware that most Palestinian Muslims are bad people and most people living in Israel are good people.

Maybe he needs more Disney movies to education him as to 'how the world works' (in IMAX)

[skinster]

This is a good article:

Zionism in the Light of Jerusalem
Donald Trump’s official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is an embarrassment. A salutary embarrassment.

It’s a clumsy, all-too-obvious unmasking of decades of bipartisan U.S. policy whose contempt for Palestinians has been cloaked with a smile and a handshake.

As such, it’s an embarrassment for the Zionist political and media elite that prefers to operate behind smiles and handshakes, and not flaunt their power.

It’s an embarrassment to liberal Zionists and “peace process” promoters everywhere—in the American political parties and media, in European conservative and social democrat governments, and in Jewish Zionist organizations. For fifty years, they have laser-focused attention on the post-’67 “occupation,” and done all that they can [nothing concrete], in solidarity with the Israeli Jewish peace movement [dwindling to insignificance in an increasingly fascistic political culture], to end the occupation [ minimize its cost to the Jewish state, ‘cause “no concessions, no withdrawals, no Palestinian state” is already proclaimed Israeli policy].

It’s an embarrassment to the Arab monarchs and the Palestinian Authority functionaries, who for decades have collaborated in the task of subduing Palestinian rage as Israel went about its colonizing project, holding out the promise that the good American Daddy and his kinder, gentler Israeli Jewish progeny would one day reward the Palestinians for their good behavior.

It’s an embarrassment to those liberals who want to portray Donald Trump as a uniquely evil interloper imposed on American politics by a foreign power, rather than understand him as the product of an American political culture that they helped to create while obtusely refusing to recognize what they were doing.

The only parties who are not embarrassed are the “hard”—that is, intellectually honest and consistent—Zionists in Israel and the United States (many liberal Democrats included) and Donald Trump himself, who is immune to embarrassment.

All this embarrassment provides a fine example of the positive repercussions of the “Trump-effect” that I discussed in a previous essay, which is steadily eroding the thin remaining patina of America’s “soft power” in the world, an essential support of the Euro-American imperialist alliance.

After all, Israel’s relentless Judaization of East Jerusalem, consistent with its long-held declaration of sovereignty over the entire city, was proceeding swimmingly, with only the feeblest occasional murmurs of protest, accompanied by massive countervailing deliveries of arms and money, from the peace-process-loving governments of Europe and America. Trump’s gratuitous, self-aggrandizing gesture, by unmasking that as the de facto acceptance of annexation that it is, only brings unwanted attention to the whole rotten game, and to the hypocrisy of those governments especially.

Good riddance to the pretense! As Noura Erakat says: “Trump has removed the emperor’s clothes to reveal the farce of the peace process…[He] has finally ended the United States’ double-speak and should have ended any faith that the US will deliver Palestinian independence or that Israel is interested in giving up its territorial holdings captured in war.” And Rashid Khalidi: “Trump may have inadvertently cleared the air. He may have smashed a rotten status quo of US ‘peace processing’ that has served only to entrench and legitimize Israel’s military occupation and colonization of Palestinian land for a quarter-century.”

In other words, Trump has suddenly and single-handedly destroyed American’s pose as the “honest broker” in the Middle east and the Solomonic arbiter of world affairs in general, in a way that forces the European and Palestinian political leaders to make an explicit break from what is now declared American policy. For now, of course, that break is rhetorical, but should it remain so—if European and Palestinian leaders do not work a political strategy independent of, and in opposition to, the United States—there will be no denying their capitulation and servility.

Indeed, Europe, in the person of the German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, has already laid down the markers for itself: “Germany can no longer simply react to U.S. policy but must establish its own position…even after Trump leaves the White House, relations with the U.S. will never be the same.” Even after Trump leaves the White House. This is a recognition that the American regime—not just Trump, but precisely what he is the culmination of—is not a trustworthy and reliable partner for the management of global capitalist stability. This is what Trump is wreaking. And it’s a very good thing.

