Category Archives: Israel

Gaza, Iran, Israel, Weapons deals

Of International Law, Weapons Smuggled to Gaza, and Somali Pirates………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter


“Israeli naval commandos intercepted and boarded a civilian ship in the southern Red Sea early Wednesday, preventing an attempt to smuggle an Iranian shipment of advanced rockets to Gaza, according to senior Israeli officials. The ship, identified as the Klos-C, was seized in international waters between Eritrea and Sudan, approximately 1,000 miles from the port of Eilat, Israel’s southernmost point. It was carrying Syrian-manufactured M-302 rockets with a range of about 100 miles, according to Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military. The takeover took place without violence; Israeli officials said the crew of 17 cooperated with the Israelis and seemed unaware of the vessel’s contents. The ship, which was also carrying civilian cargo, was flying under a Panamanian flag………………….”

“The Israeli military seized a boatload of advanced Iranian weapons—and then launched a sophisticated PR campaign to tell the world why they shouldn’t trust Tehran. On Wednesday morning, the Israeli Navy announced that it had stopped an Iranian cargo vessel with advanced weapons destined for fighters in Gaza. By Wednesday afternoon, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz was telling members of the U.S. Congress that the interception of the sophisticated rockets revealed the “real nature of Iran”………….”

It is possible, although I reserve the right to be extremely doubtful. Hamas is much more opportunistic than principled. It has gone back to its old ties of dependence on the mullahs, now that the Muslim Brotherhood is on the run in Egypt and Ras al-Khaimah and the Syrian regime seems to be winning (for now). Yet, the timing of his weapons cache is too damn……. coincidental and so convenient.
A Panamanian ship, loaded in Iraq and Sudan: that is already a red signal, nay a huge flashing red light screaming: catch me, catch me! Headed directly toward the Israeli port of Eilat? That is a brighter flashing red light and a louder scream of: catch me, catch me! Many would suspect a ship loaded in Iraq and Sudan heading to the Red Sea, and almost everybody knows that. And when were the alleged weapons added to the cargo and by whom? Can the Iranians be THAT stupid, knowing from past experience that undefended ships can and are boarded in international waters? Could be: the mullahs have their fair share of schmucks, one of them was president until last summer. Or is the Israeli Mossad THAT clever to choreograph such an incident? They can and they have done it in the past.
Maybe the Iranians ARE that stupid. Maybe Mossad ARE that smart. Either way it coincided with a big AIPAC (Israeli lobby) conference in Washington last week, and it was enough to get many people in the USA, and not just honestly-worried Jewish-Americans, even more ‘worried’.


P.S: Does international ‘law’ reserve the privilege of boarding a ship with Panamanian flag in international waters exclusively for certain ‘decent’ countries (and Somali pirates)?
Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

History, Israel, Jews, Palestine

Pop-History? the Invention of Jews and Ashkenazi Arabs…………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

This writer, Jihad Al Khazin writes for Al-Hayat, the Saudi daily newspaper owned by Prince Khaled Bin Sultan (funny how Western media call it an ‘independent pan-Arab’ daily). He refers to Arthur Koestler’s Thirteenth Tribe (a book I have not read) and speculates that the Ashkenazi Jews did not originate in historic Palestine, but were converts, originally a people of the Caucasus who claimed they were Jews in order to avoid persecution. (I must admit that is a cute one, a first, a real change, claiming to be Jewish to AVOID persecution). He also says there are no monuments or traces of any ‘fake’ Jewish prophets or kingdoms in Palestine. Then he oddly adds that he heard all the details from a student at Georgetown University, which presumably makes it like some sort of a gospel.

All this about the origins of some Jews may be of some historic interest, but it is of course quite irrelevant as far as the politics and facts (and fiction) of the Palestinian-Israeli issue are concerned. It is not the ‘race’ that matters. Many current Iraqis and Syrians and Egyptians and other “Arabs” including Palestinians are not of Arab origin either. Many Arab tribes were originally foreigners who emigrated to places like Iraq and Syria and Egypt after the Muslim conquests. It is not the blood, stupid; it is the culture and belonging, stupid.

