A concise overview of the US proxy war in Syria posted today by Brian Berletic on his ‘The New Atlas’ channel with all notes, references and links preserved from the original:
Syrian forces continue withdrawing following a large offensive carried out by US-sponsored terrorists from Idlib, northern Syria;
Syrian forces previously withdrew from these regions during the 2011-2015 phase of the US proxy war against Syria;
Russian intervention allowed Syrian forces to incrementally take back territory with a specific task force, city-by-city, in operations that spanned years;
It is still too early to draw conclusions about the disposition of forces on either side, including how overextended Russian and Iranian forces may be or the full depth of combat power of US-backed terrorists;
Syrian forces are likely falling back because they are incapable of holding all of this territory at once, particularly in areas like Hama and Homs serving as traditional strongholds of US-backed extremism and will need to incrementally retake it as it did from 2015 onward;
More recently [Dec 2nd], Vanessa Beeley (reporting live from Syria) spoke at length to founder and host of Last American Vagabond, Ryan Cristian, about the situation on the ground, wherein a renewed effort appears to be underway to destabilise and further occupy the country.
They also discussed recent events in Georgia, currently being described by many online as an “invasion” or a “coup”, and Vanessa reveals that the truth on the ground is quite a bit different, as tends to be the case in today’s hyper-propagandized world.
The main article begins below.
***
The article reproduced in full below was originally published by Vanessa Beeley on The Wall Must Wall on Friday November 28th.
*
Written in 2021 by Syrian military analyst Ibrahim Al Wahdi and edited by Vanessa Beeley
What follows is a detailed analysis of the terrorist groups and warlord factions involved in the occupation of north-west Syria and the interconnected Turkish neo-Ottoman agenda in northern Syria.
The role of Russia and its collaboration with the Syrian Arab Army is explored in depth and the areas where there is the greatest potential for conflict are revealed.
The war in Syria is not over and there are many UK/US-backed terrorist shifting alliances to be taken into account as part of the geopolitical power game that is now entering its most dangerous stage.
The tipping points are on multiple axes and it will take a great deal of political and military brinkmanship from Damascus and her allies to restore peace to Syria.
*
Warlord conflict in Idlib
Al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) deployed its most powerful weapons and equipment, opened its depots and engaged the elite ‘Asa’ib’ fighters in the battles for Mount Al-Turkman.
The last 28 members of Jund Allah (God’s soldiers), led by “Abu Fatima Al Turki” were expelled from the mountain. These fighters had been responsible for the killing of 9 HTS and the kidnapping of more than 10 gang members but they escaped safely.
Muslim Abu Walid Al-Shishani (Murad Margoshivili), and his armed group “Junod Al Sham” have also fled the mountain after violent clashes with HTS. Murad’s brother “Abu Musa Al-Shishani” was captured trying to flee to Turkey and held at a Turkish checkpoint.
Junod al-Sham was established in 2012 under the leadership of Muslim Al-Shishani. The majority of fighters were from the Caucasus countries. The group never exceeded 300 members. Almost half of them left with the defection of “Abu Omar al-Shishani” when he pledged allegiance to terrorist group ISIS in 2013.
HTS is headed up by Abu Mohammed Al Jolani recently platformed in a Frontline interviewin an apparent attempt to rebrand Jolani as viable Syrian opposition not the extremist violent former Al Qaeda leader he really is.
Al Jolani’s battles with the Junod Al Sham, Jund Allah and Guardians of Religion gangs must be viewed in the context of the bombings and suicide vehicle operations that have targeted Turkish military points and patrols since the last military operation of the Syrian Arab Army in the area that ended with a ceasefire on March 5, 2021.
The latest attack was on October 16th 2021 when a Turkish patrol was targeted killing two soldiers and injuring two more.
Such tactics were adopted by unknown organizations such as the “Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Brigades”. Al Jolani accused these splinter groups of conducting these attacks to secure Turkish support.
The groups accused Jolani of using the attacks to blame unaffiliated groups in Idlib because he was seeking a monopoly in Idlib with Turkish backing. This is the gangs and counter gangs scenario that has been a hallmark of the US Coalition armed group activities in Syria since 2011.
Here comes the Turkistan Islamic Party‘s (TIP) role. TIP consists primarily of al-Qaeda loyalists, originally from Xinjiang Province, northwest China (Uighurs).
TIP has made a deal with Taliban leaders in cooperation with Turkish intelligence (MIT) to transport Junod Al-Sham and Jund Allah groups and leaders, alongside other terrorist fighters, to Afghanistan through Turkey according to local sources. The “Azm” operation room in Afrin has denied any existence of these groups despite having received them after they fled Idlib.
*
But how would that affect Idlib now?
In order to understand and predict, we must first know who’s left in Idlib, their allegiances and their importance.
Jihadist factions reconciled with HTS:
“Jaysh al-Badia” and Jaysh al-Malahem, two small jihadist factions, whose first and last allegiance is to al-Qaeda, defected from HTS in late 2017, due to its separation from al-Qaeda, but recently returned under its wing.
“Sham al-Islam” faction, which is stationed in Mount al-Turkman, northeast of Lattakia, and includes about 400 fighters, 150 of which are Moroccan leaders and fighters, in addition to 50 Sudanese, while the rest are Syrians.
“Ansar al-Tawhid” faction, was formed in March of 2018, in Sarmin town in Idlib, from the remnants of the “Jund al-Aqsa” organization (that launched a war against several jihadist factions, which hastened its elimination). They pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and joined the operations room ” Rouse the Believers” before declaring its independence from everyone in a statement issued on May 03, 2020.
“Ajnad al-Caucasus“, led by Abdul Malik al-Shishani, was one of the most prominent organizations that fought the Syrian Arab Army and its allies during the SAA campaign to liberate southern Idlib and northern Hama. Battles were halted by a ceasefire agreement on March 05, 2020, when the group suffered heavy losses, with no more than 250 fighters remaining (according to local sources) forcing it to retreat.
These groups do not pose a threat to HTS at the present time due to understandings between the leaders of the groups and HTS command:
The “Albanian Brigade” (Xhemati Alban), an independent group led by the Macedonian Abu Qatada al-Albani, was established in 2013, and includes jihadists from the Balkan countries Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania, in addition to some Saudis and Syrians.
Its fighters are trained in all types of medium and heavy weapons. They formed a special squad of Albanian snipers. They currently operate in Kabana in the countryside of Latakia. The ideological orientation of the battalion is similar to HTS and Al-Qaeda, and it maintains a good relationship with HTS without engaging in internal hostilities.
The Salafist “Salah al-Din al-Kurdi Movement“, which began its activity in Syria in 2012, and is now deployed in Mont al-Akrad in Latakia’s northern countryside. The movement has its own training camp and local sources have informed the author that there is evidence that Qatar and Turkey are the bankrollers of the group. This claim is borne out by the fact that Turkey gave them a training camp in Afrin and they have close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood which is sponsored predominantly by Qatar.
Its members are professional soldiers, and most of them hail from eastern Turkey, in addition to Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian Kurdish fighters. These Kurdish factions believe in the Sunni Muslim roots of the Kurds and aim to expand their influence throughout the Syrian Kurdish communities.
“The Kurdish Immigrants of Iran’s Sunnis Movement”, the only Kurdish group that pledged allegiance to HTS. Most of its fighters come from northwestern Iran. Its fighters are fierce and highly trained, and guard important points in the Kabanah area. Additionally they deploy mobile offensive combat groups to guard some points of Mount al-Zawiya, south of Idlib City. The movement is led by “Abu Safiya al-Kurdi”, who participated in a meeting organised by al-Jolani with a number of Kurdish Salafist leaders in an Idlib mosque in mid-June.
*
Islamist factions opposed to HTS:
Al-Ghuraba Division (Strangers), which is deployed west of Idlib, and is led by the French-Senegalese jihadist ” Omar Omsen ” (Omar Diaby), who was previously arrested by HTS in August 2020 and his son Bilal was also arrested in late 2021. The French authorities accuse him of recruiting 80% of the French-speaking jihadists who went to Syria or Iraq.
– “Ansar al-Din Front” led by Abu Salah al-Uzbeki (Siraj al-Din Mukhtarov), from the Kyrgyz Republic. Founder and commander of the “Uzbek” battalion within HTS and the mastermind of the St Petersburg metro terrorist attack in Russia in 2017. He was arrested by HTS after his defection to Ansar al-Din in June 2020 and released in March 2021.
– “Ansar al-Islam” faction, Kurdish Salafist group stationed in the vicinity of Jisr al-Shughour, west of Idlib, and in the Dower al-Akrad within the al-Ghab Plain, west of Hama. Around 200 members – majority Iraqi Kurds along with Syrian, Turkish and Iranian Kurdish fighters. It was founded in 2001 in northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan) and fought against a number of Kurdish parties. It is considered the most fanatic among the Kurdish Salafist groups in Idlib, and the most powerful. One of its goals is to establish an Islamic state governed by Sharia Law.
– “Guardians of Religion“, affiliated with Al-Qaeda, which was established in 2018 after defection from HTS. “Al-Zawahiri” recently complimented the group after they carried out a terrorist operation in western Damascus, on August 04, 2020 – The armed group announced in a statement that one of its divisions blew up a bus carrying officers of the “Republican Guard” in the capital, as part of the “Battle of Al-Usra” series, in “solidarity with the people of Daraa”.
The group was considered to “devote itself to ‘jihad’ work inside the capitol (Damascus)”. Today the group is going through a difficult transition. Its leaders have been repeatedly targeted by US drones, giving the US the opportunity of testing its new tactical weapon such as Hellfire missile, (which indicates the hidden intelligence cooperation between al-Julani and the CIA),
Frequent battles with Al Jolani on the ground in Syria have also reduced the number of fighters in the group. The organization included about 2,000 fighters of different nationalities when it was founded, but now that is less than 100.
These factions are most likely to be the next target of Al-Jolani’s campaign to eliminate competition in Idlib and northern Syria.
*
Islamist factions collaborating with HTS
Perhaps the most prominent of the HTS allies is the aforementioned “Turkistan Islamic Party” or TIP, led by “Abu Suleiman al-Turkistani”. These are the Uighur Al Qaeda loyalists from Xinjiang Province in northwest China. TIP comprises around 8000 fighters who are distinguished by their savagery and combat prowess.
TIP follows the HTS policies closely and secured the exit of extremist fighters from Mount Al Turkman during recent battles. It is unlikely that TIP will clash with HTS after violent disputes between the two groups.
Al Jolani brought the TIP to heel and claimed that China was providing weapons to Damascus to eliminate them in Idlib and Hama countryside. This claim forced the TIP to reduce their presence in the main cities and to withdraw their families to the ‘refugee’ camps on the Syria-Turkey borders near the town of Harem.
The importance of the party lies in its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, which allowed it to establish strong relations with Turkey, Taliban and HTS at the same time. It is directly hostile to China. In September 2002 the US Treasury Department placed TIP on the list of terrorist organisations.
There remain a handful of small independent groups of foreign extremist fighters and groups who will face one of two fates. Either to be subjugated or neutralized in order for Jolani to achieve absolute control over Idlib governorate. This is in preparation for a full integration with the factions under the umbrella of the Turkish-backed so-called Syrian National Army.
This will complete the rebranding and recycling of HTS – a Turkish-UK-led agenda in northern Syria according to a ‘diplomatic source’ who informed Russian media, TASSin May 2021 that MI6 was involved in the project:
“The British side suggested that the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham group (outlawed in Russia, also known as Jabhat al-Nusra) should announce plans to abandon subversive activities against Western countries and build close cooperation with them […] Mohammad al-Julani received recommendations to give an interview to an American reporter in order to create a positive image for the alliance that he heads and rehabilitate it in the future. There are plans to engage some of the UK’s allies, primarily the US, in efforts aimed at rebranding the al-Nusra group.”
*
What is Al Jolani’s endgame in Idlib?
Al Jolani is trying to prove to everyone, especially Turkey, that he is the only one capable of controlling Idlib province from a security and military perspective. Idlib can be described as another “Tora-Bora” with embedded terrorist organisations comprising some of the most deadly foreign mercenaries.
Jolani is working on a reputation as the supreme warlord dissolving minor groups or reining in the more powerful factions. This is probably one of the main reasons that Jolani has not been assassinated by US/UK allied intelligence agencies, he is a useful asset in the last remaining terrorist-controlled pocket of north-west Syria.
Jolani’s agenda directly overlaps that of Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – to persuade Western countries to remove HTS from the UN and US terrorist list by demonstrating Jolani’s willingness to “fight terrorism” and endorsing his claims that HTS has no desire to conduct terrorist operations against the US, UK or EU by limiting their terrorism to Syria and against the Syrian people.
Jolani’s rebrand presents him as the only viable political solution in Idlib which serves Turkey’s neo-Ottoman ambitions to have control over strategic Syrian territory. Turkey can appear to be complying with Russian brokered agreements by ostensibly expelling terrorist groups from the de-escalation zones and securing the safety of the M4 (Aleppo to Latakia road).
Here we cannot ignore the “Levant Front” (LF), the largest faction of the “National Army” based in the countryside of Aleppo. The LF has formed a rival alliance to HTS in north-west Syria. It seeks to embrace the majority of political ‘opposition’ institutions in the areas of Aleppo countryside under its control combined with coordination with local armed groups to develop a shadow state in Idlib.
LF influence has expanded significantly since early 2021. The LF headquarters near the Bab Al Salama crossing has become a destination for the leaders of the National Coalition. LF recently hosted the commander of the so-called “Syrian Islamic Council“, Sheikh Osama Abdel Karim al-Rifai.
The battle for power in Idlib has resulted in a new factional map. HTS dismantling and restructuring of the “Ahrar al-Sham” (AS) movement, – which once represented an anti-HTS project – has pushed many AS members to defect and join the ranks of the LF seeking ideological synergy. Since early 2021 LF has received more than 900 AS terrorist fighters led by Alaa Faham who will form a brigade under the LF umbrella to confront HTS in the Aleppo countryside.
In July 2021, the LF formed a new military alliance separate to the National Army and the Interim Government or “Azm Operations Room”. The majority of factions operating in Aleppo countryside have joined the new coalition and present a considerable threat to HTS supremacy in Idlib.
Two of Azm’s statements of welcoming new factions joining its ranks
Two months after the formation of the “Syrian Front for Liberation” (SFI) led by Al-Mu’tasim Abbas, the “Suqur Al Shamal Brigade” and the “20th Division” have defected and joined Azm increasing numbers to an estimated forty thousand comprising more than 15 factions deployed throughout northern Syria. This leaves SFL with only 3 factions and ten thousand fighters.
The supposed Islamist project of the LF, its military alliance leadership and its expansionist policies in northwestern Syria do not automatically mean that it is preparing for a new round of conflict with HTS.
On the contrary, we may witness a dramatic increase in coordination between the two powerful factions in various fields. De facto the LF alliance may facilitate the settlement of issues with Jolani which will pave the way for broader collaboration in the future.
Russia is opposed to any political solution in the region that includes HTS. Russian and Turkish delegations have met several times in the border areas after the Erdogan-Putin summit in September 2021.
