While clinically speaking the assessment of Israel as a winner makes sense, when one applies common sense, it hardly appears to be a win.
Israel has not routed Hamas or Hezbollah and is simply hated even more by Palestinians and Lebanese, if that were even possible, and now it has opened a third front in Syria with the same goal, occupation and colonisation.
It is one thing to take land in times of chaos but quite another to secure it. Israel does not even have the boots on the ground to secure Occupied Palestine in general and Gaza in particular. Yes, it can continue murdering people, nearly half of them children, but that is not securing an area. Same with Lebanon.
The Israeli modus operandi is primitive and backward like much about the society, the belief being if you demonstrate your capacity to destroy and kill then your enemy will be forced into compliance and you will control them, or at least have power over them. If that approach worked then Israel would have had 75 years of peaceful compliance from the Palestinians, instead of ever-increasing resistance and determination to be free.
One suspects, again simply applying common sense, that the Syria invasion is more for the brainwashed Israeli market to demonstrate, look how powerful we are, look how they run from us, and look at how much more land we can take for you to settle! Delusional of course but then delusion is the middle name for Israel.
But, having invaded and put some boots on the ground in Syria, Israel now has to secure land in three countries powerfully enough to send in the settlers. And for the settlers to be safe, Israel needs plenty of boots on the ground in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
It doesn't have access to those boots. In Israel the workers are the soldiers and they are either working and keeping the economy afloat or they are working at killing and occupying and the economy is in tatters. Sure they could complicate it all by bringing in mercenaries but that is always an oil and water mix requiring huge amounts of money, time, attention and monitoring.
Israel has soldiers who are seriously mentally ill and we see that from the videos they take of themselves. They also have a high suicide and defection rate. The society is now loathed around the world which only increases paranoia which only intensifies mental illness. How can such a sick society, experienced only in targeting civilians under occupation, even create a military with the structure, order and discipline required to occupy and subdue two other countries?
Perhaps as a military expert you can explain what I am getting wrong?
Well said. It must be emphasised that Israel's economy can not possibly be doing well, as their GDP has dropped significantly over the last year, they are losing many of their best and brightest who have become discouraged and fearful that Israel can not give them the advertised safety and security they longed for when they moved there, many companies and countries have broken trade relations with them and virtually the entire world is beginning to treat them as anathema. The support of the US and Europe whom their zionist financial supporters control have economic problems of their own, drowning in debt, militarily weak and on the edge of economic/financial collapse.
Further, anyone who thinks that Iran is not positioned to completely destroy Israel's existing infrastructure if they make the wrong move, is living in lalaland. Israel in the end is a small country - only a few airports, a couple of viable sea ports, a critically important offshore gas facility, and something like only 5 power stations - all these can be critically damaged very easily by Iran's missiles and drones. Taking out much of their infrastructure would immediately destroy the country as the population could not exist there without it - no matter the amount of support they could get from their allies since most of it would take years to replace.
Also, if such a thing happened, the US would have only limited ability to retaliate on behalf of Israel as Iran has modern air defence, their arms production and nuclear facilities are located under mountains and the ability to destroy or incapacitate virtually all major US military installations in the region, plus completely disrupt the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf within minutes - this is a risk far too great to take by the West - and they are well aware of it.
From an article in Haaretz where soldiers from the Israeli Extermination Forces talk about their actions.
“A new commander came to us. We went out with him on the first patrol at six in the morning. He stops. There’s not a soul in the streets, just a little 4-year-old boy playing in the sand in his yard.
The commander suddenly starts running, grabs the boy, and breaks his arm at the elbow and his leg here. Stepped on his stomach three times and left.
We all stood there with our mouths open. Looking at him in shock … I asked the commander: “What’s your story?” He told me: These kids need to be killed from the day they are born.
When a commander does that, it becomes legit”, a soldier stated.
Haaretz is not reliable - IIRC it's a loss-generating outlet owned by a German company interested putting Israel in worst possible light. For which it then gets quoted (for money) by the anti-Israel press outside Israel. The same to a smaller extent also applies to Times of Israel.
By the way, the Israeli SSS (Sadistic Sicko Soldiers) have outdone the Nazis and even their SS.
Not even the Nazis shot children through the head and heart and tortured and murdered doctors.
Not even the Nazis debated in their Parliament whether or not rape, including with metal rods and broom handles, guaranteed to kill, was acceptable and decided yes, perfectly acceptable, there should be more of it, as the shitraelis did.
There is evil and there is Israel which ranks as some of the greatest evil in human history.
And you say Haaretz is not reliable. Pull the other one. As to putting Israel in the worst possible light, the actions of Israel make it very clear the worst possible light is all there is. The State of Hate is an atrocity and it always was.
Did almost laugh when you moaned that money was involved for quoting facts published by Haaretz. Seriously mate, do you live on planet earth? It is money which has most mainstream media in Western countries vomiting up the bullshit propaganda invented in shitrael. Good heavens, who would have thought money was involved in regard to Sickrael.
The first point I will make is that a few Jews could have been in Palestine for 100,000 years and it would still not give followers of the religion rights to that land today. Good heavens, we could re-ínvent thousands of ancient primitive kingdoms around the world if we were mad enough to do it. Israel is a disaster and it was always going to be a disaster. It is a taint on the planet and on judaism.
Religions do not get rights to land, homelands or self determination. The idea of an Israel is a lie, and what is called Israel today was founded on lies and functions on lies.
THE EGYPTIANS DID NOT TALK ABOUT ISRAEL BECAUSE IT DID NOT EXIST. It is a religious fairy story. At this point anyway. Sure, at some point in history a hieroglyph may be transcribed which refers to an Israel but so far that has not happened.
What Egyptologists do know is that the Egyptians made a note when a tribe called Judah arrived in Palestine around 3000 years ago. They wandered in from what is now Iraq. Colonists then as now.
At that point the Egyptians had been writing, carving in stone, notes about the Palestinians and Palestine for more than 2000 years. Palestine was ancient when Judaism was invented and when a few Jews set up camp in Palestine.
No-one of sound mind can have the slightest doubt that the Exodus never happened. Neither the Exodus, nor the wandering in the desert, nor the conquest of Canaan. As Uri Avnery wrote before his death in 2018:
“The Egyptians were obsessive chroniclers. Many tens of thousands of tablets have already been deciphered. It would have been impossible for an event like the exodus to pass without being reported at length. Not if 600,000 people left, as the Bible tells it, or 60,000, or even 6000. Especially if during the flight a whole Egyptian army contingent, including war chariots, was drowned.
The same goes for the Conquest. Because of acute security concerns, after being invaded once from there, the Egyptians employed a host of spies, - travelers, merchants and others - to follow closely the events in neighboring Canaan, in every single one of its towns and at all times. An invasion of Canaan, even a minor one, would have been reported. Except for the periodic incursions of Bedouin tribes, nothing was recorded.
Moreover, the Egyptian towns mentioned in the Bible did not exist at the time the event is supposed to have happened. They did exist, however, when the Bible was written, in the first or second century BC.
There is no need to point out that in a hundred years of frantic archaeological searching by devout Christians and Zionist zealots, not a shred of concrete evidence for the conquest of Canaan has been found (nor that the Kingdoms of Saul, David or Solomon ever existed. “
The people who would become the Jews were an amalgamation of Canaanite tribes, probably mostly native to the Levant (?). Which is to say that they are the same people that the Palestinians are descended from.
Not really. Only a minority of Arab speakers in Greater Israel go back to Canaanites. The vast majority of Jews left Greater Israel between the destruction of the 2nd Temple (70 CE) and end of 4th century. The main populations staying were now Christianized Greco-Roman settlers and Samaritans. After invasion by Muslim Arabs in the 7th Century that contributed to the gene pool, more than 90% of the Greco-Romans and Samaritans were converted to Islam, forcefully or otherwise.
In the 19th century, the Ottomans also brought in many Albanians, Cherkessians and other Muslims who were forced to leave SE Europe and Caucasus. None of these were actually Canaanites... Finally, British encouraged immigration of Muslims from Syria and Iraq to the area of Palestine Mandate after 1920. This is the reason the UNRWA allowed any Arab who resided for 2 years in Palestine Mandate to have a title as a Palestinian refugee. Again, these wouldn't align DNA-wise with ancient Canaanites.
With Jews - the first large resettlement wave started after 1492 when Sephardis fleeng Spain were welcomed to settle under the Ottomans. There were several small waves after Chmelnitzki pogroms in mid-17th century, and then in the 18th century. Obviously resettlement started in a big way after the Tsarist pogroms in Russia in 1861...
Judaism was invented in what is now Iraq. And yes, no doubt all these tribes were from the same region, regardless of religion.
However, none of that makes Jews a people. The earliest Christians were Palestinian but no-one considers Christians to be a people and of course they are not.
It is impossible for a religion to create a genetic marker and since intermarriage creates genetic deformities which kill off the group eventually, also impossible for any genetic markers of the tribal group to be consistently passed on.
At a thousand years we each have more than a million ancestors so, if we take the arrival of the tribe called Judah in Palestine, 3000 years ago, at which point Palestine was already ancient, that would be many millions of ancestors. At conception humans get some of millions of possible genetic markers.
Given the conversions practised by all religions, including Jews, both forced in earlier times and chosen in later centuries, it is very clear that Jews, like all religions, are descended from a mix of peoples.
The current fad for ancestry testing which claims to identify what they call Jewish/Ashkenazi, which means European, largely German, fails when it is discovered that what the same DNA can be found in Christians, Muslims, Hindus and atheists. And no doubt Buddhists. This is what one would expect, genetically speaking.
So, there is no religious DNA, including Jewish, and since every single human alive today is descended from the same relatively small, distant group of ancestors, according to modern genetic science, there are no races either, just the human race and the religion we choose to practise plays no part in any of it.
In response to your comment to which there is no reply facility that the Egyptians talked/wrote about Israel:
The first point I will make is that a few Jews could have been in Palestine for 100,000 years and it would still not give followers of the religion rights to that land today.
Good heavens, we could re-ínvent thousands of ancient primitive kingdoms around the world if we were mad enough to do it. Israel is a disaster and it was always going to be a disaster. It is a taint on the planet and on Judaism.
Religions do not get rights to land, homelands or self determination. The idea of an Israel is a lie, and what is called Israel today was founded on lies and functions on lies.
THE EGYPTIANS DID NOT TALK ABOUT ISRAEL BECAUSE IT DID NOT EXIST. It is a religious fairy story. At this point anyway. Sure, at some point in history a hieroglyph may be transcribed which refers to an Israel but so far that has not happened.
What Egyptologists do know is that the Egyptians made a note when a tribe called Judah arrived in Palestine around 3000 years ago. They wandered in from what is now Iraq. Colonists then as now.
At that point the Egyptians had been writing, carving in stone, notes about the Palestinians and Palestine for more than 2000 years. Palestine was ancient when Judaism was invented and when a few Jews set up camp in Palestine.
No-one of sound mind can have the slightest doubt that the Exodus never happened. Neither the Exodus, nor the wandering in the desert, nor the conquest of Canaan. As Uri Avnery wrote before his death in 2018:
“The Egyptians were obsessive chroniclers. Many tens of thousands of tablets have already been deciphered. It would have been impossible for an event like the exodus to pass without being reported at length. Not if 600,000 people left, as the Bible tells it, or 60,000, or even 6000. Especially if during the flight a whole Egyptian army contingent, including war chariots, was drowned.
The same goes for the Conquest. Because of acute security concerns, after being invaded once from there, the Egyptians employed a host of spies, - travelers, merchants and others - to follow closely the events in neighboring Canaan, in every single one of its towns and at all times. An invasion of Canaan, even a minor one, would have been reported. Except for the periodic incursions of Bedouin tribes, nothing was recorded.
Moreover, the Egyptian towns mentioned in the Bible did not exist at the time the event is supposed to have happened. They did exist, however, when the Bible was written, in the first or second century BC.
There is no need to point out that in a hundred years of frantic archaeological searching by devout Christians and Zionist zealots, not a shred of concrete evidence for the conquest of Canaan has been found (nor that the Kingdoms of Saul, David or Solomon ever existed. “
The first point I will make is that a few Jews could have been in Palestine for 100,000 years and it would still not give followers of the religion rights to that land today. Good heavens, we could re-ínvent thousands of ancient primitive kingdoms around the world if we were mad enough to do it. Israel is a disaster and it was always going to be a disaster. It is a taint on the planet and on judaism.
Religions do not get rights to land, homelands or self determination. The idea of an Israel is a lie, and what is called Israel today was founded on lies and functions on lies.
THE EGYPTIANS DID NOT TALK ABOUT ISRAEL BECAUSE IT DID NOT EXIST. It is a religious fairy story. At this point anyway. Sure, at some point in history a hieroglyph may be transcribed which refers to an Israel but so far that has not happened.
What Egyptologists do know is that the Egyptians made a note when a tribe called Judah arrived in Palestine around 3000 years ago. They wandered in from what is now Iraq. Colonists then as now.
At that point the Egyptians had been writing, carving in stone, notes about the Palestinians and Palestine for more than 2000 years. Palestine was ancient when Judaism was invented and when a few Jews set up camp in Palestine.
No-one of sound mind can have the slightest doubt that the Exodus never happened. Neither the Exodus, nor the wandering in the desert, nor the conquest of Canaan. As Uri Avnery wrote before his death in 2018:
“The Egyptians were obsessive chroniclers. Many tens of thousands of tablets have already been deciphered. It would have been impossible for an event like the exodus to pass without being reported at length. Not if 600,000 people left, as the Bible tells it, or 60,000, or even 6000. Especially if during the flight a whole Egyptian army contingent, including war chariots, was drowned.
The same goes for the Conquest. Because of acute security concerns, after being invaded once from there, the Egyptians employed a host of spies, - travelers, merchants and others - to follow closely the events in neighboring Canaan, in every single one of its towns and at all times. An invasion of Canaan, even a minor one, would have been reported. Except for the periodic incursions of Bedouin tribes, nothing was recorded.
Moreover, the Egyptian towns mentioned in the Bible did not exist at the time the event is supposed to have happened. They did exist, however, when the Bible was written, in the first or second century BC.
There is no need to point out that in a hundred years of frantic archaeological searching by devout Christians and Zionist zealots, not a shred of concrete evidence for the conquest of Canaan has been found (nor that the Kingdoms of Saul, David or Solomon ever existed. “
Yes, well the Nazis also said that media which told the truth and facts were not reliable. Unfortunately for you, dismissing media which publishes demonstrable and easily proven facts as being unreliable just makes you look foolish. All tyrants seek to silence and censor media which attempts to tell the truth. Ever thus.
The power of Israel exists in the countries that they control, namely America, but also Western Europe and the Anglosphere. Israel’s existence is a mechanism for Jewish control of those countries governments, again, namely America, while the others act as vassals.
Most people call this imperialism, but this is an exceptional case because I have never heard of an empire that causes its destruction. Every nation within the America/israel/jewish sphere of influence has become weaker and more insecure. This is because these nations are merely a means to an end. They view them as dispensable in their project of the building of the kingdom of judea, aka Greater Israel.
If you wonder how Israel will gain control of the territories in which they are attempting to build Greater Israel when it seams they don’t have the ability, ask yourself how they managed a year long genocide of the Palestinians while the world sat and watched.
“Western hegemony”, or “American primacy” are just euphemisms for international jewish power, and this generations-long construction of that power structure that is embedded in Western nations decision making apparatuses is where the power lies and the reason they won’t be stopped until a multipolar world is reached.
Zionist/Jewish/Israeli power is not as great as some may think. There is little power in having Governments and politicians in your grasp. What matters is holding the public, national and international, in your grasp and Israel no longer has that, if indeed it ever did.
Ultimately politicians and Governments must answer to their people and when the people turn on the Zioraeli State it is they who lose, not the people of nations far away, who previously supported them.
American politics is corrupt and it is a country run by hegemonic fanatics which is why it bullies allies into compliance. But times change and the house of cards cannot stand because it never had substance.
The genocide in Palestine has happened because the Americans keep giving them bombs to drop on the prisoners in the Gaza concentration camp and anyone who tries to help them. The people of the world have not turned away from Palestine, even if, for the moment, their Governments have.
While the law is slow, there are already legal processes at work to punish Israel and Naziyahoo and Gallant are registered as war criminals, to be arrested wherever they can be. Nutsyahoo did not go to Poland for the Auschwitz propaganda fiasco for fear of being arrested.
American Jews may have supported Shitrael for 76 years because they don’t care about the Palestinians, or indeed non-Jews in general, but, they care about themselves and they will turn on Israel if it is necessary for their own interests and survival. Already around half of young American Jews reject Israel and more than half of young Americans want the rogue State dismantled.
