So, Let's Get this Straight.

Trump, despite the advice and warnings of America's security/intelligence agencies and his country's major allies, gives in to Netanyahu's propaganda campaign against Iran, and walks away from the Iran nuclear weapons deal.

Iran, therefore, in an act of crushing military stupidity, fires a missile barrage at Israeli targets in the occupied Golan Heights. So lethal is the Iranian barrage that no one is even hit.

Israel immediately retaliates, bombing the shit out of Iranian military installations in Syria.

This couldn't possibly be a set-up, could it? The timing of these events is pure coincidence, right?

Why does Reichstag Fire keep coming to mind? There's just that powerful stench of someone really spoiling to start a war.

Meanwhile, today's Guardian editorial contends that Trump is sowing the seeds of war on Iran. Foreign Policy columnist and Harvard prof, Dr. Stephen Walt, sees the same war clouds gathering.

We've Done a Good Job at Pretending. Now We Have to Figure Out If the Liberals Deserve to Be Called "Liberal"?

It's a safe bet that Trump's announcement on Jerusalem as Israeli capital will likely bring a motion to the floor of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Harper/Trudeau machine has been in Israel's pocket for a decade.  Whenever there's a motion dealing with Israel and Palestine the vote comes down to this : The World versus the United States, Canada and a trio of bought and paid for South Pacific atoll states.  The World speaks with one voice. Us, we five (minus three), are the only support Israel still has.  A great relief when one of the two principals has a veto on the Security Council.

We'll know just what lurks inside Justin Trudeau when that motion is brought before the General Assembly. If we've become a nation of lickspittles we will see it then.  I hope Canada would find its once legendary decency and join "The World" to denounce Trump and support the Palestinians yet I doubt that's in the cards.

It's time we, the average guy, knew how this country came to be aligned under Harper and how little Trudeau has even slightly altered that alignment, our new normal.

We're no longer a country resembling the Canada as we knew it at its apex during Pearson and his immediate successor.  We don't get leaders of that calibre any more. We get technocrats who view national leadership as a management function to transactional accommodation. Now we have leaders who ignore what is right and just in favour of what is advantageous and expedient. And so they very quietly go about this nasty little business of ours hoping that people like you will be none the wiser.

While We're On the Subject of Jerusalem.

The Palestinians are once again on people's minds (sort of, briefly) due to Donald Trump's announcement that the US will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  It sort of confirms the idea that if a nightmare drags on for decades, half a century is plenty, we forget what really happened and we're prepared to swallow just about anything.

Most people I know have never read David Hirst's "The Gun and the Olive Branch." (You can get it here, free it seems, in PDF.) It's a long read but in it the veteran Middle East journalist shatters many of the myths we have come to embrace as the accepted narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There's probably no prime minister in Canada, sitting or past, who would want you to read it for it would not cast them in a flattering light.

But if you're not up for that sort of effort, you might to whet your interest with Dr. Shir Havir's account of the origins of this intractable conflict that has seen an entire people held in captivity for a half century, their lands occupied and annexed by a state that persistently flouts international law, a rogue state we proudly proclaim our ally.

About Jerusalem

Trump has broken with previous administrations to announce that the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The question on everyone's lips is "why?" He wasn't compelled to do it. If anything the decision seems ill-thought out, even capricious. It threatens to set the region on fire. The Guardian is calling it "diplomatic arson."

The history of Jerusalem is vast and full of turmoil. The name, Urusalima, was bestowed by Mesopotamians around 2400 BC abut 1500 years before the Israelis first turned up.

"During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.[8] The part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE.[9] In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent. Today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters.[10] The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger."

According to the Israeli version of the Great Book of Murderous Myths and Fatal Fantasies (as opposed to the slightly different Christian and Islamic versions), it was God herself who bestowed Jerusalem on the Israelis for all time or at least what remains of time. God means for them to have it. God doesn't want anyone else to have it. God has spoken. God is great. God is good. As an outsider it strikes me as curious how anyone who picks up any of the versions of that book gets so f#@ked up.

Now we know Donald Trump doesn't read books and I'm pretty sure he hasn't squandered a lot of time studying his Bible. I'm sure he still thinks Amos was a black guy on the radio who had a partner named Andy.

So if Trump isn't acting on some deeply held religious conviction, why is he going to such lengths to ruffle feathers? If there's one discernible trait in this presidency it's been Trump's predilection for doing things that will piss someone off, often a lot of someones. He has repeatedly offended and alienated America's allies, even the closest. He has embraced the Thuggees, anti-democratic authoritarians such as Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Poland's Duda, even the murderous Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. He's like a bull in the china shop of decency. Why?

I may have stumbled across the answer in my most recent negotiation with my beagle, Buddy.  A long time ago someone tipped me off. When you ask a beagle to do something, the hound's first reaction is, "What's in it for me?" If the beagle doesn't like the deal as he sees it, he just looks the other way. If he sees what you're asking is a sweet deal - for him, he's with you. I don't mean to disparage beagles with comparisons to Trump, but...

What if Trump sees the presidency primarily as a business opportunity? He gets to dole favours out of the public purse with an expectation of future accommodations of the the Trump business empire for his kids. The Mango Mussolini has always talked in the context of "deals." He's proud of his ghost-written book, "The Art of the Deal." That was pretty much the entire curriculum of his faux college, Trump University. He promised his supporters, the Gullibillies, that he would make "the best deals" for America, renegotiating everything.