Russia has requested a Turkish withdrawal from the eastern countryside of Idlib between the cities of Idlib and Saraqeb. This leaves Turkish forces in Idlib two options. First to repel any ground attack by the Syrian Arab Army which would result in serious losses for Turkish military, second to wait for the impending Syrian/Russian military campaign to liberate Idlib from terrorist occupation. The second option could result in Turkish bases being besieged as happened in 2019 and 2020.
Local sources indicate that the Turkish military divisions in Idlib, especially south of the M4, have reinforced their bases and closed some main roads with engineering barriers. The Syrian leadership intends to regain control over southern and western Idlib to secure the M4 and perhaps advance towards Idlib city.
There is potential for similar deals to be implemented as were recently successful in Daraa, south of Damascus city.
The collaboration between LF and HTS is not a recent phenomenon. They were previously limited to the terrorist economy – fuel trade, crossing control, checkpoints but have developed considerably since the end of 2020.
Certain opposition media outlets have reported that the two parties are coordinating in the security and military sectors. The Levant Front received officials and high ranking leaders from HTS in Azaz. A joint camp was recently established between Jolani’s forces and Sheikh Juma’a LF forces in the village of “Maabatli” as a trial military collaborative project.
*
Turkish military operations and the Erdogan conundrum
Turkey has weaponised the Muslim Brotherhood to expand military intervention in Syria, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Afghanistan and Libya.
Turkey is suffering the repercussions of these neo-Ottoman ambitions with internal issues that include an economic crisis, refugee influx and a declining Turkish Lira.
This has severely affected Erdogan’s popularity and combined with his deteriorating health, Turkish opposition parties are seeing an opportunity to win the upcoming elections in 2023 based on the resolution of the refugee issue as a primary concern for the majority of Turkish people.
A Turkish journalist specializing in American affairs, Bahar Feyzan, had leaked information about Biden and Erdogan meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 conference in Rome recently, including the advice of US President Joe Biden to Erdogan to withdraw from running for the upcoming elections, saying, “Take your health condition as an excuse to leave politics.”
Recent analysis by Steven A. Cook for Foreign Policy, covered the leak of media reports that claim Erdogan’s intention is to transfer authority to Defense Minister Hulusi Akar in case of any deterioration in his health, with a cabinet reshuffle and the appointment of Akar as First Vice President.
Erdogan is fearful, under pressure and sick, and he appears to have no other options but to export his problems abroad in order to survive. The Kurdish problem in particular has always been an existential threat to Turkish national security, which makes it the easiest card for Erdogan to play including securing internal authorisationto send military forces to Syria and Iraq for an additional two years.
With the increase in operations targeting Turkish soldiers in several areas, and the US-backed Kurdish Contra (SDF) non-compliance with the Turkish-Russian agreement in Sochi 2019, Erdogan is promoting a military campaign in north-east Syria to be conducted on four axes with an army of 35,000 comprising extremist mercenaries and Turkish armed forces.
In addition to “Menagh” air base near Azaz, Turkey considers Ayn al-Arab (Kobani) among its main priorities, to cut SDF’s strategic support lines between Qamishli-Manbij-Kobani. This would ensure a direct link between Ras al-Ain and Tal Abyad with the Euphrates Shield areas.
The National Army has sent several military convoys through Turkey to Darbasiyah near the Iraqi-Syrian border, in preparation for a military operation.
NA leaders have announced the raising of combat readiness, and according to a military source in the National Army, the Turkish officers have informed them that Manbij will be a distraction axis, and the troops will advance towards Tal Tamr, Tal Rifaat, Ain Issa and Ayn Al-Arab, while Turkish reconnaissance planes dropped leaflets warning civilians to stay away from SDF military sites, and threatened a military invasion of the region.
Practically, it is unlikely for Erdogan to risk a military adventure in northern Syria without international endorsement, especially in Tal Rifaat, where it might lead to a direct confrontation with Russia.
Tal Rifaat is not a major stronghold for SDF, it is a strategic geographical target. It is also very close to Aleppo city which explains the Russian presence and recent large reinforcements sent by the Syrian Arab Army that include advanced T-90 tanks and BMP-2 armoured vehicles heading towards Malikiyah and Shawargha villages in northern Aleppo countryside. Both villages have experienced a violent exchange of shelling in the last few days.
The most convenient scenario, for Turkey, if a military confrontation is unavoidable is for Tal Rifaat to be a distraction axis to keep the SDF militia pinned down there while the main operation would target between Tal Tamr – Ayn Issa and Manbij-Ayn Al-Arab because they are the major Kurdish strongholds.
However Erdogan may refrain from military action altogether preferring to flex his muscles publicly by deploying tanks and forces in the area to trigger negotiations to share “security” in north-east Syria.
Military action can be impeded by the imposition of a No Fly Zone over any area being considered for confrontation. Without Russian and US consent, Erdogan would be foolhardy to precipitate possible conflict with both. Reuters quoted a senior Turkish security official saying:
“The operation will start when all preparations are completed,” adding, “We are in coordination with Russia on the matter. The issue was addressed with the United States already.”
How true this claim is remains to be seen.
Below is a video of a recent Turkish military convoy heading towards Tal Abyad:
*
Russia’s position and objectives
Russian Turkish relations are tense in Syria. Russia is unhappy with Turkish intervention in countries where Russia has geopolitical interests – Libya, Syria, Armenia, Ukraine.
Ukraine used Turkish-manufactured UAVs against positions of eastern Ukraine forces affiliated with Russia.
Russia has since sent a clear message by carrying out joint air exercises with the Syrian Arab Army in areas supposed to be Turkish targets for military invasion such as the vicinity of Tal Tamr, Tal Abyad and Ain Issa where the Russian flag has been raised.
This is combined with auxiliary forces redeployment between the 93rd Brigade area and the Russian military base located in Tal Al-Samn. A big SAA reinforcement was sent to Manbij in preparation for another round of military exercises.
This will complicate the situation for Erdogan who specifically wants Ain Issa due to its location on the M4 that links Latakia with Iraq through Aleppo and Hasaka in the north-east.
Russia has also deployed the S400 air defense system at Qamishli Airport, along with twelve Su-34 bombers and five Su-35s, while the Syrian forces will deploy MiG-29, in addition to twelve Mi-8 helicopters and five Ka-52 Alligator at the Mitras military airfield, (30 km) south of Ayn al-Arab or as the US/Israeli-backed Kurdish separatists call it – “Kobani”.
Despite the Turkish calls on Russia to cleanse Ayn al-Arab of Kurdish separatist militias, Russia does not favor the entry of the “National Army” into Ayn al-Arab. It is keen to ensure the security of its military base in “Serrin”.
Perhaps the clearest indication of repercussions for Erdogan-driven recklessness in northern Syria was the recent Syrian targeting of Sarmada which houses a communications headquarters for HTS.
This was followed by airstrikes and artillery bombardment of Turkish-backed 23rd Division forces for several consecutive days and the targeting of camps and shelters of the Turkestan militias on the border strip with Turkey.
*
We cannot separate the northeast from the northwest, as Russia may agree on a limited Turkish operation in exchange for parts of Mount al-Zawiya and the city of Jisr Al-Shughour, which is the most important part of the Turkish-Russian negotiation, especially if the Syrian-Kurdish negotiations fail.
If liberated, the strategic areas of Mount Al-Zawiya and Jisr Al-Shughour will lead to the defeat of terrorism in a significant area of Idlib countryside. Regaining these areas is one of the most important military objectives of the Syrian Arab Army in the impending battles to secure the M4. The Russian Reconciliation Centre has been repeatedly announcing terrorist violations of the ceasefire agreement and the potential for the staging of a “chemical weapon attack” to provoke international outrage against the Syrian government.
According to civilian sources:
“[M]ore than 200 Turkish vehicles loaded with advanced weapons, ammunition and logistical materials entered Bab Al-Hawa and Khirbet al-Jawz crossings in two batches and deployed in the western countryside of Idlib and Mount al-Zawiya in order to strengthen its occupation points and provide direct support to terrorist organizations.”
Watch – video of Turkish military vehicles entering Syria via the so-called ‘humanitarian’ crossing:
*
The Turkish Humanitarian Relief Agency “IHH” announced the establishment of 16,239 briquette houses in Idlib Governorate. This is an indication of preparation for further displacement of civilians during an intensified military campaign.
*
Kurdish-Syrian rapprochement
With all the Turkish mobilization and media promotion of a huge Turkish military operation – waiting on international approval – the SDF has moved its most prominent military leaders from its headquarters adjacent to the Turkish border into the cities to protect them from the potential Turkish UAV attacks.
The past few days have witnessed a remarkable rapprochement between the Democratic Union Party (the SDF backbone) Damascus and Russia. The SDF removed the “Al-Quwatli”, “Al-Shabab City” and “The Industrial School” checkpoints in Qamishli city.
This lifts the longstanding siege on the security square of the Syrian forces in the city, which was imposed by the SDF after bloody confrontations erupted between the Kurdish units and the Syrian National Defense Forces back in April.
The increasing Russian influence in the Syrian east and the American retreat, which is still in its early stages, means placing the fate of the SDF in the hands of Moscow not Washington.
Despite the strenuous Russian efforts to reach a political solution with the Kurds, the US military presence is still a major obstacle. It is difficult to trust the Kurds who are divided among themselves and are far from autonomous having accepted US support to lay claim to Syrian territory.
Damascus prioritises Syrian territorial integrity and a central governance structure. This would force the Kurdish Contras to hand the oil fields back to Damscus and to accept a similar agreement to Daraa. This would include the integration of Kurdish military into a Syrian military division similar to the Eighth Brigade of the Fifth Corps.
The Kurdish factions are divided between those who lean towards the United States and a separate Kurdish state, while others seek to reach an agreement that guarantees some Kurdish rights, such as the language.
The latter is in communication with Damascus to agree on a draft agreement between the Kurdistan Workers Party, the Democratic Union Party and the Syrian State. This would include the establishment of a joint military operations room for the Syrian Arab Army, SDF, Russian forces and other allies to repel any possible Turkish aggression, based on a statement from the Head of the National Initiative for Syrian Kurds, Omar Ossi to Al-Watan newspaper.
According to Kurdish leaks a joint delegation of the Syrian Democratic Council and the Autonomous Administration headed by Ilham Ahmed visited Moscow, on Wednesday, September 15, 2021.
Their meeting with the Special Envoy of the Russian President to the Middle East and Africa, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, put forward a proposal that recognised the legitimacy of the Syrian government and President Bashar al-Assad, would agree to raise the Syrian flag in the areas of the so-called Kurdish controlled Autonomous Administration, share the region’s oil imports – 75% for the central government and 25% for the Autonomous Administration – among other terms.
Bogdanov informed the delegation that the only way to protect them is by cooperating with the Syrian Arab Army and the Syrian state directly to prevent a repeat Afrin scenario, when Kurds were ethnically cleansed by Turkish forces after the Kurds refused collaboration with the Syrian Arab Army in early 2018.
In an interview with RT, the prominent leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), Aldar Khalil confirmed their readiness for dialogue with the Syrian state directly in Damascus, without going to Geneva. He added that:
The resources and wealth in this region are not only ours. We do not have any intentions to monopolize them, but rather consider them a national treasure for all Syrians”
Khalil’s comments came days after the statements of Kurdistan Workers’ Party leader, Jamil Bayik, in an interview with Al-Nahar Al-Arabi newspaper where he said:
Our relationship with Hafez al-Assad and his family was close and warm. We cannot be anti-Syria or anti-Assad. We have previously established our relations on the basis of the general interest of the Kurds and the Kurdish-Arab brotherhood. Now we want to be a party to such a relationship.”
These statements coincide with reports of an agreement between the Russian Reconciliation Center and SDF that provides for the handover of areas in the countryside of Deir ez-Zor to the Syrian Arab Army (Al-Shuhail, Al-Busira, Dhiban, Al-Hawaij, Al-Shafa, Al-Susa and Al-Baghouz).
Map of the areas should be handed over on the next side of Euphrates river according to the agreement
On Saturday 13th November the US pushed back against the Damascus-led negotiations with Washington’s Kurdish proxies. The official website of the SDF announced the arrival of US State Department officials and Ethan Goldrich – Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs – in north-east Syria. The US Officials met with the Commander in Chief of the SDF, Mazoum Abdi to discuss ‘humanitarian and security’ issues.
On the same day the US Embassy in Syria Twitter account announced that it would stay in Syria to ensure the “ISIS threat is eliminated” which can be interpreted as a reassurance for the Kurdish separatists as rumours abound of a US withdrawal which would encourage Kurdish factions to negotiate with Damascus.
*
US reluctance to support Turkish military invasion of Syria
It wouldn’t be easy for Turkey to getUS consent for a military operation in light of the US-Turkish differences that were clearly manifested when the US Department of Defence (DoD) recently expelled Turkey from the F-35 project.
Turkey had threatened to buy SU-35s from Russia. The Biden administration has extended sanctions imposed on Turkey due to its military operation against Kurdish forces in Syria in 2019 for another year.
Brett McGurk, US Envoy for the coalition ‘fighting ISIS’, resigned from Trump’s administration in protest against Operation Peace Spring and would now be one of the fiercest opponents of any new Turkish military campaign in Syria. The US will not necessarily step in to protect the Kurdish proxies but Washington will oppose any Turkish threat to US supremacy and economic interests in the region.
The US military convoy movement in and out of Syria have increased in the past two months. The majority of these convoys come in empty and go back loaded with stolen oil. They are also involved in kidnapping civilians through airdrop operations in the countryside of Deir Ezzor and Al-Hasakah in the north-east.
The “International Coalition” has recently transferred another batch of ISIS prisoners of foreign nationalities from the Industrial School prison in the Ghweran neighborhood in Al-Hasakah city to its base in Al-Shaddadi city south of Al-Hasakah.
All these transfer and airdrop operations raise questions. Where are these prisoners going next? Are all these airdrops just to kidnap people or to extract valuable assets?
*
Conclusions
Between the Biden-Erdogan meeting, the Russian-Syrian military exercises and the SAA reinforcements in northern Syria, there are clear messages to be read:
It is not just about Biden or European rejection of Erdogan. The transnational corporatocracy is tired of Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanism. His expansionist ambitions and blatant interference in multiple foreign state affairs, his weaponization of the refugee crisis and subsequent blackmailing of Europe, are all factors that make him a universal threat.
It is very clear that Erdogan wants full or partial control of the M4. He knows that once he loses this leverage he will have no cards in his hand for negotiation. If Erdogan chooses to occupy alternative areas of Syrian territory he may find it will bring more problems than solutions. North of the M4 is agricultural, has no resources to plunder but is occupied by disparate and unruly terrorist groups.
Once the M4 is fully liberated by the SAA, the only remaining prize to be claimed by Erdogan is Al Jolani himself who believes the Taliban model is achievable in Idlib and who is clearly an asset to US Coalition intelligence agencies as the new “Bin Laden”. Perhaps there is even potential of Al Jolani being squeezed out of Idlib and turning his attention to southern Turkey for his ideologically supremacist project?