As excessive and gratuitous as Trump’s Jerusalem announcement was, there is no question that it is the culmination of American politics. It is the perfect example of how Trump is the symptom not the cause of long-festering political rot, the product not the antithesis of American political culture. His recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is the fulfillment, exactly as Trump says, of a promise that’s been de rigueur for presidential candidates, and of the demand of a law (Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995) passed twenty-two years ago by overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Congress. Just six months ago, the Senate—including Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders—voted 90-0 to demand that Trump “abide by its provisions.” Schumer, who believes he’s on a mission from God to be the guardian of Israel, had last week criticized Trump for his “indecisiveness” about declaring Jerusalem the “undivided capital of Israel” and moving the embassy.

Who can forget the scene at the 2012 Democratic Convention, when an amendment to the platform declaring Jerusalem the Israeli capital was adopted against the clear opposition of the majority? That was shoved down the party’s throat by Obama, who had it shoved down his throat by AIPAC. (It was language Obama had removed from the platform, which AIPAC browbeat him into restoring.) As I discussed in a post at the time, the blithely ignored floor vote was a display of Stalinist party discipline for which Obama was congratulated by an MSNBC roundtable including O’Donnell, Maddow, and Sharpton.

It was Obama, too, who (after becoming first American President to give bunker-buster bombs to Israel. He did that secretly, because he didn’t want it to be known that his really brave and progressive and highly-publicized peace-process demand that Israel stop settlement construction in exchange for such gifts, which Israel of course ignored, was another empty American bluff. And it was Obama who, in 2013, became the first American President to demand that “Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state.” That was a new, gratuitous and excessive demand at the time, foisted on everyone by Netanyahu and AIPAC because they knew it would be unacceptable to the Palestinians. Obama’s adoption of that requirement, which has become locked into American policy, was no less damaging to the ostensible peace-process, with its infinitely-receding goalpost, than Trump’s Jerusalem declaration, and perhaps more contemptuous of the Palestinians. It’s the equivalent of demanding that “Native Americans must recognize that America is a White Man’s state.”

Really. Think about it.

So, whatever the problem is with declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, it’s not Trump’s. It’s America’s. It’s a problem the Democrats share responsibility for, and will not get us out of.

Past Prologue
Let’s name it clearly: It’s America’s problem with Zionism.

After the “You must accept the Jewish State” insult and the “You must accept Jerusalem as capital of the Jewish State” insult, can we dispense with the diversions? Can we recognize that the problem isn’t how many settlers are in which part of which city, or how long and where exactly the wall should be located, or the Green Line or the Blue Line, or, indeed, the “occupation”? Let’s, without any more fear or hesitation, name and critique the fundamental problem: Zionism.

Zionism is a colonialist project. Israel is a colonial-settler state. The fault lies in colonialism—you know, that thing where a group of people, who want the land somebody else is living on, take it. By subjugating, expelling, and/or exterminating the indigenous population. That’s what has to be named and opposed. Every other problem in the context is a derivative of that.

Zionism has the particular distinction of being the last major initiation of a blatant settler-colonial project. It was possible at the end of WWII (1945-8) because racism and ethno-supremacist colonialism were still integral parts of the Western worldview. The great world powers could still blithely dismiss the lives, land, and humanity of an Arab population as dispensable—secondary both to the aspirations of the largely European Jews who formed the Zionist vanguard and to the guilty consciences of European gentiles. It was compensatory colonialism, with the compensation paid by an expendable third(world) people.

In the post-WWII, post-holocaust context, Zionism had the further peculiar distinction of being able to conjure about itself an aura of virtue that effectively occluded the blatant injustice of the colonialism it is. Thanks to the consistent and intensive Zionist influence on Euro-American political, media, and cultural institutions, that aura has enshrouded Zionism for Westerners’ eyes for 69 years, long past colonialism’s sell-by date. That aura of virtue is what makes breaking up with Zionism so hard to do, for so many, to this day.

I’ve discussed more of the history and arguments about this in a previous essay. At this point, there is so much information available from so many channels, including Israeli scholars, that supporters of Israel who are intellectually-honest have a hard time denying that the Zionist conquest of Palestine was colonialist ethnic cleansing, and Israel a colonial state. Liberal Americans know very well that, if such a project were to be proposed today, they would denounce and reject it—no ifs, ands or buts. Today, any person of a modern, secular, liberal cast of mind recognizes the abolition and rejection of colonialism as one of history’s irrefutably progressive milestones, and would see any attempt at colonial conquest as an unacceptable historical crime.

