Former Croatian President Ivo Josipović emphasized at the XI Global Baku Forum that the Western Balkans play a crucial role in completing Europe, Azernews reports.
Day: March 16, 2024
On Sunday, March 17, partly cloudy weather is expected in Baku and the Absheron Peninsula, sometimes cloudy, mostly without precipitation. In the morning, drizzle is expected in some parts of the peninsula, a moderate north wind will blow, which will be replaced by a south-easterly one in the evening. The…
Yahya Sinwar’s self-inflicted injury. (Arab social media)
The clandestine planning and execution of the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by the military leadership of Hamas in the Gaza Strip left many bewildered, including supposed allies such as Iran and Hizbullah.
The decision to withhold the precise timing of the attack from these factions aimed to catch Israel off guard, a strategy that proved more successful than anticipated.
However, this tactical maneuver ultimately backfired, leading to the erosion of Hamas’ control in the Gaza Strip due to a miscalculation of Israel’s response.
As time progresses, insights into the decision-making process behind the assault orchestrated by Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif are beginning to surface.
According to officials within Hamas, the military leadership acted independently, neglecting collaboration with traditional allies such as Iran and Hizbullah, among others.
While Iran was generally aware of Hamas’ intention to strike Israel, the specific timing remained concealed from both Iran and Hizbullah. This deliberate secrecy aimed to ensure Yahya Sinwar received full credit for the operation.
In a captured transcript from a meeting in January 2023, Sinwar allegedly affirmed Iran’s commitment to support Hamas in its “war of liberation.”
Sinwar and Deif meticulously compartmentalized information to optimize the element of surprise, even withholding details from the political leadership of Hamas until shortly before the attack.
Only an hour before the assault, Sinwar briefed Saleh Al-Arouri, Hamas’ deputy chairman and head of the military wing in Judea and Samaria.
The decision to bypass the consensus of Hamas’ advisory Shura Council underscores the military leadership’s determination to maintain secrecy and maximize the element of surprise.
To mitigate tensions between the military and political wings, Hamas leaders abroad retroactively endorsed the military’s authority to execute such operations independently. However, this unilateral action strained relations with Iran and Hizbullah, both of which were caught off guard by the attack.
Consequently, Hamas finds itself isolated, devoid of the anticipated military support that could have potentially sustained its position in the conflict.
Hizbullah has opted for a restrained approach to its conflict with Israel in southern Lebanon, refraining from escalating to all-out war.
Surprisingly, Hamas itself was taken aback by the magnitude of its success in the assault on Israeli settlements.
Sinwar and Deif had underestimated Israel’s response, anticipating a limited engagement akin to previous skirmishes rather than the full-scale conflict that ensued. This misjudgment mirrors Hassan Nasrallah’s error in triggering the Second Lebanon War in 2006, highlighting a recurring pattern of flawed assessments of Israel’s reactions.
Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, admitted to the unexpected severity of Israel’s retaliation, acknowledging a lack of anticipation for the unwavering support from Western powers.
The fate of the numerous Israeli captives held by Hamas hangs in the balance, raising doubts about the organization’s survival and its ability to claim victory.
Presently, Hamas’ military leadership has lost control over the Gaza Strip, with significant casualties and the IDF’s occupation of strategic territories.
Fleeing into tunnels, they face imminent capture or elimination by IDF forces.
The populace in Gaza views the unilateral decision of Hamas’ military leadership as a catastrophic misstep, predicting further hardship rather than relief from the blockade or the establishment of vital infrastructure.
In the aftermath of the conflict, Hamas will undoubtedly reassess its internal dynamics, particularly the relationship between its military and political wings.
However, the repercussions extend beyond Hamas, with the broader Muslim Brotherhood movement losing a key stronghold in the Arab world.
The once-powerful Islamic Emirate in Gaza, established in 2007, has now crumbled, leaving Hamas to contend with the aftermath of its ill-fated decision-making.