Trump has always put his personal interests ahead of all others. He's legendary for screwing those who risk dealing with him, put trust in him. He monetizes their confidence and trust and often leaves them empty-handed and bitter. That's all he knows how to do. Mentally the man is not well. Intellectually he's every bit as infirm. His greatest, perhaps only real skill, is to shamelessly exploit opportunities especially in perceived weaknesses.

Why then would he not exploit the presidency? By zigging where his predecessors all zagged, he can make some people beholden to him. He can accumulate markers to be called in at another time.

Look at what he has done in his first year in office. Everything from rampant deregulation, gutting the EPA, defunding government and the social safety net, tax relief for the richest of the rich (including familia Trump), it's all been to benefit a class of people, the sort who know to repay favours.

It's not a reach, not at all, to see Jerusalem as another example of Trump's modus operandi in action. Sure it will set back if not destroy any chance of Middle East peace and it's almost certain to result in a lot of deaths for years, perhaps generations to come, but it's an opportunity that can be monetized by the empire in years to come. The old bastard is in it for the deal.

For Years Canada has Outsourced Our Foreign Policy to the U.S. Why Not Let Germany Have a Turn?

If you want to know who is steering Canada's foreign policy look no further than Canada's voting record in the U.N. General Assembly whenever a resolution concerns Israel.

Under our fundamentalist prime minister, Harper, it was no surprise that Canada was blindly loyal to Israel against all comers. Less expected, however, was that the current prime minister would continue on in lockstep with his predecessor.

You don't hear about these votes. They don't make the news. The government doesn't go out of its way to get the word out either. It seems it's not something they want to share with the Canadian public. Fortunately our friend, Alison, at Creekside periodically updates Canada's voting record. It's always the same. The rest of the world versus the U.S., Canada, and a gaggle of "bought and paid for" votes from small island states of the central and south Pacific. Clear away the island state clutter and it's Canada and the country to which we've outsourced our foreign policy, the United States, versus the world.

Maybe it's time we tried something new, something better. Maybe it's time we showed the slightest hint of integrity. Why not outsource our foreign policy to another country, one less Trumpian? Why not Germany?

In the post-war years Germany became a staunch supporter of Israel. Sure, guilt, had a big role in that but it was a relationship that flourished. Recently, however, the Germans seem to have had enough.

The cabinets of both countries traditionally hold a joint meeting once a year, alternating annually between Berlin and Jerusalem. The next German-Israeli intergovernmental consultation had been planned for May, but the Chancellery announced suddenly a few weeks ago that the meeting would be "delayed." The reason provided was the "many international meetings in the scope of the German G-20 presidency."

But that wasn't the real reason. The cancellation was Berlin's way of protesting against Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to legalize illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. That was the first diplomatic affront. A much more significant one took place Tuesday when German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel traveled to Jerusalem, where he planned to meet with the prime minister. Netanyahu , though, cancelled their planned meeting at the last minute.

It's not unlike two friends who have drifted apart over the years. Irritation comes first, but neither has the courage to say so openly. When the conflict does finally erupt, however, it is correspondingly more vitriolic. That's the situation in which Jerusalem and Berlin currently find themselves, and Foreign Minister Gabriel isn't the only one getting increasingly resentful. So too is Chancellor Angela Merkel, who, in a 2008 before the Knesset, declared that solidarity with Israel is an integral part of Germany's raison d'état.

It has long been one of the fundamental convictions of German foreign policy that, given the crimes committed by the Nazis in World War II, the country should hold back in its criticism of Israel. But this axiom no longer holds. One reason is Netanyahu's construction of an increasing number of new settlements in the West Bank, thus imperiling the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. Another is the disquiet in both the Chancellery and the Foreign Ministry over the right-wing Israeli government's harrassment of opposition groups. In addition to fears about the failure of the two-state solution, fears are also mounting about Israel's own democratic culture.

If Germany has slowly, reluctantly reached this point, what's Canada's excuse for still looking the other way?

Who Will Decide Canada's Policy on Israel, Barack Obama or Donald Trump?

When US secretary of state, John Kerry, proclaimed that Israel had to choose - it could be a Jewish state or a democracy, just not both, Washington's abrupt epiphany must have caught Justin Trudeau and Steffie Dion with their short pants down.

If Washington can say the emperor has no clothes, where does that leave Ottawa?

Trudeau Mk.ll, like Harper, has broken with Canadian tradition in paying fealty to Benjamin Netanyahu. Put another way, Justin enjoys kissing Bibi's ass every bit as much as Stephen Harper in his day.

Oh, this is more than simply supporting the Tory motion to censure the BDS (boycott/divest/sanction) movement. As Alison at Creekside has diligently reported, the Trudeau government has continued the Harper policy of steadfastly supporting Netanyahu by voting against every pro-Palestine resolution in the UN General Assembly.

On every occasion, until now, Canada and the United States have carried Israel's water even as the rest of the world, as in the "rest of the world" - the entire EU, South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia - refuse to look the other way.