Yet that is exactly what Israel is doing. Israel is exactly that attempt.

“Attempt” is an important word here. Zionists want to think all the nasty work of ethnic cleansing is in the ancent (1948) or at worst early-modern (1967 when liberal Zionists grudgingly acknowledge, colonial aggression was certainly past its sell-by date) past. They present Israel, whatever its nasty origins, as a finished historical product: a liberal democracy filled with juice bars and tech startups—which would be stable and progressive, if only the fanatical Arabs/Muslims would leave it alone.

Indeed, a favorite Zionists argument I’ve heard delivered as if it’s a killing rhetorical blow packed with irrefutable historical realism, is some version of: “So what, you’re a colonizer, too. American Indians!” Gotcha!

It baffles me that anyone thinks that’s an effective argument. Accepting the damining admission that the relationship between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs today is analogous to that between European settlers and Native Americans from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century (and leaving the ethics or that aside), one might start a reply with the following:

Being historically realist and all, we have to recognize that, tragically, over those four centuries, the Native American population was so completely ravaged that it now constitutes less than 1% of the population. If Native Americans were now the majority of the population in North America under white settler control; if they were engaged in a fierce resistance struggle to prevent being expelled or exterminated; if they had the support of hundreds of millions of their neighbors, as well as of populations and governments throughout the world, as well as of an established international ideological and legal framework that forbade and denounced the colonial project the white settlers were still trying to complete (while demanding that everyone recognize America as the White Man’s State)—then you would have a relevant analogy.

Sorry, but the Zionist project, Israel, is not finished. It is quite unfinished and precarious, and Israeli leaders know it.

Back to the Future
This is so because the Palestinians are not defeated and have not surrendered. Too few of them have been exterminated; they have not been expelled far enough away; they have not been thoroughly enough subjugated. The existence and resistance of Palestinians put the lie to the idea that Israel is a stable, finished state and that the dirty work of Zionist colonialism is in the past. As the rallying cry of many Zionists in Israel today has it, they still have to “finish ’48.”

Israel is profoundly insecure. Not because of any external military threat, but because of the presence of the Palestinians. Their defiant presence is an intrinsic threat to the Zionist project. External threats—whether ideological or economic or military, whether from specific countries or from the international community—derive from the presence of the Palestinians and what that implies about the legitimacy of the Zionist project in an anti-colonial, anti-apartheid world.

Every attack on Gaza, Lebanon, or Syria, all the hair-pulling anxiety over Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, and where the next war will just have to be, and how many Palestinians can be dispossessed or expelled how quickly before somebody in the world—especially Americans, and most especially American Jews—starts to push back, demonstrates that Israel is an unfinished colonial project that hasn’t quite figured out how to achieve the final submission of its colonial subjects. It was as true in 1999, when Edward Said said it, as it was in 1948, and as it is now: “the contest is as alive as ever.”

Indeed, the famous loaded question “Does Israel have a right to exist?” is posed by Zionists so insistently precisely because it is an unsettled question about the future. It’s not only about past events—whether Zionists back in the day had the right to establish the colonial entity they did, but also about a present, aspirational practice—whether they now have the right to establish the colonial entity they would like to. The question, really—and those hard-core, “finish ‘48” Zionists know it—is: Will Israel exist?

The question is also asking us: “Do you agree that it is right for Zionists to be establishing a colonial-settler Jewish State, ethnic cleansing and all?” Are you going to sign on for that?

Israel will only be finished and stable if it achieves that. One can argue that it’s almost there or that it’s a long way off, but done it ain’t.

That’s why we should take the opportunity that Trump’s latest embarrassment of American policy gives us to exit for good the phony two-state peace-process paradigm, to forthrightly name and reject Zionism and the colonialism it is. We need to go back to the future, to a proposal for a single, if bi-national, secular democratic state, a de-colonized polity in the territory of historic Palestine, where Arabs and Jews can live in peace and equality. Something along the lines of the “secular, democratic state” the PLO called for in 1968 and the “full secular democracy” that Edward Said championed again in 1999.