The regions of northern Syria are within Russia’s political calculations and any possible agreement with Washington will not authorize Turkey to launch attacks without a Russian green light which is very unlikely. Therefore any military operation will be limited and only Turkish-backed proxies will be used to conduct the unlawful military operations of Turkey’s criminal leadership.
Russia has stressed to Turkey the need for military, security and political coordination in the ongoing difficult negotiations between the two sides. Washington has withdrawn from supporting the SDF except in the pseudo fight against ISIS in the north.
Russia presents itself as an alternative ally to the SDF capable of mediating between them and Turkey to prevent military conflict. Russia also perceives itself as the international guarantor of security and stability in the region in preparation for a US withdrawal destined to return Syrian resources to the Syrian government and people after years of US Coalition occupation and theft.
Despite the Turkish military build-up and the rapid developments, no one can indicate a zero hour for any military operation. It is obviously under negotiations between the three countries, and while some people rush to criticize, denounce, reject and deny the ongoing events in northern Syria, many forget that it is not about moods or wishes, and no one can predict any scenario or believe any news without first knowing the facts on the ground.
With a complete international, regional and internal consensus to resolve the files of eastern and western Euphrates within a great settlement in the Middle East, the facts on the ground and the emerging political factors impose inevitable war on those who reject a peaceful solution or try to obstruct it.
Northern Syria will almost certainly be the epicentre of fierce battles, military and political, that will determine the fate of Syria now and in the future. The final word rests with the Syrian Arab Army and allies and how they navigate the increasingly complex network of groups and alliances to achieve their objectives for Syria.
*
Click here to read the same article as it was originally published by Vanessa Beeley on November 28th.
On November 7th, Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv visited Amsterdam to play Ajax. Maccabi fans have a well-established reputation for racism and violence, and they seized the opportunity to rampage across the city tearing down pro-Palestinian flags, chanting vile anti-Arab slogans, and wielding sticks, metal pipes and any other weapons they could lay their hands on to attack local residents.
These unprovoked attacks by mobs of Maccabi fans were filmed by Dutch journalists, ‘Bender’ and Annet de Graaf, who recorded footage that was mostly ignored or else deliberately reframed and falsely presented as a racially motivated attack on the Maccabi fans themselves. Annet de Graaf has since publicly condemned international media for mislabeling her video as evidence of “anti-Semitic attacks” against Israeli football supporters.
Indeed, in a coordinated effort to lay all the blame on the victims of the violence, the mainstream media wasted no time at all in equating the incident to “a pogrom” and making obscene, senseless, and totally inflammatory comparisons to Kristallnacht.
For a full account of what really happened and how the media repeatedly and deliberately lied to mislead the audience, I refer readers to an excellent analytical overview produced by Double Down News (above), and the still deeper analysis presented by Al Jazeera (below):
*
In response to this extraordinary illustration of mainstream “fake news” and shameless pro-Israel propagandising, Natalie Strecker also provided her own rebuttal:
Angrily, she stresses the point that such ludicrous parallels to The Holocaust and other historical atrocities against Jewish people dishonours the victims. She also references Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four with the caption “welcome to our own 1984, when the perpetrators are the victims”.
Nowadays citations of Orwell’s greatest work are widespread and consequently its impact has been diminished. However, the reason for this overuse of reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four is itself a cause for alarm – or ought to be.
Orwell wrote his book as a cautionary tale, yet seemingly, and though his name is today immortalised in the adjective ‘Orwellian’, most people are conditioned to regard such bleak dystopian prophesy as either something distant and foreign (enemy states), or else a product of more or less unstoppable and thus unavoidable technological “progress”, or even just as literary hyperbole.
Certainly, it is all of these things. Many foreign states are deeply Orwellian. Our own technologies are also leading us into a surveillance state that has clear Orwellian characteristics. Yet to call the West ‘Orwellian’ at this present time still strains the original meaning of the term a little too much.
The looming threat of a police state is certainly rising and the shadow cast already has a significant chilling effect. Nevertheless, due to the extreme gravity of these matters, it is better not to throw the term “Orwellian” around too casually. But this brings me back to Natalie Strecker’s case, and how her own description was rather promptly underlined. That in true Orwellian manner, having posted up her real concerns, instead of simply ignoring her, which given her relatively low-level social media profile one might have expected the state to do, instead she got an early morning knock at the door from the counterterrorism terrorist police.
“The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed – would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper – the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.”
Wrote Orwell in the first chapter of Nineteen Eighty-Four, continuing:
“People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporised was the usual word.”
The antiterrorism thought police came at the crack of dawn, as they generally like to do. For now, people do not disappear of course. Instead they are mostly just harassed and intimidated. They are handcuffed. Put in cells. Then left in a state of legal limbo for which charges are seldom provided, or else quickly dropped, and while the threat remains of fresh inquiries, further interrogations, and another overnight spell in the cells.
Here is Natalie Strecker again, issuing a more recent statement with a full transcript provided beneath:
*
On Friday the 15th of November at around 6:30 am, I was arrested under the terrorism act; an act that has been weaponised and misapplied in order to shut down free speech on the subject of Palestine and Israel.
It is absolutely insane that a peace activist, a well-known peace activist, such as myself – and I’m not the only one – can be arrested in this manner. It is a clear attempt to criminalise any support or solidarity with the Palestinian people.
As I said, I’m not the first person. There have been many victims including journalists such as Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson, Asa Winstanley and my good friend Haim Bresheeth, a 79-year-old anti-Zionist Israeli academic.
I’m not going to speak too much about what happened. What I want to ask people to do is to understand the need to push back on this. This is a free speech issue and it is about the right to use our voices to try and bring an end to a genocide: the most televised genocide in our history.
We know that the whole establishment is supporting Israel and so therefore it’s down to us as ordinary individuals to do all we can to stop it. And to others, I say to you, who might not even support Palestine, what you need to understand is that although they’re using it for this issue, what happens when it’s about something that you are interested and passionate about?
We must protect the right to freedom of speech for all of us; otherwise it endangers all of us.
Now, it was a horrible situation, but this is nothing compared to what the Palestinians, the Lebanese and others are going through at this time.
I remain steadfast to the cause. Steadfast campaigning for the application of international law, and for the freedom and liberation of the Palestinian people, the Lebanese, and others – for their rights to live with dignity.
So thank you everyone who has supported me. I appreciate it so, so much, but let’s keep going. Let’s keep shining the light. And let’s find our strength and inspiration from those who have walked this path before us.
Thank you and as always free Palestine.
*
I wish to add my support for Natalie whose Youtube channel I am now subscribed to. Those who demand truth and justice must stand together. Solidarity is vital.
And here is Crispin Flintoff speaking with Natalie Strecker about her ongoing ordeal:
*
In another interview recorded just a few days earlier, Crispin Flintoff also spoke to another pro-Palestine activist and friend of Natalie, the retired Jewish professor and 79-year-old peace activist, Haim Bresheeth, who had likewise been arrested under the terrorism legislation. On this occasion, a protest outside the residence of the Israel Ambassador in Swiss Cottage, for daring to speak the truth that Israel has not been victorious against Hamas:
*
More recently, Crispin Flintoff spoke to Palestine Action’s Huda Ammori (full interview embedded below), who described a disturbing development in state suppression of people calling out the genocide in Gaza. Once again, this story is not being covered by any mainstream media outlets, so this is an extract from an article published in The Canary:
On 19 November, counter-terrorism police raided and arrested 10 more people in relation to an action taken by Palestine Action against Elbit’s Filton-based research and development hub on 6 August 2024.
Reports of the raids undertaken today, include family members and roommates being expelled from their own homes by counter terrorism police for up to three days. The mother and younger brother of one arrested today were also cuffed during the initial raid, despite not being accused of any offence.
These arrests were made in relation to the case of the ‘Filton10’ – ten individuals who have been detained since August, following an action which cost Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, over £1million in damages.
Click here to read the full report entitled “Cops use counter terror powers again against Palestine Action” published by The Canary on November 19th.
In the interview, Huda Ammori describes the latest intimidation tactics used by the police [from 4:40 mins]:
“It was a coordinated attack so to speak. They raided 10 people’s homes around the same time across the country from Liverpool, to London, to Bristol, and during those raids, which we heard afterwards (some of which are still ongoing)… they had bashed I think nearly everyone’s door in. They didn’t even bother knocking. One of them started drilling the door off without even knocking on the door. Completely unnecessarily.
“They’ve forced a lot of family members and flatmates out of the houses, so that they can continue raids which they have they told some people it would take a few days to complete in total.
“We know some people have gone back. Some family members have gone back and there’s been items broken in their homes: the beds been broken in one house, the doors left broken and they left the place in a complete mess.
“Someone’s younger brother, 17-years-old, was cuffed and actually taken out of his house in boxer [shorts] in the freezing cold and told that they couldn’t go back in.
“So this is the kind of tactics that we’re seeing being used by the state, and it’s very much, I believe, a case of using the process as a punishment in and of itself. Because, as you said, none of the original Filton 10 were actually charged under the Terrorism Act, yet they’re still arresting people under the same offence which they know they’re never going to charge for.
“But it means that they can use the process of the counterterrorism powers. It means that they can hold them for extended periods of time without charge, in solitary confinement, interrogate them repeatedly.
“And I think more significantly as well, it means the state is deploying significant amount of resources on this case and probably wider against Palestine Action in a bit to try and stop us, and ultimately to protect Israel’s biggest weapons company. But, to be honest, that they would not go to this extent if they did if we weren’t close to winning and forcing Elbit out of this country.
“They have tried to stop us for years and this is the latest escalation, but every escalation, every crackdown they have done, has failed so far and it will continue to fail.”
Huda Ammori continues [from 7:30 mins]:
“They’re some being held in Manchester; some being held in Hammersmith police station; some being held in Newbury station. Yesterday, a 72-year-old man was released, but the rest they’ve applied for extensions, and they have to be authorised by a magistrate to get an extension to hold them without charge, but it’s a very low threshold. It’s very, very hard to challenge these kind of orders by a magistrate, so they’re still – most of them – are still being held in solitary [confinement] and being interrogated repeatedly.
“And we know in one case in Manchester [who] has only been given a few hundred calories of food a day and he’s been in there for 48 hours so far. Another one in Manchester is refusing to eat, and has called it ‘a fast for justice’ and says that her spirit won’t be broken, but she will not eat while she’s in police custody.” […]
“Every year that goes by, in Palestine Action we get used to a new normal of police repression and so we are used to those this kind of treatment: having medication withdrawn from people; you know raids are commonplace in Palestine Action in general; we’re having lots of raids every week, because our movement is growing as well, and the stakes are growing and in their tactics trying and stop us.
“What’s different though, is they are trying to normalise holding people for days on end in solitary confinement without charge. When you’re under this kind of – when they use these kinds of powers against people – you really have no rights. It’s really unclear what your rights are in these situations. And as activists we learn what our rights are. We know what our rights are in normal situations. These are not normal situations.
“The Terrorism Act was designed to take away the rights of those in this respect of terrorism and what they’re doing is using it against activists who are acting to stop terrorism, and we’re seeing the sharp end of it at the moment.”
The following article was originally published yesterday [Monday 18th] by Matt Hoh on Substack under the title “Stare into Gaza”.
That is Gaza behind me.
The fence line is 600m away. The northern part of Gaza, where Israel is carrying out a genocide within a genocide, systematically starving 300,000 Palestinians to death, is about 2km further.
The absurdity and the obscenity of being able to be this close to 20,000 murdered children, their bodies “prophetic voices from under the rubble” as a colleague called them, is difficult to accept.
The grotesque horror of a school field trip arriving at this location from two hours away to watch the mass slaughter from an observation deck was a shock I am overwhelmed by. The first wave of boys pumped celebratory firsts and thrust middle fingers upon their sight of Gaza.
There were no warplanes or drones visible. The school kids and other audience members of a genocide who gawked and put money into a telescope left disappointed as they saw no bombs or missiles, no artillery or tank fire. There were no blast waves from controlled demolitions to wash over them, and the numbers of smoke pillars from smoldering and cratered homes and schools were in the single digits, their fires not vigorous enough to be smelled. It must have been underwhelming and a let down; not much to boast about or revel in on the school bus ride home.
It was quiet. The sounds of those buried under rubble don’t reach the observation deck. No torn and wrecked bodies could be seen, no sunlight reflected in pools of blood, and no strips of clothes snagged on exposed bones fluttered in the strong wind. We were as close as we could be but so separate and so safe from it. It was sanitary and septic, picturesque.
I felt I was a voyeur, a tourist, a spectator. I felt disgust and disbelief. And I felt an absence within me that I cannot articulate.
To be that close to the cleansing and destruction of 2.2 million people and to be centering now my words on my feelings doesn’t escape me. Perhaps a well-achieved purpose of that observation deck of genocide.
The Nietzsche-ism, stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back at you, struck me as I stood there.
Stare into Gaza and Gaza stares back is what I am left with now, comfortable in my Jerusalem hotel, just hours after looking into their genocide as if I were on a platform at a national park or on the boardwalk at the shore.
The horror of the genocide I expected but did not see. I thought I might curse and cry. I did neither. The cruel and so very human spectacle of a caged people being destroyed as a display for school children was what I encountered. I did not expect that and I don’t know how to respond.
Note: Americans partially funded this observation deck.
The observation deck in Sderot looking into Gaza.
These are my first thoughts on standing that close to Gaza. I may need to revisit them.
I am in Palestine this week as part of a delegation to be in solidarity with and learn from those engaged in Palestinian liberation. Today, in addition to this visit to the border of Gaza, we met with Rabbis for Human Rights and an October 7th survivor in the Sderot settlement, as well as a Palestinian Lutheran minister in Bethlehem.
Yesterday, we were in Jerusalem’s Old City. Here are my reflections from that visit.
Click here to read the original version of Matt Hoh’s article published on November 18th.
*
Additional:
Matt Hoh also spoke live from Israel earlier today on Andrew Napolitano’s Judging Freedom show and reflected again on his visit to the observation deck above Gaza. Their conversation is embedded below:
Following the recent arrests of Craig Murray, Richard Medhurst and Sarah Wilkinson among others, last Thursday [Oct 17th] the associate editor of The Electronic Intifada and author of ‘Weaponising Anti-Semitism’, Asa Winstanley, became the latest target in the UK’s authoritarian crackdown on independent journalism and free speech.
The NUJ quickly condemned this latest abuse of police power:
The National Union of Journalists has condemned the rising use of counter-terrorism legislation against journalists as an intimidatory measure harmful to public interest journalism and press freedom.
The NUJ recognises the raid of journalist Asa Winstanley’s home on Thursday 17 October 2024, part of so-called ‘Operation Incessantness’, as the latest in a string of targeted approaches by police officers using anti-terror legislation and contributing to a concerning police culture where the rights of journalists and their ability to ensure the safety of sources is placed at risk.
The seizure of journalistic material and devices, the detention of journalists, and the failure of constabularies to sufficiently outline reasons for the apparent pursuit of journalists is condemned by the union, and has rightly raised alarm among members of the public for its undermining impact on journalism and media freedom.