That changed when the US refused to veto a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Israel cease stealing Palestinian land, what little of it remains, for ever more Israeli settlements. With that, America pushed the "reset" button on US-Israeli relations. Kerry followed through with a speech branding the Netanyahu government as the "most right wing in Israel's history."

The Israelis were predictably outraged at being exposed for what they are and have been for decades. Netanyahu's education minister, Naftali Bennett, blurted out that, as of January 20th when Trump is inaugurated, the "two state solution" will be off the table which, of course, it has been all along. Bennett then repeated his call that Israel simply annex most of the Palestinian West Bank.

John Kerry was speaking the obvious truth when he said Israel's settler policy is creating a one-nation state, one in which Palestinians will see their homeland erased even as they remain captives to the Israelis. What's next, ethnic cleansing - driving the Palestinians off their lands, again, and herding them to Jordan?

The problem with this is, when you have 150 nations - make that 151 now - opposed to Israeli extremism, that leaves just the one - Justin Trudeau's Canada isolated, exposed.

Of course, Justin can wait until the 20th when the old order is restored by president Donald Trump but he's been put on notice. He can't pretend any more. He cannot continue to look the other way. Trudeau, like Harper before him, has made our government, our nation and us - you and me - complicit in this. Once again this prime minister has shown that all of his principles come with price tags and can be had for the right price.

If Our Close Allies Do It...

Surely it can't be a crime. "It" is the now infamous "double tap." The Americans like to do it with Hellfire missiles delivered from their drones. The Saudis do it with airstrikes.

It works like this. First you hit a designated target - an enemy emplacement, a wedding, a funeral, a hospital, whatever.  Then you sit back and wait for people nearby to come running to help the original victims. Just to prove that no good deed goes unpunished, not when you're around, you then drop another weapon or two to clean out the rescuers too.

Which leads us to this finding by a UN panel investigating the Saudi airstrikes on a funeral in Yemen believed to have slaughtered over a hundred mourners and their rescuers:

IHL, international humanitarian law, not sure that cuts much ice with our allies especially our really good allies, the United States, the Saudis, or the Israelis. What's the point of having all that expensive hardware if you can't slaughter civilians, including medical personnel when the opportunity arises?

How America ReStructured the Balance of Power in the Middle East. Hint - Neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia Came Out on Top

It was a strategic defeat when Washington failed to impose a "secular" government on Iraq and, instead, had to back off and watch a government representative of Iraq's long marginalized and brutally suppressed majority, the Shia, ascend to power with its public support. If Bush/Cheney didn't capitulate they were in for two endless unconventional wars - one with the Sunni army who were sent packing off home with the toppling of Saddam's government, the other with the Shiite militias. And so Nouri al Maliki came to power to run roughshod over a country that has never demonstrated itself capable of functioning as a state except at gunpoint.

Here's the thing. The Iraqis have never said they want to be Iraqi. They weren't Iraqis until Britain and France shook hands and drew some lines carving up what, until the end of WWI, had been Ottoman Empire territory. Voila, instant Iraq! It's probably fair to say the Iraqi people were simply living, breathing spoils of war. Without any voice in the matter they, Kurd/Sunni/Shiite were much akin to captives.

When Saddam was toppled, the Americans never consulted Iraq's ethnic constituencies to discover what they wanted. Judging by what has happened ever since that might have been a priceless lost opportunity.

The Kurds were upfront. They wanted an autonomous Kurdish state from Kirkuk to the Turkish border. They even had a constitution for such an independent state drawn up with the help of US foreign service staffer, Peter Galbraith, son on John Kenneth..

It's quite likely that Iraq's Sunni population would have been content with their own state nestled between the Kurds to the north and the Shia to the south and abutting Syria. That would have given them control of the as yet not well explored oilfields in the central area.

The Shia would have their own theocratic enclave in the south including Baghdad and the oilfields that generate most of Iraq's current wealth. They would have also had the backing of neighbouring Iran to guarantee they would never again succumb to Sunni domination.

I'm drawn back to Galbraith's observations in his 2008 book, "How Iraq Ends"

For the most part, Iraq's leaders are not personally stubborn or uncooperative. They find it impossible to reach agreement on the benchmarks because their constituents don't agree on any common vision for Iraq. The Shi'ites voted twice in 2005 for parties that seek to define Iraq as a Shi'ite state. By their boycotts and votes, the Sunni Arabs have almost unanimously rejected the Shi'ite vision of Iraq's future, including the new constitution. The Kurds envisage an Iraq that does not include them. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, 99% of them voted for Kurdish nationalist parties, and in the January 2005 referendum, 98% voted for an independent Kurdistan.

America's war in Iraq is lost. Of course, neither President Bush nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways.

The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning - a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes - but by the consequences of defeat. As Bush put it, "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America."

...Iraq after a US defeat will look very much like Iraq today - a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states with a civil war being fought within its Arab part. Defeat is defined by America's failure to accomplish its objective of a self-sustaining, democratic and unified Iraq. And that failure has already taken place, along with the increase of Iranian power in the region.

The Americans will never deign to admit it but their defeat in Iraq has led to a curious rapprochement between Washington and Tehran as the once low-grade civil war between Shiite and Sunni Iraqis metastasized into today's war with ISIS.

Despite the best efforts of the United States, Iran is now the co-dominant power in the Middle East. And rising. (Washington remains the other half of that "co.")