Love It Loud
To be sure: I am not sanguine about this. The political way forward is not clear.

On the one hand, the exhaustion of the peace process and the Palestinian Authority is now a done deal, as I hope everyone now recognizes. At least as important, the de-legitimization of Zionism, is already well-advanced. Politically and ideologically, the actions and discourse of Israel and its partisans themselves do as much as anything to discredit Zionism. And, despite its being kept in the cultural shadows, more Americans are aware of the problems with the dominant Zionist narrative. The BDS movement is strong and growing. On American campuses today, Zionism is losing the all-important ideological battle, especially in the crucial constituency of young Jewish-Americans, and the effects of that are radiating throughout the culture. The reality of this effect is demonstrated by the increased anxiety among the guardians of Zionism, with their increasing efforts to censor and suppress criticism of Israel, to define anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, and to outlaw anti-Zionism and the BDS movement. The arc of history is not bending toward Zionist colonialism.

To wax ironic, Zionism’s fatal weakness may be the effect of its greatest strength—its tenacious entwinement in our political culture, which is hard to overstate. We live in a country where powerful politicians and the wealthy donors who control them proclaim their fealty to Israel; where Israeli officials enjoy veto power over candidates for office down to the level of State Assembly. where the Secretary of State gives a “devoutly Zionist” speech and is still criticized for not being obsequious enough to Israel, where the Vice-President declares “I am a Zionist,” and where a President who was excoriated for avoiding service in the American army can say “I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch, and fight and die” for Israel, and nobody bats an eyelash.

Really, think about it.

Perhaps most vomit-inducing in the present context, it’s a country where the Congress has just overwhelmingly passed a bill de-funding the Palestinian Authority (except, at Israeli insistence, the PA security forces) if they give any support to any family member of a Palestinian convicted of what Israel calls “terrorism” (and others would call anti-colonial resistance), and at the same time that Congress allows the great charitable organization, The Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), to collect $50 million a night, tax-free to itself and tax-deductible to its donors. All that money is needed, over and above the $3.7+ billion the U.S. gives Israel every year, in order to provide extra-comfortable “well-being facilities” for the beleaguered Israeli “coed infantry units” who have the tough job of dragging Palestinian families from their homes and blowing them up—those families the PA is now forbidden to support. Friends of the IDF galas are hosted in New York by Republican billionaire Sheldon Adelson, and in Los Angeles by Democratic billionaire Haim Saban, and entertained by celebrities like Seal and Israeli-born KISS-er, Gene Simmons (Chaim Witz). Bi-partisanship rocks.

America has become a Zionist country. And it shows. And it’s discomfiting. For the most powerful people and institutions in the United States, Zionism has become a core component of American ideology and politics, married, like nothing else is, to capitalism and imperialism as a co-equal existential imperative.

It’s a peculiar relationship because capitalism and imperialism do not need Zionism, and may even be weakened by it. Zionism is a surplus oppression. The excessiveness and gratuity of Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem, which so many people recognize, is only a reflection of the excessiveness and gratuity of Zionism itself, which too many people have for too long taken for granted.

Dragging people from their homes and blowing them up is excessive, an atrocity too far. A partner whose addicted to such behavior will inevitably create trouble for the capitalist-imperialist family, which has enough problems of its own to deal with. It’s the U.S who insists, excessively, on including Zionism in a polyamorous arrangement, and who is, as can be expected in such cases, losing its mind over this misplaced affection, and endangering the core relationship.

This is what the German FM and other members of the European Frist Wives’ Club see in Trump’s Jerusalem declaration. This is what a lot of people see in all the state-destroying, jihadi-chaos-creating aggression from Iraq to Syria and heading toward Iran—all of which makes no sense until you understand that the American project throughout has been an overcomplicated ménage-à-trois: capitalism-imperialism-Zionism.

As Shoshana Bryen says: “The United States military, then, is a Zionist institution.” Bryen is herself a perfect example of the intimate relations between Israel and the American military, having made the rounds as former Director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA,, the prime meeting spot where Israelis entice senior American officers to see the world as Israel does), and as a lecturer at the National Defense University and the U.S. Army War College.