Last month, the NUJ and International Federation of Journalists expressed grave concern over the chilling effect of Richard Medhurst’s detention and wrote to Matt Jukes, UK Head of Counter Terrorism Policing with concerns.
Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, said:
“Abuse and mis-use of counter-terror legislation has serious ramifications for public confidence in the police whilst directly threatening the safety of journalists. The UK government cannot on one hand state its commitment to valuing media freedom whilst endorsing the targeting of journalists through raids and seizures of journalistic material in this manner.
“All use of terrorism legislation must be proportionate or risks grave harm to media freedom. We seek further detail of Operation Incessantness with clarity on considered safeguards to prevent the unlawful investigations of journalists. Journalistic integrity must be maintained – any misuse of UK anti-terror legislation poses a significant risk to journalists and journalism and brings shame on the world stage as one where public interest journalism and a diverse media is stymied.”
Click here to read the full statement released by the NUJ on October 21st.
***
The article below was originally published by Craig Murray on Friday 18th October.
I have a confession to make.
When a journalist writes this it generally means they will proceed to reveal something they hope will actually show them in a good light or justified in some way. But I have a real confession to make, of something I did that was wrong.
Somewhere in the UK, among the papers of a dead loved one which nobody has the heart to throw out, in cardboard boxes in dusty attics or deep in the filing cabinets of Jeremy Corbyn, exist still a few copies of thousands of letters bearing my authentic signature.
These letters, on expensive paper with an impressive Foreign and Commonwealth Office crested header, state that the British Government will not deal with the African National Congress because it is a terrorist organisation.
Many of them go on to state that Nelson Mandela is a terrorist who was rightly convicted of terrorism by a South African court after a free and fair trial.
I really did write those thousands of letters, not just sign them. I did not believe a single word of it, and was only “doing my job” as a civil servant, but in a sense that makes it worse.
So I know how many government functionaries currently feel in carrying out the government’s policy of supporting and indeed actively participating in genocide.
When I joined the FCO, in my “fast stream” intake of 22 I was one of only two who was not public school and the only one who was not Oxbridge. I also had the unusual background of being a member of CND, Friends of Palestine and various other activist groups.
I could not be excluded because in the several days and stages of public examinations I had (tied with 2 others) outperformed everybody else of the 80,000 people who had entered the Civil Service administrative exams (it was 1984 with 3.5 million unemployed).
But the security services were not happy, and my “positive vetting” was delayed. This is an extremely exhaustive process (nowadays direct vetting) for those with the highest security clearance. An MOD officer, usually retired military, is assigned to investigate everything about you for months, including interviewing many who know you.
So while I joined the FCO in September 1984, for five months I was not given a job but rather put on full time French language training together with three other misfits (one of whom I think was being given extra investigation because his uncle was Roger Hollis).
In the end my positive vetting was left with a query, and I was pulled in to see the Head of Personnel Department. They said that they had decided to grant my vetting certificate, but that I was going to be placed on the South Africa (Political) desk as a direct test of whether it was possible for me to put my politics aside and function as a civil servant.
So I did. You tell yourself many things to get by, chiefly that the UK is a democracy and ministers are elected by voters to determine policy; whereas you as a civil servant are merely carrying through the wishes of the voters.
Thatcher was Prime Minister and she simply was a straightforward supporter of apartheid. This is much denied but I am an eye witness. Geoffrey Howe was Foreign Minister and it was never easy to determine what he thought about anything. Junior ministers running day to day policy were Lynda Chalker and Malcolm Rifkind, who were both viscerally anti-apartheid.
But the line that Mandela was a terrorist and the ANC a terrorist organisation was dictated by Thatcher and absolutely insisted upon.
It is difficult now to explain the intensity of feeling in the UK and the strength of the anti-apartheid campaign. Scores of letters would arrive every day, many from MPs, and – this bit is hard to believe now – in those days every letter would be answered point by point, not with a generic reply.
I was writing those replies by hand, and then giving them to the secretaries to type up. In 1985 the Department got its first word processor and I was able to draft forty template paragraphs and select from those for the replies. But out those replies went from Craig Murray, stating that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, thousands of them.
I was very actively involved in the Whitehall battle to change the policy, but that is a different story which I have in part explained before.
But this is an extremely important thought that I want you all to ponder.
In 1985, the Terrorism Act 2000 was still 15 years away. There was no such thing as a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act.
Under today’s legislation, every single one of those people writing in support of the African National Congress or out campaigning for the release of Nelson Mandela would have been liable for arrest under Section 12 1 (a) of the Terrorism Act.
That is the danger of allowing the state to dictate whom you must consider a terrorist and punishing those who disagree with the state.
In 1985 the official position of the British state was that the ANC were terrorists and apartheid South Africa were the good guys.
In 2024 the official position of the British state is that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorists and apartheid Israel are the good guys.
The state can be wrong.
It is therefore not an irony that Starmer and Cooper banned Nelson Mandela’s grandson from entering the UK as a “terrorist sympathiser” because of his support for Palestine. In this as so much else, Starmer is a follower of Thatcher.
Today 10 UK police launched a pre-dawn raid on the home of Asa Winstanley, one of Britain’s leading and most celebrated investigative journalists.
All this devices, so all his journalistic materials, were seized and are now with the authorities.
The difference forty years later is that the state is now persecuting British citizens and locking them up for daring to say that the state can be wrong.
The ANC example explains why it is essential we do not give way to this pressure.
Let us face facts. Like most resistance units against colonialism, the ANC were indeed forced by the exigencies of asymmetric warfare into actions that were careless of, or even targeted the lives of, colonial settler civilians.
That did not put them on the wrong side of history. Apartheid South Africa was wrong just as Apartheid Israel is wrong. Occupied people have, in international law, the right of armed resistance. Within that context of lawful struggle, individuals remain accountable for individual war crimes.
The Terrorism Act, abused by the Israel lobby to make it illegal to support Israel’s opponents, is fundamentally bad legislation. It literally provides for up to 14 years in jail if you “express an opinion” in favour of a proscribed organisation.
40 years ago it would have been used against the large majority of the population who “expressed an opinion” in favour of the ANC, officially viewed as a terrorist organisation.
The sickening ratcheting up of pressure on Palestine supporters by super Zionist Keir Starmer continued yesterday with a 6am raid on highly distinguished journalist Asa Winstanley. All his electronics and journalistic materials were seized.
Panicked Zionist “elites” who run western states are lashing out in fear at their opponents. As their popular support evaporates in the face of clear evidence of appalling Israeli atrocities, they are resorting to the methods of fascism.
*
Additional:
British counterterrorism police on Thursday raided the home and seized several electronic devices belonging to The Electronic Intifada’s associate editor Asa Winstanley.
Approximately 10 officers arrived at Winstanley’s North London home before 6 am and served the journalist with warrants and other papers authorizing them to search his house and vehicle for devices and documents.
A letter addressed to Winstanley from the “Counter Terrorism Command” of the Metropolitan Police Service indicates that the authorities are “aware of your profession” as a journalist but that “notwithstanding, police are investigating possible offenses” under sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act (2006). These provisions set out the purported offense of “encouragement of terrorism.”
An officer conducting Thursday’s raid informed Winstanley that the investigation was connected with the journalist’s social media posts. Attempts to reach the Metropolitan Police Service for comment for this story have been unsuccessful.
Although his devices were seized, Winstanley was not arrested and has not been charged with any offense.
Click here to read the full report published by The Electronic Intifada on October 17th.
Embedded above, Asa Winstanley speaks with Crispin Flintoff about the police raid and its repercussions.
Whenever I see our chickenhawk politicians so eager to sign their names and write obscene messages like “Finish them” on shells and missiles, I am reminded of Hannah Arendt and her famous remarks about ‘the banality of evil’. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the West has become the pure evil it once claimed to oppose. We are the child killers. We are the torturers. We are the cowardly terrorists. We are the genocidalists. And last, but certainly not least, we are the fascists.
My comment above was originally appended to Judge Andrew Napolitano’s interview with former State Department official, Matthew Hoh (see below), except that instantly it was blocked (presumably) by the Youtube censorship algorithm.
[Apologies for the product placement at the start of the show – do please skip ahead to the interview. My comment is a reference to clips of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and former presidential candidate Nikki Haley signing armaments.]
*
That my perfectly defensible (I would say empirically accurate) characterisation was shadow banned by Youtube ought to come as no shock. Internet censorship is absolutely rampant. Why the surprise then?
In fact, previous comments have been removed by YT (or less directly by the content provider themselves – a different matter) despite being factually correct or otherwise inoffensive, on multiple occasions. More importantly, whole channels I have subscribed to have been deplatformed with every one of their past uploads emptied into the bottomless memory hole from where they can never be recovered. And such extreme unregulated censorship regularly enforced by YT, as across all of the major social media platforms, has been happening for well over a decade – a campaign of suppression greatly accelerated under the pretext of Russiagate and covid ‘misinformation’.
Yet there is something different in this latest instance, since it’s rather difficult to understand precisely which of my chosen words or phrases, indeed which parts of my statement overall, triggered its instantaneous deletion. Unlike on the past occasions, it seems the whole sentiment might have been scrutinised as one piece – presumably by an AI system – and then dismissed as inappropriate, offensive, or quite literally deemed a threat; when plainly it is none of these things.
Sadly, there is nothing whatsoever in my comment that is not factually and demonstrably true, aside from the last point which you may contest if you wish, since it finally makes little difference whether we use the f-word or not. However we might choose to describe it, the full capture of our governments by corporate power with its endless pursuit of profit and war is inherently fascist by definition.
Moreover, the full clampdown on individual rights and dissenting voices – the final stage of historic fascism – is well underway. Just ask Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson, Kit Klarenberg, Richard Barnard, Scott Ritter, Craig Murray, or for that matter, Pavel Durov, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.
In fact, the mask of liberal democracy started to peel off long ago. 9/11 obviously accelerated the process, but prior to this, we’d seen already how an emergent ‘anti-globalisation movement’ (as it was then known) could be brutally cut down at the ‘Battle in Seattle’ which commenced outside the WTO conference (Dec 1999) with the coup de grâce delivered at the G8 in Genoa (July 2001) that ended in further mass arrests and the murder of two protesters.
With those initial uprisings quashed, the next stage of western liberal decline involved the half-digested lies about Saddam’s WMDs, alongside more widely accepted lies about Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Syria – all long since exposed too.
With the world engulfed in a prefabricated and inherently racist and neo-imperialist ‘War on Terror’, the next big crisis to hit the West was the so-called financial crisis of 2008. “Too big to fail” became the familiar mantra, as our governments unapologetically bailed out the banker class and the ninety-nine percent were properly reminded of our lowly irrelevance beneath the heel of the self-appointed “masters of the universe”. In reaction, Occupy emerged and was abruptly smashed in turn – American protesters attacked again with baton rounds, tear gas and pepper spray, beaten back most savagely during its last stand in Zuccotti Park. In case you were wondering – as if it matters – Barack Obama was in office at the time.
Since then, we’ve lived though more brazen government corruption and lies, and most especially at the height of the covid pandemic. All of which further undermined public trust in the official narrative, i.e., the sanctioned lines of propaganda. A problem for the establishment authorities that worsens, of course, when reality constantly catches up, making it harder and harder for people to readily swallow the blatant lies – a collapsing process that is suddenly happening across all areas, but especially when it comes to news from the current warzones.
Youtube is a major arm of our corporate-controlled problem, and suddenly, it banning everything, everywhere, all at once… because it can, but also because an urgent need has now arisen. Just as the ubiquitous lies are exposed, the truth revealed is actually far, far worse than most people could ever have imagined. Thus the ship of lies isn’t merely uncloaked, but holed and already sinking… batten down the hatches!
Here is John Kerry, the former Democrat presidential candidate and US Secretary of State under Obama, spilling the beans at the World Economic Forum:
*
This brings me inevitably back to the Hamas raid of October 7th – already a year ago – and the nonstop killing spree that Israel has since unleashed. Seizing the attack as its pretext, Israel then embarked on its operation to empty the land of Palestinians. This campaign of ethnic cleansing kicked off with weeks of unrelenting carpet bombing. The indiscriminate killing of mostly women and children, interspersed with the deliberate targeting of hospitals (initially denied), schools, refugee camps, aid convoys, journalists and even ambulances.
To maximise casualties, Israel soon cut the power and water supplies to Gaza – already a high-security prison, but now fully blockaded and illegally deprived of basic necessities including anaesthetics. Already displaced, since forced to flee from their bombed-out and burnt out homes, the desperate people have since been compelled to move restlessly from place to place to seek sanctuary from further bombardment. Finally they were massacred even as they queued for meagre deliveries of food, or whilst trying to sleep under canvass in tent shanty towns where they await mass expulsion or death.
The endlessly restated death toll has become nothing more than a horrible and callous joke. The majority of the 40,000 official deaths were already reported within the first weeks of Israel’s attack, and since then this counter has remained ghoulishly stuck, as if clogged with the blood and bones of the victims buried under rubble and never recovered or else shredded into pieces so small the individuals became unidentifiable.
Back in July The Lancet released a publication that applied what it described as a “conservative estimate” of counting four indirect deaths per one direct death, and thereby raised the estimate to a more plausible 186,000; a number it has since “corrected”. However, it is reasonable to extrapolate from this that the true number today is closer to quarter of a million. In other words the likelihood is that approximately 10% of Gaza’s original population of 2.3 million have been killed in just twelve months. This means the literal decimation – i.e., the killing of every tenth person – of the Gazan civilian population.
Thanks to social media, you know all this, of course. You also know that while Israel has carried out this merciless slaughter of innocent people not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank where there was no Hamas – a holocaust as I have written before – they have additionally captured thousands more Palestinians, to be ritually humiliated and indefinitely detained within torture camps. All of these acts are recognised war crimes and yet our political class not only sanctions all this, and turns a blind eye to the cruelty, but actively assists with Israel’s never-ending carnage.
And so, if you haven’t seen these atrocities and the daily genocide then you were looking the other way, because all of this horror is being perpetrated in plain sight, while tacitly endorsed and further enabled in every conceivable way ever by the western powers; ignored or else cheered on by our political leaders and airbrushed across the legacy media which maintains such a narrow spectrum of permitted mainstream opinion. With this, the last remnants of the liberal democratic mask were melted away altogether.
The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate report on US Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s lies about Israel blocking US humanitarian aid to Gaza, which is a clear violation of US law:
*
The leadership in the West – if we may laughingly call it leadership anymore – is now effectively embarked on three separate wars simultaneously. All three have been long in the pipeline and though loosely interconnected, the ramping up of tensions in each case has inevitably forged closer ties between our adversaries. And all three are rapidly coming to a head. These are the wars against respectively Iran, Russia and China.
