Things are spinning out of control in the Middle East. Michael Harris writes:
Events unfolding in the Middle East are showing just how right Canada was to call for a ceasefire in the atrocious Gaza War.
The nightmare scenario—an all-out regional conflict involving Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and potentially Iran on one side, with Israel and the United States on the other—is no longer a long shot.
After the recent assassination of a senior Hamas member in Beirut, the leader of Hezbollah, Hasan Nazralla, has called for vengeance against Israel.
Nazralla said his group is not afraid of war, and there would be no ceiling to the fighting if it begins. Israel did not give the U.S. advance notice before carrying out the assassination of Saleh Arouri.
Meanwhile in Iran, a car-bomb killed at least 84 people in the city of Kerman, which is the burial site of slain Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.
Iran’s leader said Israel will face “harsh punishment” for the bombing and deaths, the worst in the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Israeli Defense Forces told CNN: “No comment.”
The war will continue as long as the United States supports Israel. And is real will keep fighting until the Israelis toss out Netanyahu.
All this will take time. In the meanwhile, a pause in the fighting is the only way to bring a little sanity to this nightmare.
Image: NBC News
12 comments:
As well, at this moment, US representatives are visiting the region and trying to turn the heat and the pressure down. Israel is behaving, as intended, and falling into a trap such as described by Michael Harris. Basically those other countries want to fight Israel, they want an all out war, they want Israel out of the equation. They know and the US knows that the US, and others, will back Israel, but at the moment Israel is writing a cheque no one is prepared to cash at this time.
Israel, under Netanyahu, has reacted predictably but too strongly. The over reaction while not surprising is out of proportion to the original offence. Perhaps Netanyahu sees this as his chance to do as he has always wished or perhaps he has lashed out without thinking it all the way through. Either way it won’t have a good end if this keeps up.
Israel is long past the point and time where it needs to settle, equitably, the problems with their Palestinian neighbours. To keep doing as they have done is not going to get either side to where they want or need to be.
Frankly I only see both sides being destroyed if this keeps up. Both sides will need to give in and give up something, Israel more than the Palestinians, as they have taken much more and much that wasn’t theirs to take. The way forward isn’t to keep hoping the other side will go away or will quietly take the abuse and attacks.
One definition of insanity, Graham, is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
I thought I'd write a comment for you and for Lorne, Owen. Here goes:
It was the late 60s. I was in officer school at Esquimalt. A young infantry officer in dress uniform (the army always had the best uniforms) came in to the classroom. He had just returned from a tour on the demilitarized zone along the border of Gaza.
This fellow opened his briefcase and produced copies of Life, Look, and Time magazines. All featured stories about terrorism along the DMZ, pointing the finger of blame at the Palestinians.
The officer said it was part of his duty to investigate ceasefire violations along the border. Contrary to the tone of these American news magazines he said that most of the attacks across that no fire zone originated from Israeli terrorists attacking Gazans.
Until that moment I had been an ardent supporter of Israel but what I learned recalibrated my perception. I realized that there were no "clean hands" in that foresaken land. Our ally was as dirty, perhaps dirtier than the Palestinians.
When former state secretary Hillary Clinton's emails were dumped during the 2016 election campaign, among them was a dispatch about a meeting Clinton had with top Israeli generals. They detailed a new Israeli policy that became known as "Dahiyeh" after a Hezbollah neighbourhood in Beiruit. Israel would henceforth deliberately target civilian neighbourhoods - apartment buildings, schools, hospitals and essential infrastructure - power plants, freshwater and sewage systems - a deliberate and flagrant affront to human rights laws and the laws of war set out in the Geneva Conventions. Israel was deliberately targeting civilian populations and their essential infrastructure in the belief that would pressure their opponents to yield.
Clinton's dispatch confirmed what I had suspected when Israeli jets laid waste to this Beiruit neighbourhood. I had been puzzled with the first day saw air raids taking down the power plants. On successive days they trashed the water and sewage plants. Then they methodically destroyed hospitals, schools and finally residential buildings.
Once or twice a decade Israel has repeated these atrocities. Each time leads to grabbing more land in the West Bank and more pillaging of the Palestinian resources, especially farmland and the shared freshwater aquifers.
Canadian governments, Conservative and Liberal, have stood mute, supporting Israel almost every time the General Assembly votes on Palestinian issues.
We see each of these events as a standalone conflict which blinds us to the fact that what we're seeing is a campaign of ethnic cleansing by instalments. Those who criticize the Israeli government and its Zionist ways are denounced in our own House of Commons as anti-Semitic, conveniently blurring the criticial distinction.
An anti-Semite is one who hates Jews. It has now been turned on its head to mean anyone these fascists dislike. And our governments endorse this twisted logic. That makes our country complicit in this brutal madness.
I hear the hands of Armageddon clapping in the churches and temples of the USA!
Do not expect any intervention from the divided states of Amerika in the year of elections and perhaps further!!
TB
The first casualty of war is truth, Mound -- and so it continues.
And the madness will continue, TB.
Re,
Once or twice a decade Israel has repeated these atrocities. Each time leads to grabbing more land in the West Bank and more pillaging of the Palestinian resources, especially farmland and the shared freshwater aquifers.
True words that are passed off by today's media be it right, left government or independent.
Gwynn Dyer warned us , many years ago,in his book Climate Wars that we faced international conflict over the supply of fresh water.
please check this out..
https://www.google.com/search?q=america+to+drill+from+Israel+to+palestine+for+water&oq=america+to+drill+from+Israel+to+palestine+for+water&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigAdIBCTIzNzI2ajFqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Add to this the Jewish, not Israeli, version of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_as_the_chosen_people#:~:text=The%20Tosefta%2C%20an%20important%20supplement,are%20the%20%22chosen%20people%22.
Or try a modern explanation!
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/yuval-noah-harari-netanyahu-trying-to-create-a-new-judaism-with-depraved-ideas-of-supremacy/
TB
Righteousness is not the property of one nation, TB.
I worked for some Israelis for a total of 14 years in two small start-up tech companies.
The second company did well and grew-up, got a TSE listing, then went sideways when the street-fighting tactics that worked so well for the founders during start-up proved disastrous in a bigger established organization.
After I became CEO, we went from an $80M loss to a small profit, hitting the top-ten turnaround list in the Financial Post 1998 ratings. I visited our subsidiary in Israel twice while CEO. (I even know a little Hebrew.)
When I arrived in Israel the first time, I had a series of meetings with the local general manager, head sales guy, the book-keeper and the external accountant.
Each one in turn told me that 'things didn't work like they do in Canada' and to beware both internal and external crooks. Each person then swore that they were the only person in the local company that should be trusted.
Already a 'lovely little country' back then, I can only imagine the what it is like today.
Mr. Netanyahu seems to operate that way, PoV.
At least the USA is trying to calm things down. /s
A U.S. airstrike on the headquarters of an Iran-backed militia in central Baghdad on Thursday killed a high-ranking militia commander, militia officials said.
Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi was, at least nominally, a fairly senior member of the Iraqi armed forces. This will help the Iraqi population calm down. Nothing like having an erstwhile ally assassinate one of your officers.
In other words Israel has tacit, or more than tacit, support from the US Administration. Hell, what's a little genocide here and there?
That's exactly how genocide becomes normalized, jrk.
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