This interesting piece was reproduced in Alarabiya (Arabic) website from al-Hayat.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

AIPAC, Iran, Israel, MENA, US Congress, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

U.S. Senate Goes Knesset, Declares Netanyahu ‘War President’ of America……

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter 

“Today the Senate is about to vote Israel a virtual blank check – for war on Iran. Reads Senate bill S.1881: If Israel is “compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” the United States “should stand with Israel and provide … diplomatic, military and economic support to the Government of Israel in the defense of its territory, people and existence.” Inserted in that call for U.S. military action to support an Israeli strike on Iran, S.1881 says that, in doing so, we should follow our laws and constitutional procedures. Nevertheless, this bill virtually hands over the decision on war to Bibi Netanyahu who is on record saying: “This is 1938. Iran is Germany.”……….” Is this the man we want deciding whether America fights her fifth war in a generation in the Mideast? Do we really want to outsource the decision on war in the Persian Gulf, the gas station of the world, to a Likud regime whose leaders routinely compare Iran to Nazi Germany?……………”


Also sprach Pat Buchanan, one of the few independent voices in U.S. media and politics that does not kneel to AIPAC and to what he has called the “Israeli amen corner”. At issue is independence: the U.S. Congress (both houses) is doing the bidding of the Israeli right-wing prime minister, and acts against the long-term interests of the United States. This bill (S. 1881) would effectively make the Israeli politician the “decider” of war and peace for America.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon

Ariel Sharon and the Liberation of Lebanon……..

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter

“Israeli leaders seemed like moths irresistibly attracted to the fires of Lebanon” Me

Ariel Sharon was probably more hated by Arabs than any other Israeli, until Benyamin Netanyahu showed up and took that crown. Sharon did his fighting mostly on the ground: in the battlefield and in occupied Arab territory from Gaza to the West Bank to Lebanon to the African bank of the Suez Canal in October 1973. Netanyahu has ‘personal’ baggage that Sharon did not have. He is also no military commander: he prefers to jaw-jaw the United States into war on his behalf. He does much of his fighting in front of a microphone, in the halls of the U.S. Knesset Congress, and especially within the halls of the powerful AIPAC.


In 1982 Israeli forces led by Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon, swept across the border, reaching the outskirts of Beirut right in the middle of the Lebanese Civil War. Maybe they were given the impression that they were liberating Lebanon and that they would be met with flowers. They were in fact met with the equivalent of flowers, but only by the Gemayyel’s Phalange fascist militia and some other warlords now allied with the Hariri March 14 bloc. One of their goals was to break and expel the PLO from southern Lebanon, and that they did. That invasion, at least the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon at the time, lasted many years. The PLO was expelled, but the Israelis probably regret that by now, seeing what replaced them. The expulsion of Palestinian security left the refugee camps open and vulnerable. Israeli forces had surrounded the camps (Sabra and Shatila) but allowed their local allies among Lebanese fascist militias to enter them and exact their revenge. Thousands of unprotected Palestinian civilians were massacred, after being subjected to other atrocities.
After that the Reagan administration and France managed to blunder into the Lebanese civil war, establishing vulnerable military bases in the middle of the warring factions. A classic blunder and the tragic consequences for French and U.S. forces are well recorded. The shaken Western forces pulled out quickly. The Israelis had also pulled back to the border region and decided to remain inside Lebanon, within reach of their local ‘allies’ who ironically were inspired by European Fascists and Nazis and hence inherently anti-Semitic.

The PLO departed for Tunisia, but in its place emerged a new indigenous organization called the Party of God, Hezbollah. The war and economics had pushed many repressed Lebanese Shi’as away from the border region, north to Beirut and its suburbs. That movement and the aftermath of the invasion and occupation of the South in 1982 weakened the political influence of the traditional Shi’a political “bosses” who were like other quasi-feudal Lebanese political warlords. Hezbollah, and Amal (Hope) movement before it, quickly attracted Shi’a loyalty as the Israelis seemed set to remain in the country. The guerrilla war against the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon and against its Lebanese surrogates of the so-called South Lebanon Army lasted about 18 years, until Hezbollah guerrillas forced them out in the year 2000. Over the years of war Lebanon lost several politicians including at least two presidents of the republic to car bombs. The victims also included many honest citizens.
 
When it came to Lebanon, Sharon was no different from other Israeli leaders who followed him. I posted once that Israeli leaders seemed like moths irresistibly attracted to the fires of Lebanon. They keep getting burned by it but they come back for more. They are still making incursions, flying sorties, and bombings in Lebanese territory, and against UN resolutions which seem to only apply to Arabs and Muslims.