The war against Iran is arguably the longest in the planning, at least to judge from public statements as well as noting the rollout of sanctions. Indeed, the neo-con faction that consolidated its seizure of power in Washington following the 9/11 attacks has been poised to destroy Iran ever since. In fact, General Wesley Clark famously let the cat out of the bag when he admitted that this same neo-con faction originally planned to attack seven countries in five years. According to Clark, this list of US targets “Begin[s] with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran” [2:20 mins from the start]:
*
The second war of the current batch (of three) was launched against the older adversary, Russia. In the days of the British Empire, Russia had also been the perennial foe simply by virtue of being such a powerful rival. And Russia has remained more or less enemy number one despite occasional and uneasy alliances during the two world wars fought against Germany in the last century.
Indeed, following World War II, hostilities renewed with the construction of the Iron Curtain in the 50s, which signified the start of the Cold War. Then, at the end of the Cold War standoff in the late 80s, the West (still led by an Anglo-America alliance, aka ‘Atlanticist’, which is how the British Empire has realigned and rebranded), exploited the weakness through the imposition of neoliberal ‘shock therapy’.
The decade of the 90s resulted in the fire sale of state assets to a new class of oligarchs with the commensurate ruination of the already flagging post-Soviet economy and a precipitous drop in living standards for ordinary people right across the former Soviet Union. It was a process overseen by the greatly reviled US puppet and drunkard, Boris Yeltsin, who set about ruthlessly crushing all popular opposition and then sparked a constitutional crisis when he called up army tanks to shell the Russian parliament.
The self-coup of October 1993 which killed 187 people and wounded almost 500 others – all in the name of freedom and democracy, as our news media tended to spin it – has been largely forgotten today in the West, but it is still well-remembered in Russia.
Meanwhile, the West also tricked the Russians in a different way, with false guarantees that the former Warsaw Pact nations would remain neutral for the price of German reunification. No deal was written down apparently, but on the basis of well-known verbal agreements, former President Mikhail Gorbachev had accepted the West’s tacit peace proposal, however unwisely.
Skip ahead to Russia’s current war with its former Soviet republic Ukraine; a war that effectively began in 2014 in the aftermath of the Maidan popular uprising in Kiev which had culminated in the toppling of President Viktor Yanukovych. I have already covered those events extensively in multiple articles and do not wish to repeat myself too much again. The basic facts are however irrefutable:
Yanukovych was an elected president; the colour revolution that ensued was US funded and very ably directed by the US State Department; and perhaps most importantly, when the originally peaceful protests eventually erupted as a violent coup, including major arson attacks and then a massacre of more than a hundred innocent people, the seizure of power had been spearheaded by overtly neo-Nazi forces. Indeed, the leaders of the same factions and militia – principally the political alliance Svoboda and the paramilitary faction Right Sector – were afterwards promoted into senior government positions. All of this is very easily established and I have covered every aspect at length previously (see here,here and here).
However, to speak these truths is to step out of line with respectable opinion. As subeditor Mick Hall who worked at Radio New Zealand (RNZ) discovered to his cost when he made corrections to put a Reuters article into a better context:
I had worked on the RNZ digital team since September 2018. Part of my job involved selecting and processing news agency/wire service reports for website publication. I had approached such copy critically, finding that Reuters stories on occasions blatantly leaned towards a US State Department position, while BBC copy tended to reflect a UK government bias. In both cases it led to unbalanced and distorted stories. Addressing political or cultural bias usually involved deleting or reframing the paragraph that carried it, or adding counter-factual context to achieve greater balance.
As the Ukraine war kicked off, instances of such bias and imbalance increased, as did what I saw as a journalistic duty to remove it.
On June 8 a story on the Russian-Ukraine conflict I had subedited and then published was flagged on Twitter by New York-based lawyer and media commentator Luppe B Luppen. He claimed it presented a propagandisedversion of events during the Maidan protests of 2014 and contacted Reuters.
The original paragraph had read:
“The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.”
The edited version instead stated:
“The conflict in Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian elected government was toppled during Ukraine’s violent Maidan colour revolution. Russia annexed Crimea after a referendum, as the new pro-Western government suppressed ethnic Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine, sending in its armed forces to the Donbas.”
As Mick Hall goes on to explain:
In June [2023], I was publicly cast as a Russian propagandist by my employer Radio New Zealand (RNZ) and thrown to the wolves over my subediting of a Reuters story on the US proxy war in Ukraine.
The gross mischaracterisation created a scandal and widespread hysteria amid speculation that the national broadcaster — New Zealand’s most trusted source of news — had been infiltrated by a Russian agent. It led to weeks of intense national and international media coverage. It also left me jobless, with a 20-year career in tatters. Others around the world are being smeared in a similar fashion.
Click here to read Mick Hall’s full account on Substack in an article entitled “The facts behind RNZ’s ‘Russian edits scandal’” published on October 9th 2023.
More recently, Mick Hall spoke with Pascal Lottaz about the events that caused him to lose his job at RNZ and the witch hunt he subsequently endured. The full interview is embedded above.
*
The US-led colour revolution in Kiev brought to power the chocolate oligarch and billionaire, Petro Poroshenko, who as president promptly initiated a war against the Russian-speaking separatists in Donbas. Additionally, he then punished residents in the region by cutting off welfare payments on the spurious grounds that money could be used to expand separatist violence, which left the civilian population in fear of starvation – close to three quarters of a million fled across the border to Russia. 1
Within months of his presidency, Poroshenko also signed a bill dropping the country’s non-aligned status. This cleared the way for both EU and Nato membership, and the prospect of a referendum on joining the military block:
“I am planning reforms that will comply with EU standards and to the standards of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO),” said Poroshenko. 2
Therefore, to understand why Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it is essential first to understand and acknowledge that like all countries, Russia has strategic interests and inviolable security concerns of its own, and that, in the case of Russia, its primary post-Soviet concern has been the limitation of Nato expansion.
As Jeffrey Sachs wrote in an article entitled “NATO Chief Admits NATO Expansion Was Key to Russian Invasion of Ukraine” published almost precisely a year ago:
When Prof. John Mearsheimer, I, and others have said the same, we’ve been attacked as Putin apologists. The same critics also choose to hide or flatly ignore the dire warnings against NATO enlargement to Ukraine long articulated by many of America’s leading diplomats, including the great scholar-statesman George Kennan, and the former US Ambassadors to Russia Jack Matlock and William Burns.
Burns, now CIA Director, was US Ambassador to Russia in 2008, and author of a memo entitled “Nyet means Nyet.” In that memo, Burns explained to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the entire Russian political class, not just Putin, was dead-set against NATO enlargement. We know about the memo only because it was leaked. Otherwise, we’d be in the dark about it.
Why does Russia oppose NATO enlargement? For the simple reason that Russia does not accept the U.S. military on its 2,300 km border with Ukraine in the Black Sea region. Russia does not appreciate the U.S. placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania after the U.S. unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.
Russia also does not welcome the fact that the U.S. engaged in no fewer than 70 regime change operations during the Cold War (1947-1989), and countless more since, including in Serbia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, and Ukraine. Nor does Russia like the fact that many leading U.S. politicians actively advocate the destruction of Russia under the banner of “Decolonizing Russia.” That would be like Russia calling for the removal of Texas, California, Hawaii, the conquered Indian lands, and much else, from the United States.
Even Zelensky’s team knew that the quest for NATO enlargement meant imminent war with Russia. Oleksiy Arestovych, former Advisor to the Office of the President of Ukraine under Zelensky, declared that “with a 99.9% probability, our price for joining NATO is a big war with Russia.” 3
Click here to read Jeffrey Sach’s full article published on September 20th, 2023.
*
The third of these three concurrent US-led wars involves the distant waters of the South China Sea and those surrounding Taiwan. But rather than delving more deeply into the same issues here – including historical background which I have already covered at length in an earlier piece – I will simply recommend again John Pilger’s remarkably prescient 2016 documentary, The Coming War with China:
In his notes about the film, John Pilger wrote:
When the United States, the world’s biggest military power, decided that China, the second largest economic power, was a threat to its imperial dominance, two-thirds of US naval forces were transferred to Asia and the Pacific. This was the ‘pivot to Asia’, announced by President Barack Obama in 2011. China, which in the space of a generation had risen from the chaos of Mao Zedong’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ to an economic prosperity that has seen more than 500 million people lifted out of poverty, was suddenly the United States’s new enemy.
The build-up of naval forces would reinforce the US’s already overwhelmingly superior military position in the region. Seldom referred to in the Western media, 400 American bases surround China with ships, missiles and troops, in an arc that extends from Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India.
Click here to read John Pilger’s full description of the documentary available on his official website.
*
In short, the true reason for this standoff with China has literally nothing whatsoever to do with legitimate concerns about freedom and democracy. Alike every one of these conflicts, it serves instead a single purpose, which is to maintain and then achieve further expansion of US hegemony to the level of unassailable global primacy. This is not a wild presumption, but a repeatedly stated neo-con objective.
As with Iran and Ukraine, the China conflict is longstanding, however, in terms of significance, it is standalone for the simple fact that it will be the pivotal conflict in attaining such primacy. For that reason alone, it has remained smouldering; sustained for the longest time without the same intensity of calls for direct military intervention.
The true aim has always been to eliminate each of the West’s primary adversaries one at a time, and when it finally came to it, China, which remains the largest and thus strongest of the three, would then find itself largely isolated and devoid of significant allies. However, that is not how the facts on the ground are playing out today. And the steady rise of BRICS represents an enormous challenge and perceived threat to the achievement of these western ambitions.
Instead of global dominance, and really rather suddenly, the West appears to be losing its competitive advantage. For having pursued this decades-long post-Cold War belligerence towards all of its peer rivals, the West and, Europe in particular, is now itself becoming isolated from the rest of the world, discovering that instead of victories in Ukraine and the Middle East, its constant regime of belligerence and sanctions (war by economic means) has actually meant digging a hole for itself. For who dares to trust the West anymore, whether in negotiating trade deals or peace treaties? As other options have become available, many countries are finding that it’s better to avoid dealing with the West altogether.
Meanwhile, the situation on-the-ground in Ukraine is becoming so bad that mainstream news generally tends to steer clear of the ensuing horror and disaster. In the background, away from the ballyhoo about the Kursk incursion (Zelensky’s last act of desperation and quickly a debacle) or spectacular if rare drone strikes on Russian arms depots, there is a slow, but steady admission of military failures. Ukraine is out of weapons, out of power, and, most tragically, out of men.
And for all the claims over the years that Putin was itching to turn off the gas taps, in the end we did it to ourselves. Indeed, through endless rounds of escalating economic sanctions, the Ukraine war has gradually meant Europe cut most of its remaining ties with Russia, particularly following the destruction of Nordstream (a brazen act of Western-led terrorism), which permanently severed its main supplies of cheap and dependable energy. All of this is forcing European nations to rely more and more heavily on American trade instead.
To correct Ursula von der Leyen’s notorious statement: it’s not Russian, but German industry that today “is in tatters”, and it is not Russia’s economy but the German economy that is “on the path to oblivion”; and Germany is certainly not alone:
*
Zelensky was first elected by his beleaguered people to be the peace candidate at a time when he was promising to enforce the Minsk accords which still guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty of Donbas; the breakaway oblasts would remain as autonomous regions. Instead, and against those popular demands, the ultranationalists intensified their war on the East. Later, we heard the candid admissions of chief negotiators of Minsk that their ostensible ceasefire deal was intended only to buy time for Ukraine to rearm; in other words, just another western trick to defeat the Russians:
According to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Minsk agreement served to buy time to rearm Ukraine. “The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time,” Merkel told the weekly Die Zeit. “It also used this time to become stronger, as you can see today.” 4
Unavoidably, therefore, any final settlement will be much harsher for Ukraine than the original Minsk deals – a settlement that Zelensky and his western backers simply cannot afford to make for hard political reasons. For such a resounding loss of territory, and with it face, will not be permitted, not at least immediately prior to the US elections. After the US elections, Ukraine may very well become yesterday’s war, of course, just as Libya, Syria and even Afghanistan became. And today, very few in the West care to dwell much on the ongoing plight of those who suffer today in such remote lands, whereas back when those same regions were our principle battle zones, we all had to pretend to care.
Israel is a rather different case. “A crazy state,” as Jewish-American scholar Norman Finkelstein pointed out with tremendous eloquence in an article published six months ago:
I have hesitated thus far to sound the alarm. But at the risk of being thought mad, it must, as an act of political responsibility, be said out loud: Israel is hurling toward the precipice and dragging the rest of the world with it.
A rational analysis of the current predicament must begin with this bedrock fact: Israel is a crazy state. Not a “bad actor.” Not a “rogue” regime. A crazy state. The full range of Israeli elite opinion, itself reflective of Israeli society at large (which overwhelmingly supports the genocidal war in Gaza; only a handful of Israelis have refused to serve), spans a mere flea’s hop:
AT ONE POLE stand “crackpot realists,” of whom sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote in the American context: “they have come to believe that there … is no other solution but war, even when they sense that war can be a solution to nothing … they still believe that ‘winning’ means something, although they never tell us what.” Professor Benny Morris is cut squarely from this mold. He is urbane, educated, secular—and a crackpot. He once even “proved” that Israeli Jews couldn’t coexist with barbarian Palestinians by inter alia mustering stats on how many more road accidents Palestinians got into! Morris exhorts the US to join in an attack on Iran and then rattles the threat that if Washington doesn’t rise to the occasion, Israel will go it alone by nuking Iran. He must be cognizant as he breezily proffers such counsel that an attack would not only incinerate tens of millions of Iranians—he reckons they have it coming—but also trigger a terminal retaliation. Hezbollah alone is alleged to possess 150,000 missiles. It’s a circuitous auto-da-fé. That prospect, however, doesn’t appear to faze Morris one bit.
AT THE OTHER POLE stand full-blown crazies—or those just one step short of this threshold. “The greatest danger facing Israel right now,” Noam Chomsky presciently observed already four decades ago, “is the ‘collective version’ of Samson’s revenge against the Philistines—‘Let me perish with the Philistines’—as he brought down the Temple in ruins.” The Samson clones ensconced in Jerusalem have either already gone mad—“we shall kill and bury the Gentiles around us while we ourselves shall die with them”—or pretend to “go crazy” so as to terrify enemies and allies alike into submission. Feigned lunacy, be it noted, easily transmutes into the real thing as the imaginary phantoms one repeatedly conjures seep into the psyche’s inner chambers. The upshot is that this madness, real or contrived, “renders rational calculations … questionable” as Israel “may behave in the manner of what have sometimes been called ‘crazy states.’” A report in yesterday’s paper fleshes out in real time this Israeli propensity to unhinged outbursts: when one senior Israeli official counseled caution, if only in the immediate term, after Iran’s symbolic retaliation, a far-right cabinet minister demanded on the contrary that Israel go “crazy.”
Click here to read Norman Finkelstein’s full article entitled “Samson and Cassandra” published on April 16th.
Inside Israel many have long sought such an almighty day of reckoning when finally they might see all of their enemies destroyed in a ruthless campaign of extermination – with the help of America alongside, of course. So in spite of the very grim prospects for Israel as each of their wars is expanded, and with a looming economic collapse, a lunatic determination to fight to the bitter end evidently remains; potentially to go down as the Biblical Samson did, in this instance igniting a thermonuclear fury that brings the whole world down on all of our heads.