By Dr. Amrita Jash
On 19 January, inaugurating the 35 infrastructure projects of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) in Uttarakhand, Indian Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh, remarked “Climate change in the country [India] is not just a weather-related phenomenon, but the matter is related to national security”. Singh made this definite statement without mentioning China, positing “Certain [Indian] border States like Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, and Union Territories (UT) like Ladakh have noticed an increase in the number of natural disasters in recent years. The Himalayas extend to other states as well, but such incidents are confined to certain States only, and we cannot ignore that.”
However, the hint is quite clear as these states border Tibet and are the areas where the Line of Actual Control between India and China stands disputed: the western sector (Aksai Chin in Ladakh region), the middle sector (Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand) and the eastern sector (Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh).
Singh also affirmed that, “India’s Ministry of Defence has taken it very seriously and will seek help from friendly countries to study and rule out any involvement of any enemy country on this issue.” The term ‘enemy’ itself is self-explanatory as India has adversarial relations with China. In the past, some Indian states have speculated on Chinese interference. In 2018, the state government of Assam contended that despite no massive rainfall, the state witnessed severe flooding, resulting in the third wave of flood which is perceived as an interference by China in the natural ecosystem in Tibet. Thus, the looming question remains: Is China modifying the weather?
In 2020, the State Council issued a circular stating that China will possess a developed weather modification system by 2025 and the total area of artificial rainfall (snowfall) operation will reach beyond 5.5 million square kilometres. By 2035, China’s weather modification should arrive at a worldwide advanced level in terms of operation, technologies, and services. In June 2023, the National Development and Reform Commission and China Meteorological Administration (CMA) convened a meeting on weather modification work, boasting China’s large-scale and effective weather modification operational strength with a complete system. While difficult to assess China’s intentions, what is certain is that China is serious about weather modification.
It is important to note that the World Meteorological Organisation does not advocate weather modification practices as ‘weather as a weapon’ has been used in the past. During the Vietnam War, under its ‘Operation Popeye,’ the US utilised cloud seeding techniques to induce rain, extend the monsoon season, and flood the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the main route that enemy fighters were using to deliver their supplies. Thereafter, in 1976, the United Nations passed the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or any other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) which prohibits states from engaging in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting, or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage, or injury to another state party. Today, 78 states are party to the Convention.
Indian Defence Minister’s remarks on “climate as national security” stand justified. India’s concerns over China’s intentions and actions are grounded based on the following reasons: First, there is no binding on China to abide by the norm of not manipulating weather as Beijing is not a signatory to the ENMOD. In 2005, Beijing agreed that the Convention shall apply only to the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions of China. Second, China has already proved its capabilities by its large-scale event-driven weather modification practices undertaken in 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2014 APEC summit, National Day parades, the centenary celebration of the Chinese Communist Party in 2021, the Winter Olympics in 2022 and others. South China Morning Post reported, that a research paper claimed that the artificial rain that was created reduced the level of the air pollutant PM2.5 by more than two-thirds, and improved air quality from “moderate” to “good” under the World Health Organization standards, ahead of the Party’s Centenary celebrations.
Third, China, today, runs the biggest weather modification programme. Since 1949, China has consistently made developments in its weather modification, be it establishing the Chinese Meteorological Institute in 1978; passing its first-ever “Weather Modification Law in 2002; adding weather as a component to its Five Year Plans in 2005; allocating US$ 1.34 billion in the period 2012-2017 to support weather modification programme, launching the largest weather-control machine to be installed in the Tibetan Plateau in 2018, and others.
Fourth, given the proximity to India, the construction of fuel-burning chambers by China on the Tibetan Plateau to enhance rainfall does raise concerns for India and the rest of South Asia. As the South China Morning Post reported, more than 500 burners have been deployed on Alpine slopes in Tibet, Xinjiang, and other areas for experimental use.