Another quick plunge into largely forgotten history: the U.S. stumbled into the post-9/11 era with two invasions that neatly eliminated Iran's key enemies on its eastern and western borders - Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. (The former is, of course, gone for good; the latter is doing better these days, though unlikely to threaten Iran for some time.) As those wars bled on without the promised victories, America's military weariness sapped the desire in the Bush administration for military strikes against Iran. Jump almost a decade ahead and Washington now quietly supports at least some of that country's military efforts in Iraq against the insurgent Islamic State. The Obama administration is seemingly at least half-resigned to looking the other way while Tehran ensures that it will have a puppet regime in Baghdad. In its serially failing strategies in Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria, Washington has all but begged the Iranians to assume a leading role in those places. They have.

And that only scratches the surface of the new Iranian ascendancy in the region. Despite the damage done by U.S.-led economic sanctions, Iran's real strength lies at home. It is probably the most stable Muslim nation in the Middle East. It has existed more or less within its current borders for thousands of years. It is almost completely ethnically, religiously, culturally, and linguistically homogeneous, with its minorities comparatively under control. While still governed in large part by its clerics, the country has nonetheless experienced a series of increasingly democratic electoral transitions since the 1979 revolution. Most significantly, unlike nearly every other nation in the Middle East, Iran's leaders do not rule in fear of an Islamic revolution. They already had one.

For all the bluster of America's Republicans, the nuclear deal with Iran could remove the last hurdle to the country's emergence as the powerhouse of the Middle East.

While diplomacy brought the United States and Iran to this point, cash is what will expand and sustain the relationship.

Iran, with the fourth-largest proven crude oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves on the planet, is ready to start selling on world markets as soon as sanctions lift. Its young people reportedly yearn for greater engagement with the West. The lifting of sanctions will allow Iranian businesses access to global capital and outside businesses access to starved Iranian commercial markets.

Since November 2014, the Chinese, for example, have already doubled their investment in Iran. European companies, including Shell and Peugeot, are now holding talks with Iranian officials. Apple is contacting Iranian distributors. Germany sent a trade delegation to Tehran. Ads for European cars and luxury goods are starting to reappear in the Iranian capital. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of foreign technology and expertise will need to be acquired if the country is to update its frayed oil and natural gas infrastructure. Many of its airliners are decades old and need replacement. Airlines in Dubai are fast adding new Iran routes to meet growing demand. The money will flow. After that, it will be very hard for the war hawks in Washington, Tel Aviv, or Riyadh to put the toothpaste back in the tube, which is why you hear such screaming and grinding of teeth now.

..No, what fundamentally worries the Israelis and the Saudis is that Iran will rejoin the community of nations as a diplomatic and trading partner of the United States, Asia, and Europe. Embarking on a diplomatic offensive in the wake of its nuclear deal, Iranian officials assured fellow Muslim countries in the region that they hoped the accord would pave the way for greater cooperation. American policy in the Persian Gulf, once reliably focused only on its own security and energy needs, may (finally) start to line up with an increasingly multifaceted Eurasian reality. A powerful Iran is indeed a threat to the status quo - hence the upset in Tel Aviv and Riyadh - just not a military one. Real power in the twenty-first century, short of total war, rests with money.

The July accord acknowledges the real-world power map of the Middle East. It does not make Iran and the United States friends. It does, however, open the door for the two biggest regional players to talk to each other and develop the kinds of financial and trade ties that will make conflict more impractical. After more than three decades of U.S.-Iranian hostility in the world's most volatile region, that is no small accomplishment.

And, so, America's defeat in Iraq was not a total loss for it became, quite unintentionally, the ice-breaker between Washington and Tehran.  As for Iraq, it will eventually have to sort itself out - probably through partition.  With Iran acting as defender of the Shiite south and America as guarantor of Kurdish independence, a new Sunni state expanding westward into Syria seems inevitable.




The Balance of Power  (TruthOut).

Well, That's a Relief!

Israel has officially absolved itself of any wrongdoing in the murder of four Palestinian kids killed on a Gaza beach last summer.

The kids - they were children - had a soccer ball in play when an Israeli patrol boat opened fire on them with explosive shells. Unfortunately, for the Israelis, foreign journalists witnessed the slaughter.

The New York Times’s Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Tyler Hicks, who witnessed the incident, though from a different angle to the Guardian, wrote in a blog at the time: “A small metal shack with no electricity or running water on a jetty in the blazing seaside sun does not seem like the kind of place frequented by Hamas militants, the Israel Defence Forces’ intended targets.

“Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, doesn’t fit the description of Hamas fighters, either.” 

Oh well, it was only four kids and, besides, they were Palestinian kids, worse yet they were Gazans.  All three Canadian parties supported Israel's "Dahiyeh" campaign against Gaza that saw civilians butchered by the hundreds so what's four kids in the greater scheme of things?

And, yes, those are news photos of those kids (the three who survived the first round) running for safety just seconds before they too were killed.  

Shoot to Kill - Anyone, Everyone

Israeli soldiers willfully targeted civilians in last year's war on Gaza.

Testimonies provided by more than 60 Israeli soldiers who fought in last summer’s war in Gaza have raised serious questions over whether Israel’s tactics breached its obligations under international law to distinguish and protect civilians.