Moreover, Israel’s otherwise suicidal actions are predicated on its firm and repeatedly confirmed belief that it can rely upon unconditional support from The White House and Congress, and that as its military campaign widens, it will be granted the full assistance of US armed forces. This critical assumption underpins every operation that the Israelis are now conducting.
Biden might easily have demanded a ceasefire in Gaza on any day during the past year, but resolutely he has declined. Irrespective of the rulings of both the ICJ and even the ICC, Netanyahu received a heroic welcome when he visited Congress with a record-breaking succession of standing ovations. Afterwards, he was invited to cordial meetings with Biden, Harris and Trump. So the signal from the US could hardly be clearer.
Meanwhile, already facing criminal prosecution following indictments for allegations of bribery, fraud, and other related offences, Netanyahu cannot afford to end this episode of aggressive expansionism and illegal war for more personal reasons.
Embedded below, Vanessa Beeley speaking on Wednesday 25th with UK Column’s Mike Robinson and presenting evidence of the true origins of Hezbollah as a defensive force against Israel, the lack of evidence of terrorist activity, and how it has remained a non-secular resistance force:
*
Israel’s pager terrorist attack on September 17th must be recognised as a war crime, since the weaponisation of civilian products is strictly forbidden under international law. An unprecedented atrocity, the attack immediately paved the way for future copycat tactics. As with most terrorist operations, the number of deaths was comparatively small – 42 people tragically died – but the effects of the shock were amplified by the maiming of more than 3,500 others, mainly unknown and largely innocent victims. On the back of this, Israel has since expanded its indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations into Lebanon and thousands more are thought to have died.
While it is now abundantly clear that Israel has no respect for established human rights or international law, still more astonishing is the apparent belief that to win it must annihilate everything that opposes it. As Roman historian Tacitus famously wrote: “they make a desert and call it peace.” An approach that is not just doomed to failure since it is basically insane, but one that has very quickly turned Israel into the world’s most detested pariah state.
When Netanyahu stood in front of the UN General Assembly on Friday (just ten days after the pager attack), the reception was in very stark contrast to the perpetual standing ovation he’d received from a supine Congress just two months earlier. The great hall immediately emptied as the majority of diplomats simply turned their backs and walked out in disgust. In response, Netanyahu angrily accused the entire UN organisation, and by extension the majority of the nations on earth, of anti-Semitism!
And the UN assembly was unaware of Israel’s next move. That reminiscent of the baptism scene at the end of The Godfather, as Netanyahu called for peace, Israel’s bombing campaign had intensified and that Southern Beirut was about to be pounded with at least eighty 2,000lb US-supplied bunker buster bombs. The principle target of this “shock and awe” just one man, the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and to assassinate him and a handful of close associates, Israel levelled an entire city block including six high-rise residential apartments about the size of the World Trade Center as “collateral damage”.
“Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their home safely. And that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Netanyahu said. “We will not rest until the remaining hostages are brought home.”
Netanyahu’s speech was also replete with dire warnings that there could be more carnage to come.
“I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran: if you strike us, we will strike you,” he said. “There is no place, no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach and that’s true of the entire Middle East.” 5
Seyed Mohammad Marandi is a Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran and advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiations team. He spoke to Nima Alkhorshid on his podcast Dialogue Works today:
*
World events are happening so rapidly that I’m finding it harder and harder to finish this article, just because everything is constantly in flux. Back when I started it (at the time of Matt Hoh’s interview with Judge Napolitano embedded at the top) there was growing talk that the US was about to grant permission to Ukraine to launch missile strikes deep into Russian territory. Indeed, when Keir Starmer visited to Washington, it was widely believed that he’d arrived with plans already at hand, but then, behind the scenes, person or persons unknown (though presumed to be military advisors) had insisted that Biden reject the idea.
It is also widely understood that the main reason Starmer’s plans were rejected – or at least put on the backburner – was because of warnings from Russia and adjustments to its own nuclear doctrine. Former UN weapons inspectors, Scott Ritter, who is an expert in the field of nuclear warfare and arms control, has since repeated his claim that this incident brought the world to within 72 minutes of nuclear apocalypse on the weekend of September 14–15th:
If you’re not thinking about the end of the world by now, you’re either braindead or stuck in some remote corner of the world, totally removed from access to news.
Earlier this month we came closer to a nuclear conflict between the U.S. and Russia than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Scott Ritter in his latest piece, published Friday 27th September with reference the article linked above, then continues:
Today we are even closer.
Most scenarios being bandied about in the Western mainstream media that involve a nuclear conflict between Russia and the United States have Russia initiating the exchange by using nuclear weapons against Ukraine in response to deteriorating military, economic, and/or political conditions brought on by the U.S. and NATO successfully leveraging Ukraine as a proxy to achieve the strategic defeat of Russia.
Understand, this is what both Ukraine and the Biden administration mean when they speak of Ukraine “winning the war.”
After careful analysis of the real situation facing Russia, Ukraine and its Nato allies, Scott Ritter then concludes as follows:
Russia’s response appears to have been to change its nuclear posture to embrace a similar posture of nuclear pre-emption, meaning that rather than wait for the U.S. to actually launch a nuclear-armed missile or missiles against a Russian target, Russia will now seek to pre-empt such an attack by launching its own pre-emptive nuclear strike designed to eliminate the U.S. land-based nuclear deterrent force.
In a sane world, both sides would recognize the inherent dangers of such a forward-leaning posture, and take corrective action.
But we no longer live in a sane world.
Moreover, given the fact that the underlying principle guiding U.S. policies toward Russia is the misplaced notion that Russia is bluffing, any aggressive posturing we might engage in designed to promote and exploit the ambiguity derived from the first-strike potential inherent in existing U.S. nuclear posture will, more likely than not, only fuel Russian paranoia about a potential U.S. nuclear pre-emption, prompting Russia to pre-empt.
Russia isn’t bluffing.
And our refusal to acknowledge this has embarked us on a path where we appear more than willing to pre-empt life itself.
We need to pre-empt nuclear preemption by embracing a policy of strict no- first-use principles.
By choosing deterrence over warfighting.
By deemphasizing nuclear war.
By controlling nuclear weapons through verifiable arms control treaties.
And by eliminating nuclear weapons.
It truly is an existential choice — nuclear weapons or life.
Because they are incompatible with one another.
Click here to read Scott Ritter’s full article entitled “Life, Preempted” published on September 27th by Consortium News.
Increasingly on the hook as America pivots to the Middle East, Ukraine now seeks endless loans to prop up its already devastated and deeply corrupt economy. But more directly, the war in Ukraine has hugely depleted Nato’s conventional weapons stocks – thoughtless notions that the West has almost limitless supplies are long gone. A worsening problem as Israel now sets its sights on both Lebanon and Iran with what are likely to be more desperate calls to bring in American force to enable a wider Middle East war. Such wartime expansion means even the military might of the West is becoming stretched to breaking point.
In short, the West, and European nations in particular, are very rapidly coming to an extraordinary crisis point. The sensible, realistic answer – the humane answer – would be to seek peaceful resolution to all of these wars. Yet, this option – the only sane option – is seldom discussed, and therefore our march towards ever-greater war – ultimately, the war to end not just all wars, but potentially all life – may become unstoppable. An unthinkable catastrophe that we are suddenly compelled to think about.
The crisis we face is not yet irreversible. Peace is possible but only if millions of us urgently demand it. Otherwise, the darkest hour… may come.
*
Additional: The other reason to rage against the war machine
“Israel’s carrying out this genocide with a new system called ‘The Gospel’. It is an artificial intelligence targeting system that generates targets in record time and allows Israel to kill and target families in their homes through a computer without human intervention.
“It’s been developed by companies in the United States like Palantir. And when Israel’s done testing these weapons, these Skynet-like weapons which recall the opening scene of Terminator 2 – The war of the humans against the machine – when they’re done, they’re going to export them and they’re going to be exported to any country, and any government that has a restless population that resists and that refuses to take a knee for whatever their orders might be.
“Along with Israel’s unprecedented, unparalleled surveillance system, it will come here and it is coming here, and it is being tested on the canaries in the coal mine in Gaza. That is why Palantir CEO, Alex Karp, a committed Zionist, declared while seated before next to former CENTCOM Chief, Mark Milley, just a few months ago in Washington DC; he declared that if these student protests, and these protests against genocide in Gaza, and the anti-war movement in the US grows, and is allowed to continue to grow, and we can’t shut them down through oppression then we will lose the war on ideas and we will not be able to send armies from the West to fight around the world. And he’s right and that is a good thing.”
Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, speaking to crowds in Washington at Saturday’s ‘Rage Against the War Machine’ rally hosted on the National Mall by the Libertarian Party and People’s Party:
About 730,000 Ukrainians have left the country for Russia this year due to the fighting in eastern Ukraine, the European head of the United Nations agency for refugees said on Tuesday, pointing to a far bigger exodus than previously thought.
The figure strips out seasonal data and numbers for people who would normally have crossed the border for trade or tourism purposes, UNHCR’s European director Vincent Cochetel told a news briefing.
“The 730,000, it’s the ‘plus’ compared to other years,” he said. “They are not tourists. We’ve seen them at the border, just like in any other conflict. They walk, sometimes they just walk across the border, they come with plastic bags. Many of them are really destitute.”
A further 117,000 people are displaced inside Ukraine, a number that is growing by about 1,200 per day, he said.
In an interview published in Germany’s Zeit magazine on Wednesday, former German chancellor Angela Merkel said that the Minsk agreements had been an attempt to “give Ukraine time” to build up its defences.
5From a report entitled “UN General Assembly 2024: Diplomats walk out in protest against Netanyahu address” published by Middle East Eye on September 27, 2024.
Lord Darzi has published a report into the NHS within nine weeks of being commissioned to do so. Hardly any media have questioned the validity of the report that is aimed at giving Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting an opportunity to open up the NHS to more private outsourcing – and to undermine public health even further.
Crispin Flintoff welcomes NHS campaigner and producer of The Great NHS Heist documentary (2019), Dr Bob Gill, and Nicholas Csergo (Socialist Health Association, SHA) on to his show to provide some in-depth analysis.
Bob Gill says: “First of all the policy stream entirely follows on from what the Conservatives have done, and from what New Labour did back in the early 2000s.
“The speed of production of this report and the extensive consultation: well what that means is we’ve ask the privatisation lobby to present us with a propaganda package which we can bamboozle the public with.
“What starmer is delivering is very cleverly crafted wording – neurolinguistic programming they call it – whereby he’s more or less frightening people to say ‘unless you let us do what we want the NHS will no longer exist.’
“And what Darzi outlines – remember Darzi was Blair’s advisor back in the early 2000s [subsequently given a peerage made health minister under Gordon Brown] – what Darzi has outlined is a continuation of profiteering by the private sector. And, as you pointed out, he completely ignores all that really ails the NHS; the biggest one is the PFI debt burden.
“He also ignores the catastrophe of the staffing which is not only are we having a haemorrhage, but we’re also having an accelerating dumbing-down agenda; replacing qualified people with less qualified people. So he ignores the real issues and he scares us to death to say: ‘let us do what we like’, which is the same plan that the Tories had.” [from 8:50 mins]
*
Bob Gill then parses statements made within the report in a series of slides.
From Darzi’s report:Some sanity has been restored by the 2022 Act which put integrated care systems on a statutory basis.
Bob Gill: So Darzi is here clearly rubber-stamping the legislation that converted NHS in England to 42 public-private partnerships: these integrated care systems which are modelled on the American system, which deliver profit through the denial of care.
So New Labour, Starmer and Darzi have rubber stamped the Tory’s massive betrayal of the NHS. The NHS we have now does not resemble the NHS of 1948 in legal terms, in structure, and in who’s delivering the care.
From Darzi’s report:The NHS budget is not being spent where it should be – too great a share is being spent in hospitals, too little in the community, and productivity is too low […]
The key reason for this is that patients no longer flow through hospitals as they should… And a dire state of social care means 13 per cent of NHS beds are occupied by people waiting for social care.
Bob Gill: So yeah he identifies there’s a problem with capacity. He fails to mention that New Labour and the Tories deliberately cut bed capacity.
So they create a problem of capacity. Then who do they blame? They blame the elderly bed blockers.
And why are they blocking the beds? Because they privatised social care. So we have private equity and for-profit organisations bleeding social care budgets dry.
Do you see what’s happened? So you create a problem and you scapegoat somebody else, meanwhile ignoring your own hand in creating the problem.
From Darzi’s report: On top of that, there is a shortfall of £37 billion of capital investment…
That sum could have prevented the backlog maintenance, modernised technology and equipment, and paid for the 40 new hospitals that were promised but which have yet to materialise.
Bob Gill: So £37 billion happens to the amount of money the government wasted on the pandemic response – just out of interest, by coincidence.
We’ve been through this cycle before: of famine and feast. So you have a Conservative administration that squeezes the budgets, then you have New Labour coming to the rescue.
But each time they inject more cash, they further send this money to the corporate private sector. This is the game they play. Good cop, bad cop. But they’re on the same team, because the plan is to divert money away from patient care into the private sector.
And this whole narrative about moving care out of the hospitals might sound attractive, but what it means is we are replacing high quality care in hospital settings that should be delivered, for a substitute service which is going to be run by the private sector in the community using untested IT systems and without the workforce to back up the care.
We have a community service which is barely functioning at the moment, and they’re talking about transferring more care into non-existent services. So this is another democide that’s going to take place as demonstrated by the last administration, where they discharged 20,000 infected people into nursing homes with covid-19 to cause a cull of the elderly population.
Now this is what Labour is proposing in its own, maybe a slower less dramatic way. But you’re dumping people out of hospitals without the service provision in the community.
From Darzi’s report:Lock in the shift of care closer to home by hardwiring financial flows…
Simplify and innovate care delivery for a neighbourhood NHS. The best way to work as a team is to work in a team: we need to embrace new multidisciplinary models of care that bring together primary, community and mental health services.
Bob Gill: It’s doubling down on that [moving services into the community] narrative.
If you look at community care, as it exists, there is a huge recruitment problem for district nursing. People with experience are leaving the service because they can see the standards of dropping.
We’re having a less qualified workforce being brought forward, and this workforce is high turnover, so you’re never getting experience. You’re getting the blind leading the blind. And you’re getting a rapid decline in the quality of service.
So people will be convinced that services in the community are safe, whereas actually they’re unsafe. They’re dangerous. And in a lot of places they’re non-existent.
From Darzi’s report:Drive productivity in hospitals. Acute care providers will need to bring down waiting lists by radically improving productivity. That means fixing flow through better operational management, capital investment in modern buildings and equipment, and empowering staff. […]
There is enormous potential in AI to transform care and for life sciences breakthroughs to create new treatments.
Bob Gill: So some of this capital investment may take the form of a new version of Private Finance Initiative. They’re talking about pushing out investigations and radiology out of the hospital setting into the High Street. Guess who will be running these High Street operations: the private sector.
So this is again another shift of resource into private corporations, destabilising the hospital setup, and pretending that this is somehow bringing care closer to the patient.