If, or when, push comes to shove, the Americans will ditch the Israeli state in an instant. Israel is a tainted pariah and if the Iranians do not take it out, which they will if Israel attacks them, the fake state of hate will implode.
It's the other way round. US support for Ukraine was drying out in mid-2023. And then, Iran and China made their move on Oct 7, 2023, and since then money has been flowing to Ukraine on condition that a third of that would be flowing to Taiwan and Israel too. So suddenly, Israel is awash in much more US money than during the Yom Kippur war.
Thank you for this response - you've said many of the things I wanted to say.
The subject I'd like to add, and the main element missing from the author's analysis, is the US Empire.
Like Serge, I don't really know what "fake state" means, but then I don't really know what a "legitimate" state is either (they're all glorified protection rackets as far as I'm concerned). In any case, Israel is not a separate nation in it's own right.
If we take up the author's analogy of nation states as organisms, then yes, even a vassal state is their own beast, though subjugated to a larger, more dangerous beast. But Israel is not a whole organism - it is but the heavy hand of the Empire reaching out to grab the World's energy supply by the scruff of the neck. If cut off, the hand could not survive on its own.
Israel is the 49th state of the USA, founded in 1948. The de facto HQ of CENTCOM.
We should not confuse "fake" with "illegitimate". It is "fake" v "real", and "legitimate" v "illegitimate". These are not mutually exclusive terms for a country. In other words, israel is a "real" country in that it without question exists, but it is "illegitimate" in that the land it occupies has been outright stolen by force (NOT given to it by the UN as many believe).
No-one has a right to give away someone else's country, not even the UN. And no Treaty has any legal validity.
In fact the UN did not partition Palestine because it knew it had no legal right to do so. It made a recommendation which had to be approved by the Security Council and never was. Even if it had been it would have had no legal basis.
A recommendation has no legal basis. The Zionists and Jews invaded and set up their state in genocidal slaughter and ethnic cleansing. ISRAEL WAS AND IS ILLEGAL.
As to the UN recommendation, that was clearly null and void when the shitraelis reneged on the condition that the Palestinians be left to live in freedom in what was left of their homeland.
Right of conquest was international law till at least end of WW1. Moreover, Poland acquired Pommerania, Silesia and Western part of East Prussia through through a land gift from Soviet Union that acquired it through Right of Conquest from Germany at the end of WW2. Just saying. If you do historical analysis, every single state - every single one - has established itself through right of conquest.
Nothing taken by Zionists, Jews, then Israelis from 1947 is legally held.
Many nations were established through might is right and genocidal slaughter in the past, as Israel has always attempted to do, but, in the modern age, it is not accepted.
THERE WAS AND IS NO RIGHT OF CONQUEST FOR ISRAEL. just saying.
So little history knowledge. Truman was opposed to Israeli independence in 1947/1948. Stalin and Gromyko outflanked the USA on this and scored one of their few decisive diplomatic victories here. Foggy Bottom was in deep shock after Gromyko's May 1947 speech at the UN.
Amost all the weapons for the war of Indepence came from France and the Soviet subsidiaries (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia). In contrast, the US and UK had an arms embargo on Israel while providing weapons for the Arab states.
As soon as Israel was established as a viable state in 1948, Anglosphere stopped their blockade of Jewish displaced persons to immigrate there, in order to reduce Jewish immigration to Israel.
How could there be Israeli independence when an israel never existed. Truman was opposed to the Ziojews invading another country and setting up their fascist, racist State.
Israel was and is illegal. The Israelis have to be among the most stupid people on planet earth. They could have gotten away with their theft of Palestine if they had had the brains and the integrity to do what other Western nations founded through colonisation had done, one state where the native Palestinians and the European colonists shared the land as equal citizens.
But no, the shitraelis were primitive, barbaric, simple-minded bigots and they wanted Palestine just for Jooz. So they inflicted 76 years of one of the most sadistically cruel and bestially savage military colonial occupations on the Palestinians and then wondered by they fought back. Talk about absolute idiots.
I totally agree. Moreover, the idea that we can assess the identify of the 'winners' and 'losers' after a few short weeks is quite mistaken. I rather suspect that Israel's overreach may turn out to be a terrible error, and that other interested parties, such as Iran, may benefit from a redirection of resources.
"Israel has not routed Hamas or Hezbollah and is simply hated even more by Palestinians and Lebanese, if that were even possible..."
Depends on what you mean by "routed." Both have been hurt, and significantly. Would you like to take up the mantle of leadership in Hamas and Hezbollah? Go sign up.
You care that the "Palestinians" Israelis more than every, but does Israel care? Meanwhile does the Arab world care? How many refugees are Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia taking in...what's ...NONE? The Arab worlds DOES not CARE about the Palestinians.
And by the way, what happened to Iran's response to Israel's stand off missile attack? Any word on that.
Oh, and by the way, there are NO ZERO air defenses left in Syrian, so Israeli fighter bombers can fly basically unmolested.
Big Serge is absolutely right, Israel is the big winner here. Sorry
For Israel to be a big winner it must take and hold southern Lebanon; a large slab of Syria and secure Palestine so their colonists can return. It must also exterminate or expel 6 million in Occupied Palestine and another 2 million in what is called Israel.
It must also restore its economy, bring back investors and businesses and have a ready supply of well trained soldiers, enough to secure three areas of occupation. It does not have that capacity. That is winning. Bombs and tanks are theatre, not winning a colonial war.
For those who think Israel is the big winner:
When Croesus, the king of Lydia, asked the oracle if he should attack Persia, he received the response: “If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed.” He viewed this as a good omen and went ahead with the invasion. Unfortunately, the great empire that was destroyed was his own.
Routed means defeated. Neither the Palestinians or the Lebanese are defeated. Hurt yes, but not significantly. The murder of leaders does not hurt significantly a resistance militia. Generally it strengthens them. The Israelis really do believe non-Jews are subhuman and fail to understand that Hamas and Hezbollah know their enemy well and prepare for what they will do and assassination is one of the things that they do.
When people are fighting for a just cause and their homeland they can never be defeated unless you exterminate every last one of them and Israel cannot do that. They can be significantly weakened if you imprison every single one of them but Israel cannot do that either.
Israel cares only about itself, its own belief in its power and survival. The Arab world is the Arab world and no more united than the Anglo or Asian world.
Why should Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia take in refugees and help Shitrael ethnically cleanse Palestine. ALL OF THOSE REFUGEES SHOULD BE TAKEN IN BY ISRAEL WHO CREATED THEM.
More to the point, THEY ARE NOT REFUGEES. They are the native people of Occupied Palestine and what is called Israel who are experiencing genocide from their colonial masters.
The Iranians are smart enough to know that as shitrael rampages around the region, opening new war fronts, they are destroying themselves. All Iran has to do is watch,
As to destroying air bases in Syria, meaningless. The Iranians can see off an Israeli air attack, AND NO WAR IS EVER WON FROM THE AIR.
Only boots on the ground win a war and Israel does not have them and cannot create them. Israel has weakened itself by opening a third front to play its propaganda game to its society which is haemhorraging. It cannot secure Syria just as it cannot secure Occupied Palestine or Lebanon.
Learn to tell the difference between appearances and realities, something the Israelis cannot do.
Since when was it a military achievement to send tanks and bombs into a country in chaos where the military have disappeared and rebels are running rampant and there is no order?
Trained to attack helpless civilians is what the Israeli army can do. This is why it has failed to rout Hamas and Hezbollah. Plenty of dead civilians but no true military victories.
It would be one thing for Israel to win a real battle with a real army and well trained fighters but it hardly seems like a win, to opportunistically scavenge in the blood-drenched remains of what is left of a country after more than a decade of sanctions and war.
How is that winning? Surely it is just taking a chance to steal more? I mean, Israeli tanks and bombs were targeting no true enemy, just exploiting a situation because they could.
If 76 years of violent and sadistic domination could not make the Palestinians compliant, why would anyone with half a brain think Israel could hold any of Syria? Watch the rebel worms turn. They may hate each other but they hate the Israelis even more.
A winner in the theatre and propaganda of war, not a winner in any military sense. And not in any real sense. The genocide in Gaza in particular and Occupied Palestine in general, and the slaughter of civilians in Lebanon, has pulled away the curtain hiding the Shitraeli magician, so the world can see the State is just a fake.
Once seen, the curtain can hide nothing and so can never be closed. The suffering of the Palestinians in the past year had enabled billions around the world to learn the ghastly truth of Israel's genocidal foundation and its 76 years of sadistic cruelty and bestial savagery to the native people whose land it has stolen.
I don’t think you understand that the number one priority of the American empire is the promotion and protection of Israel. Jews own and control America, but will use every last ounce of its power and resources to protect Israel as a safe haven for Jews and a place in which they will continue towards their goal of global domination.
Jews only think in terms of blood and revenge and humiliation. Their actions over the last year has taught us that, and America’s behaviour on the world stage, with its punishing, bullying, and threatening, is a reflection of this Jewish racial spirit.
Once you understand semitism, it’s all as plain as day.
The number one priority of the American empire is world domination. Jews are actually irrelevant and so is Israel beyond being a military base in the Middle East where there is so much oil and gas.
I don't think most Americans, nutter Christians aside, give a toss about Jews or Israel and anyone with half a brain can see that Israel is the most dangerous place a Jew can live.
Some Jews only think in terms of blood, revenge and humiliation, as do most Israelis, but also some Christians, Hindus, Muslims and others. Nothing particular about it to Judaism and all Jews should not be blamed for the actions of their fanatics.
There is no Jewish racial spirit. It is a religion not a race. Tribal spirit perhaps but nothing racial about it and not found in all Jews by any stretch of imagination.
You appear to have a somewhat prejudiced attitude to Jews which does not help you or the situation.
I follow no religion and so am not a Jew. I have studied many religions, including Judaism. I find them all in their ancient writings violent, cruel and highly misogynistic.
I am not trying to control anything. I truly do believe it is wrong to blame all members of any group for the actions of some, particularly their fanatics. I apply the same principles to Jews as I do to Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists.
I believe it does more harm than good to talk about Jews and the wrongs committed by some Jews, as if they were a cohesive group. They are not. No religion is.
Im no friend of the Israeli government, but I think what Israel is doing makes a lot of strategic sense, at least in the short term. The positions around Mt. Hermon that they're occupying are operationally important in regard to both Syria and Southern Lebanon (vis a vis Hezbollah). Blowing up former government arms caches, or in other words, disarming the rebels, makes sense as well. I'm sure that more settlers will follow into the Golan Heights themselves now that the security buffer has increased in size, but in my opinion there is good reason for the IDF to take advantage of Syrian weakness.
One can argue one way or another as to whether this is good for Israeli security in the the long terms, but if you take your neighbor to be an eternal enemy, it makes sense to kick him while he's down.
In its invasion of a crippled Syria Israel has revealed how weak it is. The Israeli military has failed to destroy Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance and now sends its exhausted and mentally sick soldiers into Syria. Easy enough to roll in with the tanks and drop your bombs when a State is in chaos and politically, socially and physically crippled. Any idiot can achieve that.
Israel's problem is that for it to serve any purpose it has to be able to secure occupation of the land. It has not been able to do that in Lebanon or Palestine so why would anyone think it could do it in Syria?
I suspect the invasion of Syria is yet another on the run, spin decision by the Israelis who will wave it as a banner to their brainwashed citizens and supporters, as a demonstration of strength and power. It isn't, it is a demonstration of weakness and failure.
Israel cannot even get its settlers returned to Occupied Palestine and northern Israel so quite how it is going to protect them in the Golan Heights, or any fools who venture further, is the question.
The Syrians will be united in their hatred of Israel and many of the rebel fighters are honed in the arts of resistance war. The desire to drive the enemy out of Syria, and indeed the Golan Heights, held by Israeli occupation forces for too long, may well be a powerful glue which has the Israelis coming to realise they have bitten off more than they can chew.
One can believe in their superiority as humans, their brilliance as a military, but belief, unless it is translated into action is meaningless. After 14 months the Israelis have demonstrated only weakness, failure and a capacity for genocidal destruction which has seen the world turn on them.
The world does not need Israel but Israel cannot survive without the world. Will Americans go to war and die in their tens of thousands to defend Israel in its colonial rampages? That is the question. One thing is certain, even if the Americans did decide to get into a war against Iran started by Israel, there would be no Israel left to defend by the time they did so.
I agree that their further expansion into Syria is not a meaningful military feat - easy to kick Syria while it's down. I also agree that further aggression towards its neighbors will hurt Israel in the long run (the real question there is the continued efficacy of the Israel Lobby in Washington - how much longer can they get the American people to turn a blind eye?).
I think the question of whether the IDF can/will consolidate their new positions in Syria is more nuanced. It's worth pointing out that Gaza is a densely populated city, which makes military occupation and ethnic cleansing extremely difficult. In Lebanon, there is a 30k-40k strong army in Hezbollah, armed with modern long range weapons, that makes prolonged occupation there costly (for example, Shebaa Farms).
Meanwhile, the territory that the Israelis are occupying in Syria is sparsely populated and mountainous in the north, which makes it easy to occupy and strategically valuable. Low cost, high reward in terms of immediate military utility. There's no coherent military force in Southern Syria that can cause a serious problem for the IDF at the moment, but if that changed, the IDF is now in a stronger position to deal with them than they were before the collapse of the Assad Regime.
So, is this about military utility, or further conquest and settlement? I suspect both; given that theres a solid case for both and they aren't mutually exclusive. In any case, I suspect that Israel will do their best to sow dissent among the rebel factions and undermine the viability of a new Syrian state, as they have with Palestine. As long as Syria is weak, Israel will probably be able to get away with maintaining the current lines on the map.
Unfortunately, I think it's too soon to use the words "united" and "Syrian" in the same sentence. The grim reality is that the average Syrian has far more pressing issues than the fate of a few mountain hamlets in the south. If the IDF continues to push towards Damascus, perhaps this will change. Too soon to tell.
Yes, all of that makes a great deal of sense. However, I would venture to guess that the real 'win' for Israel is Palestine and half if not all of Lebanon. I really doubt that taking a slab of Syria is an instead option, but rather an opportunistic grab of more, more, more land in that Sickraeli way. It sells well to the brainwashed Fizzraeli public who do believe greater Israel is possible.
The problem as common sense would decree is that Israel does not even have the boots on the ground to secure Palestine, let alone Lebanon, and losing boots to Syria is spreading itself thin.
Securing Palestine means controlling all of it and everyone in it. Unless every last Palestinian is removed, it is hard to see that happening. And to remove 6 million people, is, as history teaches us, not easy and it never goes down well with the global public. Such a bad look.
And how are they going to do it? Load half dead, maimed, injured men, women and half of them children into trucks, drive them to the border of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, force them out at gunpoint, break down the gates/fence and drive them across? Neither the Egyptians or Jordanians can afford, politically and financially to take more refugees and even if the US masters paid them to do it, the political price of their disaffected citizens would still be too high.
The other option is load them onto ships, as they did in 47/48 and send them where? And if they did drive out the Palestinians in large numbers they are driving out the evidence of their crimes, sadistic cruelty and bestial savagery, where the wrecks of humans created by the Israelis are now available for the world to see their state and hear their stories>
What a public relations disaster. As would exterminating 6 million, 8 million if they include those in what is called Israel, be. And again, how would they do it? We can see from Gaza where probably 600,000, nearly half of them children, are dead, how hard it is and how long it takes to exterminate 2.3 million people.
For shitrael to not take the extermination option and to then control millions of Palestinians so it can be secure, hardly seems likely either. If their policy worked, violence, cruelty, bestial savagery, torture, rape, abuse, dispossession they would have had 75 years of peace and there would be no Hamas, no Palestinian Resistance, no October 7.
Yup, agreed. Their "business model" has an expiration date, they wont be able to call in diplomatic favors and deny/deflect forever. Lets just hope that date comes sooner rather than later.
Well as Glenn Diesen said, Israel has thrown a lot of chaotic cards in the air and where they fall no-one knows, least of all Israel which may have ensured its own destruction. I do paraphrase.
Having turned the world against it, even if some Governments still play the Ziorael game, particularly the US, the Israelis may soon learn that the power of the people ultimately trumps even the power of Governments.
Security comes from good relationships with neighbours and not from violence, rage, hatred, aggression and destruction. Israel has only ever rampaged with bloody boots through the region and ensured it will never be accepted, thereby signing its own death warrant.
Let us hope the Judaic myth that no State of Israel, real or imagined, has ever lasted 80 years is truly prophetic.