While it is difficult to predict the potential immediate effects of China’s cloud seeding operations in the Tibetan Plateau, India must be alert. India should monitor China’s weather control activities in the Tibetan Plateau to avoid unwarranted risks from cloud seeding practices. As weather has historically been used as a weapon in warfare, India must assess the geopolitical and strategic implications of China’s activities and thus, develop its expertise to mitigate artificial weather-born calamities.
- About the author: Dr. Amrita Jash is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (Institution of Eminence), India.
- Source: This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation
On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, formerly Missouri v. Biden, the president whose administration has been accused of strong-arming Big Tech to remove “objectionable posts.” The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, joined by doctors such as Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, argue that the administration censored dissenting speech on COVID-19 and other policies by pressuring tech platforms to remove or restrict posts.
Consider this account from Martin Kulldorff, former professor of medicine at Harvard and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBR) with Dr. Bhattacharya and Oxford University’s Sunetra Gupta, a leading infectious-disease epidemiologist. The GBR, signed by thousands of medical scientists, advocated an approach to the pandemic similar to the one taken by Kulldorff’s native Sweden, which declined to shut down schools.
Kulldorff recalls that although Sweden had the lowest excess mortality among major European countries and “despite being a Harvard professor, I was unable to publish my thoughts in American media. Twitter (now X) put me on the platform’s Trends Blacklist.” Twitter did the same to Dr. Bhattacharya.
“Seeking to prop up Anthony Fauci and the lockdown policies he promoted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the plaintiffs explain, “Twitter (and other Big Tech companies) intentionally blacklisted, censored, suppressed, and targeted the GBD and its signers.”
National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins smeared the GBD authors as “fringe epidemiologists,” but they were far more qualified than Collins, a “lab scientist with limited public-health experience,” according to Kulldorff. Fauci, longtime boss of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is a nonpracticing physician whose bio shows no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry. The government’s white-coat supremacists were causing extensive damage, and the GBD scientists called them out.
“It was also clear that lockdowns would inflict enormous collateral damage,” notes Kulldorff, “not only on education but also on public health, including treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health. We will be dealing with the harm done for decades. Our children, the elderly, the middle class, the working class, and the poor around the world—all will suffer.”
As the ousted Harvard professor explains, “The pursuit of truth requires academic freedom with open, passionate, and civilized scientific discourse, with zero tolerance for slander, bullying, or cancellation.” That sort of activity has been going on at Facebook for some time.
In 2018, in his first public testimony before Congress, CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook was collaborating with the investigation of President Trump by former FBI director Robert Mueller. The FBI had interviewed some Facebook employees, but Zuckerberg would not say who they were “because our work with the special counsel is confidential.”
When Sen. Ted Cruz asked Zuckerberg if Facebook was a “neutral forum,” the CEO seemed puzzled by the concept. Sen. Cory Gardner asked if the government had ever demanded that Facebook remove a page from the site. “Yes, I believe so,” said Zuckerberg. He did not reveal the content of the page or when the removal had taken place.
Joe Biden has accused Facebook of “killing people” with vaccine misinformation. From the ordeals of Kulldorff, Bhattacharya and others, it’s now clear that the Biden administration was peddling misinformation, slandering the GBD scientists, and blocking them from setting forth the truth to the widest possible audience.
“In an environment where just about every decision tech platforms make becomes highly politicized,” one article previewing Murthy v. Missouri explains, “lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have grown accustomed to making pointed—if, often empty—threats at Big Tech. Now, the Supreme Court will decide just how far those threats can go.”
Murthy v. Missouri aside, it’s clear that white-coat supremacy and government censorship are incompatible with a free, safe, and healthy society.
This article was published by The Beacon
For decades, controversies about property taxes and rent control have been near the top of the list of state and local government disputes.