It’s got absolutely nothing to do with improving patient care or outcomes. It’s all about diverting money into the private sector, and if that’s through AI – if that’s through more and more bungs to the big pharmaceutical companies to produce next to useless, or in fact, harmful interventions – then they want to do more of that.
For example, they’re pushing the insanity of prescribing statin drugs to 15 year-olds. Now this is this is medicine and big pharma influence gone mad.
So this is the type of thing that they’re pushing. It’s got nothing to do with highly effective, proven, and useful interventions. It’s all about shifting money to the profits of big pharma companies and big IT companies.
Warning: The video above includes distressing images and testimony of torture and abuse throughout.
*
A full transcript is provided below with relevant quotes and links added.
Something very sick and evil is happening in Israel’s jails and almost nobody is talking about it. Israel is running, and let’s be absolutely explicit about this, a system of torture camps. Welcome to hell is not an exaggeration.
[CCTV images show] Nine Israeli reservists sodomise by inserting metal objects up the anus of the prisoner and causing terrible internal injuries.
[The narrator of the news report] This is CCTV video of what Israeli military police allege is a detainee being sodomised as he’s hidden from the view of security cameras by riot shields.
They were arrested, taken away to a detention centre, where there was an enormous outcry, and there was actually an invasion of the detention centre, including politicians in support of the Israeli soldiers:
This is insanity, someone in the prosecutor’s office thinks it’s possible to arrest soldiers for things they do to Nukhba [Hamas] terrorists. We can’t continue as usual…
To insert a stick in a person’s rectum, is that legitimate?
Shut up! Yes it he’s Nukba, everything is legitimate. [from 0:54 mins]
In Israel reaction is, “is it right to sodomise prisoners?” This conversation went on on Breakfast Television. It’s sort of their equivalent in Israel of GMTV:
Soldiers are suspected of raping a shackled prisoner, this doesn’t concern you?
I don’t give a rat’s arse what they do to that Hamas man. The only problem I see it that it’s not state policy to abuse detainees. Firstly they deserve it, and it’s a great form of revenge. Secondly, maybe it will act as a deterrent. [from 1:23 mins]
So you have Israeli TV pundits discussing the merits of allowing Palestinian prisoners to be raped.
Many members of the cabinet are justifying it. Take the example of the Israeli Energy Minister, Eli Cohen:
[Google translation of a tweet] Reservists who do holy work and guard the despicable Hamas terrorists. We should all embrace them and salute them, certainly not interrogate them and humiliate them.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is the Security Minister, went even further:
[From i24 News report] Take your hands off our reservists. Like it is in the prison service, so it is in the IDF. Our fighters deserve full support.
[from 2:17 mins]
This tells you that something has gone wrong, but it also tells you that something’s gone wrong with us.
Have we heard a word of condemnation from the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer? I haven’t heard it.
Nothing from Rishi Sunak, who promised Netanyahu his unequivocal support.
Nothing from the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Andrew Mitchell.
Nothing from Britain’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, who famously said, on no evidence at all, that Hamas had raped babies:
[David Lammy speaking on TV]: And we must recognise that Israel is facing a huge existential crisis. 1300 people dead, murdered, babies raped …
[from 2:55 mins]
And yet he has not yet said one word of condemnation of the treatment of Palestinians in these – what can only be called torture camps – run by the Israeli state.
And I think that means that we accept them. Imagine how we’d be reacting if this was emerging about Putin’s treatment of Ukrainian prisoners. You can imagine the frenzy of outrage.
You don’t get it when it’s committed by our ally Israel, and I think that shows that we have done the same as the Israelis. We cannot see Palestinians as human beings.
To behave in this bestial way towards Palestinians is not regarded by the British media as disgusting and foul and inhumane, it’s just – to use that code word – it’s been normalised. Not just in Israel, but in Britain as well.
Imagine we learnt, the British people tomorrow morning, picked up the papers and discovered that prison officers had been systematically sodomising inmates in his Majesty’s prisons. It would be a national outcry. There would be a sense of utter horror. You know, you’d get the Sunday Times investigation team would be in there. The Sun would be having screaming headlines, denouncing the way that it was being handled. The Prime Minister would have to come on and justify, and denounce it. There’d be questions in the House of Commons. You can imagine.
{By comparison we’ve had] the near total silence by the western media. Most western papers actually invented stories about what was happening on October the 7th.
Papers which went along with the fabrications by Israeli sources: 40 beheaded babies, mass rapes, etc, on October the 7th.
At the same time, they’ve downplayed, or scarcely reported, these horrifying reports of sheer barbarity committed by Israel against Palestinian prisoners.
I am puzzled that there’s been so little western reporting of this. You’ve had the United Nation’s report which says that quite a number of these prisoners have died because they’re beaten to death, or just left to die.
B’Tselem, which is the leading Israeli human rights group, published a devastating report [entitled simply ‘Welcome to Hell’] based on the interviews with 50 or more prisoners, which make completely unbearable reading:
[A sample statements made available in those interviews is presented here.]
The guards would order us to kiss their shoes.
They broke one guy’s hand, another one’s nose, another one’s leg.
They beat him terribly, blood was pouring out of him.
One of the soldiers kicked me and I fell on my face.
Unfortunately, I got a very hard blow to my ear. I’ve completely lost hearing on that side.
There was a prisoner named Khaled a-Shawish who died. It got so bad that maggots came out of his body. They still left him with no treatment.
“Abu Ahmad, I was raped.” They put a stick up his behind.
One said, “Get up, you animal. Get up, you dog.” Finally, they understood he’d never get up again.They put him in a black body bag.
[from 5:40 mins]
If you are a Palestinian prisoner in one of these jails, very likely you haven’t been charged with any criminal or other offence.
[Testimony from another detainee from an inserted news report] I told the soldier, “You killed my brothers and bombed my home. On what basis are you asking where the hostages are? What do I know about the hostages?” He electrocuted me in my private parts several times and also hit me there. I was crying like a child. [from 6:36 mins]
You’re going to be randomly beaten, tortured, you may be sodomised, normally by metal objects. Internal organs have been smashed up as a result:
[Further testimony from the same man] When you are bent over, they target your arse with a baton, both the women and the men. Everything is focussed on the arse.
The baton, with its thickness and made of iron, when it’s extended and inserted inside you, it feels like you brain is exploding. [from 7:05 mins]
There are 9,500 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, approximately 200 of whom are children.
[Josh Paul, who resigned from the US State Department speaking on CCN] I was part of the human rights vetting process for arms going to Israel, and a charity called Defense of Children International – Palestine [DCI-P] drew our attention at the State Department to the sexual assault – actually the rape of a 13-year-old boy – that occurred in an Israeli prison, in the Al-Moscobiyeh in Jerusalem.
We examined these allegations. We believed they were credible. We put them to the government of Israel, and you know what happened the next day? The IDF went into the DCI-P offices and removed all their computers and declared them a terrorist entity. [from 7:32 mins]
This is nothing new. It’s been going on for a very long time, probably to the origins of the Israeli state, and then with venomous intensity ever since October the 7th.
In July, I was in Jerusalem and saw this awful tape of a man Muazzaz Abayat coming out of the Negev jail in South Israel. And he was clearly unable to walk unaided. His right arm was stuck out in front of him, looked broken. I asked our bureau chief in Jerusalem if we could go and interview him, and she sorted that out, and we went together.
He had never been charged with anything. This is very important. Nobody had accused him of a crime.
He has a pregnant wife and four children. They came in, they smashed everything up, took him away, and basically he went through nine months of beatings.
[Muazzaz Abayat’s testimony] They beat you relentless with body search devices in your sensitive areas. They beat you relentlessly while you are naked. The beat the prisoner while he is naked with iron rods, and with body search devices on your private parts. [from 8:57 mins]
In a nearby cell somebody was beaten to death and left to die.
[continuing testimony] He was martyred in Room 6. His name was Thayer Abu Asab. He was killed by that unit, the Keter Unit. After they beat him on the head with iron rods, he was in the room for one hour. They didn’t take him out of the room.
He said the prison is still in my head, he was so traumatised by this experience.
The other thing he said was that every other prisoner is getting the same treatment: the beatings, the torture, the starvation, the barbarity. You’re not treated like human beings.
He said this is like Guantánamo or Abu Ghraib. This is what we’re talking about. It is Israel’s Abu Ghraib moment.
What we are talking about here is war crimes. Very grave war crimes. The torture and abuse of prisoners.
Why the ICC, despite the mountain of evidence which now exists, has been unable to look for arrest warrants against the people directing this barbarity is utterly baffling, and completely wrong.
By failing to act in the face of so much evidence the International Criminal Court is itself sanctioning this gross abuse, this inhumanity, which is going on all the time now in Israeli prisons.
The evidence of what is happening in Israeli jails – or should we call them torture camps? – shows that Israel has passed through some awful invisible barrier and is now a very sick society.
The silence of mainstream media and most senior western politicians, I’m afraid shows that we too have entered into the same nightmare moral universe as Israel Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Prime Minister, Netanyahu.
Click here to read Peter Oborne’s report based on his interview with Muazzaz Abayat following his release from the notorious Negev prison camp published on July 12th by Middle East Eye.
Sarah Wilkinson is human rights activist who has been reporting on events in Palestine on social media platforms. On Thursday August 29th, she was arrested by UK police reportedly over “content she posted online”.
She says 16 or 17 mostly plain-clothed, anti-terrorism police pulled up in vans on her street. They handcuffed her, ransacked her home, and confiscated every piece of electronic equipment. She effectively remains under house arrest.
In an interview uploaded today on Youtube, Sarah speaks to Crispin Flintoff about the dawn police raid on her house:
*
As The Cradle reported on the day of her arrest in a piece entitled, “Human rights activist Sarah Wilkinson arrested by UK police”:
The British activist and reporter has been an outspoken critic of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Earlier this year, she took part in the “Freedom Flotilla Coalition,” an international initiative that tried to deliver humanitarian aid directly into Gaza.
The same article reminds us that:
Other British journalists who have reported critically on Israeli, UK, and US foreign policy have also been detained and harassed upon returning to their home country, including The Cradle contributor Kit Klarenberg and Vanessa Beeley.
Last week, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in Paris and faces being indicted on 12 different charges, including refusing to “share information or documents with investigators when required by law” and “complicity in managing an online platform to allow illicit transactions by an organized group.”
Durov’s messaging app has played a significant role in the ongoing information war surrounding the genocide in Gaza. Supporters of the Palestinians have been able to use the app to freely share information exposing ongoing Israeli war crimes while highlighting the efforts of Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen, and Iran to resist Israel.
Click here to read the full report published by The Cradle on Thursday 29th August.
*
Additional:
[T]he Sarah Wilkinson case is an escalation, in that this is a raid on a journalist whose home was invaded by 16 policemen at 7.30am, while she was arrested and taken to the police station as her home was comprehensively turned over, presumably looking for gunmen under the bed.
More details of the raid have come out which are scarcely believable. Armed counter-terrorism police wearing balaclavas were used against a peaceful, female journalist. She was manhandled and physically hurt. The ashes in her mother’s funerary urn were desecrated in a “search”. And Sarah’s bail conditions include that she may not use a computer or mobile telephone.
It is a fascist government that sends 16 police to bust a peaceful journalist at home at 7.30am.
In the same piece, Craig Murray details the recent arrest of Palestine Action’s co-founder, Richard Barnard, who was likewise charged under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act and now faces trial over two speeches he made supporting the Palestinian resistance. But Murray also sees these latest arrests and draconian sentencing of activists as part of a more widespread and coordinated clampdown on free speech and protest right across the western world:
The state’s actions against activists have been ramped up – as I predicted – since Starmer came to power.
Five young activists in Glasgow were ten days ago given sentences ranging from 12 months to 24 months in prison for direct action against Thales weapons plant in Govan, which makes parts for Israel’s Watchkeeper drones, widely used against civilians in Gaza.
The sentences from Sheriff Judge McCormick were savage – far higher than would normally be given on the specified charges, which were of breach of the peace, vandalism, disorderly conduct and acting in an abusive manner.
These normally would attract at most a suspended sentence on a first offence. McCormick also ignored the Scottish government guidelines not to give custodial sentences of 24 months or less but to seek alternatives.
More tellingly, McCormick completely ignored the elephant in the room: the genocide in Gaza, which Thales are supplying.
(The fact the action occurred before the genocide should be properly viewed as a commendable act of prescience.)
The Zionist Starmerite Establishment were quick to crow over the jailing – notably Luke Akehurst and John Woodcock (who is laughably called Lord Walney nowadays and is the Government Adviser on political violence) who said “Activists considering breaking the law to get their way need to see there will be consequences”.
This follows similarly harsh sentencing of climate change activists, including those who merely took part in Zoom calls discussing direct action.
The authoritarian reaction of the threatened Zionist ruling class is a worldwide phenomenon. Redoubtable Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis has been ludicrously charged under hate speech laws for retweeting mainstream pro-Palestinian tweets.
American activist Professor Danny Shaw was turned over by the FBI on return to the USA following a trip which included speaking on a panel alongside me at the Palestine International Film Festival.
Also in the United States my friend Scott Ritter has been raided by the FBI and all his electronics and other materials confiscated.
I have spoken to Danny Shaw and to Richard Medhurst. In all of these arrests and detentions, including my own, the emphasis has been on confiscating electronics and on questioning focusing very strongly on contacts, meetings and sources of finance.
The Five Eyes intelligence services are plainly building up Venn diagrams of the democratic opposition to Zionism and the neoliberal project. It is notable that many of those recently arrested over Palestine – including Mary Kostakidis, Richard Medhurst, Scott Ritter and myself – were active in the campaign to free Julian Assange.
I have always maintained that Keir Starmer’s record shows that he will be an even bigger danger to civil liberties than the Tories. It is worth noting that all of the Tory recent draconian legislation – The Public Order Act, The National Security Act and even the Rwanda Act – was not opposed or was supported by Starmer as the pretend “Leader of the Opposition”.
Starmer and Cooper are continuing the Tory policy of challenging a High Court ruling won by Liberty, that Suella Braverman acted illegally in tabling secondary legislation lowering the threshold to ban a demonstration on grounds of inconvenience to the public.
The forthcoming Online Safety Act will be truly chilling, including making it illegal to publish what the government deems misinformation.
Starmer has always been MI5-controlled. The fact that, while a Tory government was in power, the Crown Prosecution Service destroyed all the key documentation revealing Starmer’s involvement in the Assange, Savile and [Lord Greville] Janner cases (the last being far more important than generally appreciated), shows the extent to which Starmer is a protected Deep State asset.
If we are to survive this descent onto fascism as a society, we need to be prepared to dissent now, and each of us needs to be prepared to go to jail if necessary.
Click here to read Craig Murray’s article in full.
A full transcript of Richard Medhurst’s statement is provided below:
My name is Richard Thomas Medhurst. I’m an internationally accredited journalist from the United Kingdom. On Thursday, as I landed in London Heathrow Airport, I was immediately escorted off the plane by six police officers, who were waiting for me at the entrance of the aircraft. They arrested me – not detained – they arrested me under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act of 2000, and accused me of allegedly “expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a prescribed organisation”, but wouldn’t explain what this meant.