Sharon failed in his quest to liberate Lebanon from its future, to preserve it for the right-wing hereditary warlords. That impossible task has now been handed over to Saudi intelligence and Saudi money and the politicized and widely discredited STL Lebanon Tribunal. Going against the tide of the future, the writing on the wall in Lebanon, it will also fail.
Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Israel, Racism

Blood Racism in Israel: the Master Race Lives Again, from Moldova to Ethiopia………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter        
                           Video:
A Kenny G Holiday

“In additional case of discriminatory practices, Yesh Atid MK Pnina Tamano-Shata barred from donating blood because she has “special kind of Jewish-Ethiopian blood”……………….” Magen David Adom refused to allow MK Pnina Tamano-Shata (Yesh Atid) to donate blood, saying she had “the special kind of Jewish-Ethiopian blood.” The staff then told her that she could donate blood, but her donation would be frozen, not used. In the past, the MDA’s refusal to use blood donated from resident of Ethiopian descent has inspired claims of racism, the MDA in response claim they are only trying to minimize risks to blood recipients…………….”

Magen David Adom is supposed to be the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross or Red Crescent. It is not supposed to be some ‘institute’ created by some Heinrich Himmler from Moldova or thereabouts to distinguish superior blood for tainted blood.
This Nazi-style irrational racism is apparently something that happens often, refusing blood donations from blacks, be they Jews or others, in order to minimize risks. And these are the most educated people in the Middle East! Even we Muslims know better than discriminate between sources of blood,  know that it makes no difference.
Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Africa, Apartheid, Israel, U.S. Congress

Netanyahu Skips South Africa, Puts ‘Both’ His Eggs in U.S. Congressional Basket…………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter        
                            Video:
A Kenny G Holiday

“Mandela, in both life and death, symbolized the idea of equality among all human beings and opposition to the apartheid regime, which subjected people to different laws based on race or ethnicity. Israel under Netanyahu’s leadership, in which segregation, racist legislation and discrimination on the basis of nationality are flourishing virtually undisturbed, cannot say it respects Mandela’s heritage, nor can it join the family of nations whose flagship values are the striving for civil equality and the fight against racism. Mandela spoke out in the past in favor of the Palestinian struggle – something that earned him no points with Netanyahu, who sees the Palestinians as demonic enemies with whom there is no possibility of dialogue. It’s also possible to infer that the core of Mandela’s struggle – the war on racism against blacks – doesn’t burn in the Israeli prime minister’s bones, since just this week Netanyahu and his coalition partners were busy passing the so-called Infiltration Law, which allows people to be jailed for up to a year without trial, and is aimed primarily at African migrants………………..”

Also sprach Israel daily Haaretz.
Netanyahu is increasingly depending on two kinds of allies: his own domestic extreme rights wing supporters and the U.S. Congress (both houses, both parties). He probably feels that he needs no one else: he can get elected and he can outmaneuver President Obama with his own houses of Congress, including the Democrat-controlled Senate. It is true: both houses of the U.S. Congress are now more likely to do Netanyahu’s bidding than that of Obama. After all, when Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress, his old tired predictable rhetoric got many more standing ovations than Obama’s State of the Union addresses.

In fact, even as I write this post, Congressmen and senators facing elections next year are pushing through new Iran resolutions that would derail Mr. Obama’s peace attempts. They are doing the bidding of a foreign leader who is no doubt lobbying and campaigning by phone against the policies of the president of the United States. Some Arab media have reported that the White House is allegedly reduced to sending emissaries to Tel Aviv to help moderate a U.S. Congress that is eager for war (both houses, both parties) on behalf of the Israeli right wing.

We can say Mr. Netanyahu is putting both his eggs in the Congressional basket. Congress, of course, has fewer eggs than it used to, or maybe just has smaller ‘eggs’ than before, but that probably has nothing to do with taking any testosterone.
FYI: I was translating literally from Arabic in the last paragraph.
Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Arab Politics, GCC, Israel, Persian Gulf

On the Persian Gulf: Shimon Peres Orates, Gulf Ministers Cheer, Tom Friedman Leaks, Abdu Sneers…………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter        
                           Video:
A Kenny G Holiday

“Israel’s president Shimon Peres secretly addressed 29 foreign ministers from Arab and Muslim countries during a Gulf security summit in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, drawing a round of applause from the audience, an Israeli daily revealed Monday. Peres, reportedly speaking via video link from an office in Jerusalem with an Israeli flag behind him, discussed issues related to Iran, radical Islam and “his vision for world peace,” according to Yedioth Ahronoth. The paper said New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman attended the meeting and was behind the leak …………..”