The hope is that it’s all becoming too obvious and too much—an embarrassment of too many riches for Zionism. It’s why Hillary Clinton’s campaign decided not to highlight—except to donors—her passionate love for Israel: “We shouldn’t have Israel at public events. Especially dem (Democratic) activists…. What about this as a base, and then she can drop in Israel when she’s with donors.” While the donors and elite still swoon, the arc of the Democratic base is bending away from Zionism—and the Zionists know it.

There Is No Time
On the other hand, we have to recognize the persistent weaknesses of the Palestinians, who suffer constant, horrendous, human and material losses every day at the hands of a Zionist colonial machine. Israel, the Jewish State, has already established an apartheid regime, the late stage of colonialism, and has made clear that it is determined to extend that as far and as long as it can, with all necessary force. The illusion that America would do something to stop or reverse this has been finally shattered. Though it’s stance may be changing, thanks to the likes of Trump, and it is a medium- to long-term weak spot for Israel, the “international community” still grants Israel effective impunity.

The Arab countries? Ha! Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, and Egypt will supply the rope and tie the knot. The staunchest Arab supporters of Palestine—Iraq, Libya, and Syria—just happen to be the countries ravaged by that United States military institution. A weakened Syria and (non-Arab) Iran may give some assistance, but really, nobody’s coming to save the Palestinians.

External support in the way of boycott and sanctions will help also, but significant victories can only come from organized resistance by Palestinians themselves. The Palestinian political leadership which, as Noura Erakat says, “has abandoned confrontation with Israel as a matter of policy” would have to be changed. New leadership would have to emerge that renounces Oslo and forges a militant struggle for equal political and social rights, a multi-level strategy of resistance against colonialism and apartheid. This will be very tough, in a community that’s been ground down for decades by the Israeli-PA security apparatus, and the collaborationist mindset and economic interests that support it.

To be thoroughly frank: though militant non-violent civilian resistance must be the core of struggle, it has to be backed by some kind of armed power. The ANC’s victorious fight against South African apartheid was not confined to “terrorist” Nelson Mandela’s prison cell; his comrades were busy outside. A movement to defeat colonialism and apartheid must demonstrate the capacity not only to take punishment, but also to inflict it, to hurt the forces and institutions imposing Zionist oppression and to disrupt the normalcy of Zionist daily life. Everywhere, enemies of the IDF. No “well-being” respite. No justice, no peace. That is the only way victory over colonialism and apartheid ever has, or ever will be, won.

Since the Zionists’ founding spasm of brutal ethnic cleansing—expelling over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs while killing thousands of others—and since colonialism fell into disgrace, Israel has been constrained to pursue further ethnic cleansing in a fitful series of measures, with levels of brutality adjusted for various international political and ideological exigencies. But it has not ceased to probe those limits. Israel is working very hard to compress political time and make it suddenly possible again to exterminate or expel enough Palestinians (we’re talking at least tens of thousands) to stabilize Israel for most of a century. That’s one of the things Israel’s, and its American patron’s, support of jihadi chaos in the region, as well as its attempt to foment war with Iran, is all about. The fat lady hasn’t sung, but the orchestra is in full swing. The Palestinians don’t have forever to stop the music.

So, there’s no room for false hope or assumptions of inevitable victory. There’s an opportunity now for a successful fight to defeat Zionism, pitched precisely as struggle against colonialism and apartheid, and it must be seized quickly. It is also not impossible for Zionism to defeat the Palestinians in some effectively irreversible way, as it keeps trying to do.

It’s just the case—the practical, utterly realistic political case—that nothing, not a thing, can be gained by trying to revive the zombie two-state peace process that has been killed over and over again by the U.S. and Israel themselves. To seal the deal, Donald Trump just drove a stake through its heart. There is no two-state solution. There is only one state: either the one colonial, apartheid state that’s coalescing now, or the one democratic state of equal rights that justice demands.

For American left allies of Palestine, it’s time, past time, to clearly reject, not just the occupation of Jerusalem or the West Bank, but Zionism tout court.