Your inept opinions about military strategy diminish Big Serge's page. Your anti semitism is loathsome and tiresome. Israel is surrounded by millions of adherents to the "religion of peace" which teaches it children from infancy that Jews are dogs and pigs and need to be killed. The made up "Palestinians" have had a number of opportunities to have their own state but always fall back on the "three No s" Instead of stealing billions of Euros and Dollars and living in luxury in Qatar, Hamas could have created a prosperous state in Gaza, instead they opted to hide among civilians and lob missiles in to Israel. They are homicial/suicidal maniacs and have caused misery and death to their own people. May they burn in hell.
If it is anti-semitic, expressing a hatred of Jews, to condemn the atrocities Israel has committed for 76 years and worse in the past 14 months then it is you who is anti-semitic and hates Jews because you are saying Israel's evil represents Judaism and Jews. I reject that.
You are saying that Israel as the greatest intentional mass murderer of children in recorded history represents Jews.
You are saying that genocide, occupation, colonisation, ethnic cleansing, rape, torture, murder, theft, sadistic cruelty and bestial savagery represents Judaism and Jews. Shame on you.
The Palestinians have no need to teach their children that the bestial savages who occupy their land and kill them are like animals because that is how the Israelis act.
And since most Jews do not even live in Israel, WTF are you going on about.
PLEASE NAME ONE SAVAGELY OCCUPIED AND COLONISED PEOPLE IN HISTORY WHO DID NOT WANT TO KILL THEIR ABUSERS. ONE WILL DO.
As to the Palestinians having their own state. Do some research. Zionists and Israelis have made it clear for more than 100 years that the Palestinians are to be exterminated or expelled and are never to have their own state. Why lie when the facts of history so easily refute your lies?
And your deranged final para says it all. You hate Muslims, don't care that Palestinian Christians are also murdered by the Israelis because you hate Muslims and you know absolutely nothing about the history of Palestine or the evil that is the Zioraeli State.
If there is a Hell it will be full of Israelis and their supporters not the Palestinians.
This is the VERY BEST analysis I've seen from anyone on the Syria situation, and I've read at least a dozen so far on Substack. I think you got rolled by your spellcheck, though. Of a half dozen uses of the word "discrete," only one was correct, and the rest were spelled "discreet." Also, you have "want" for "wont." This would not be important, but it's so good I think you should shop it to a journal like Consortium News or another independent news source.
There are some missing pieces here. Woefully impoverished states elsewhere have fought on, and even won. Yemen for instance. There are circumstantial hints that a high level sell-out took place. And the end result is just awful on many levels, above all for the people of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.
For Russia, I'd maybe compare the situation to the decision to withdraw from lands West of the Dnieper. It was quite possible to fight on, but at some point the overall cost-benefit was recognized as not worth it. Russian bases going forward become an invitation for Erdogan to extort again and again, so probably will be abandoned.
Russian ambiguity on Israel, despite literal genocide carried out in broad daylight, was also certainly a long term problem, and deserves reconsideration. As time goes on I think the nearly universal sentiment in the "Global South" will make it more natural to correct this. But this is, alas, the downside of 'multipolarity'.
For Iran, the battleground for upcoming showdown with the US shifts to Iraq. This may be beneficial, but only if Iraq's internal politics are less fragile than Syria's. As a human being, I certainly hope they can unite and stand up for themselves in the face of Western barbarism.
However, the occupied (75+ years, brutalized) have an 100% right to fight back. It's not an equal situation. Gaza has zero defenses, except Hamas and some few allies. Are they just supposed to give up?
Well, that kind of objectivity would say when the Germans occupied France and Poland the killing was on both sides.
It would also say when the Germans slaughtered Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto the killing was on both sides!
And it would say the Jewish fighters were using civilians as human shields and all of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were terrorists because they resisted their occupiers and the Germans were the innocent victims.
See how ridiculous it is? Israel occupies Palestine, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
Israel has the fourth largest military in the world and uses it to maintain occupation and colonisation of the Palestinians and to deny them justice, freedom and human and civil rights. The Palestinians have no army, navy or airforce, just a Resistance militia. IT IS NOT AN EQUAL FIGHT.
The Palestinians have justice and law on their side in their fight to be free and the Israelis are the aggressors, committing genocide to maintain their occupation of Palestine.
Israel has subjected the Palestinians to one of the most sadistically cruel and bestially savage military colonial occupations in history and has killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over 76 years and the Palestinians, resisting, have killed a couple of thousand of the colonial occupiers, mostly military targets.
Israel is targeting civilians, and is the greatest intentional mass murderer of children in history.
Sure there is killing on both sides but one side has done it in the name of justice, Palestinians, and the other in the name of evil and injustice, Israel.
It is not just the killing. It is the total destruction of all that enables a peaceful, healthy society to exist - homes, businesses, transport, roads, hospitals, schools, universities, water/waste treatment centres. On top of that the intentional denial of medical supplies, food, and fresh water. All this leaving the survivors and their children homeless and permanently traumatised for the rest of their lives.
And the look on their faces as they enter what is left of homes and trash and steal the contents, laughing all the way. What kind of monsters do this to people?
The sickraelis know it is time- consuming to kill 2.3 million people, nearly half of them children. It is easier to turn their world to rubble, hopefully killing as many as possible and leaving the rest to die of starvation, lack of medical aid, no sanitation and hygiene or clean water because Israel denies all aid.
The poor, sad, sick soldiers are brainwashed from birth to fear and hate the Palestinians and deranged enough to believe that the land belongs to them and the Palestinians are invaders who ruin their lives by making them soldiers. Their hate is enormous and their fear is greater and so in that childishly cretinous way, they gain satisfaction from destruction and mockery like, hanging the toys of children they have killed on their tanks, parading around in the lingerie of women they have killed and shitting in Palestinian cooking pots and bathtubs.
The shitraelis are also sending a message. We control you and your world and if you disobey we shall destroy your world. This is the message not just for the Palestinians in Gaza but in all of Occupied Palestine and in Lebanon and now Syria.
Israel was founded on a belief that they had to be more terrifyingly violent to render those under their rule, the Palestinians, compliant. In the Israeli mind if you get the level of terror high enough the subhumans will become submissive and serve as your slaves or go away and let you have their country. They are oblivious to the fact their policy does not work. It just enrages them more.
Needless to say the Israelis are devoid of any real intelligence and because they consider non-Jews to be subhuman, of the capacity to understand human nature and responses. The more violent they become the more determined are those they rape, torture, murder and abuse and, because they have nothing left to lose but their lives, they become even stronger.
Hamas does not not kill innocent women and children. Hamas does not intentionally target children playing. Do you have any idea what is really going on there?
From an article in Haaretz where soldiers from the Israeli Extermination Forces talk about their actions.
“A new commander came to us. We went out with him on the first patrol at six in the morning. He stops. There’s not a soul in the streets, just a little 4-year-old boy playing in the sand in his yard.
The commander suddenly starts running, grabs the boy, and breaks his arm at the elbow and his leg here. Stepped on his stomach three times and left.
We all stood there with our mouths open. Looking at him in shock … I asked the commander: “What’s your story?” He told me: These kids need to be killed from the day they are born.
When a commander does that, it becomes legit”, a soldier stated.
Exactly. Let us not forget it's core sponsor, my country of depraved ruling elites. I'm constantly horrified.
This was massively coordinated with Turkey, Israel, USA/NATO. The other Arab states did nothing to help Assad. I heard 1 (Col. Jacques Baud) commentator say that the gulf states would not help. He also said that Iran and Russia didn't act because Assad stopped communicating. Professor Marandi has similar views.
It was massively planned. My view is that the US sanctions and arming factions is the most responsible. The US rag of a Constitution tasks these sociopaths with running the US. That's the bottom line in the end. Assad never wanted the job.
In his work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (1944), Lemkin noted that a key component of genocide was the
criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group. The acts are directed against groups as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.
In contemporary international law the crime of genocide is part of the broader category of “crimes against humanity,” which were defined by the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (Nürnberg Charter).
The charter granted the tribunal jurisdiction to indict and try the leaders of the Nazi regime for inhumane acts committed against civilians, as well as for acts of persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds; in so doing, it also contributed to the international criminalization of other forms of abusive conduct.
The momentum created by the Nürnberg trials and the ensuing revelations of Nazi atrocities led to the passage by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly of Resolution 96-I (December 1946), which made the crime of genocide punishable under international law, and of Resolution 260-III (December 1948), which approved the text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the first UN human rights treaty. The convention, which entered into force in 1951, has been ratified by more than 130 countries. Although the United States played a major role in drafting the convention and was an original signatory, the U.S. Senate did not ratify it until 1988.
Article 2 of the convention defines genocide as
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
In addition to the commission of genocide, the convention also made conspiracy, incitement, attempt, and complicity in genocide punishable under international law.
Let us not be truly ridiculous. Duh. In 1947/48 the Zionist Jews invaded Palestine and wiped from the face of the earth 530 villages and towns which were centuries old and lived in by, PALESTINIANS. And they drove out close to a million, massacring thousands of, guess what? PALESTINIANS.
And the name of the country they invaded was, gosh, who would have thought it, PALESTINE.
We have transcribed from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs records about Palestine and PALESTINIANS more than 5000 years old.
We have maps, drawings, paintings, images, records, data and then photographs of Palestine and PALESTINIANS going back thousands of years.
Arab simply means Arab speaker and Palestinians became Arab speakers under occupation. THE PALESTINIANS HAVE BEEN OCCUPIED MANY TIMES AND THEY STILL ARE BUT THEY REMAIN PALESTINIANS.
This Zionist bullshit Palestinians never existed is only believed by children and cretins.
Further, such accusations are meant to cover the truly horrific behaviour of those who make such claims. These are not JUST Palestinians, they are PEOPLE, human beings. They are being ruthlessly slaughtered and their land made uninhabitable whatever you want to call them as a people.
Egyptian Hieroglyphs do record about Israel. After all, it was border region between the Egyptians on the one side, the the Hittites and Mesopotamians on the other.
Oh dear, you’re just another hasbara dimwit..you’ll probably tell us that Yahweh/Dude Upstairs thinks Jews are all that and a bag of chips so gave them some land.. and that they’re genetically superior or some such bird droppings..
So, can you clarify. Do you believe it is fine to commit genocide with bestial savagery and sadistic cruelty on people, knowing half of them are children, for any reason?
Would you allow this to be done to animals? By what stretch of evil can anyone seek to condone the atrocities inflicted on the Palestinians?
You are saying Israel can do what it wants to them because they don't exist as an ethnic people. Why would that mean they have no human rights?
Well, Roslyn, we all know the other side have not only lost the (perceived) moral high ground but any claim to an intellectual and cogent defense of their position. It boggles the mind that after all the billions spent on psyops across industries, continents and time spans to prop up the Zionist stance all you get are the likes of this bird-brained hasbara regurgitator.. I really haven’t read or heard anything beyond the level of what this imbecile says; just a bunch of inconsistent racist remarks masked as morality or history. Incidentally, if your logic appeals to higher order thinking then you don’t need to ban, bribe, cancel, etc (or unleash the dimwits like this useful idiot/troll who delivers morsels of bird droppings as if they were godly edicts..). I really appreciate your cogent and logical answers even in response to these people that we know lack the intellect/gray matter hardware to comprehend your argument..
I think the apologists operate at such levels of propaganda silliness, devoid of any substance or facts, that they make themselves look foolish and actually make a case for the other side. But I do believe everyone should be free to speak, should have a voice. After all, that is why we are fighting to defend justice for the Palestinians, denied any voice or any rights by their colonial rulers, Israel.
So far Bibi has an arrest warrant for war crimes: starving the population to death. 600 trucks per day prior to Oct 7, 2023 compared to maybe 60 half-full trucks - of course, for security reasons, today; which means a reduction to 1/20th of "normal" times, when Gazans were still on a caloric reduced diet.
Assuming you have an intake of 3000 calories per day, reducing that to 1/20th yields 150 calories per day. Try it for a month, see if you are alive after that...
Everything about the fundamentals -- Syria's overpopulation combined with declining resources combined with lack of ethnic and sectarian homogeneity -- is true.
But the question also has to be asked what Russia and Iran did to help Syria recover the northeast. The answer is nothing.
Then the next question is what could they have done. The answer is a lot.
Let's say they didn't want to fight the US prior to 2022.
But the moment the first HIMARS systems arrived in Ukraine and started decimating Russian logistics, Russian Tornado-S and other heavly MLRS systems should have been unleashed on the US bases in the northeast of Syria, with the goal of complete annihilation and driving them out.
US then wants to do air strikes? Send more air defense and actually use it, see how they like their F-35s dropping out of the skies like flies.
Many people were in fact calling for such reciprocal actions for two years.
But in the Kremlin they have been in "we want to surrender, will you please let us surrender, please, please, please?" mode since Istanbul. So of course none of the above was done...
A comparison with the situation in Soviet times is instructive -- Syria back then was not only allowed to use the Russian-supplied weapons on Israel (while it was clearly banned from doing it in the 2010s and 2020s), but the USSR was in key moments ready to intervene to defend it directly. Now? The Kremlin would bomb the "terrorists" but that was it, and even that was not carried to completion, while their masters were allowed to do whatever they wanted.
During the USSR times, there weren't as many Russian immigrants to Israel as after 1992. This creates mutual influencing forces that induce restraint to Russia.
Before 2022, Russia wasn't as well prepared to "sanctions from Hell" as she is today. Risking a financial collapse for the sake of evicting Americans from Eastern Syria didn't make sense.
Yes, prior to 2022 the Cold War norms of fighting a proxy war were maintained — no attacks on each other’s territory and no existential for each other conflicts.
Although even by those rules it would have been perfectly fine for Russia to pump Syria with weapons and unleash them on the US, Turkey and the Zionists in Tel Aviv. It is what the USSR used to do.
But in mid-2022 the US started to break the rules, and then it was not even just allowable, but mandatory to hit them hard somewhere, Syria being the most obvious place.
Syria is a majority Sunni state. Assad was running a minority rule government, his regime legitimacy coming from being a part of Arab nationalistic secular block facing and fighting Israel. Once upon a time Egypt, Iraq were also run by Arab nationalist secular forces at war with Israel. Not so much after Sadat signing peace agreement with ISrael, and Syria not signing, even less after the Sadam's invasion of Kuwait, and final defeat and destruction of Sadam's regime and Iraqi state.
Syria was alone, in Arab and Sunni Moslem world. in double bind position. Like Armenia.
Traditionally described by idiom: Don't Change Horses In Midstream.
Survival of Syria demanded making peace with Israel, getting support of other Arab states, Muslim states, the very states that supported uprising against the Assad government. And this again demanded leaving traditional allies Iran and Russia.
A very difficult strategic position, as precisely described by Serge.
Russia could have used Syria against US, bit it would have ended in a major defeat, then.
Second, there is no open conflict between Russia and Israel, per se. In multipolar world Russia can honestly support Palestinian cause, but in same spirit in which Naftali Bennett tried to arrange a negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, RUssia is interested and would support any nonviolent negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestinians , but once war and violence erupts, and war is perceived as existential by Israelis and Jews worldwide, it is not a Russian war.
The zionist influence in the Kremlin cannot be overstated, and is the refraining influence that determines Russia's options. The US also has the same zionist parasitic influence, where the well-being of the people is irrelevant to the goals of the zionists (what ever demonic power they represent).
The battles, whether openly manifested or discretely occurring, are the existential battle of humanity in these biblical times.
It is not just the conflicts between nations, but the conflicts within nations and within each of us that constitutes the drama of these times.
If the zionists had the same influence in Russia that they have in the USA, you would see entirely different results in Russian military, economic and societal characteristics. The zionists had almost full control in the 90s after the fall of the USSR - military poorly equipped and maintained, an economy being sucked dry by Jewish/American oligarchs, and a society on the verge of collapse and soaked with alcohol, drugs and moral degeneracy. The advent of Putin changed all that. Now Russia is healthy and revitalised - no zionist-led country exhibits such characteristics as the jews tend to suck a country dry and introduce lower morals in society as they take over - this is why they have been thrown out of so many countries over the centuries.
Given Russian attitudes to the always problematic tribe of Jews, it would be interesting to see what proof you have of Zionist Jewish influence. It was the Jews who tore Russia apart with the Bolshevik Revolution and Russians have not forgotten that.
But, I am happy to be shown the substance for your claims.
Great point - after March of 2022, those US bases in E. Syria ought to have been leveled. With only 600 or so troops, they likely would not have been defensible. Sure, the US would have howled like a stuck pig and retaliated, but what would be worse than the Crocus attacks, ATACMS, and the sponsoring of terrorists to attack Russian civilians? All those things happened anyway.