Proposition 13 and the other efforts to limit property taxes that it inspired are a prime example. So are the ongoing efforts ever since by those whose nests are feathered with those dollars. That tug of war is currently highlighted by California’sTax Protection and Government Accountability Act, which the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and others have qualified for the November 2024 ballot to limit the political erosion and evasion of Proposition 13’s protections, subsequently targeted by Democrats’ end-of-session Assembly Constitutional Amendment 13, which would dramatically raise the votes necessary to make the proposition pass, and Governor Newsom’s legal efforts to remove it from the ballot altogether.
Rent control is similarly controversial. Some local governments, particularly those that have majority renter populations, seem to always be proposing rent control or tightening of rent controls. On the other hand, about half of America’s states ban or restrict local governments’ ability to impose rent control. This was illustrated by California’s Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, and subsequent efforts at overturning it, culminating in another November 2024 ballot initiative, as well as the current controversy over New York’s rent control rules.
People typically discuss these two subjects as if they were distinct. They are, in that one is a tax and the other is a regulation, and one applies to all properties while the other applies only to rental housing. But the source of both controversies is the same. They are, in an important sense, two birds of a fiscal feather.
The “common core” is that current property owners have a very limited ability to protect themselves from government abuse by “voting with their feet,” making them convenient patsies to be forced to bear the burden of ineffective and discriminatory policies.
Consider taxes first.
It is generally less costly to escape the policies in an unattractive local jurisdiction than in a state, and less costly to leave a state than the country. Consequently, a smaller government can generally impose less inefficiency and fewer unsupported policies. That would be the case if a local government imposed overly burdensome sales or income taxes, which a citizen could “dodge” by leaving the jurisdiction, the costs of which put an upper bound on how abusive such policies can be.
Unlike other state and local government burdens, however, voting with one’s feet cannot avoid the burdens of jurisdictions imposing “abusive” property taxation. The current owner of a property bears those burdens (and whatever benefits they finance). If they move away, but do not sell the property, they continue to bear the burden. If they sell the asset, whether they move away or not, the present value of the difference between expected future taxes and benefits will be capitalized into their property’s sale price, and they still bear the burden, just in a different form.
That can explain why in California, property taxes accelerated in the 1970s. It was attractive to politicians who wanted to sharply increase the role and reach of government, even though it carried no guarantee that the resources would provide more benefits than costs to citizens. That is why virtually every major government “leader” and powerful interest group opposed Proposition 13. It can also explain why Proposition 13 became so popular with those who felt victimized by rapidly rising property taxes without corresponding increases in value provided, and why opponents have continued to attack it in the more than four decades since, to resurrect their preferred funding source for profligate and unequal policies. One recent “study” critical of Proposition 13 let the cat out of the bag when it concluded that what was needed was to “overcome political and taxpayer resistance to changing Proposition 13 and other policies that constrain taxation and budgetary decision-making in California,” which in more straightforward words means, “we want still more tax money to spend, whether California’s citizens believe that spending is worth it or not.”
Rent control follows the same basic script when it comes to burdens imposed on property owners.
Rent controls coercively reduce what rental housing owners can earn by forcing rents below what others would be willing to pay for their units (that is, it takes away property rights owners had before). As with property tax increases, the current owner of a property bears those burdens. If they move away, but do not sell the property, they continue to bear the burden. If they sell the asset, whether they move away or not, the far lower present value of potential earnings from the property will be capitalized into their property’s sales price, and they still bear the burden, just in a different form.
The only major difference between the two cases is that taxes can fund whatever the government wants to spend it on, but imposing rent control essentially taxes landlords and gives the proceeds to existing tenants. In fact, in majority-renter cities, such as Santa Monica, existing renters can vote very large sums of money into their own pockets under the cover of “democracy” rather than robbery (voting to make your landlord charge you $1000 less than otherwise has the same effect as taking back $1000 of the rent you paid from your landlord at gunpoint, but the latter would land you in jail). That is why former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti referred to getting a rent-controlled apartment as like winning the lottery. Those lottery winners then reward the politicians who arrange such transfers, keeping them in office to advance their causes.