Thomas Friedman devised the old so-called Arab Peace Plan that the Saudis stole and claimed their distracted king had devised. For some time after that Friedman seemed alienated from the Al Saud, confining his Arab contacts to airport taxi drivers named Abed or Abdu or Abboodi, depending on the particular Arab country he was visiting.
Now he seems to be back in from the cold in the Persian Gulf region. Maybe they want him to devise a new plan for the Gulf region. The potentates must need his help in the next Lebanese elections, wtf that is, and the coming Iraqi elections. The good news is that both Saudi surrogates Ayad Allawi (Iraq) and Sa’ad Hariri (Lebanon and Saudi Arabia) have about as much chance of leading their countries as I do of leading Israel or Bosnia.
Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Mossad

Israeli Mossad and Collaborators Assassinate Top Hezbollah Military Techie………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter           
                                 Video:
A Kenny G Holiday

“Israeli intelligence has assassinated Hassan al-Laqqis. A deadly breach has taken out one of the leading minds of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon. The executioners snuck under cover of darkness and struck a blow to Hezbollah deep inside its stronghold. The five bullets did not penetrate the head of Hassan al-Laqqis alone but also the heart of the Resistance itself. The assailants followed Laqqis, snuck in, and struck down the head of Hezbollah’s air defense division, and one of the Resistance’s most important “electronic minds.” The perpetrators fired five shots – one of which missed – killing Laqqis after several botched assassination attempts in the past. There is no doubt that this is a Mossad operation, no matter who carried it out directly – whether takfiri groups or collaborators…………..”

Once upon a time, Arab regimes and Arab media blamed Israel for almost every political assassination and sabotage. Even for many of the killings that were perpetrated by other Arabs. Take the Sabra-Shatilla refugee camp massacre of 1982 (somewhere between 750 to 2,000 unprotected unarmed Palestinian civilians were murdered). It is true that Israeli occupation forces stood by and let “the Lebanese” killers into the camps, but those who shot, stabbed, and raped the unarmed refugees were Lebanese. The killers are now mainly part of the March 14 pro-Saudi political bloc led by Saad Hariri and the Gemayyel clan and others. Yet for decades Arab media mostly blamed the Israelis without pointing the finger at the actual killers.
That day is past, gone. Most official Arabs now blame other Arabs (of other sects or other parties) and occasionally they blame Iran. Even if Israel is the guilty party. In this case Israel is almost certainly the guilty party, perhaps along with some Lebanese collaborators, who can be from the March 14 and their Salafi allies or just paid agents.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Donkeys and Asses, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Jackasses, US Foreign Policy

Gaza Crisis: Hamas Turns to Jackasses, Ramallah and Likud………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter      

“Donkeys turn binmen as Gaza fuel crisis bites…. On a sweltering November afternoon, 10-year-old Alaa skips barefoot along a road in Gaza City picking up festering bags of rubbish and throwing them onto his father’s donkey-drawn cart. ………. People like Abu Jabal, who own a donkey and cart, are being increasingly relied on by Gaza’s Islamist Hamas government as the fuel crisis worsens. “In the past few days there’s been more pressure on us and more rubbish collecting work,” he told AFP. “At first we were tasked with picking up the rubbish outside the hospital, but now we’ve had to take collections from outside people’s homes as well.”……………….”

Now I know why the Israelis included donkeys, jackasses, and asses among items they had banned from being imported into Gaza. I had speculated about that in a posting a couple of years ago here. Too late for Hamas, of course, since they are ensconced inside Gaza and in power, just as the extreme right-wing is securely in power inside Israel. Speaking of donkeys and asses and the right-wing, I wonder how the boys in Ramallah are faring these days.
Also speaking of Hamas and Fatah (PA) and Israel and jackasses: these three four groups have so much in common, I am surprised they can’t reach a quick deal. Then again, maybe it is this common regional affinity to asses and jackasses that encouraged US Secretary of State John Kerry to launch his latest futile peace initiative.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Iran, Israel, Middle East Nuclear, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, US Foreign Policy

What Prince Bandar Would Say about the Geneva Nuclear Deal………

      

 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter      

This is what Saudi Prince Bandar wants the West to think of the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran.

P.S.: he was apparently incognito (no, not that one: in disguise) when he wrote this piece for Foreign Policy. Or so I think. He even threatens that his family, the Al Saud, will go nuclear if a deal is finalized, meaning he will be  a nuclear bomb from somewhere (Pakistan, North Korea,  UmmAl-Quwain, Jordan, WTF……..). But that is also exactly what the Al Saud and their vast media mouthpieces had threatened to do if there was NO deal in Geneva.

On the other hand, that is also what Ben Netanyahu has been saying for two decades, that he will go nuclear, even more nuclear than he has been for some four decades. Could he be the writer in disguise?

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]