Isn't most every power trying to contain the psychos in DC? Or are they just more considerate of or afraid the raging empire? By the way, US person here. War sucks!
Big Surge struck out on multiple fronts fronts despite a good analysis of the main reasons for the collapse of the SAR. As far as the conclusions on the geopolitical outlook, this was the typically biased and limitedly informed analysis from a western viewpoint. You might as well have been reading a propaganda or simplistic interpretation with the (pseudo) categorization of the winners and losers! First, Russia a small loser? Lol! Russian reliance on Syria as a base for its political and potential military power projection in West Asia and the Mediterranean goes back to the Soviet times. With Syria out of the picture, it is left without a naval force vis-à-vis the empire anywhere in the Mediterranean all the way down to Africa. And if anyone had any troops in Syria up until the end, it was Russia rather than Iran. Second, Iran never depended or used Syria, Lebanon, or the Eastern Mediterranean as actual or potential projections of economic power like empires do. Rather, Iran variably organized, supported, or reinforced Hezbollah or Syria mainly as autonomous bulwarks and defense lines against military threats stemming from the Zio-American schemes. However, with the rise of Iran’s long range military capabilities and ability to project deadly missile and drone power (advanced and ultra technological warfare), it has seized escalation dominance or de facto deterrence against US and Israel, and a reduced need to invest and expend enormous resources including direct military presence in unstable and shifting arenas, merely to protect its borders and integral autonomy from such eventual threats. That is not to mention that Iran has now has even a viable nuclear option.
And the totally ridiculously hollow statement that israel and Iran have equally demonstrated capability to direct airstrikes against each other? Are you kidding? Israel has always lived on the premise, in fact, the unequivocal ability to threaten all regional actors with the ability to conduct devastating airstrikes at will or with impunity, and the conviction or the confidence that no one has the ability to penetrate its invulnerable air defenses. There’s nothing that’s been more shattered than that, with the unprecedented successful direct missile and hypersonic missile strikes on the most cherished and defended military and industrial assets of Israel by Iran! I guess 2024 hasn’t been all that bad for Iran, after it demonstrated the ability to penetrate the supposedly best and most heavily defended airbase in the world! And the Israeli retaliation was at best ineffectual and at worse comical as it could not even with the logistical and intelligence support of the US actually send one of its bombers into Iranian airspace as had been planned or do any notable damage to Iranian military assets. You can fool yourself in considering that as equal to what Iran gained and what Israel actually lost in deterrence power!
Israel as the winner? Lol! Some winning year it’s been for Israel! Its army or infantry dealt huge losses in material, manpower, and morale; its utter and embarrassing failure to accomplish effective or stable control over Gaza let alone southern Lebanon (other than assassinating a few notable leaders which will not ever defeat the movement and resistance unless you are a typical uniformed western “analyst” who thinks the resistance starts and ends with a charismatic leader!) and carrying out a genocide against women and children); its economy shattered and the exodus of its most economically significant population by the hundreds of thousands; its utter unprecedented shameful and negative image and perception across the world including criminal charges for its leaders; and the loss of its carefully constructed deterrence and invulnerability of its military, especially in future conflicts and battles with state or no state actors. And you think Syria has been good for israel? I guess you have little idea of surprises a new Libya next door might bring to Israel. The same instabilities that Israel counts on for advancing its agenda in the region can become new tumors that will fester to create challenges and demand unending resources for that “little shitty county” (as remarked by a French politician some years ago).
A big problem with this supposed analysis by Big Surge regarding the geopolitical background, consequences, and outlook is that there is little evidence of having studied or incorporated any local sources including hundreds diverse and informed Iranian or middle eastern political reporters, analysts, or experts. Such sources of course demand some knowledge of the language and cultures beyond the stereotypical or limited European or American variety.
I have watched Professor Marandi, Col. Jacques Baud and others. I am American. That said, people underestimate the insanity of WA. This Syrian operation was/is a total plan. Your thoughts on the global surprise? Ceasefire on Lebanon which Israel totally ignored. Immediate air attacks on Syria. Massive coordination with Turkey, the US/NATO/Israel. Rebranding their 'moderate rebels' aka Al Q, ISIS, etc.
I am happy to see the restraint of China, Russia. These psychos are dangerous with their Battle of Armageddon religious self-fulfilling BS.
Among the many decent western analysts of the current geopolitical dynamics, I like Pepe Escobar, Alastair Crooke, and Brian Berletic. I also think The Cradle offers excellent take and coverage from a more local Middle East/West Asia framework. But, there are many others, particularly in the non-English speaking and locally well known journalists and experts beyond Marandi for instance. I think, the complexity of the current West Asian dynamics demands a rather detailed understanding of its historical, social, economic, and cultural background and diversity that few in the Western world fully understand let alone have mastered. The traces of colonial, Imperial and Eurocentric viewpoints are detectable even among the very best of their experts that do not function necessarily within the vast designated or self appointed “experts” in the mainstream media propaganda industry.
I have watched all of these people you cite on You Tube and various presentations. I like Ben Norton-Geopolitical Economy Report, Grayzone, Hedges, Sachs, others. Michael Hudson for economics.
I read widely as time permits. I follow historians for some of these topics.
Just finished a book by Rashid Khalidi, Robert Fisk. It's wise to consult highly educated folks. No one is perfect. However, bias can be detected if one considers many views. Thank you. ✌️
Great post and fits with much I have read and gleaned. I wonder if Big Serge and some of the other analysts are hedging their bets and throwing a sop to Shitrael just in case it does come out on top.
For anyone with a modicum of common sense it seems, as you say, ridiculous to deem Iran a loser given what it has demonstrated it can do to Israel, and petty little Israel as a winner because it opened a third war front, having failed to achieve any military wins on the first two.
Super triple kudos for mentioning the population explosion and the draining of the aquifers! Nobody else pays attention to that. I am seriously impressed.
But: you should also consider that the population explosion was by design. Seriously, the Syrian government was strongly pro-natalist and even made the sale and possession of contraceptives a crime! (See “Demographic Developments and Population: Policies in Ba’thist Syria (Demographic Developments and Socioeconomics)”, by Onn Winkler).
Always the rich INSIST that more people MUST be jammed into a country and this is guaranteed to be totally wonderful. Always we are lied to. But in the aftermath, there is an almost total blackout on discussing this. Other instances where the rich forced the population up, and the result was, if not always collapse, certainly strong downwards pressure on the working class, include Mexico, China under Mao, Japan before WWII, South Africa, the Ivory Coast, Turkey, England, Sweden, The Kingdom of Hawaii, Afghanistan, Sudan (they even had secret fertility police looking for illegal contraceptive use), and yes, the United States, where since the closing of the frontier there has been an inverse relationship between the rate of immigration and the fortunes of workers.
One also notes that the total size of the Syrian population including the Diaspora might be approaching 35 million by now (last I hear the Syrian refugees in Turkey are still averaging about 4 kids each). The refugees are not going back, and in any event Erdogan has been a champion of high levels of immigration, that was the main issue in the last Turkish election.
"The Problem of Syria, as such, is that the fiscal-economic viability of the state is tenuous at best and relies on consolidated control of the state’s former territory, but this in turn requires welding together an amalgamation of ethnic and sectarian groups, combustible in the best circumstances, at the same time that foreign powers are trying to set them alight. The ethnic logic and the economic logic of Syria border on total incompatibility, and have historically been held together by repression and violence. "
Indeed, the "Problem of Syria" is one which has existed really since the end of WW1 and the collapse of the old Ottoman Empire. While the British had Mandates in Palestine and Mesopotamia (now Israel/Jordan and Iraq, respectively), France wanted its sphere of influence in the region and so insisted on running its own Mandate in Syria--it toppled the nascent Hashemite Kingdom of Syria in 1920 and spend the remainder of the pre-WW2 years crafting the states of Syria and Lebanon. Perversely the closest Syria ever came to political stability was the dictatorial rule of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's far more capable father.
The situation in Syria now is much like that of LIbya after the death of Muommar Quadafi: multiple rival factions none of which have the power or the gravitas to unite all the factions into a single polity. All of the tribal allegiances the British and French disregarded in the post-WW1 carve-up of the region are still very much at odds with the arbitrarily drawn borders which nominally define the countries today.
Since the end of WW1 the entire region has been held together largely by this or that strongman dictator, and the toppling of Assad, much like the toppling of Hussein in Iraq, leaves a power vacuum that no one is able to fill.
Dismissing the argument that some states are 'fakes' misses the point. The whole idealogical history upon which Israel's claim to a statehood is based is a fabrication as Finkelstein- a Jewish academic- exposed in the 'bible unearthed', also made into a BBC documentary. This is a matter of main stream acknowledged archeological fact. As the for the european so called Jews, see Koestler on the thirteen tribe!
This matters because the fake history of Israel is what it has relied on- or the US western hegemon has cynically relied upon- to establish a forward base in the resource rich ME with religious fundamentalists of the Jewish persuasion, as much victims of this fabrication as is promulgators, using the fakery to wage war on Israel's neighbours and take their land.
But we do not have to go back into the mists of history to make the argument for a fake state here. It was dumped straight into the ME by the west after WWII forcibly displacing the actual inhabitants of the actual territory- a war crime in all but name!
As for Ukraine, there are many provisional moving boundaries in that part of eurasia not just viz Ukraine. The idea of the sovereign rights of a given 'state' is just a propaganda weapon in wars for resources. If you happen to be sitting on resources that the western hegemon has set its avarice sights on, beware. Your sovereign (sic) rights count for nothing at all. You had better have that final bastion of sovereignty in good working order because you will need it- military force.
The Russians realized years ago that Assad's generals and army were rotten with corruption. The Russians told Assad to clean up his army and fire the corrupt generals. Assad wouldn't do it. The generals kept him in power. Assad and his generals deserve their fates.
I'm surprised that the Ukrainian Army is still fighting. Zelensky and his generals are also corrupt.
Sorry! You cannot have missed the most powerful force in the region, that acts through its various proxies, the United States. Is this deliberate? I don’t believe it can be an accident. You have set out to write a very mainstream account, but it is dishonest. I will have to cancel my paid subscription. A pity!
You’re right! It’s very suspicious that these points are barely mentioned:
1) the illegal US sanctions that were fundamental to wreck the Syrian economy
2) the US directly and with proxies occupying the wealthiest regions of Syria - from the text it seems as if these regions were occupied by some random rebel party, but as other commenter has rightly said, this was explicit US policy as explained by that Dana Stroul biatch!!
Right! Plenty of US folks think Israel runs the US. I disagree. The US is the top aggressor. AIPAC is a major influence, of course. The "rules-based order" only applies to other parties. The Wall Street bull is the real god here.
US human under the boot here for 76 years! I fear for everyone as it collapses. It could take awhile, but the signs are everywhere. ✌️
The Jews are happy. The Muslims are fighting each other. The Christians are the big losers. They are being beheaded right now by the new rulers of Syria.
Israel will overextend itself eventually. Iran needs to take care of itself. Theocracies don't work well in the modern world.
As an American, I just want the American troops to come home. I want the money and weapons to Israel to stop. The Old World can go to Hell (which it will), as far as I'm concerned.
Problem is the new world is an extension of the old world.. well, kind of.. a lot of the religious nut jobs from the old world populated the new one.. so you have same old, same old..
In the modern geopolitical era it is the power that acts with the most tactical and strategic aggression that walks away with the prize. The axis of resistance especially iran acted with too little conviction and initiative in relation to Israeli belligerence and ultimately paid the price. It doesn't make me feel good but it's undeniable that Israel is the big winner.
Israel's airpower had to be curbed, either by air defence in Syria protecting its sovereignty and Lebanon's, and or Iran incapacitating Israel's airfields.
Neither was, and we see the consequence.
This is just a major factor, but as Serge poignantly asserts, Syria's economic strength made it unviable as a functioning state.
Iran knows it can take out Israel's airfields anytime it chooses. As an ancient culture who have not attacked anyone for more than 100 years, perhaps the Iranians are choosing to let Israel destroy itself.
As to Syria, if Israelis can believe they are a country after 76 years then perhaps it would be wise to not underestimate the Syrians who have just over 100 years under their national belt.
And while Syrians are divided, we can be certain that each and every one of them hates the Israelis far more than they hate other Syrians regardless of their actions or persuasions.
Your assessment relies on a huge number of assumptions regarding the Iranians. It is hard to see little Israel as a big winner when the Iranian's have demonstrated, as have the Houthis, their Iron Dome does not work and is more like a Netting Dome, as well as the fact that they have failed to destroy Hamas or Hezbollah. Murdering civilians does not defeat a Resistance, it empowers it.
Bombs can never win a war and Israel does not have and cannot have the boots on the ground to make Occupied Palestine secure, let alone a slab of Lebanon and Syria.
The Israeli army is weak, poorly trained and many if not most of its soldiers are mentally ill. That makes them fit for demonic killing sprees but not up to making sensible military decisions which can ensure clear outcomes and increase security.
Perhaps more critical, Israel is simply one big military camp and its people are either fighting and killing, securing occupied areas, and not working and the economy is in ruins, or they are working and keeping the economy stable and not able to fight to secure anything under occupation, or to protect settlers on ground taken illegally.
How can anyone talk about Syria and not mention the United Ststes, that malign slayer of peoples’ hopes of democracy, freedom and sovereignty? I can only conclude you are in the pay of the US. Whatever , l have no need to read your biased blandishments. I prefer the truth. Please unsubscribe me.
A couple of points. It was not explicitly mentioned, so I will note that certainly all the Astana stakeholders understood Syria's precarious state very well. I conjecture that they had an agreement that the status quo would be maintained for the foreseeable future, but Turkey decided to renege at this time. I think Russia and Iran would have preferred the collapse not happen at this time viz Lavrov's remarks but knew it was likely to happen and of course had expected contingencies.
Second, chaos on its border may not be a long term win for Israel, if there is such a thing as a long term win for Israel. God knows...
While clinically speaking the assessment of Israel as a winner makes sense, when one applies common sense, it hardly appears to be a win.
Israel has not routed Hamas or Hezbollah and is simply hated even more by Palestinians and Lebanese, if that were even possible, and now it has opened a third front in Syria with the same goal, occupation and colonisation.
It is one thing to take land in times of chaos but quite another to secure it. Israel does not even have the boots on the ground to secure Occupied Palestine in general and Gaza in particular. Yes, it can continue murdering people, nearly half of them children, but that is not securing an area. Same with Lebanon.
The Israeli modus operandi is primitive and backward like much about the society, the belief being if you demonstrate your capacity to destroy and kill then your enemy will be forced into compliance and you will control them, or at least have power over them. If that approach worked then Israel would have had 75 years of peaceful compliance from the Palestinians, instead of ever-increasing resistance and determination to be free.
One suspects, again simply applying common sense, that the Syria invasion is more for the brainwashed Israeli market to demonstrate, look how powerful we are, look how they run from us, and look at how much more land we can take for you to settle! Delusional of course but then delusion is the middle name for Israel.
But, having invaded and put some boots on the ground in Syria, Israel now has to secure land in three countries powerfully enough to send in the settlers. And for the settlers to be safe, Israel needs plenty of boots on the ground in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
It doesn't have access to those boots. In Israel the workers are the soldiers and they are either working and keeping the economy afloat or they are working at killing and occupying and the economy is in tatters. Sure they could complicate it all by bringing in mercenaries but that is always an oil and water mix requiring huge amounts of money, time, attention and monitoring.
Israel has soldiers who are seriously mentally ill and we see that from the videos they take of themselves. They also have a high suicide and defection rate. The society is now loathed around the world which only increases paranoia which only intensifies mental illness. How can such a sick society, experienced only in targeting civilians under occupation, even create a military with the structure, order and discipline required to occupy and subdue two other countries?
Perhaps as a military expert you can explain what I am getting wrong?
Well said. It must be emphasised that Israel's economy can not possibly be doing well, as their GDP has dropped significantly over the last year, they are losing many of their best and brightest who have become discouraged and fearful that Israel can not give them the advertised safety and security they longed for when they moved there, many companies and countries have broken trade relations with them and virtually the entire world is beginning to treat them as anathema. The support of the US and Europe whom their zionist financial supporters control have economic problems of their own, drowning in debt, militarily weak and on the edge of economic/financial collapse.