Back to the future it is. Liberal Zionists like to imagine ’48 is finished in some democratically acceptable way. Militant Zionists know they still have to finish ’48 as ruthlessly as possible. Principled anti-Zionists—that is, principled anti-colonialists—have to work very hard to make sure that ‘48 ends in failure, and that Israel never becomes the finished colonial project it wishes to be.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/13 ... jerusalem/

[noir]

The Stockholm jihadi chants:

"Long live Margot Wallström (Swedish foreign minister)! Because we must show that those who fight for us, we’ve got their backs."

1. The Stockholm chants:
"Boycott, boycott, boycott Israel!"
"Jews remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad shall return." (Reference to killing Jews)
"Long live Margot Wallström! Because we must show that those who fight for us, we’ve got their backs."
"Arm me, please! Allahu Akbar!"
"Let all of Stockholm hear us! Let every Zionist in Stockholm hear us! Crush Zionism!"
"To Jerusalem we march, martyrs by the millions! Allahu Akbar. Honor to Islam."
"We pray to Allah the Almighty for victory over the descendants of the cows, the descendants of apes and pigs, over the sons of Zion."
(Stomping on Israeli flag.) "We die, Palestine lives!"
"To Jerusalem we march, martyrs by the millions!"

[skinster]

Jeez are you really going to keep pushing the THIS IS ANTISEMITISM line when a) this is obviously about colonialism and settler-colonialism and has been very well documented. Here's some history:

Anyway,

“Live in fear,” Israeli officer warns German protesters on Facebook
An Israeli military officer is openly threatening civilians in Germany with violence or death.

On Friday, reservist Major Arye Sharuz Shalicar posted on Facebook an article about Israel’s undercover gunmen – so-called mistaravim – who dress up as Palestinians to abduct and injure civilians during protests against Israel’s military occupation.

Shalicar added his own comment: “Please share! The message of this article also goes out to all those in Germany who think they can burn the Star of David publicly without being punished for it. We know who you are, where you are and how we can bring you to justice. We determine time and place. Live in fear!”

The linked article is illustrated with a masked Israeli gunman waving a pistol with one hand as he grabs a Palestinian by the head with another.

Mistaravim have regularly been involved in Israeli assassinations of Palestinians, including inside a hospital room.

Threat of violence
Shalicar’s comment is an open threat of violence against civilians on German soil.

When one Facebook user in Germany objected to Shalicar – as a representative of a foreign government – taking justice into his own hands, the Israeli officer doubled down: “Nice to know that you as a German are ready to watch how Jewish symbols are burned on German soil as in the 1930s. I’m not ready for that. And I’m German too.”

Shalicar seems to be following the Israeli government line that the burning of Israel’s national flag as a form of protest against its decades-long military occupation and massive systematic violence against Palestinians – carried out in the name of the self-declared “Jewish state” – should be viewed as anti-Semitism.

There have been protests in many countries, including Germany, since US President Donald Trump legitimized Israel’s military occupation and ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem by recognizing the city as Israel’s capital earlier this month.

But Shalicar seems to be going a step further by threatening to harm or kill protesters in Germany, just as Israel routinely slays Palestinians who protest or resist its violent land thefts and incursions into their villages, cities and refugee camps by heavily armed occupation forces.

Yet there is reason for concern, as Israel’s Mossad spy agency does have a long history of carrying out assassinations around the world.

“Gangsta”
According to the “About” section on his verified Facebook page, Shalicar was born in Germany in 1977 to parents who immigrated from Iran. He completed service in the German military as a paramedic in 1997, before settling in Israel in 2001, where he joined the army as a paratrooper.

After stints working for Germany’s public broadcaster ARD in Tel Aviv and for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he began working as an Israeli army spokesperson and media liaison to Europe in 2009.

Although his Facebook page now identifies him as a “former” spokesperson, Shalicar still provides an official Israeli army email address as a contact: shalicar@idf.gov.il.

In a 2015 tweet, the Israeli embassy in Berlin invited Shalicar to lecture to its staff about his life story.

Israeli media have promoted Shalicar as a former “gangsta” who spent his teenage years “fighting for his life in a Muslim-dominated suburb of Berlin.”