One officer took my bags, and when I asked why he was still back in the aircraft I was told, “look mate, you can get nicked right here in front of everyone, or in there. Your choice.”
So I was taken to an adjacent room, pattered down, my phone confiscated. I was not allowed to inform my family. Despite being calm and cooperative, I was handcuffed with something that placed my shoulders in an awkward position and my wrists on top of, rather than next to, each other. The handcuffs were extremely tight despite the police loosening them, and they left marks on me for 2 days.
The police took me down onto the runway, put me in a police van – essentially a mobile cage – and informed me that everything was being recorded. The van was cramped. I had to struggle the entire time to keep my balance and try not to fall over as we drove to the police station.
Now once inside the station, they searched me again for the second time within 10 minutes. I was told to sit on a bench, remove my shoes, remove my socks. I was told to turn my socks inside out and hold them up for the officers to inspect. They also made me hold up my feet so they could check them as well.
The officers took me to a room with UV lights which they told me is used to catch burglars who are sprayed with something. I have no idea why they did this, since they just removed me off of a plane.
My suitcase was then opened in the lobby and ransacked. All of my journalistic equipment and devices were seized including phones, SIM cards, wireless microphones, microphones, headphones, even my shoelaces! They later took my DNA as well. My fingerprints, palm prints, and photographed me.
I was placed in solitary confinement in a cold cell that smelt like urine. There was barely any light and the bed, if you can even call it a bed, was simply a small concrete ledge with a paper thin mattress. The cell had no windows, no heating, no toilet paper.
I was recorded 24/7 with audio and video. Even when going to the toilet.
I had to eat food with a piece of cardboard that you were supposed to fold in two in order to scoop up the meal.
The police said that I have the right to inform someone that I’m locked up. So I said, “okay I want to call my family” and then they’d go, “well your calls are withheld because of the nature of the alleged offense.” I tried to ask, “well, what’s the point of a right if you can just randomly withdraw it? Why tell me that I have this right at all?” And one of them said something along the lines of, “well, it’s not an absolute right. It can be waived.”
Similarly, they said I had the right to know why I was being detained. So I asked again and the police would say something like, “well, we just the arresting officers, we don’t really know”, or, “this will be explained to you during the interview”, or some other generic response.
Now despite the police officer’s civility and cheerfulness, I felt that the whole process was designed to humiliate, intimidate and dehumanise me. And treat me like a criminal even though they must have been aware of my background, and that I’m a journalist.
I was under surveillance almost the entire time from the moment I was arrested until I was released – be it in the police van, in the station, the cell, all of it. No privacy whatsoever.
Many of my requests were also delayed, or outright ignored. When I was detained, I asked for water several times. The police would always say, “sure”, but then I ended up waiting hours for a tiny cup of water.
I asked if I could have my own clothes, because I was in a t-shirt, it was cold, and I couldn’t sleep. They said they’d give me a pullover, but never did, although one guard did give me a second blanket. So you have to nag and nag for the most basic things. And this is why I was afraid that they weren’t even going to call a solicitor for me.
I was able to see the nurse on one occasion, but on three other occasions, when I asked to see the nurse they’d say, “yes”, and then nothing for many hours. No one in the world knew what had happened to me, or where I was. Only the police could call a solicitor for me. I had to ask like four or five different guards for several hours until I finally received a call.
Some of my solicitor’s calls did not get through, or were not answered. In one of the calls, my solicitor was told it would be monitored and so they simply refused to take it. I asked to speak to the solicitor afterwards when that happened, but I was not allowed to.
In total I spent almost 24 hours in detention. At no point whatsoever was I allowed to speak to a family member or a friend. After waiting 15 hours, I was finally interviewed by two detectives. The interview lasted about an hour, an hour a half maybe. Something like that.
So there’s clearly no need to hold me there this entire time, but I believe this was done on purpose to try and rattle me psychologically. That failed.
I categorically and utterly reject all the accusations by the police. I am not a terrorist. I have no criminal record prior to this incident. I’d never been detained in my entire life.
I’m a product of the diplomatic community and I’m raised to be anti-war. Both of my parents won Nobel Peace Prizes for their work as United Nations peacekeepers. They had a tremendous effect on my world view and outlook, and instilled in me the importance of diplomacy, international law, and peace.
I, myself, am a victim of terrorism. When I attended the British school in Islamabad, the Egyptian embassy adjacent to my school was blown up in a double bombing.
I categorically and unequivocally condemn terrorism.
I am a Medhurst. My family goes back 1,000 years in this country. I come from a long line of public servants. My father served in the London Metropolitan Police before entering the United Nations. He is an expert and an authority on counterterrorism, who taught me much. My grandfather was in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and his father before him, in the British Army in World War I.
I perhaps don’t have the same career paths as them, but I consider my journalism to be a public service, and my way of doing my bit for the country by providing a counterweight to mainstream media.
I love my country. I respect its laws and its legal institutions. I get the feeling nevertheless that those like myself who are speaking up and reporting on the situation in Palestine are being targeted.
I had booked my ticket to London on the same day, and yet an entire team of police were mobilized to arrest and question me. This is why I felt that this was a pre-planned coordinated arrest.
Many people have been detained in Britain because of their connection to journalism sometimes under the Terrorism Act, sometimes not. I think of Julian Assange, Craig Murray, Kit Klarenberg, David Miranda, Vanessa Beeley.
As far as I’m aware, I’m the only journalist, however, to have been arrested and held for up to 24 hours under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act.
Keep in mind the conditions that I outlined previously: the psychological element where you’re made to wait endlessly. You’ve not been told what you’re accused of, nor when you’ll be questioned.
Now, despite having been released unconditionally, I do not feel that my bail is truly unconditional. I’m effectively in limbo, not knowing if I will be charged in 3 months, or if I will go to prison.
Journalism is my livelihood. I have an ethical and a moral responsibility toward the general public to inform, but I feel that a muzzle has been placed on me. I simply do not know if, or how, I can work at all during the next months.
Palestine, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, remains the most pressing news story in the world, however, it seems that any statement, no matter how innocent, how factual, and well-intentioned can be skewed and twisted into an offence of the highest order.
This is precisely the danger and the absurdity of the Terrorism Act that I have always sought to impress upon the public long before I ever became a victim of it myself. It is out of control. It has no place in a democracy.
Counterterrorism laws should be used to fight actual terrorism, not journalism. We cannot call ourselves a democracy as long as reporters are dragged off planes and detained and treated like murderers.
I am disgusted that I’m being politically persecuted in my own country.
Now, as I do not know if I can still report as a journalist for the next months, I kindly ask you for your support during these times. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech really, are under attack. The state is cracking down and escalating to try and stop people from speaking out against our government’s complicity in genocide.
Please stand, not just with me, but with the others who are still inside. I know what they’re going through and the best relief is to know that people on the outside are rooting for you, and doing everything they can to get you out.
Thank you.
*
Update:
On Wednesday August 21st, Richard Medhurst spoke with Consortium News co-hosts Joe Lauria and Elizabeth Vos:
*
Additional: Craig Murray untangles the legalities behind Richard Medhurst’s arrest
We were waiting for Richard Medhurst to arrive and join our panel at the Beautiful Days festival, when he was arrested and imprisoned for 23.5 hours. Obviously we were all worried sick about him.
Others at the Beautiful Days festival pictured above included (running left to right) Craig Murray, Jeremy Corbyn, David Miller and Lowkey.
It is now becoming easier to list the truly dissident UK journalists who have not been arrested for terrorism than those who have! This fascist ploy of labelling journalists as terrorists is incredible.
Richard’s case is slightly different to that of other journalists including myself, John Laughland, Vanessa Beeley, Johanna Ross, Kit Klarenberg and many more to suffer the same treatment, in that Richard was specifically held under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act – which outlaws support for a proscribed organisation.
Yes, you are reading that right. You can go to jail for 14 years for expressing an opinion in support of a proscribed organisation.
Embedded below: Craig Murray also took the opportunity on Consortium News to discuss at length the ramifications of the arrest of Richard Medhurst, in the context of the general attack on dissident journalism and particularly the widespread abuse of anti-terrorist powers against journalists.
*
We now have an extraordinary conflict between UK domestic law and international law.
The International Court of Justice has just last month stated definitively to the UN General Assembly that the Israeli occupation is illegal and it is the duty of states not to support it.
Moreover, the Court considers that, in view of the character and importance of the rights and obligations involved, all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It is for all States, while respecting the Charter of the United Nations and international law, to ensure that any impediment resulting from the illegal presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the exercise of the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end. In addition, all the States parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention have the obligation, while respecting the Charter of the United Nations and international law, to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention.
Yet it is perfectly legal in UK domestic law for zionists to state that they support the Israeli Defence Force and they hope that the IDF kill every Palestinian in Gaza.
Indeed zionists state this all the time, supporting an action that is entirely illegal in international law, and no action is ever taken against these zionists by the UK state.
Members of the IDF who have actually participated in the genocide are able to come and live in the UK unmolested.
In stark contrast to the illegal acts of the occupying power, the Palestinian people do have the right of armed resistance in international law.
This right is founded on the right of self-determination in the UN Charter and is encapsulated in the First Protocol of the Geneva Convention (1977) Article 1 Para 4:
The situations referred to in the preceding paragraph include armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
Yet under UK law it is legal to express support for the completely illegal operations of the IDF (illegal even without considering the question of Genocide!) while it is illegal to express support for completely legal acts of resistance by certain Palestinian groups.
Let me spell this out again.
It is legal in UK law to support Israel’s genocidal and illegal acts of colonial occupation, but illegal in UK law to support Palestine’s legal acts of armed resistance to colonial and racist occupation.
The Protocol to the Geneva Convention makes clear that those engaged in armed resistance against occupation are both entitled to the same humanitarian protections, and obliged to respect the same humanitarian law, as other combatants.
There is a fascinating twist here from the days when Robin Cook was Foreign Secretary and I was Deputy Head of the FCO Africa Department. In 1998 the First Protocol of the Geneva Convention was incorporated into UK law, and the United Kingdom made a very telling reservation.
British law stipulates that the First Protocol’s recognition that a person not wearing uniform may still be a lawful combatant, and entitled to the full protections of the Geneva Convention provided he carries his arms openly, applies only in occupied territory or when engaged in fighting colonial or racist occupation.
It is the understanding of the United Kingdom that:
the situation in the second sentence of paragraph 3 can only exist in occupied territory or in armed conflicts covered by paragraph 4 of Article 1;
… which means that this provision of the First Protocol:
Recognizing, however, that there are situations in armed conflicts where, owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot so distinguish himself, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided that, in such situations, he carries his arms openly:
(a) During each military engagement, and
(b) During such time as he is visible to the adversary while he is engaged in a military deployment preceding the launching of an attack in which he is to participate.
Acts which comply with the requirements of this paragraph shall not be considered as perfidious within the meaning of Article 37, paragraph 1 (c).
… only applies in UK law where:
The situations referred to in the preceding paragraph include armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
So, and it is absolutely important this is understood, the right to fight against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes is not only an absolute right in international law, it is also a specific right in UK law.
And UK law further specifically recognises that when fighting colonial domination, alien occupation and a racist regime you do not have to wear uniform.
Applying this to 7 October, it means that those armed Palestinian combatants who were not members of a proscribed organisation (see below) were engaged in legal armed struggle in terms of UK law, provided they respected international humanitarian law in so doing.
Which makes the recent clarifications that the majority of civilian casualties were killed by the IDF and that the mass rapes and beheaded babies stories were a total fabrication, still more important.
Every colonial or racist power that has ever faced armed resistance has always characterised the native peoples resisting as “terrorists”, “savages” or similar. Asymmetric warfare is by nature unconventional. The systematic and often legalised atrocities of the coloniser will indeed often spark uncontrolled acts of rage that rightly fall outside what international humanitarian law will condone.
So we now have the situation that Richard Medhurst is arrested for allegedly supporting armed resistance that is not only undeniably legal in international law but is also specifically legal in British law.
The source of this conundrum is the extraordinarily arbitrary power of proscribing an organisation.
Now to proscribe an organisation the government does not have to prove its actions were illegal, either under international law or UK law. An organisation is proscribed simply on the basis that the government says so.
If the government proscribed the Girl Guides, you could get up to 14 years in jail for expressing support for the Girl Guides, and no amount of argument in court that the Girl Guides is not in fact a terrorist organisation would help you.
Hamas and Hezbollah are acting legally in UK law in terms of the Geneva Convention First Protocol Order of 1998, but expressing support for them is nevertheless illegal because the proscription of an organisation is an entirely arbitrary power of the executive.
When I ran the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s South Africa (Political) Desk in 1985, it was the firm position of the Thatcher Government that the ANC was a terrorist organisation and that Nelson Mandela was rightly and correctly imprisoned as a terrorist.
The notion that governments can fairly and impartially designate “terrorists” is very obviously nuts.
It is important to add that this analysis of the legal position in no way implies that I do, or do not, approve of Hamas or Hezbollah. In general I am not in favour of mixing the state and religion, so I come from a very different place and have my criticisms.
But it is also important not to be scared to state that the proscription of Hamas as a terrorist organisation does not align with the UK legal position in the First Protocol Order that specifically recognises the right of an occupied people to armed resistance.
It also causes great confusion. It is, for example, only the military wing of Hamas that is a proscribed organisation. So far as I can tell, it would not be illegal to state that Hamas did a very good job of running Gaza’s schools and hospitals.
But it is very difficult to be sure – the law and its application are arbitrary and not foreseeable.
When I stood for election in Blackburn, I had the specific endorsement of the Palestinian Foreign Ministry which had been engaged with the South African delegation in the ICJ Genocide case against Israel at the Hague.
I was then also (unsolicited) offered the endorsement of Hamas. This caused some head-scratching and I consulted an eminent lawyer. He advised that while it would be illegal for me to endorse Hamas, it would not be illegal for Hamas to endorse me.
Particularly so if it came from the political and not the military wing.
I thought this sounded great fun, but perhaps not great enough fun for me to spend several years of my life fighting the case from inside a prison cell. So I did not take up the offer.
Any law which states you can be jailed for fourteen years simply for expressing an opinion is a very bad law, no matter what that opinion may be.
To use such arbitrary power to seek to silence those who are opposing a most dreadful genocide, is the action of an over-mighty state led by evil people.
I think it is most important that we are not silenced. Hence this article. Most of my friends are advising me I should travel abroad for a while once again, and I am trying to make up my mind about this. I should be grateful for your views.
The UK is plainly not a safe place for political dissidents.
The reason for this galloping authoritarianism is of course panic by the political class that they have lost popular consent, particularly for zionism in view of the appalling genocide in plain view by the terrorist settler state.
To conclude on an optimistic note, [inserted above] is a photo of the gathering that Richard was prevented from joining. It brought together at Beautiful Days a few of the wonderful people who will not be silenced, and who will be remembered as being on the right side of history.
Click here to read the same article as it was originally published by Craig Murray on August 20th.
wall of controversy 