Further, anyone who thinks that Iran is not positioned to completely destroy Israel's existing infrastructure if they make the wrong move, is living in lalaland. Israel in the end is a small country - only a few airports, a couple of viable sea ports, a critically important offshore gas facility, and something like only 5 power stations - all these can be critically damaged very easily by Iran's missiles and drones. Taking out much of their infrastructure would immediately destroy the country as the population could not exist there without it - no matter the amount of support they could get from their allies since most of it would take years to replace.
Also, if such a thing happened, the US would have only limited ability to retaliate on behalf of Israel as Iran has modern air defence, their arms production and nuclear facilities are located under mountains and the ability to destroy or incapacitate virtually all major US military installations in the region, plus completely disrupt the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf within minutes - this is a risk far too great to take by the West - and they are well aware of it.
Agree and how functional is an army of sickos?
From an article in Haaretz where soldiers from the Israeli Extermination Forces talk about their actions.
“A new commander came to us. We went out with him on the first patrol at six in the morning. He stops. There’s not a soul in the streets, just a little 4-year-old boy playing in the sand in his yard.
The commander suddenly starts running, grabs the boy, and breaks his arm at the elbow and his leg here. Stepped on his stomach three times and left.
We all stood there with our mouths open. Looking at him in shock … I asked the commander: “What’s your story?” He told me: These kids need to be killed from the day they are born.
When a commander does that, it becomes legit”, a soldier stated.
Haaretz is not reliable - IIRC it's a loss-generating outlet owned by a German company interested putting Israel in worst possible light. For which it then gets quoted (for money) by the anti-Israel press outside Israel. The same to a smaller extent also applies to Times of Israel.
By the way, the Israeli SSS (Sadistic Sicko Soldiers) have outdone the Nazis and even their SS.
Not even the Nazis shot children through the head and heart and tortured and murdered doctors.
Not even the Nazis debated in their Parliament whether or not rape, including with metal rods and broom handles, guaranteed to kill, was acceptable and decided yes, perfectly acceptable, there should be more of it, as the shitraelis did.
There is evil and there is Israel which ranks as some of the greatest evil in human history.
And you say Haaretz is not reliable. Pull the other one. As to putting Israel in the worst possible light, the actions of Israel make it very clear the worst possible light is all there is. The State of Hate is an atrocity and it always was.
Did almost laugh when you moaned that money was involved for quoting facts published by Haaretz. Seriously mate, do you live on planet earth? It is money which has most mainstream media in Western countries vomiting up the bullshit propaganda invented in shitrael. Good heavens, who would have thought money was involved in regard to Sickrael.
barnabus,
The first point I will make is that a few Jews could have been in Palestine for 100,000 years and it would still not give followers of the religion rights to that land today. Good heavens, we could re-ínvent thousands of ancient primitive kingdoms around the world if we were mad enough to do it. Israel is a disaster and it was always going to be a disaster. It is a taint on the planet and on judaism.
Religions do not get rights to land, homelands or self determination. The idea of an Israel is a lie, and what is called Israel today was founded on lies and functions on lies.
THE EGYPTIANS DID NOT TALK ABOUT ISRAEL BECAUSE IT DID NOT EXIST. It is a religious fairy story. At this point anyway. Sure, at some point in history a hieroglyph may be transcribed which refers to an Israel but so far that has not happened.
What Egyptologists do know is that the Egyptians made a note when a tribe called Judah arrived in Palestine around 3000 years ago. They wandered in from what is now Iraq. Colonists then as now.
At that point the Egyptians had been writing, carving in stone, notes about the Palestinians and Palestine for more than 2000 years. Palestine was ancient when Judaism was invented and when a few Jews set up camp in Palestine.
No-one of sound mind can have the slightest doubt that the Exodus never happened. Neither the Exodus, nor the wandering in the desert, nor the conquest of Canaan. As Uri Avnery wrote before his death in 2018:
“The Egyptians were obsessive chroniclers. Many tens of thousands of tablets have already been deciphered. It would have been impossible for an event like the exodus to pass without being reported at length. Not if 600,000 people left, as the Bible tells it, or 60,000, or even 6000. Especially if during the flight a whole Egyptian army contingent, including war chariots, was drowned.
The same goes for the Conquest. Because of acute security concerns, after being invaded once from there, the Egyptians employed a host of spies, - travelers, merchants and others - to follow closely the events in neighboring Canaan, in every single one of its towns and at all times. An invasion of Canaan, even a minor one, would have been reported. Except for the periodic incursions of Bedouin tribes, nothing was recorded.
Moreover, the Egyptian towns mentioned in the Bible did not exist at the time the event is supposed to have happened. They did exist, however, when the Bible was written, in the first or second century BC.
There is no need to point out that in a hundred years of frantic archaeological searching by devout Christians and Zionist zealots, not a shred of concrete evidence for the conquest of Canaan has been found (nor that the Kingdoms of Saul, David or Solomon ever existed. “
The people who would become the Jews were an amalgamation of Canaanite tribes, probably mostly native to the Levant (?). Which is to say that they are the same people that the Palestinians are descended from.
Not really. Only a minority of Arab speakers in Greater Israel go back to Canaanites. The vast majority of Jews left Greater Israel between the destruction of the 2nd Temple (70 CE) and end of 4th century. The main populations staying were now Christianized Greco-Roman settlers and Samaritans. After invasion by Muslim Arabs in the 7th Century that contributed to the gene pool, more than 90% of the Greco-Romans and Samaritans were converted to Islam, forcefully or otherwise.
In the 19th century, the Ottomans also brought in many Albanians, Cherkessians and other Muslims who were forced to leave SE Europe and Caucasus. None of these were actually Canaanites... Finally, British encouraged immigration of Muslims from Syria and Iraq to the area of Palestine Mandate after 1920. This is the reason the UNRWA allowed any Arab who resided for 2 years in Palestine Mandate to have a title as a Palestinian refugee. Again, these wouldn't align DNA-wise with ancient Canaanites.
With Jews - the first large resettlement wave started after 1492 when Sephardis fleeng Spain were welcomed to settle under the Ottomans. There were several small waves after Chmelnitzki pogroms in mid-17th century, and then in the 18th century. Obviously resettlement started in a big way after the Tsarist pogroms in Russia in 1861...
Judaism was invented in what is now Iraq. And yes, no doubt all these tribes were from the same region, regardless of religion.
However, none of that makes Jews a people. The earliest Christians were Palestinian but no-one considers Christians to be a people and of course they are not.
It is impossible for a religion to create a genetic marker and since intermarriage creates genetic deformities which kill off the group eventually, also impossible for any genetic markers of the tribal group to be consistently passed on.
At a thousand years we each have more than a million ancestors so, if we take the arrival of the tribe called Judah in Palestine, 3000 years ago, at which point Palestine was already ancient, that would be many millions of ancestors. At conception humans get some of millions of possible genetic markers.
Given the conversions practised by all religions, including Jews, both forced in earlier times and chosen in later centuries, it is very clear that Jews, like all religions, are descended from a mix of peoples.
The current fad for ancestry testing which claims to identify what they call Jewish/Ashkenazi, which means European, largely German, fails when it is discovered that what the same DNA can be found in Christians, Muslims, Hindus and atheists. And no doubt Buddhists. This is what one would expect, genetically speaking.
So, there is no religious DNA, including Jewish, and since every single human alive today is descended from the same relatively small, distant group of ancestors, according to modern genetic science, there are no races either, just the human race and the religion we choose to practise plays no part in any of it.
barnabus,
In response to your comment to which there is no reply facility that the Egyptians talked/wrote about Israel:
The first point I will make is that a few Jews could have been in Palestine for 100,000 years and it would still not give followers of the religion rights to that land today.
Good heavens, we could re-ínvent thousands of ancient primitive kingdoms around the world if we were mad enough to do it. Israel is a disaster and it was always going to be a disaster. It is a taint on the planet and on Judaism.
Religions do not get rights to land, homelands or self determination. The idea of an Israel is a lie, and what is called Israel today was founded on lies and functions on lies.
THE EGYPTIANS DID NOT TALK ABOUT ISRAEL BECAUSE IT DID NOT EXIST. It is a religious fairy story. At this point anyway. Sure, at some point in history a hieroglyph may be transcribed which refers to an Israel but so far that has not happened.
What Egyptologists do know is that the Egyptians made a note when a tribe called Judah arrived in Palestine around 3000 years ago. They wandered in from what is now Iraq. Colonists then as now.
At that point the Egyptians had been writing, carving in stone, notes about the Palestinians and Palestine for more than 2000 years. Palestine was ancient when Judaism was invented and when a few Jews set up camp in Palestine.
No-one of sound mind can have the slightest doubt that the Exodus never happened. Neither the Exodus, nor the wandering in the desert, nor the conquest of Canaan. As Uri Avnery wrote before his death in 2018:
“The Egyptians were obsessive chroniclers. Many tens of thousands of tablets have already been deciphered. It would have been impossible for an event like the exodus to pass without being reported at length. Not if 600,000 people left, as the Bible tells it, or 60,000, or even 6000. Especially if during the flight a whole Egyptian army contingent, including war chariots, was drowned.
The same goes for the Conquest. Because of acute security concerns, after being invaded once from there, the Egyptians employed a host of spies, - travelers, merchants and others - to follow closely the events in neighboring Canaan, in every single one of its towns and at all times. An invasion of Canaan, even a minor one, would have been reported. Except for the periodic incursions of Bedouin tribes, nothing was recorded.
Moreover, the Egyptian towns mentioned in the Bible did not exist at the time the event is supposed to have happened. They did exist, however, when the Bible was written, in the first or second century BC.
There is no need to point out that in a hundred years of frantic archaeological searching by devout Christians and Zionist zealots, not a shred of concrete evidence for the conquest of Canaan has been found (nor that the Kingdoms of Saul, David or Solomon ever existed. “
The first point I will make is that a few Jews could have been in Palestine for 100,000 years and it would still not give followers of the religion rights to that land today. Good heavens, we could re-ínvent thousands of ancient primitive kingdoms around the world if we were mad enough to do it. Israel is a disaster and it was always going to be a disaster. It is a taint on the planet and on judaism.
Religions do not get rights to land, homelands or self determination. The idea of an Israel is a lie, and what is called Israel today was founded on lies and functions on lies.
THE EGYPTIANS DID NOT TALK ABOUT ISRAEL BECAUSE IT DID NOT EXIST. It is a religious fairy story. At this point anyway. Sure, at some point in history a hieroglyph may be transcribed which refers to an Israel but so far that has not happened.
What Egyptologists do know is that the Egyptians made a note when a tribe called Judah arrived in Palestine around 3000 years ago. They wandered in from what is now Iraq. Colonists then as now.
At that point the Egyptians had been writing, carving in stone, notes about the Palestinians and Palestine for more than 2000 years. Palestine was ancient when Judaism was invented and when a few Jews set up camp in Palestine.
No-one of sound mind can have the slightest doubt that the Exodus never happened. Neither the Exodus, nor the wandering in the desert, nor the conquest of Canaan. As Uri Avnery wrote before his death in 2018:
“The Egyptians were obsessive chroniclers. Many tens of thousands of tablets have already been deciphered. It would have been impossible for an event like the exodus to pass without being reported at length. Not if 600,000 people left, as the Bible tells it, or 60,000, or even 6000. Especially if during the flight a whole Egyptian army contingent, including war chariots, was drowned.
The same goes for the Conquest. Because of acute security concerns, after being invaded once from there, the Egyptians employed a host of spies, - travelers, merchants and others - to follow closely the events in neighboring Canaan, in every single one of its towns and at all times. An invasion of Canaan, even a minor one, would have been reported. Except for the periodic incursions of Bedouin tribes, nothing was recorded.
Moreover, the Egyptian towns mentioned in the Bible did not exist at the time the event is supposed to have happened. They did exist, however, when the Bible was written, in the first or second century BC.
There is no need to point out that in a hundred years of frantic archaeological searching by devout Christians and Zionist zealots, not a shred of concrete evidence for the conquest of Canaan has been found (nor that the Kingdoms of Saul, David or Solomon ever existed. “
Yes, well the Nazis also said that media which told the truth and facts were not reliable. Unfortunately for you, dismissing media which publishes demonstrable and easily proven facts as being unreliable just makes you look foolish. All tyrants seek to silence and censor media which attempts to tell the truth. Ever thus.
The power of Israel exists in the countries that they control, namely America, but also Western Europe and the Anglosphere. Israel’s existence is a mechanism for Jewish control of those countries governments, again, namely America, while the others act as vassals.
Most people call this imperialism, but this is an exceptional case because I have never heard of an empire that causes its destruction. Every nation within the America/israel/jewish sphere of influence has become weaker and more insecure. This is because these nations are merely a means to an end. They view them as dispensable in their project of the building of the kingdom of judea, aka Greater Israel.
If you wonder how Israel will gain control of the territories in which they are attempting to build Greater Israel when it seams they don’t have the ability, ask yourself how they managed a year long genocide of the Palestinians while the world sat and watched.
“Western hegemony”, or “American primacy” are just euphemisms for international jewish power, and this generations-long construction of that power structure that is embedded in Western nations decision making apparatuses is where the power lies and the reason they won’t be stopped until a multipolar world is reached.
Zionist/Jewish/Israeli power is not as great as some may think. There is little power in having Governments and politicians in your grasp. What matters is holding the public, national and international, in your grasp and Israel no longer has that, if indeed it ever did.
Ultimately politicians and Governments must answer to their people and when the people turn on the Zioraeli State it is they who lose, not the people of nations far away, who previously supported them.
American politics is corrupt and it is a country run by hegemonic fanatics which is why it bullies allies into compliance. But times change and the house of cards cannot stand because it never had substance.
The genocide in Palestine has happened because the Americans keep giving them bombs to drop on the prisoners in the Gaza concentration camp and anyone who tries to help them. The people of the world have not turned away from Palestine, even if, for the moment, their Governments have.
While the law is slow, there are already legal processes at work to punish Israel and Naziyahoo and Gallant are registered as war criminals, to be arrested wherever they can be. Nutsyahoo did not go to Poland for the Auschwitz propaganda fiasco for fear of being arrested.
American Jews may have supported Shitrael for 76 years because they don’t care about the Palestinians, or indeed non-Jews in general, but, they care about themselves and they will turn on Israel if it is necessary for their own interests and survival. Already around half of young American Jews reject Israel and more than half of young Americans want the rogue State dismantled.
If, or when, push comes to shove, the Americans will ditch the Israeli state in an instant. Israel is a tainted pariah and if the Iranians do not take it out, which they will if Israel attacks them, the fake state of hate will implode.
Like it or not, the second paragraph here is 100% correct. This is not over by a long shot.
It doesn't matter what Israel's economy is doing. The United States will completely fund them for as long as it takes.
It's the other way round. US support for Ukraine was drying out in mid-2023. And then, Iran and China made their move on Oct 7, 2023, and since then money has been flowing to Ukraine on condition that a third of that would be flowing to Taiwan and Israel too. So suddenly, Israel is awash in much more US money than during the Yom Kippur war.
You are joking. Blaming October 7 on the Chinese as well as the Iranians is such a joke. Israeli hasbarists must be getting desperate.
Here's a tip: IT'S THE OCCUPATION STUPID! IT ALWAYS WAS THE OCCUPATION AND IT ALWAYS WILL BE THE OCCUPATION UNTIL PALESTINE IS FREE.
FFS as if the Chinese care about Palestine or Israel.
Thank you for this response - you've said many of the things I wanted to say.
The subject I'd like to add, and the main element missing from the author's analysis, is the US Empire.
Like Serge, I don't really know what "fake state" means, but then I don't really know what a "legitimate" state is either (they're all glorified protection rackets as far as I'm concerned). In any case, Israel is not a separate nation in it's own right.
If we take up the author's analogy of nation states as organisms, then yes, even a vassal state is their own beast, though subjugated to a larger, more dangerous beast. But Israel is not a whole organism - it is but the heavy hand of the Empire reaching out to grab the World's energy supply by the scruff of the neck. If cut off, the hand could not survive on its own.
Israel is the 49th state of the USA, founded in 1948. The de facto HQ of CENTCOM.
We should not confuse "fake" with "illegitimate". It is "fake" v "real", and "legitimate" v "illegitimate". These are not mutually exclusive terms for a country. In other words, israel is a "real" country in that it without question exists, but it is "illegitimate" in that the land it occupies has been outright stolen by force (NOT given to it by the UN as many believe).
It was already given through the San Remo Treaty. UN simply accepted pre-existing treaties under the League of Nations.
By the way, who gave East Prussia to Russia or Silesia and Pomerania to Poland in 1945? Was it the UN, *smile*?
No-one has a right to give away someone else's country, not even the UN. And no Treaty has any legal validity.