In sum, both property tax increases and rent control continue to be controversial, after decades, in that they both represent forms of grand theft against housing owners and rental housing providers. As long as such policies persist, enabled because the affected property owners cannot effectively “vote with their feet” to escape the burdens, we will see ongoing battles between those who benefit from and facilitate such theft and those whose resources are exploited to bear the costs. Such unequal treatment flies in the face of protecting what were to be our common unalienable rights to ourselves and our resources. There would be more peace and justice (at least in the traditional sense of giving each person their due) if we looked to shrink, rather than expand, such grand theft, housing, as we do with grand theft, auto.
This article was also published in American Institute for Economic Research
By Dr Alon Ben-Meir*
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has found itself facing a serious dilemma as to how to balance its commitment to Israel’s national security along with the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinians in Gaza. Whereas the United States provides military aid to Israel, including bombs and other defense and offense systems, as a part of the US strategic alliance, this support has always been rooted in their shared democratic values, mutual security interests, and historical ties. It is also influenced by domestic political factors within the United States, including strong support for Israel among the American people and American lawmakers.
At the same time, the US is facing tremendous pressure to provide humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza, especially food, water, medicine, and fuel. Having failed to persuade Israel to increase these supplies to the Palestinians recently, the United States decided to drop this aid from the air and now is also considering building a floating pier to provide such support from the sea, aiming at alleviating the humanitarian crisis. This could lessen, only to a small extent, the dire shortages of these essential supplies, but they are no substitute for direct deliveries from Israel in terms of quantities and speed which is desperately needed.
This dual approach of supporting Israel’s war efforts in Gaza while also providing humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians is paradoxical albeit is a part of President Biden’s broader diplomatic effort to balance US interests in the region. However, the United States’ effort to promote regional security by supporting Israel’s right to defend itself while advocating for the Palestinians’ humanitarian needs and acting on them presents a dilemma for President Biden. The Biden administration will have to resort to direct measures to force Netanyahu to change his policy and at the same time address other significant disagreements between them that go back years before the Israel-Gaza war.
Significant disagreement
They include policy differences related to the expansion of the settlements in the West Bank, the Iran nuclear deal, and President Biden’s efforts to renegotiate a new deal in the wake of Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, they differ dramatically concerning the overall approach in the search for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the United States supports a two-state solution to which Netanyahu vehemently objects.
There is also significant disagreement on two other major issues. The Biden administration would like the Palestinian Authority to take charge of the Strip following the end of the war. Conversely, Netanyahu completely opposes the return of the PA to Gaza, primarily because he wants to maintain control over most of the Palestinian territories and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. As he stated in January, “I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over the entire area in the west of Jordan – and this is contrary to a Palestinian state.”
In addition, whereas President Biden wants to see a clear exit strategy from the war, Netanyahu is insisting on maintaining indefinite security control over Gaza, which, from the United States’ perspective, will result in the expansion of the Israeli occupation and creeping annexation of Palestinian territories, with no resolution in sight.
It should be noted that the upcoming US presidential elections in November are playing a role in Netanyahu’s strategy. If there are only two people in the world who want Trump to win the election this fall, the first is Trump himself, and the second is Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister will do everything in his power to undermine President Biden’s reelection.
He is cheering the fact that Biden is intensely criticized by some Congressional Democrats as well as a multitude of young voters who oppose his unwavering support of Israel while tens of thousands of Palestinians have died and counting, and hundreds of thousands are on the verge of starvation. Netanyahu will prolong the war as long as it serves his personal interest and weakens Biden politically as he is embarking on his reelection campaign.
Given all of the above, President Biden should not allow Netanyahu to set the agenda. He must now take definitive measures to alert the Israeli public that, although the US commitment to Israel’s national security is unshakable, he differentiates between the state of Israel and the current Netanyahu government which is causing untold human suffering to the Palestinians in Gaza that must be stopped.