The claims – collected by the human rights group Breaking the Silence – are contained in dozens of interviews with Israeli combatants, as well as with soldiers who served in command centres and attack rooms, a quarter of them officers up to the rank of major.

They include allegations that Israeli ground troops were briefed to regard everything inside Gaza as a “threat” and they should “not spare ammo”, and that tanks fired randomly or for revenge on buildings without knowing whether they were legitimate military targets or contained civilians.

..Post-conflict briefings to soldiers suggest that the high death toll and destruction were treated as “achievements” by officers who judged the attrition would keep Gaza “quiet for five years”.

The Israeli campaign itself was one giant war crime.  It featured the now-standard Israeli tactic of Dahiyeh, the deliberate targeting of essential civilian infrastructure - water plants, sewage treatment plants, power utilities before moving on to hospitals, schools and finally residential neighbourhoods.  This is outrageously contrary to the laws of war and international agreements such as the Geneva Conventions.  

Yet the Liberal Party supports these atrocities, masking it under the guise of "self defence."  Let's not forget that Mulcair also was on side with this at first until he sensed that the wind had shifted and conveniently reversed himself.  

Don't Eat That, Charlie, It's Bullshit.

Most of us come with a pretty good "BD" or Bullshit Detector as standard equipment.  People lie, so we need it.  Not that it always works but it's still pretty good.  The more obvious the lie the better our BD works.  White lies sometimes get past us but whoppers rarely do.

So, why?

Why have we spent decades listening to Israeli leaders tell us how they support the "Two State" solution only to then authorize new Israeli settlements on land that plainly belongs to the Palestinians?  Look at it this way - there are now more than 600,000 lies illegally occupying the West Bank.  Why do we still believe this nonsense?

How in hell would Israel ever relocate, oh let's use the term "repatriate" all those settlers back into Israeli territory?  Do you think they haven't already asked and answered that question?  Of course they have. They're not stupid.  And the answer is, and always has been, "we won't."

Take a look up top.  Can you foresee Israel going back from Map 4 to Map 2? Of course not.  So then you're pretending to believe that this Two State business is at least possibly in the cards.  You're making this up in your mind.  The only place it has any illusion of reality is between your ears.

There aren't many people still breathing who know the doctrine of "profit a prendre" or "long user."  They're old real property terms from the days of the ancient British land registry system.  Long user describes the situation where a farmer crosses your field to access his own.  Over the course of 20 or 30-years he acquires a right of long user. It's sometimes a right of carriageway or an easement.  Profit a prendre is a right to take something (okay, let's call it groundwater) from land belonging to another.

Israel has another term for "long user" when it comes to Palestinian lands.  They call it "reality on the ground."  It's another way of saying, "my tank is parked on that hill, ergo it's my hill."  I don't think the Israelis have come up with their own term for profit a prendre but they don't need one, they just take the groundwater without it.

At this point further talk of the Two State solution should have your BD buzzing hard enough to loosen your fillings. So what's the point of pretending it's not?  Is it because we don't like to think bad thoughts?  Is it because we realize we're complicit in the armed conquest and illegal seizure of the Palestinian homeland? Is it because we don't like to trouble our beautiful minds with images of two generations of Palestinians already born into captivity with a third not far off?  Is it because we know that what we're watching is slow-motion ethnic cleansing?

Whatever our excuse, it sucks.    

Did Bibi Spy on Barack? Easy Answer? Of Course.

Israel has never been reluctant to spy on its global benefactor, the United States. Now Washington is accusing Israel of having spied on American negotiations with Iran for a nuclear enrichment treaty.

The apparent decision by the White House to leak the allegations is the latest symptom of the growing gulf between Barack Obama’s administration and Binyamin Netanyahu’s government over the Iran talks, in which the Israeli leader suspects US officials of being ready to make too many concessions at the expense of Israeli security. Intelligence analysts suggested that the leak reflects the degree of anger in Washington at Netanyahu’s actions, and could mark a more serious blow to the already tottering relationship.

The leak has come exactly a week before a deadline for the US-Iranian negotiations in Lausanne to produce a framework agreement.

According to the report, the US has long been aware that Israel is among the shortlist of countries with the most aggressive intelligence operations targeting America, alongside Russia, China and France. It said American diplomats attending the talks in Austria and Switzerland were briefed by US counterintelligence officials about the threat of Israeli eavesdropping. It also raised the possibility that Israel gathered intelligence about the US position by spying on other participants in the negotiations, from western Europe, Russia, China or Iran. US intelligence had previously provided help to the Israelis to spy on the Iranians, the report said.
The fact is that Israel has a rich history of spying on the hand that feeds it some $3-billion a year.

The most infamous case was that of Jonathan Pollard currently serving a life sentence.  By some accounts Pollard may be released from prison this November.  Netanyahu has repeatedly pressed various American presidents to free Pollard at one point claiming it would be an appropriate reward for Israel suspending the expansion of illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories for three months.

In the 60s, Zalman Shapiro was suspected of smuggling weapons-grade uranium from his processing plant in Pennsylvania to Israel.  In 1985, US businessman Richard Smyth was convicted of shipping about 800 nuclear bomb triggers disguised as "radio tubes" to Israel.

Then there's this eye-opening summary of Israeli spying against the United States published in 2004 in CounterPunch.