In fact the UN did not partition Palestine because it knew it had no legal right to do so. It made a recommendation which had to be approved by the Security Council and never was. Even if it had been it would have had no legal basis.
A recommendation has no legal basis. The Zionists and Jews invaded and set up their state in genocidal slaughter and ethnic cleansing. ISRAEL WAS AND IS ILLEGAL.
As to the UN recommendation, that was clearly null and void when the shitraelis reneged on the condition that the Palestinians be left to live in freedom in what was left of their homeland.
Right of conquest was international law till at least end of WW1. Moreover, Poland acquired Pommerania, Silesia and Western part of East Prussia through through a land gift from Soviet Union that acquired it through Right of Conquest from Germany at the end of WW2. Just saying. If you do historical analysis, every single state - every single one - has established itself through right of conquest.
Right of Conquest was ditched in 1945.
Nothing taken by Zionists, Jews, then Israelis from 1947 is legally held.
Many nations were established through might is right and genocidal slaughter in the past, as Israel has always attempted to do, but, in the modern age, it is not accepted.
THERE WAS AND IS NO RIGHT OF CONQUEST FOR ISRAEL. just saying.
Yes, well said and I agree. If Syria is a fake state then Israel is even more of a fake state.
So little history knowledge. Truman was opposed to Israeli independence in 1947/1948. Stalin and Gromyko outflanked the USA on this and scored one of their few decisive diplomatic victories here. Foggy Bottom was in deep shock after Gromyko's May 1947 speech at the UN.
Amost all the weapons for the war of Indepence came from France and the Soviet subsidiaries (Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia). In contrast, the US and UK had an arms embargo on Israel while providing weapons for the Arab states.
As soon as Israel was established as a viable state in 1948, Anglosphere stopped their blockade of Jewish displaced persons to immigrate there, in order to reduce Jewish immigration to Israel.
How could there be Israeli independence when an israel never existed. Truman was opposed to the Ziojews invading another country and setting up their fascist, racist State.
Israel was and is illegal. The Israelis have to be among the most stupid people on planet earth. They could have gotten away with their theft of Palestine if they had had the brains and the integrity to do what other Western nations founded through colonisation had done, one state where the native Palestinians and the European colonists shared the land as equal citizens.
But no, the shitraelis were primitive, barbaric, simple-minded bigots and they wanted Palestine just for Jooz. So they inflicted 76 years of one of the most sadistically cruel and bestially savage military colonial occupations on the Palestinians and then wondered by they fought back. Talk about absolute idiots.
I totally agree. Moreover, the idea that we can assess the identify of the 'winners' and 'losers' after a few short weeks is quite mistaken. I rather suspect that Israel's overreach may turn out to be a terrible error, and that other interested parties, such as Iran, may benefit from a redirection of resources.
"Israel has not routed Hamas or Hezbollah and is simply hated even more by Palestinians and Lebanese, if that were even possible..."
Depends on what you mean by "routed." Both have been hurt, and significantly. Would you like to take up the mantle of leadership in Hamas and Hezbollah? Go sign up.
You care that the "Palestinians" Israelis more than every, but does Israel care? Meanwhile does the Arab world care? How many refugees are Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia taking in...what's ...NONE? The Arab worlds DOES not CARE about the Palestinians.
And by the way, what happened to Iran's response to Israel's stand off missile attack? Any word on that.
Oh, and by the way, there are NO ZERO air defenses left in Syrian, so Israeli fighter bombers can fly basically unmolested.
Big Serge is absolutely right, Israel is the big winner here. Sorry
For Israel to be a big winner it must take and hold southern Lebanon; a large slab of Syria and secure Palestine so their colonists can return. It must also exterminate or expel 6 million in Occupied Palestine and another 2 million in what is called Israel.
It must also restore its economy, bring back investors and businesses and have a ready supply of well trained soldiers, enough to secure three areas of occupation. It does not have that capacity. That is winning. Bombs and tanks are theatre, not winning a colonial war.
For those who think Israel is the big winner:
When Croesus, the king of Lydia, asked the oracle if he should attack Persia, he received the response: “If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed.” He viewed this as a good omen and went ahead with the invasion. Unfortunately, the great empire that was destroyed was his own.
Routed means defeated. Neither the Palestinians or the Lebanese are defeated. Hurt yes, but not significantly. The murder of leaders does not hurt significantly a resistance militia. Generally it strengthens them. The Israelis really do believe non-Jews are subhuman and fail to understand that Hamas and Hezbollah know their enemy well and prepare for what they will do and assassination is one of the things that they do.
When people are fighting for a just cause and their homeland they can never be defeated unless you exterminate every last one of them and Israel cannot do that. They can be significantly weakened if you imprison every single one of them but Israel cannot do that either.
Israel cares only about itself, its own belief in its power and survival. The Arab world is the Arab world and no more united than the Anglo or Asian world.
Why should Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia take in refugees and help Shitrael ethnically cleanse Palestine. ALL OF THOSE REFUGEES SHOULD BE TAKEN IN BY ISRAEL WHO CREATED THEM.
More to the point, THEY ARE NOT REFUGEES. They are the native people of Occupied Palestine and what is called Israel who are experiencing genocide from their colonial masters.
The Iranians are smart enough to know that as shitrael rampages around the region, opening new war fronts, they are destroying themselves. All Iran has to do is watch,
As to destroying air bases in Syria, meaningless. The Iranians can see off an Israeli air attack, AND NO WAR IS EVER WON FROM THE AIR.
Only boots on the ground win a war and Israel does not have them and cannot create them. Israel has weakened itself by opening a third front to play its propaganda game to its society which is haemhorraging. It cannot secure Syria just as it cannot secure Occupied Palestine or Lebanon.
Learn to tell the difference between appearances and realities, something the Israelis cannot do.
Since when was it a military achievement to send tanks and bombs into a country in chaos where the military have disappeared and rebels are running rampant and there is no order?
Trained to attack helpless civilians is what the Israeli army can do. This is why it has failed to rout Hamas and Hezbollah. Plenty of dead civilians but no true military victories.
It would be one thing for Israel to win a real battle with a real army and well trained fighters but it hardly seems like a win, to opportunistically scavenge in the blood-drenched remains of what is left of a country after more than a decade of sanctions and war.
How is that winning? Surely it is just taking a chance to steal more? I mean, Israeli tanks and bombs were targeting no true enemy, just exploiting a situation because they could.
If 76 years of violent and sadistic domination could not make the Palestinians compliant, why would anyone with half a brain think Israel could hold any of Syria? Watch the rebel worms turn. They may hate each other but they hate the Israelis even more.
"Israel is the big winner here" True..
For the moment.
A winner in the theatre and propaganda of war, not a winner in any military sense. And not in any real sense. The genocide in Gaza in particular and Occupied Palestine in general, and the slaughter of civilians in Lebanon, has pulled away the curtain hiding the Shitraeli magician, so the world can see the State is just a fake.
Once seen, the curtain can hide nothing and so can never be closed. The suffering of the Palestinians in the past year had enabled billions around the world to learn the ghastly truth of Israel's genocidal foundation and its 76 years of sadistic cruelty and bestial savagery to the native people whose land it has stolen.
I don’t think you understand that the number one priority of the American empire is the promotion and protection of Israel. Jews own and control America, but will use every last ounce of its power and resources to protect Israel as a safe haven for Jews and a place in which they will continue towards their goal of global domination.
Jews only think in terms of blood and revenge and humiliation. Their actions over the last year has taught us that, and America’s behaviour on the world stage, with its punishing, bullying, and threatening, is a reflection of this Jewish racial spirit.
Once you understand semitism, it’s all as plain as day.
The number one priority of the American empire is world domination. Jews are actually irrelevant and so is Israel beyond being a military base in the Middle East where there is so much oil and gas.
I don't think most Americans, nutter Christians aside, give a toss about Jews or Israel and anyone with half a brain can see that Israel is the most dangerous place a Jew can live.
Some Jews only think in terms of blood, revenge and humiliation, as do most Israelis, but also some Christians, Hindus, Muslims and others. Nothing particular about it to Judaism and all Jews should not be blamed for the actions of their fanatics.
There is no Jewish racial spirit. It is a religion not a race. Tribal spirit perhaps but nothing racial about it and not found in all Jews by any stretch of imagination.
You appear to have a somewhat prejudiced attitude to Jews which does not help you or the situation.
You’re right, I’m not a fan of Jews. I think Jewish power is the greatest threat to our world, but I believe you’re prejudiced as well.
You sound like a Jew, trying to control both sides of the political discussion. In fact, I’m sure of it.
Many such cases.
You're correct. It's a jew trying to use pilpul on you. Don't fall for it.
I follow no religion and so am not a Jew. I have studied many religions, including Judaism. I find them all in their ancient writings violent, cruel and highly misogynistic.
I am not trying to control anything. I truly do believe it is wrong to blame all members of any group for the actions of some, particularly their fanatics. I apply the same principles to Jews as I do to Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists.
I believe it does more harm than good to talk about Jews and the wrongs committed by some Jews, as if they were a cohesive group. They are not. No religion is.
Im no friend of the Israeli government, but I think what Israel is doing makes a lot of strategic sense, at least in the short term. The positions around Mt. Hermon that they're occupying are operationally important in regard to both Syria and Southern Lebanon (vis a vis Hezbollah). Blowing up former government arms caches, or in other words, disarming the rebels, makes sense as well. I'm sure that more settlers will follow into the Golan Heights themselves now that the security buffer has increased in size, but in my opinion there is good reason for the IDF to take advantage of Syrian weakness.
One can argue one way or another as to whether this is good for Israeli security in the the long terms, but if you take your neighbor to be an eternal enemy, it makes sense to kick him while he's down.
In its invasion of a crippled Syria Israel has revealed how weak it is. The Israeli military has failed to destroy Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance and now sends its exhausted and mentally sick soldiers into Syria. Easy enough to roll in with the tanks and drop your bombs when a State is in chaos and politically, socially and physically crippled. Any idiot can achieve that.
Israel's problem is that for it to serve any purpose it has to be able to secure occupation of the land. It has not been able to do that in Lebanon or Palestine so why would anyone think it could do it in Syria?
I suspect the invasion of Syria is yet another on the run, spin decision by the Israelis who will wave it as a banner to their brainwashed citizens and supporters, as a demonstration of strength and power. It isn't, it is a demonstration of weakness and failure.
Israel cannot even get its settlers returned to Occupied Palestine and northern Israel so quite how it is going to protect them in the Golan Heights, or any fools who venture further, is the question.
The Syrians will be united in their hatred of Israel and many of the rebel fighters are honed in the arts of resistance war. The desire to drive the enemy out of Syria, and indeed the Golan Heights, held by Israeli occupation forces for too long, may well be a powerful glue which has the Israelis coming to realise they have bitten off more than they can chew.
One can believe in their superiority as humans, their brilliance as a military, but belief, unless it is translated into action is meaningless. After 14 months the Israelis have demonstrated only weakness, failure and a capacity for genocidal destruction which has seen the world turn on them.
The world does not need Israel but Israel cannot survive without the world. Will Americans go to war and die in their tens of thousands to defend Israel in its colonial rampages? That is the question. One thing is certain, even if the Americans did decide to get into a war against Iran started by Israel, there would be no Israel left to defend by the time they did so.
I agree that their further expansion into Syria is not a meaningful military feat - easy to kick Syria while it's down. I also agree that further aggression towards its neighbors will hurt Israel in the long run (the real question there is the continued efficacy of the Israel Lobby in Washington - how much longer can they get the American people to turn a blind eye?).
I think the question of whether the IDF can/will consolidate their new positions in Syria is more nuanced. It's worth pointing out that Gaza is a densely populated city, which makes military occupation and ethnic cleansing extremely difficult. In Lebanon, there is a 30k-40k strong army in Hezbollah, armed with modern long range weapons, that makes prolonged occupation there costly (for example, Shebaa Farms).
Meanwhile, the territory that the Israelis are occupying in Syria is sparsely populated and mountainous in the north, which makes it easy to occupy and strategically valuable. Low cost, high reward in terms of immediate military utility. There's no coherent military force in Southern Syria that can cause a serious problem for the IDF at the moment, but if that changed, the IDF is now in a stronger position to deal with them than they were before the collapse of the Assad Regime.
So, is this about military utility, or further conquest and settlement? I suspect both; given that theres a solid case for both and they aren't mutually exclusive. In any case, I suspect that Israel will do their best to sow dissent among the rebel factions and undermine the viability of a new Syrian state, as they have with Palestine. As long as Syria is weak, Israel will probably be able to get away with maintaining the current lines on the map.
Unfortunately, I think it's too soon to use the words "united" and "Syrian" in the same sentence. The grim reality is that the average Syrian has far more pressing issues than the fate of a few mountain hamlets in the south. If the IDF continues to push towards Damascus, perhaps this will change. Too soon to tell.
Yes, all of that makes a great deal of sense. However, I would venture to guess that the real 'win' for Israel is Palestine and half if not all of Lebanon. I really doubt that taking a slab of Syria is an instead option, but rather an opportunistic grab of more, more, more land in that Sickraeli way. It sells well to the brainwashed Fizzraeli public who do believe greater Israel is possible.
The problem as common sense would decree is that Israel does not even have the boots on the ground to secure Palestine, let alone Lebanon, and losing boots to Syria is spreading itself thin.
Securing Palestine means controlling all of it and everyone in it. Unless every last Palestinian is removed, it is hard to see that happening. And to remove 6 million people, is, as history teaches us, not easy and it never goes down well with the global public. Such a bad look.
And how are they going to do it? Load half dead, maimed, injured men, women and half of them children into trucks, drive them to the border of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, force them out at gunpoint, break down the gates/fence and drive them across? Neither the Egyptians or Jordanians can afford, politically and financially to take more refugees and even if the US masters paid them to do it, the political price of their disaffected citizens would still be too high.
The other option is load them onto ships, as they did in 47/48 and send them where? And if they did drive out the Palestinians in large numbers they are driving out the evidence of their crimes, sadistic cruelty and bestial savagery, where the wrecks of humans created by the Israelis are now available for the world to see their state and hear their stories>
What a public relations disaster. As would exterminating 6 million, 8 million if they include those in what is called Israel, be. And again, how would they do it? We can see from Gaza where probably 600,000, nearly half of them children, are dead, how hard it is and how long it takes to exterminate 2.3 million people.
For shitrael to not take the extermination option and to then control millions of Palestinians so it can be secure, hardly seems likely either. If their policy worked, violence, cruelty, bestial savagery, torture, rape, abuse, dispossession they would have had 75 years of peace and there would be no Hamas, no Palestinian Resistance, no October 7.
Yup, agreed. Their "business model" has an expiration date, they wont be able to call in diplomatic favors and deny/deflect forever. Lets just hope that date comes sooner rather than later.
Well as Glenn Diesen said, Israel has thrown a lot of chaotic cards in the air and where they fall no-one knows, least of all Israel which may have ensured its own destruction. I do paraphrase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqjqoLT54AU
Having turned the world against it, even if some Governments still play the Ziorael game, particularly the US, the Israelis may soon learn that the power of the people ultimately trumps even the power of Governments.
Security comes from good relationships with neighbours and not from violence, rage, hatred, aggression and destruction. Israel has only ever rampaged with bloody boots through the region and ensured it will never be accepted, thereby signing its own death warrant.
Let us hope the Judaic myth that no State of Israel, real or imagined, has ever lasted 80 years is truly prophetic.
Your inept opinions about military strategy diminish Big Serge's page. Your anti semitism is loathsome and tiresome. Israel is surrounded by millions of adherents to the "religion of peace" which teaches it children from infancy that Jews are dogs and pigs and need to be killed. The made up "Palestinians" have had a number of opportunities to have their own state but always fall back on the "three No s" Instead of stealing billions of Euros and Dollars and living in luxury in Qatar, Hamas could have created a prosperous state in Gaza, instead they opted to hide among civilians and lob missiles in to Israel. They are homicial/suicidal maniacs and have caused misery and death to their own people. May they burn in hell.
And your opinions about others diminish you.
If it is anti-semitic, expressing a hatred of Jews, to condemn the atrocities Israel has committed for 76 years and worse in the past 14 months then it is you who is anti-semitic and hates Jews because you are saying Israel's evil represents Judaism and Jews. I reject that.
You are saying that Israel as the greatest intentional mass murderer of children in recorded history represents Jews.
You are saying that genocide, occupation, colonisation, ethnic cleansing, rape, torture, murder, theft, sadistic cruelty and bestial savagery represents Judaism and Jews. Shame on you.