President Biden can initially take four major measures
To force Netanyahu’s hand, President Biden can initially take four major measures that will not affect the US commitment to Israel’s national security but will send a clear message to Netanyahu that the US must now draw the line and no longer allow Netanyahu to drag the US into the morass of his own creation. Although some of these measures are politically sensitive and have far-reaching implications, Biden has no choice but to act to alleviate the massive humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
First, President Biden should make a public statement to the effect that while the United States is and will remain committed to Israel’s national security, it has clear disagreements in the way Netanyahu is waging the war against Hamas, which is to Israel’s detriment. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s call from the Senate floor for an election in Israel to choose a new government is unprecedented, yet it is certainly timely and necessary. He labeled Netanyahu as one who “has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.” Given Schumer’s longstanding support for Israel as well as his closeness with the Biden administration, it is likely that he would not have made such a statement without consulting the White House.
This should now be translated to four demands that Netanyahu must comply with or face severe consequences: 1) Begin the immediate and speedy supply of basic necessities in sufficient quantities to alleviate the disastrous humanitarian crisis among the civilians in Gaza; 2) provide a safe passage to the Palestinians currently sheltering in Rafah, mostly from northern Gaza, to return to their homes before the IDF enters Rafah; 3) prepare for the creation of an international peacekeeping force to assume overall security once the fighting comes to an end; and 4) articulate a credible exit strategy from Gaza.
Second, since the United States provides significant military aid to Israel, the administration should immediately stop the delivery of military ordinances that indiscriminately kill many innocent Palestinians, such as bombs and other explosives. This would send a clear message that the United States cannot sit idly by while the carnage in Gaza continues, and force Netanyahu to resort to a surgical approach to weed out Hamas fighters.
Third, the United States should introduce or vote in favor of a resolution in the United Nations Security Council that calls on Israel to immediately agree on a ceasefire for six to eight weeks and allow the flow of aid to the Palestinians, irrespective of how the negotiation on the release of the hostages is progressing.
Fourth, on a political level, since President Biden has been advocating for a two-state solution, he should act now by allowing the reopening of the United States mission in East Jerusalem to serve the Palestinians and invite the Palestinian Authority to reestablish its mission in Washington, DC, to restore ties between the US and the PA. These two measures will not only demonstrate to the Palestinians that Biden means what he says and quell much of the criticism leveled against him by the Arab American community and congressional Democrats, but it will be the biggest slap in Netanyahu’s face and put a major obstacle in his design to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Needless to say, these measures rest on a set of considerations as stated above and their political implications. Nevertheless, President Biden has no choice but to act to balance his commitment to Israel’s national security and his determination to permanently alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
*Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.
The Israeli government’s “solution” to the Palestinian problem – eviction or destruction and colonization of what’s left of Palestinian land – did not begin after the October 7th Hamas raid.
A November 22, 2023, article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz headline reads, “Netanyahu Ignored All the Warnings and Looming Threats. He’s Primarily Responsible for the Calamity
“Instead of dealing with the clear warnings he was given, the Israeli prime minister focused on crushing democracy, establishing his status as the supreme ruler and transferring resources to the ultra-Orthodox and the settlements“
The article notes, “There’s no better proof of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s responsibility for the disaster suffered by Israel on October 7 than the letters of warning sent to him by the head of the Military Intelligence research division, Brig. Gen. Amit Saar, in March and July.”
For many decades Israeli politicians have been working toward the goal of establishing what they call “Eretz Israel” or “The Greater Land of Israel” – a greater Israel composed of all of the Palestine mandate “from the Sea to the River Jordan” (their words). After the partition of Palestine under UN auspices in 1948, Israel has expanded its territory, by military and non-military means, and now comprises 78% of what was once Palestine, plus Syria’s Golan Heights.
There is a clear historical record of deliberate displacement documented by many scholars, including the book, “Plowshares into Swords: From Zionism to Israel,” (Verso, 2008) by Princeton Professor Arno Mayer. Coming off the horrors of Russian pogroms and Nazi genocide, the early Founders of the Israeli state were in no mood to respect the rights of the indigenous Palestinians.