Shalicar also appears to have been received by the Trump administration. Last month he posted a photo of himself at the office of Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s “special representative” for the so-called peace process.

A request for comment has been sent to the German foreign ministry.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/al ... s-facebook

[noir]

Jeez are you really going to keep pushing the THIS IS ANTISEMITISM line when a) this is obviously about colonialism and settler-colonialism

Best Takiyya line

[Ter]

This is a good article:

Jonathan Cook wrote:

Laith Marouf wrote:

tl;dr

You did not address any points I made in my posts, you just paste some long (most probably very biased) articles and tweets and push the "send" button.

(some tweets you posted double in your last two posts so I assume you don't even pay attention to what exactly you post, as long as it contains the anti-Zionist jargon "apartheid, racism, colonial, settler, etc.")

[Hindsite]

Jeez are you really going to keep pushing the THIS IS ANTISEMITISM line when a) this is obviously about colonialism and settler-colonialism and has been very well documented. Here's some history:

The Jews are settling back into Israel, their land.

[skinster]

I don't know why Ter is under some bizarre thinking where I'm here to serve him. I ignore most of your posts because they tend to be shit and are obviously from an old man who's had decades of brainwashing and now is throwing out his toys because he sees people say mean things about the ethnosupremacist shit that he likes. But if you insist, remind me again what you feel I missed out on.

Hindsite, the settlements are illegal, even your ilk, Israeli law, US law and international law oppose them...at least in public, catch up.

[Ter]

I don't know why Ter is under some bizarre thinking where I'm here to serve him. I ignore most of your posts because they tend to be shit and are obviously from an old man who's had decades of brainwashing and now is throwing out his toys because he sees people say mean things about the ethnosupremacist shit that he likes. But if you insist, remind me again what you feel I missed out on.

Oh, I was under the mistaken illusion that we were communicating our own biases towards each other because you often cite me and send me dozens of tweets in your replies.
You can call me old but you are not a spring chicken either, you recently disclosed your past normal child-bearing age.
It must be sad to be on the losing side whilst siding with the Arabs, but you excel in the verbal aspects, even desperately so. Your BDS is going nowhere relevant and your Arabs are nowhere near an independent state (because of their unreasonableness).

As for Jerusalem, because this is what this thread is all about, you and the Arabs could not possibly think that Israel would give up the remaining wall of their temple and other Jewish sites?

By the way, posting Galloway tweets is really going down the lowest dregs of tweet-land !

[noir]

By the way, posting Galloway tweets is really going down the lowest dregs of tweet-land !

This is how Christian lands like "Turkey", Syria and Egypt were Islamised. There were powerful collaborators from within. He and Margot Wallström (Swedish foreign minister) know that they rely on the Muslims settlers as voters. All the massacares in the world will not wave their support for the ultimate jihadi cause.

The Muslim conquerors could not have maintained their hold over the overwhelmingly Christian populations of the lands conquered by jihad had it not been for the support and collaboration of Christian princes, patriarchs, and army commanders.14 This collusion derived from a context of inter- Christian dynastic and religious rivalries or personal ambitions. Coming from the highest levels of power and authority in administrative, ecclesiastical, and military bodies, these betrayals triggered the Islamization of millions of Christians. Whereas in a Christian realm the Church would be subject to a Christian king who would interfere in theological definitions, control the patriarch's treasury and curtail his power, under the Islamic caliphate the patriarch was given exclusive responsibility for his Christian flock. But this prerogative was conceded on his total compliance with the caliph's service and orders. The patriarch thus became the instrument of the caliph's anti-Christian policy and oppression, guaranteeing the steady trend toward Islamization.

A historical overview of the complex and numerous intricacies that led to the Islamization of powerful Christian civilizations spread over the Middle East, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Anatolia, and Southeastern Europe reveals several unchanging key elements.

The emergence of powerful collaborationist parties economically and politically linked with Muslim rulers.

Hence it was within the religious, political, intellectual, and economic domains of the Christian world that the system of dhimmitude developed and grew. The culture of dhimmitude was characterized by surrender and passive submission, imposed by leaders who had been won over to the service of Islam by ambition and financial interest.