The Palestinians have no need to teach their children that the bestial savages who occupy their land and kill them are like animals because that is how the Israelis act.
And since most Jews do not even live in Israel, WTF are you going on about.
PLEASE NAME ONE SAVAGELY OCCUPIED AND COLONISED PEOPLE IN HISTORY WHO DID NOT WANT TO KILL THEIR ABUSERS. ONE WILL DO.
As to the Palestinians having their own state. Do some research. Zionists and Israelis have made it clear for more than 100 years that the Palestinians are to be exterminated or expelled and are never to have their own state. Why lie when the facts of history so easily refute your lies?
And your deranged final para says it all. You hate Muslims, don't care that Palestinian Christians are also murdered by the Israelis because you hate Muslims and you know absolutely nothing about the history of Palestine or the evil that is the Zioraeli State.
If there is a Hell it will be full of Israelis and their supporters not the Palestinians.
You have zero knowledge. Blocked for being a foking idiot.
This is the VERY BEST analysis I've seen from anyone on the Syria situation, and I've read at least a dozen so far on Substack. I think you got rolled by your spellcheck, though. Of a half dozen uses of the word "discrete," only one was correct, and the rest were spelled "discreet." Also, you have "want" for "wont." This would not be important, but it's so good I think you should shop it to a journal like Consortium News or another independent news source.
There are some missing pieces here. Woefully impoverished states elsewhere have fought on, and even won. Yemen for instance. There are circumstantial hints that a high level sell-out took place. And the end result is just awful on many levels, above all for the people of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.
For Russia, I'd maybe compare the situation to the decision to withdraw from lands West of the Dnieper. It was quite possible to fight on, but at some point the overall cost-benefit was recognized as not worth it. Russian bases going forward become an invitation for Erdogan to extort again and again, so probably will be abandoned.
Russian ambiguity on Israel, despite literal genocide carried out in broad daylight, was also certainly a long term problem, and deserves reconsideration. As time goes on I think the nearly universal sentiment in the "Global South" will make it more natural to correct this. But this is, alas, the downside of 'multipolarity'.
For Iran, the battleground for upcoming showdown with the US shifts to Iraq. This may be beneficial, but only if Iraq's internal politics are less fragile than Syria's. As a human being, I certainly hope they can unite and stand up for themselves in the face of Western barbarism.
I don’t think you know what Genocide means…
Genocide is destruction of a country, people, culture, group, society. Zionists and Jews started doing that in 1947 and Israel has never stopped.
Genocide is Israel using maps of Palestine and calling it all Israel.
Genocide is murdering Palestinians for resisting occupation.
Genocide is destroying hospitals.
Genocide is destroying universities and schools.
Genocide is destroying churches, mosques and all infrastructure.
Genocide is believing another group is subhuman.
Genocide is failing to teach your children that they live on land which has been stolen from others.
Genocide is failing to teach the history of Palestine.
Genocide is stealing Palestinian food, culture, history, archaeology and calling it Israeli.
And yes, genocide is trying to kill as many Palestinians as possible but mostly to eradicate their land, country, history from the map.
In 47/48 the Zionists and Jews wiped from the face of the earth 530 Palestinian towns and villages. THAT IS GENOCIDE.
In 47/48 they massacred thousands of Palestinians and drove out nearly a million. THAT IS GENOCIDE.
The total destruction of Gaza is genocide. The use of bombs, bullets, starvation, denial of clean water and medical aid IS GENOCIDE.
The murder of men, women and children throughout all of Occupied Palestine and destruction of their homes IS GENOCIDE.
If you wanted to be objective, you would have to admit that the killing is on both sides, including the Palestinians.
However, the occupied (75+ years, brutalized) have an 100% right to fight back. It's not an equal situation. Gaza has zero defenses, except Hamas and some few allies. Are they just supposed to give up?
The Sickraelis and their supporters think they should give up and become compliant subhuman slaves for their superior colonial masters.
Back away from the meths.
Well, that kind of objectivity would say when the Germans occupied France and Poland the killing was on both sides.
It would also say when the Germans slaughtered Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto the killing was on both sides!
And it would say the Jewish fighters were using civilians as human shields and all of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were terrorists because they resisted their occupiers and the Germans were the innocent victims.
See how ridiculous it is? Israel occupies Palestine, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
Israel has the fourth largest military in the world and uses it to maintain occupation and colonisation of the Palestinians and to deny them justice, freedom and human and civil rights. The Palestinians have no army, navy or airforce, just a Resistance militia. IT IS NOT AN EQUAL FIGHT.
The Palestinians have justice and law on their side in their fight to be free and the Israelis are the aggressors, committing genocide to maintain their occupation of Palestine.
Israel has subjected the Palestinians to one of the most sadistically cruel and bestially savage military colonial occupations in history and has killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over 76 years and the Palestinians, resisting, have killed a couple of thousand of the colonial occupiers, mostly military targets.
Israel is targeting civilians, and is the greatest intentional mass murderer of children in history.
Sure there is killing on both sides but one side has done it in the name of justice, Palestinians, and the other in the name of evil and injustice, Israel.
It is not just the killing. It is the total destruction of all that enables a peaceful, healthy society to exist - homes, businesses, transport, roads, hospitals, schools, universities, water/waste treatment centres. On top of that the intentional denial of medical supplies, food, and fresh water. All this leaving the survivors and their children homeless and permanently traumatised for the rest of their lives.
And the look on their faces as they enter what is left of homes and trash and steal the contents, laughing all the way. What kind of monsters do this to people?
Killing on both sides, my ass.
The sickraelis know it is time- consuming to kill 2.3 million people, nearly half of them children. It is easier to turn their world to rubble, hopefully killing as many as possible and leaving the rest to die of starvation, lack of medical aid, no sanitation and hygiene or clean water because Israel denies all aid.
The poor, sad, sick soldiers are brainwashed from birth to fear and hate the Palestinians and deranged enough to believe that the land belongs to them and the Palestinians are invaders who ruin their lives by making them soldiers. Their hate is enormous and their fear is greater and so in that childishly cretinous way, they gain satisfaction from destruction and mockery like, hanging the toys of children they have killed on their tanks, parading around in the lingerie of women they have killed and shitting in Palestinian cooking pots and bathtubs.
The shitraelis are also sending a message. We control you and your world and if you disobey we shall destroy your world. This is the message not just for the Palestinians in Gaza but in all of Occupied Palestine and in Lebanon and now Syria.
Israel was founded on a belief that they had to be more terrifyingly violent to render those under their rule, the Palestinians, compliant. In the Israeli mind if you get the level of terror high enough the subhumans will become submissive and serve as your slaves or go away and let you have their country. They are oblivious to the fact their policy does not work. It just enrages them more.
Needless to say the Israelis are devoid of any real intelligence and because they consider non-Jews to be subhuman, of the capacity to understand human nature and responses. The more violent they become the more determined are those they rape, torture, murder and abuse and, because they have nothing left to lose but their lives, they become even stronger.
Yes! 100 %
This accelerated genocide has made it all crystal clear.
Hamas does not not kill innocent women and children. Hamas does not intentionally target children playing. Do you have any idea what is really going on there?
You are clinically insane.
Really? How about being objective with this?
From an article in Haaretz where soldiers from the Israeli Extermination Forces talk about their actions.
“A new commander came to us. We went out with him on the first patrol at six in the morning. He stops. There’s not a soul in the streets, just a little 4-year-old boy playing in the sand in his yard.
The commander suddenly starts running, grabs the boy, and breaks his arm at the elbow and his leg here. Stepped on his stomach three times and left.
We all stood there with our mouths open. Looking at him in shock … I asked the commander: “What’s your story?” He told me: These kids need to be killed from the day they are born.
When a commander does that, it becomes legit”, a soldier stated.
Exactly. Let us not forget it's core sponsor, my country of depraved ruling elites. I'm constantly horrified.
This was massively coordinated with Turkey, Israel, USA/NATO. The other Arab states did nothing to help Assad. I heard 1 (Col. Jacques Baud) commentator say that the gulf states would not help. He also said that Iran and Russia didn't act because Assad stopped communicating. Professor Marandi has similar views.
It was massively planned. My view is that the US sanctions and arming factions is the most responsible. The US rag of a Constitution tasks these sociopaths with running the US. That's the bottom line in the end. Assad never wanted the job.
As I said you don’t know what Genocide means, I.e. none of the above.
And you know what hasbara means and it’s a load of bullshit that low IQ individuals like yourself peddle.. shoo!
Genocide is all of the above.
In his work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (1944), Lemkin noted that a key component of genocide was the
criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group. The acts are directed against groups as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.
In contemporary international law the crime of genocide is part of the broader category of “crimes against humanity,” which were defined by the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (Nürnberg Charter).
The charter granted the tribunal jurisdiction to indict and try the leaders of the Nazi regime for inhumane acts committed against civilians, as well as for acts of persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds; in so doing, it also contributed to the international criminalization of other forms of abusive conduct.
The momentum created by the Nürnberg trials and the ensuing revelations of Nazi atrocities led to the passage by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly of Resolution 96-I (December 1946), which made the crime of genocide punishable under international law, and of Resolution 260-III (December 1948), which approved the text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the first UN human rights treaty. The convention, which entered into force in 1951, has been ratified by more than 130 countries. Although the United States played a major role in drafting the convention and was an original signatory, the U.S. Senate did not ratify it until 1988.
Article 2 of the convention defines genocide as
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
In addition to the commission of genocide, the convention also made conspiracy, incitement, attempt, and complicity in genocide punishable under international law.
Under normal circumstances, I do not approve of feeding the trolls, but in this case the trolling brings enlightenment that people should heed.
As for the troll, he is just a monster among monsters of his own kind. If anyone exhibits sub-human characteristics, it is these.
Go forth Marxist nonentity
Nope, for a start there is no such ethnic people as “Palestinians”, those who identify as such are mostly Arab colonisers…
Let us not be truly ridiculous. Duh. In 1947/48 the Zionist Jews invaded Palestine and wiped from the face of the earth 530 villages and towns which were centuries old and lived in by, PALESTINIANS. And they drove out close to a million, massacring thousands of, guess what? PALESTINIANS.
And the name of the country they invaded was, gosh, who would have thought it, PALESTINE.
We have transcribed from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs records about Palestine and PALESTINIANS more than 5000 years old.
We have maps, drawings, paintings, images, records, data and then photographs of Palestine and PALESTINIANS going back thousands of years.
Arab simply means Arab speaker and Palestinians became Arab speakers under occupation. THE PALESTINIANS HAVE BEEN OCCUPIED MANY TIMES AND THEY STILL ARE BUT THEY REMAIN PALESTINIANS.
This Zionist bullshit Palestinians never existed is only believed by children and cretins.
Further, such accusations are meant to cover the truly horrific behaviour of those who make such claims. These are not JUST Palestinians, they are PEOPLE, human beings. They are being ruthlessly slaughtered and their land made uninhabitable whatever you want to call them as a people.
Egyptian Hieroglyphs do record about Israel. After all, it was border region between the Egyptians on the one side, the the Hittites and Mesopotamians on the other.
Oh dear, you’re just another hasbara dimwit..you’ll probably tell us that Yahweh/Dude Upstairs thinks Jews are all that and a bag of chips so gave them some land.. and that they’re genetically superior or some such bird droppings..
Dry your salty tears princess, realpolitik has kicked you in the arse.
@ Benjamin Waterhouse,
So, can you clarify. Do you believe it is fine to commit genocide with bestial savagery and sadistic cruelty on people, knowing half of them are children, for any reason?
Would you allow this to be done to animals? By what stretch of evil can anyone seek to condone the atrocities inflicted on the Palestinians?
You are saying Israel can do what it wants to them because they don't exist as an ethnic people. Why would that mean they have no human rights?
Well, Roslyn, we all know the other side have not only lost the (perceived) moral high ground but any claim to an intellectual and cogent defense of their position. It boggles the mind that after all the billions spent on psyops across industries, continents and time spans to prop up the Zionist stance all you get are the likes of this bird-brained hasbara regurgitator.. I really haven’t read or heard anything beyond the level of what this imbecile says; just a bunch of inconsistent racist remarks masked as morality or history. Incidentally, if your logic appeals to higher order thinking then you don’t need to ban, bribe, cancel, etc (or unleash the dimwits like this useful idiot/troll who delivers morsels of bird droppings as if they were godly edicts..). I really appreciate your cogent and logical answers even in response to these people that we know lack the intellect/gray matter hardware to comprehend your argument..
I think the apologists operate at such levels of propaganda silliness, devoid of any substance or facts, that they make themselves look foolish and actually make a case for the other side. But I do believe everyone should be free to speak, should have a voice. After all, that is why we are fighting to defend justice for the Palestinians, denied any voice or any rights by their colonial rulers, Israel.
Are you 14?
Wholesale elimination of civilian populations, especially along ethno-religious lines. What Israel is doing right now.
Nope.
You tickle a population to death?? Don’t keep us guessing, oh wise one! Enlighten the world!
Pearls before swine…
That’s the brain fart you came up with?? Really.. 🙄
🙄
Let's wait for the ICJ with its verdict, ok?!
So far Bibi has an arrest warrant for war crimes: starving the population to death. 600 trucks per day prior to Oct 7, 2023 compared to maybe 60 half-full trucks - of course, for security reasons, today; which means a reduction to 1/20th of "normal" times, when Gazans were still on a caloric reduced diet.
Assuming you have an intake of 3000 calories per day, reducing that to 1/20th yields 150 calories per day. Try it for a month, see if you are alive after that...
Everything about the fundamentals -- Syria's overpopulation combined with declining resources combined with lack of ethnic and sectarian homogeneity -- is true.
But the question also has to be asked what Russia and Iran did to help Syria recover the northeast. The answer is nothing.
Then the next question is what could they have done. The answer is a lot.
Let's say they didn't want to fight the US prior to 2022.
But the moment the first HIMARS systems arrived in Ukraine and started decimating Russian logistics, Russian Tornado-S and other heavly MLRS systems should have been unleashed on the US bases in the northeast of Syria, with the goal of complete annihilation and driving them out.
US then wants to do air strikes? Send more air defense and actually use it, see how they like their F-35s dropping out of the skies like flies.
Many people were in fact calling for such reciprocal actions for two years.
But in the Kremlin they have been in "we want to surrender, will you please let us surrender, please, please, please?" mode since Istanbul. So of course none of the above was done...
A comparison with the situation in Soviet times is instructive -- Syria back then was not only allowed to use the Russian-supplied weapons on Israel (while it was clearly banned from doing it in the 2010s and 2020s), but the USSR was in key moments ready to intervene to defend it directly. Now? The Kremlin would bomb the "terrorists" but that was it, and even that was not carried to completion, while their masters were allowed to do whatever they wanted.
During the USSR times, there weren't as many Russian immigrants to Israel as after 1992. This creates mutual influencing forces that induce restraint to Russia.
Before 2022, Russia wasn't as well prepared to "sanctions from Hell" as she is today. Risking a financial collapse for the sake of evicting Americans from Eastern Syria didn't make sense.
I was talking about AFTER 2022.
And yes, the Jewish capture of the Kremlin is a gigantic issue that nobody ever talks about.
Zionist Jews are behind the war on Russia that the West launched, and Zionist Jews are running Moscow.
And then people are wondering why Moscow does not fight back...
"I was talking about AFTER 2022."
You wrote "Let's say they didn't want to fight the US prior to 2022."
In any case, after or before, Russia wages an attrition war. Opening a far away front doesn't make sense in that scenario.
Yes, prior to 2022 the Cold War norms of fighting a proxy war were maintained — no attacks on each other’s territory and no existential for each other conflicts.
Although even by those rules it would have been perfectly fine for Russia to pump Syria with weapons and unleash them on the US, Turkey and the Zionists in Tel Aviv. It is what the USSR used to do.
But in mid-2022 the US started to break the rules, and then it was not even just allowable, but mandatory to hit them hard somewhere, Syria being the most obvious place.
Syria is a majority Sunni state. Assad was running a minority rule government, his regime legitimacy coming from being a part of Arab nationalistic secular block facing and fighting Israel. Once upon a time Egypt, Iraq were also run by Arab nationalist secular forces at war with Israel. Not so much after Sadat signing peace agreement with ISrael, and Syria not signing, even less after the Sadam's invasion of Kuwait, and final defeat and destruction of Sadam's regime and Iraqi state.
Syria was alone, in Arab and Sunni Moslem world. in double bind position. Like Armenia.
Traditionally described by idiom: Don't Change Horses In Midstream.
Survival of Syria demanded making peace with Israel, getting support of other Arab states, Muslim states, the very states that supported uprising against the Assad government. And this again demanded leaving traditional allies Iran and Russia.