Overall, it seems that Israel was second only to the Soviet Union in spying on America, at least until the recent ascendancy of China.

Coming Clean, It's Good for the Soul.

After half a century of persistent fudging the Pentagon has officially admitted the undeniable - Israel has an arsenal of nuclear weapons and all the high tech gear to best use them.

That revelation might not matter much to most of us but, to the US government, it has serious military and foreign policy ramifications.

...the confirmation of this poorly kept secret opens a troublesome can of worms for both the US government and our closest ally in the Middle East. Official acknowledgement poses questions and contradictions that cry out for closer inspection. For many years, the United States collaborated with Israel’s development of critical technology needed for advanced armaments. Yet Washington pushed other nations to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires international inspections to discourage the spread of nuclear arms. Israel has never signed the NPT and therefore does not have to submit to inspections.

Washington knew all along what the inspectors would find in Israel. Furthermore, as far back as the 1960s, the US Foreign Assistance Act was amended by concerned senators to prohibit any foreign aid for countries developing their own nukes. Smith asserts that the exception made for Israel was a violation of the US law but it was shrouded by the official secrecy. Since Israel is a major recipient of US aid, American presidents had good reason not to reveal the truth.

The newly released report—“Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations”—describes Israel’s nuclear infrastructure in broad terms, but the dimensions are awesome. Israel’s nuclear research labs, the IDA researchers reported, “are equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.” Indeed, the investigators observed that Israel’s facilities are “an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories.”

In other words, going back well before the 80s, Israel and the US have been one collaborative lab for developing advanced weapons of mass destruction and yet the US Congress wouldn't hesitate if it only could to attack Iran for basic nuclear processing far short of any weaponized materials.

Update - for anyone interested in Israel and how it came to amass so many nuclear weapons, Foreign Policy has a fascinating whodunnit, "What lies beneath Numec?" that focuses on a uranium processing plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania in the 60s,  and how it came to misplace hundreds of pounds of highly enriched, weapons grade uranium. It's made more intriguing by the fact that Numec's founder, Zalman Shapiro, had close connections to Israel's defence and intelligence establishments.

Whacking Iran - Maybe Sooner Than You Think - The Warmonger Digest, vol. 2

It's reported that the Saudis have given Israel a green light to overfly Saudi Arabia should Netanyahu decide to launch an attack on Iran.

Jerusalem and Riyadh do not have diplomatic ties, but unconfirmed reports have swirled for years of coordination between them against the common enemy of Iran, a partnership that may ramp up should the world powers reach a reportedly emerging deal that would allow Tehran to continue enriching some uranium.

There's some suggestion that NATO tacitly approves of an Israeli air war on Iran.

Saudi Arabia and Israel may be given the green light to attack Iran on behalf of NATO powers if NATO feels it could not sell a direct war in Iran to their populations back home. Regime change in Syria is a prerequisite before an overt attack on Iran can take place however, as Damascus is an important Iranian ally in the Middle East. If a military assault on Iran occurs it would be difficult for the arena of conflict to be contained to the Middle East, as it has the potential to rapidly escalate into a wider conflict involving Russia and China.

Western nations have been engaged in attempting to covertly overthrow the present Iranian regime for decades, a country that has been placed under sanctions by an assortment of nations for years. Regime change in Iran has been a dream of Western foreign policy strategists for decades, with Iran pinpointed in a strategic paper written in 2000 by the neoconservative thinktank, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), alongside countries such as Iraq, Libya and Syria. Retired US four star general and former NATO commander, Wesley Clark, also revealed a plan circulating around the Pentagon in 2001 to attack 7 countries in 5 years, with Iran named as one of the seven.

I wonder if Israel will be able to wait until it gets those F-35s.

Netanyahu's "Dog Whistle" Might Have Fetched the Hounds

Maybe some day Benjamin Netanyahu will be known as the founder of the state of Palestine.  Strange things are happening.  From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Already the US is hinting that it might support a United Nations Security Council resolution that recognises Palestine along pre-1967 borders.

Until now it has repeatedly refused to endorse the resolution and Israel has always been opposed to it, insisting that only negotiations can bring about a lasting peace and agreed borders, but a US official has told The New York Times that Washington is "in a reality where the Israeli government no longer supports direct negotiations. Therefore we clearly have to factor that into our decisions".

British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg described Mr Netanyahu's comments as "extremely worrying".

"It cannot be more alarming – to have [Mr Netanyahu] do something which no leading Israeli politician has ever done – to rule out the prospect of a two-state solution," he said.

Summing up the week in Israeli politics, Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy said: "They voted for the man who admitted to having duped half the world during his Bar-Ilan speech. Now he has torn off his mask and disavowed those words once and for all. Israel said `yes' to the man who said `no' to a Palestinian state."

Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said, "No one has been taking seriously the idea that you will get a two-state solution under Netanyahu, but if you can maintain the pretence, if the Palestinians are willing to maintain it, if the US and the EU are willing to maintain it, then it can be business as usual."

...The tactics Mr Netanyahu used to get elected – coming out against a Palestinian state – will have far-reaching consequences on Israel's standing in the international community, warns Daniel Seidemann, political commentator and an expert on Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem.