It took an American-born Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir (1969-1974), to speak the ultimate antisemitism against the Arabs of Palestine, declaring “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”
Other Israeli leaders before and after Golda Meir were brutally frank about what they were making happen on the ground. Israel’s lead Founder, David Ben-Gurion, in 1937 wrote in a letter to his son, “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…” A year later he said in a speech, “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. …” Many years later, in the 1980s, Ben-Gurion renewed his candor: “There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
In 1979, Israeli war hero, top general Moshe Dayan, recognized that “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages.” After naming a number of them, he added “There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” Speaking to Jewish settlers, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in 1988 warned resistors, meaning Palestinians would be crushed “like grasshoppers” and their “head smashed against the boulders and walls.”
Other Israeli Prime Ministers – Menachem Begin (1977-1983), Ariel Sharon (2001-2006) and the incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu have expressed similar assertions of the need to expel the Palestinians, as they have repressed and impoverished them in the Occupied Territories. Now, Netanyahu wants to push Palestinians out of Gaza entirely, if he can, into Egypt and Jordan.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak (1999-2001), responding to a columnist asking what he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian, frankly replied “I would have joined a terrorist organization.”
When it comes to “terrorism,” – defined as violence against civilians for political purposes, Palestinians have lost over 400 times more innocent lives than have innocent Israelis over the decades. Israeli state terror against Gaza’s (starving, sick and dying) civilians, mostly children and women, is manifesting itself daily with vast supplies of American weaponry and diplomatic cover.
To Israeli hardliners, countered by numerous courageous Israeli human rights organizations, Palestinian lives are valued beneath “cockroaches” and “snakes,” antisemitic rants against Arabs flow through the Israeli media. One Rabbi who eulogized American-born Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinians killed and 150 others injured who were praying in Hebron’s al-Ibrahimi Mosque, declared “One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.”
Israeli politicians have an encompassing reason why they believe they can get away with all kinds of violations of international law in their oppression of Palestinians and, in recent years, routine bombings and incursions into neighboring countries too weak to respond. That reason is the U.S. government. The U.S. is a lawless Empire bombing and invading where it wants, without Congressional declarations of war and in violation of federal and international laws.
In 2001, the BBC reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said, that “Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.”
That same year, P.M. Sharon declared what Israel’s prime ministers, before and since, have striven for regarding Congress and the White House when he told former P.M. Shimon Peres (1984-1986), as reported on Kol Yisrael radio: “Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.”
Such imperiousness and violent racist remarks against Palestinians are reflected in Israeli leaders and opinion-shapers who call Palestinians “beasts,” “animals,” “subhuman,” “crocodiles,” “vermin,” and worse. With such vile pejoratives, it was easy for Eli Yishai, Israeli Interior Minister to say in 2012: “The goal of the operation [Operation Pillar of Defense] is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages…”
Actually, the Palestinians have one of the highest literacy rates – 97 percent – in the world. Under dire conditions, they have accomplished farmers, physicians, scientists, engineers, poets, musicians, novelists, artists, and a deep entrepreneurial tradition carried on by the Palestinian diaspora around the world.
It is no accident that Israeli bombers directly target Palestinian cultural and educational institutions in their recurrent assaults on Gaza.
Israeli militarists have to degrade all Palestinians (3.2 million in the West Bank and 2.3 million in the Gaza Strip) to expel them from their ancestral lands and in so doing violently reveal the “other antisemitism” that most of the media has ignored. (See the “Anti-Semitism Against Arab and Jewish Americans” speech by Jim Zogby and DebatingTaboos.org).
Degrading rhetoric makes it easier for Israel to reject outright, a 2002 peace proposal for a two-state solution by the 22 countries of the Arab League that is still on the table.
(For documented sources and more similar declarations by Israeli politicians, see the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2018 issue.)