A very difficult strategic position, as precisely described by Serge.
Russia could have used Syria against US, bit it would have ended in a major defeat, then.
Second, there is no open conflict between Russia and Israel, per se. In multipolar world Russia can honestly support Palestinian cause, but in same spirit in which Naftali Bennett tried to arrange a negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, RUssia is interested and would support any nonviolent negotiated settlement between Israel and Palestinians , but once war and violence erupts, and war is perceived as existential by Israelis and Jews worldwide, it is not a Russian war.
I think you underestimate the Russian attitude to Jews and Judaism if you think Russian immigrants to Israel would induce restraint in Russia.
At this point the risk of financial collapse is greater for the US than Russia, which may well be why the Americans opt not to go to war against Iran.
The zionist influence in the Kremlin cannot be overstated, and is the refraining influence that determines Russia's options. The US also has the same zionist parasitic influence, where the well-being of the people is irrelevant to the goals of the zionists (what ever demonic power they represent).
The battles, whether openly manifested or discretely occurring, are the existential battle of humanity in these biblical times.
It is not just the conflicts between nations, but the conflicts within nations and within each of us that constitutes the drama of these times.
If the zionists had the same influence in Russia that they have in the USA, you would see entirely different results in Russian military, economic and societal characteristics. The zionists had almost full control in the 90s after the fall of the USSR - military poorly equipped and maintained, an economy being sucked dry by Jewish/American oligarchs, and a society on the verge of collapse and soaked with alcohol, drugs and moral degeneracy. The advent of Putin changed all that. Now Russia is healthy and revitalised - no zionist-led country exhibits such characteristics as the jews tend to suck a country dry and introduce lower morals in society as they take over - this is why they have been thrown out of so many countries over the centuries.
Given Russian attitudes to the always problematic tribe of Jews, it would be interesting to see what proof you have of Zionist Jewish influence. It was the Jews who tore Russia apart with the Bolshevik Revolution and Russians have not forgotten that.
But, I am happy to be shown the substance for your claims.
Great point - after March of 2022, those US bases in E. Syria ought to have been leveled. With only 600 or so troops, they likely would not have been defensible. Sure, the US would have howled like a stuck pig and retaliated, but what would be worse than the Crocus attacks, ATACMS, and the sponsoring of terrorists to attack Russian civilians? All those things happened anyway.
Isn't most every power trying to contain the psychos in DC? Or are they just more considerate of or afraid the raging empire? By the way, US person here. War sucks!
" "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
Known to palaeontologists as "punctuated equilibrium".
Big Surge struck out on multiple fronts fronts despite a good analysis of the main reasons for the collapse of the SAR. As far as the conclusions on the geopolitical outlook, this was the typically biased and limitedly informed analysis from a western viewpoint. You might as well have been reading a propaganda or simplistic interpretation with the (pseudo) categorization of the winners and losers! First, Russia a small loser? Lol! Russian reliance on Syria as a base for its political and potential military power projection in West Asia and the Mediterranean goes back to the Soviet times. With Syria out of the picture, it is left without a naval force vis-à-vis the empire anywhere in the Mediterranean all the way down to Africa. And if anyone had any troops in Syria up until the end, it was Russia rather than Iran. Second, Iran never depended or used Syria, Lebanon, or the Eastern Mediterranean as actual or potential projections of economic power like empires do. Rather, Iran variably organized, supported, or reinforced Hezbollah or Syria mainly as autonomous bulwarks and defense lines against military threats stemming from the Zio-American schemes. However, with the rise of Iran’s long range military capabilities and ability to project deadly missile and drone power (advanced and ultra technological warfare), it has seized escalation dominance or de facto deterrence against US and Israel, and a reduced need to invest and expend enormous resources including direct military presence in unstable and shifting arenas, merely to protect its borders and integral autonomy from such eventual threats. That is not to mention that Iran has now has even a viable nuclear option.
And the totally ridiculously hollow statement that israel and Iran have equally demonstrated capability to direct airstrikes against each other? Are you kidding? Israel has always lived on the premise, in fact, the unequivocal ability to threaten all regional actors with the ability to conduct devastating airstrikes at will or with impunity, and the conviction or the confidence that no one has the ability to penetrate its invulnerable air defenses. There’s nothing that’s been more shattered than that, with the unprecedented successful direct missile and hypersonic missile strikes on the most cherished and defended military and industrial assets of Israel by Iran! I guess 2024 hasn’t been all that bad for Iran, after it demonstrated the ability to penetrate the supposedly best and most heavily defended airbase in the world! And the Israeli retaliation was at best ineffectual and at worse comical as it could not even with the logistical and intelligence support of the US actually send one of its bombers into Iranian airspace as had been planned or do any notable damage to Iranian military assets. You can fool yourself in considering that as equal to what Iran gained and what Israel actually lost in deterrence power!
Israel as the winner? Lol! Some winning year it’s been for Israel! Its army or infantry dealt huge losses in material, manpower, and morale; its utter and embarrassing failure to accomplish effective or stable control over Gaza let alone southern Lebanon (other than assassinating a few notable leaders which will not ever defeat the movement and resistance unless you are a typical uniformed western “analyst” who thinks the resistance starts and ends with a charismatic leader!) and carrying out a genocide against women and children); its economy shattered and the exodus of its most economically significant population by the hundreds of thousands; its utter unprecedented shameful and negative image and perception across the world including criminal charges for its leaders; and the loss of its carefully constructed deterrence and invulnerability of its military, especially in future conflicts and battles with state or no state actors. And you think Syria has been good for israel? I guess you have little idea of surprises a new Libya next door might bring to Israel. The same instabilities that Israel counts on for advancing its agenda in the region can become new tumors that will fester to create challenges and demand unending resources for that “little shitty county” (as remarked by a French politician some years ago).
A big problem with this supposed analysis by Big Surge regarding the geopolitical background, consequences, and outlook is that there is little evidence of having studied or incorporated any local sources including hundreds diverse and informed Iranian or middle eastern political reporters, analysts, or experts. Such sources of course demand some knowledge of the language and cultures beyond the stereotypical or limited European or American variety.
I have watched Professor Marandi, Col. Jacques Baud and others. I am American. That said, people underestimate the insanity of WA. This Syrian operation was/is a total plan. Your thoughts on the global surprise? Ceasefire on Lebanon which Israel totally ignored. Immediate air attacks on Syria. Massive coordination with Turkey, the US/NATO/Israel. Rebranding their 'moderate rebels' aka Al Q, ISIS, etc.
I am happy to see the restraint of China, Russia. These psychos are dangerous with their Battle of Armageddon religious self-fulfilling BS.
Your thoughts?
Among the many decent western analysts of the current geopolitical dynamics, I like Pepe Escobar, Alastair Crooke, and Brian Berletic. I also think The Cradle offers excellent take and coverage from a more local Middle East/West Asia framework. But, there are many others, particularly in the non-English speaking and locally well known journalists and experts beyond Marandi for instance. I think, the complexity of the current West Asian dynamics demands a rather detailed understanding of its historical, social, economic, and cultural background and diversity that few in the Western world fully understand let alone have mastered. The traces of colonial, Imperial and Eurocentric viewpoints are detectable even among the very best of their experts that do not function necessarily within the vast designated or self appointed “experts” in the mainstream media propaganda industry.
I have watched all of these people you cite on You Tube and various presentations. I like Ben Norton-Geopolitical Economy Report, Grayzone, Hedges, Sachs, others. Michael Hudson for economics.
I read widely as time permits. I follow historians for some of these topics.
Just finished a book by Rashid Khalidi, Robert Fisk. It's wise to consult highly educated folks. No one is perfect. However, bias can be detected if one considers many views. Thank you. ✌️
Great post and fits with much I have read and gleaned. I wonder if Big Serge and some of the other analysts are hedging their bets and throwing a sop to Shitrael just in case it does come out on top.
For anyone with a modicum of common sense it seems, as you say, ridiculous to deem Iran a loser given what it has demonstrated it can do to Israel, and petty little Israel as a winner because it opened a third war front, having failed to achieve any military wins on the first two.
Super triple kudos for mentioning the population explosion and the draining of the aquifers! Nobody else pays attention to that. I am seriously impressed.
But: you should also consider that the population explosion was by design. Seriously, the Syrian government was strongly pro-natalist and even made the sale and possession of contraceptives a crime! (See “Demographic Developments and Population: Policies in Ba’thist Syria (Demographic Developments and Socioeconomics)”, by Onn Winkler).
Always the rich INSIST that more people MUST be jammed into a country and this is guaranteed to be totally wonderful. Always we are lied to. But in the aftermath, there is an almost total blackout on discussing this. Other instances where the rich forced the population up, and the result was, if not always collapse, certainly strong downwards pressure on the working class, include Mexico, China under Mao, Japan before WWII, South Africa, the Ivory Coast, Turkey, England, Sweden, The Kingdom of Hawaii, Afghanistan, Sudan (they even had secret fertility police looking for illegal contraceptive use), and yes, the United States, where since the closing of the frontier there has been an inverse relationship between the rate of immigration and the fortunes of workers.
One also notes that the total size of the Syrian population including the Diaspora might be approaching 35 million by now (last I hear the Syrian refugees in Turkey are still averaging about 4 kids each). The refugees are not going back, and in any event Erdogan has been a champion of high levels of immigration, that was the main issue in the last Turkish election.
"The Problem of Syria, as such, is that the fiscal-economic viability of the state is tenuous at best and relies on consolidated control of the state’s former territory, but this in turn requires welding together an amalgamation of ethnic and sectarian groups, combustible in the best circumstances, at the same time that foreign powers are trying to set them alight. The ethnic logic and the economic logic of Syria border on total incompatibility, and have historically been held together by repression and violence. "
Indeed, the "Problem of Syria" is one which has existed really since the end of WW1 and the collapse of the old Ottoman Empire. While the British had Mandates in Palestine and Mesopotamia (now Israel/Jordan and Iraq, respectively), France wanted its sphere of influence in the region and so insisted on running its own Mandate in Syria--it toppled the nascent Hashemite Kingdom of Syria in 1920 and spend the remainder of the pre-WW2 years crafting the states of Syria and Lebanon. Perversely the closest Syria ever came to political stability was the dictatorial rule of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's far more capable father.
The situation in Syria now is much like that of LIbya after the death of Muommar Quadafi: multiple rival factions none of which have the power or the gravitas to unite all the factions into a single polity. All of the tribal allegiances the British and French disregarded in the post-WW1 carve-up of the region are still very much at odds with the arbitrarily drawn borders which nominally define the countries today.
Since the end of WW1 the entire region has been held together largely by this or that strongman dictator, and the toppling of Assad, much like the toppling of Hussein in Iraq, leaves a power vacuum that no one is able to fill.
What a mess.
Dismissing the argument that some states are 'fakes' misses the point. The whole idealogical history upon which Israel's claim to a statehood is based is a fabrication as Finkelstein- a Jewish academic- exposed in the 'bible unearthed', also made into a BBC documentary. This is a matter of main stream acknowledged archeological fact. As the for the european so called Jews, see Koestler on the thirteen tribe!
This matters because the fake history of Israel is what it has relied on- or the US western hegemon has cynically relied upon- to establish a forward base in the resource rich ME with religious fundamentalists of the Jewish persuasion, as much victims of this fabrication as is promulgators, using the fakery to wage war on Israel's neighbours and take their land.
But we do not have to go back into the mists of history to make the argument for a fake state here. It was dumped straight into the ME by the west after WWII forcibly displacing the actual inhabitants of the actual territory- a war crime in all but name!
As for Ukraine, there are many provisional moving boundaries in that part of eurasia not just viz Ukraine. The idea of the sovereign rights of a given 'state' is just a propaganda weapon in wars for resources. If you happen to be sitting on resources that the western hegemon has set its avarice sights on, beware. Your sovereign (sic) rights count for nothing at all. You had better have that final bastion of sovereignty in good working order because you will need it- military force.
Bingo!
The Russians realized years ago that Assad's generals and army were rotten with corruption. The Russians told Assad to clean up his army and fire the corrupt generals. Assad wouldn't do it. The generals kept him in power. Assad and his generals deserve their fates.
I'm surprised that the Ukrainian Army is still fighting. Zelensky and his generals are also corrupt.
Sorry! You cannot have missed the most powerful force in the region, that acts through its various proxies, the United States. Is this deliberate? I don’t believe it can be an accident. You have set out to write a very mainstream account, but it is dishonest. I will have to cancel my paid subscription. A pity!
You’re right! It’s very suspicious that these points are barely mentioned:
1) the illegal US sanctions that were fundamental to wreck the Syrian economy
2) the US directly and with proxies occupying the wealthiest regions of Syria - from the text it seems as if these regions were occupied by some random rebel party, but as other commenter has rightly said, this was explicit US policy as explained by that Dana Stroul biatch!!
Right! Plenty of US folks think Israel runs the US. I disagree. The US is the top aggressor. AIPAC is a major influence, of course. The "rules-based order" only applies to other parties. The Wall Street bull is the real god here.
US human under the boot here for 76 years! I fear for everyone as it collapses. It could take awhile, but the signs are everywhere. ✌️
Great analysis of Syria. Fascinating.
The Jews are happy. The Muslims are fighting each other. The Christians are the big losers. They are being beheaded right now by the new rulers of Syria.
Israel will overextend itself eventually. Iran needs to take care of itself. Theocracies don't work well in the modern world.
As an American, I just want the American troops to come home. I want the money and weapons to Israel to stop. The Old World can go to Hell (which it will), as far as I'm concerned.
Problem is the new world is an extension of the old world.. well, kind of.. a lot of the religious nut jobs from the old world populated the new one.. so you have same old, same old..
Diana, No! New England and Washington, D.C., are extensions of the Old World, but 90% of the USA is not.
In the modern geopolitical era it is the power that acts with the most tactical and strategic aggression that walks away with the prize. The axis of resistance especially iran acted with too little conviction and initiative in relation to Israeli belligerence and ultimately paid the price. It doesn't make me feel good but it's undeniable that Israel is the big winner.
Eventually, it won't be a winner.
Israel's airpower had to be curbed, either by air defence in Syria protecting its sovereignty and Lebanon's, and or Iran incapacitating Israel's airfields.
Neither was, and we see the consequence.
This is just a major factor, but as Serge poignantly asserts, Syria's economic strength made it unviable as a functioning state.
Iran knows it can take out Israel's airfields anytime it chooses. As an ancient culture who have not attacked anyone for more than 100 years, perhaps the Iranians are choosing to let Israel destroy itself.
As to Syria, if Israelis can believe they are a country after 76 years then perhaps it would be wise to not underestimate the Syrians who have just over 100 years under their national belt.
And while Syrians are divided, we can be certain that each and every one of them hates the Israelis far more than they hate other Syrians regardless of their actions or persuasions.
Your assessment relies on a huge number of assumptions regarding the Iranians. It is hard to see little Israel as a big winner when the Iranian's have demonstrated, as have the Houthis, their Iron Dome does not work and is more like a Netting Dome, as well as the fact that they have failed to destroy Hamas or Hezbollah. Murdering civilians does not defeat a Resistance, it empowers it.
Bombs can never win a war and Israel does not have and cannot have the boots on the ground to make Occupied Palestine secure, let alone a slab of Lebanon and Syria.
The Israeli army is weak, poorly trained and many if not most of its soldiers are mentally ill. That makes them fit for demonic killing sprees but not up to making sensible military decisions which can ensure clear outcomes and increase security.
Perhaps more critical, Israel is simply one big military camp and its people are either fighting and killing, securing occupied areas, and not working and the economy is in ruins, or they are working and keeping the economy stable and not able to fight to secure anything under occupation, or to protect settlers on ground taken illegally.
How many words? And not one mention of US sanctions.
How can anyone talk about Syria and not mention the United Ststes, that malign slayer of peoples’ hopes of democracy, freedom and sovereignty? I can only conclude you are in the pay of the US. Whatever , l have no need to read your biased blandishments. I prefer the truth. Please unsubscribe me.
A couple of points. It was not explicitly mentioned, so I will note that certainly all the Astana stakeholders understood Syria's precarious state very well. I conjecture that they had an agreement that the status quo would be maintained for the foreseeable future, but Turkey decided to renege at this time. I think Russia and Iran would have preferred the collapse not happen at this time viz Lavrov's remarks but knew it was likely to happen and of course had expected contingencies.
Second, chaos on its border may not be a long term win for Israel, if there is such a thing as a long term win for Israel. God knows...
Excellent point! Another case of a deal where Russia was backstabbed by its “partners”…