"There are people who only recently have heard the opposite from him – US Secretary of State John Kerry, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example – and I believe that tactics that Netanyahu used to get re-elected will haunt us for a long time.

"Netanyahu plays on Israeli fears and anxieties the way the virtuoso plays on a Stradivarius," he says.

Is it even possible for the Americans or Euros to play this game again?  How will they respond to the continued annexation of Jerusalem, more illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories or the next time Israeli deathware is dispatched to "mow the lawn" in Gaza?

Update - Guess who's heading to Israel to congratulate Netanyahu?  John Boehner.

Netanuyahu's Win Could Be Israel's Greatest Defeat

Tossing ideas around yesterday I came to a "What If" moment.  What if, I wondered, Israeli prime minister re-elect, Benjamin Netanyahu, has destroyed Israel's lifeline - the backing of the president of the United States of America.

It's been the American president, who alone controls his country's veto at the United Nations Security Council, who has intervened dozens of times over the years to prevent the U.N. from responding to Israel's excesses, particularly its half-century of mauling of the captive Palestinian people.

What if?  Could it possibly happen.  Then, this morning, Boris from The Galloping Beaver left a comment to the effect that Gwynne Dyer sees that security council business pretty much the same way.


...Netanyahu’s entire political career has been dedicated to sabotaging the 1993 Oslo Accords (which envisaged Israeli and Palestinian states living side-by-side in peace) and planting so many Jewish settlers on the Israeli-occupied territories that a separate Palestinian state becomes physically impossible.

He largely destroyed the Oslo agreement in his first term as prime minister in 1996-99 (the creation of a Palestinian state was scheduled for 1998). Almost 10 percent of Israel’s Jews now live in the occupied Palestinian territories (east Jerusalem and the West Bank) that would make up a Palestinian state. But to keep his American allies and his European supporters happy, he never actually said he would not allow an independent Palestine.

Netanyahu finally spoke the truth on Monday because that’s what the settlers and their supporters wanted to hear, and he needed those votes in order to survive politically. But it destroyed the myth, useful to the United States and the European Union, that there is some surviving “peace process” that must be protected by keeping the Israelis happy. The “peace process” is dead, dead, dead. Has been for years. There is no “two-state solution” on the table.

This makes it a lot harder for the U.S. to veto resolutions critical of Israel at the United Nations, as it has done 51 times since 1972. Without the cover of peace talks, these vetoes become votes for perpetual Israeli rule over the Palestinian people. And it will accelerate the broader erosion of the old pro-Israel reflexes of people in Europe and the US who needed the reassurance that some day, somehow, there would be a just peace settlement.

Netanyahu made matters considerably worse during the campaign by openly showing his contempt for President Barack Obama. His panic-mongering speech to the U.S. Congress, painting Obama’s quest for a nuclear deal with Iran as a naive surrender to Iran’s alleged desire for nuclear weapons, was an unprecedented foreign intervention in the U.S. political process. It will not be forgiven or forgotten by Obama.

His election promise to speed up Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories (which is illegal under international law) was another nail in the coffin of peace negotiations. Still, it did help to get Netanyahu re-elected, and for him that’s all that counts.

He still truly believes that only he understands the real and existential dangers facing Israel, and has the will to do something about them. Except that all he ever really does is kick those dangers down the road a bit. Unable to believe that a peaceful settlement is possible or even desirable, he condemns his country to perpetual conflict and growing isolation.

Benjamin Netanyahu has given the finger to his best ally, his indispensable ally, and not just once.  He did it so that Bibi could remain the prime minister of Israel.  Before Tuesday it was unimaginable that a president of the United States would not call a prime minister of Israel to congratulate him/her on an election victory.  The unimaginable has happened.  Obama has nearly two years left in office and he doesn't have to seek re-election.  John Boehner and Mitch McConnell don't get a vote at the U.N.  From here on,  we're sailing in uncharted waters and there are storm clouds gathering.

Bye, Bye Bibi - Bye, Bye

Israeli Arabs are reported to be turning out in unusually large numbers to vote but, overall, voting is lighter than normal in the Israeli elections.  This, according to Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, is a bad omen for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's desperate hopes to cling to power.

Bibi, sensing disaster in the offing, has been pulling out all the stops.  He courted the redneck Right (wait a second, is "redneck" and "Right" redundant?) vote by promising there'll be no Palestinian state on his watch.  And today he warned all good and loyal Israelis to be on guard because those Arab Israelis are really turning out at the polls.

Haaretz maintains that Bibi is finished, even if he somehow corrals a coalition to overcome a Zionist Union party win.  The paper speculates that even if he somehow holds on he'll be gone within two years.

Update:  while voting was lower than usual for most of the day, Israeli papers report something of a surge following Netanyahu's warnings that Arabs were flocking to the polls.

Netanyahu Promises Israeli Voters - There'll Be No Palestinian State On My Watch.

With Israelis heading to the polls, Benjamin Netanyahu is running scared.  He's seen Likud's numbers and all the polls show he's in trouble.  He's in deep enough that he's pulling out all the stops and scrambling for the hardliner vote.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau said Monday that if he were to be reelected, a Palestinian state would not be created, in a definite disavowal of his 2009 speech, in which he had voiced support for the principle of two states for two peoples.

Netanyahu's remarks in an interview with the NRG website - which is owned by casino mogul [and Bibi owner] Sheldon Adelson and tied with the settler newspaper Makor Rishon - were a last-minute attempt to pull right-wing voters away from Habayit Hayehudi. 

The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, also reports that Middle East envoy, Tony Blair, is about to resign.

In 2014, a group of former British diplomats and political figures wrote an open letter calling for Blair's resignation from his role as the Special Envoy of the Middle East Quartet, citing, among other reasons, his "blurring the lines between his public position as envoy" and his private business dealings in the region.

Israelis vote tomorrow but it won't be clear whether Netanyahu could keep post even if Likud emerges trailing Zionist Union by three or four seats.  With nearly a dozen parties expected to pick up seats there's enormous room for horse trading.  Of course our Mr. Harper won't hesitate to embrace a Likud coalition even if he denounced the legitimacy of the very same thing in Canada.

Meanwhile, Today In ISIS News....

These guys are really getting around.  They're in Syria and Iraq.  They're in Libya and environs.  They're becoming established in Afghanistan.  Now they're engaging Egypt and Israel.  Yes, that's right, Israel.  This ISIS outfit is on the move.

The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reports that the Israeli Defence Force is preparing for an ISIS attack out of the Sinai peninsula.  The Sinai branch of ISIS has announced on Twitter (naturally) plans to launch a barrage of 150-rockets into Israel.  This is the same bunch that's been attacking Egyptian forces with some success.

The threat of the Islamic State on Israel's southern border "is of great concern to the army and influences our preparedness for any incident that might occur," Col. Arik Chen, deputy commander of the 80th Territorial Division, said yesterday in a briefing for reporters.

The IDF "knows the intentions and the abilities" of the Islamists in the Sinai and is prepared for any aggression, whether it is aimed at the Egyptian security forces or whether "it becomes a threat to Israel in the future," Chen said.

The number of casualties from attacks on Egyptian forces by the Sinai branch of the Islamic State has increased drastically since last September, he added.

...The group calling itself Ansar Bait al-Maqdis announced its allegiance to the Islamic State last year and is now regarded as the Sinai branch of the organization. The group is attempting to get its hands on sophisticated weaponry, including anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft missiles and explosives.

Meanwhile Egyptian president al-Sissi took to FOX News to plead for more American help.  FOX News shill, Bret Baier, had little difficulty getting al-Sissi to criticize Obama for cutting off military aid to Egypt in the wake of massacres.

It sounds like the Saudis and Egyptians are forming some sort of military alliance but they still want the US and its allies to do their fighting.  Quelle surprise.

Israel's Real Demographic Nightmare

Israel holds the Palestinian people captive because it believes it has no choice. While no Israeli leader will come right out and say it, there's no way the country will restore the Occupied Territories to the Palestinians.  No Israeli government is prepared to see their country withdrawn to its pre-1967 borders.

There is an alternative, a one state solution, that would make Israeli and Palestinian equal citizens.  The problem there is demographic.  The Palestinians are a good deal more reproductive, meaning Arabs would fairly quickly outnumber Jews and they might take their revenge for the past half-century at the ballot box.

The third option, ethnic cleansing, is the worst of all.  The forced expulsion of the Palestinians to an Arab country, most likely Jordan, would be roundly condemned worldwide and leave Israel with a whole list of new enemies.  It's hard to imagine any leader this side of Stephen Harper who would tolerate it.

But it could be Israel's real demographic problem isn't the one at home.  It's the demographic shift underway in Israel's one key ally and protector, the United States.  From Haaretz:

...the United States is becoming, in important ways, a different country.  Benjamin Netanyahu does not like Barack Obama; you may not either.  But Obama is not an aberration; he is not a passing phase.  He is the face of 21st century America.  He will leave office in two years, but the coalition that elected him - minorities and Millennials - will grow in strength.  In all likelihood, it will shape American politics for decades to come.

Obama is president because, twice now, he won overwhelming majorities among racial and ethnic minorities.  In 2012, he won 71 percent of the Latino vote, 73 percent of the Asian vote and 93 percent of the African-American vote.  And he is president because, twice now, he won an overwhelming majority among those younger voters who entered adulthood around the turn of the 21st century.  In 2012, these "Millennials" backed Obama at a rate of 67 percent.

It is a virtual certainty that, in the years to come, both minorities and Millennials will rise as a share of the American electorate.  It is a virtual certainty because Latinos and Asians are America's fastest growing ethnic groups, and because Millennials are still reaching voting age.  In 2012, according to the political demographer Ruy Teixeira, minorities and Millennials togehter comprised 43 percent of America's eligible voters. (Obviously, some Americans fall into both categories).  By 2020, if current trends continue, that share will rise to above 50 percent. By 2050, it will be almost 65 percent.

...None of this means reelecting Bibi will change Israel’s relationship with the United States overnight. It won’t. But by entrenching Israeli control over the West Bank, and moving Israel ever closer to what Ehud Barak,Ehud Olmert and now Meir Dagan have called an apartheid state, Bibi is putting Israel on an ideological collision course with the people who will likely dominate American politics in the years to come. He’s alienating the young and non-white voters who backed Obama not merely because he’s treated Obama with disrespect but, more fundamentally, because he flouts the values that led them to support Obama in the first place.