Category Archives: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

PODCAST: ‘Iran Tries To Restore Regional Balance; Israel Continues To Murder And Get Away With Murder’

Ethics, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Individual Rights, Iran, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Military, Neoconservatism, War

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In “Iran Tries To Restore Regional Balance; Israel Continues To Murder And Get Away With Murder,” a HARD TRUTH podcast, David Vance and I have a heated discussion about Iran’s response, on April 13 and 14, to Israel’s murder of senior commanders in Damascus, on April 1. Six other Iranian nationals and six Syrian citizens were assassinated. In all, Israel murdered 13 people in its April 1 strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

I detail Israel’s lengthy, illegal, immoral and extra-judicial assassination program against Iranian civilians and military ongoing for decades, coupled as it is with Israeli cyberterrorism directed at Iran’s infrastructure and state apparatus.

All things considered, I think Iran’s restraint was quite commendable in launching what was a theatrical, victimless, precision attack on Israeli military targets alone. This was the first time Teheran had directly struck Israel proper. Israel, conversely, regularly strikes on Iranian soil.

All the more so is Teheran’s restraint commendable considering that its attempt to make a point, as it deescalated a conflict begun by Israel in Damascus, occurs against the backdrop of a US-led crippling program of sanctions and embargoes directed at the Iranian people, and Israel’s American-backed and sponsored mass killing and land confiscation programs underway in Gaza and the West Bank.

Both myself and David Vance agree that the Israel First neoconservatives have always aimed at regime change in Iran. David, however, pushes back: He sees even greater forces at work in creating global chaos.

WATCH:

We appreciate your Follow here.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2020/01/u-s-globes-judge-jury-executioner/

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2012/03/onward-to-iran/

IMPORTANT ESSAY: ISRAEL: In Violation Of God’s Law, Natural Justice, The Laws Of War & All Customary International Humanitarian Law

America, Crime, Europe, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Law, Media, Morality, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, UN, War

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Over and above industrial-scale mass murder of individual people—Israel is engaged in the eradication of Gazans as a People ~ilana

NEW ESSAY in its totality is on The Unz Review: “Israel: In Violation Of God’s Law, Natural Justice, The Laws Of War & All Customary International Humanitarian Law.”

AND serialized on the Mises Institute’s Power & Market:

“The State of Israel Abandons Law and Morality in Its War on Gaza,” Part I, April 2
“The US Vetoes International Action on Gaza,” Part II, April 3
“Why Genocide?: Every Law of War Has Been Violated in Gaza,” Part III, April 4
“Gaza: What If America Were the Good Guy?” Part IV, April 5

The title is self-explanatory. In this new essay I comprehensively show Israel to be In violation of all laws of war and much of Customary International Humanitarian Law. God’s Law and
Natural Justice are close corollaries.

I go through the US ceasefire farce and lies—the ceasefire is BINDING!–I exposit the laws of war all violated, and expound on at least four laws that make up the genocide standard, flouted by Israel. Rafah appears to be a Final Solution of sorts.

I visualize what a Super Power could and should do. The visual of the essay’s coda is that of a patriot. Alas, and sadly, there is not much to be patriotic about.

Please share, for truth-tellers on Israel’s war of annihilation against Gaza’s Palestinians are being banned and excommunicated. Go figure: WE CANNOT BE BOUGHT OR SILENCED.

Short excerpt:

AMERICA’S CEASEFIRE DECEPTION

America has conditioned the inalienable right to life of Palestinians on the return of Israeli hostages, in effect nullifying that right ~ilana

For throwing-up clouds of obfuscating sepia over its abstention vote on the United Nations Security Council’s ceasefire resolution, March 25, the Biden Administration and its UN representative must be exposed.

“Ceasefire” in previous U.S. drafts amounted to Orwellian News Speak. Having never once called for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire, the U.S. had perfunctorily predicated temporary ceasefire resolutions on the return of Israeli hostages.

Whereas it was obligated morally to compel Israel to forthwith cease and desist its systematic and sustained onslaught on Gaza’s civilians; the US had opted, until March 25, to merely condition the temporary cessation of immoral and illegal mass murder of innocent Palestinians on the release of Israeli hostages, in effect tethering a “ceasefire” to the return of the Israeli hostages.

Against the wishes of citizens of our country and the world, America has deployed its veto power, repeatedly and reliably, in previous United Nations Security Council votes, so as to prevent an immediate, unconditional cease-fire in Gaza.

By so doing, America had conditioned the inalienable right to life of Palestinians on the return of Israeli hostages, in effect nullifying that inalienable right.

Recognizing that the right to life of innocent men, women and children is unconditional; Security Council member states, aside the United States and its protégé Israel, had refused to tether the fate of Gaza to hostage negotiations.

With pellucid logic, Amar Bendjama, Algeria’s ambassador to the U.N and the Arab bloc’s current Security Council member, had stated, February 20, 2024, that, “A vote in favor of [an unconditional ceasefire] is a support to the Palestinians’ right to life.” With its prior vetoes and current abstention, the US had nullified Palestinian right to life independent of the rights of Israeli hostages to the same.

You can say that Gaza’s innocent civilians are being held hostage by Israel enablers Blinken, Biden and Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

The general run of people around the world, however, are having none of this. We have been chanting “ceasefire” with catechetical promptness. The West’s “smart” set is belatedly getting the message that their constituents, decent citizens, are revolted by Israel’s acts and are in-revolt against supporting it.

In response, and oh-so cynically, all Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield did on March 25 was to abstain from using American veto power to stop the good guys—China, Russia, Algeria and the rest of the 15-member UN Security Council—from demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza. That’s all.

Expect the Biden Administration and its bi-partisan backers to keep gently cajoling brief lulls—conditional breaks—in the IDF’s bloodletting of a helpless, cornered civilian population.

Covering its wretchedness with sanctimony; the US had not vetoed the last ceasefire resolution; but had, nevertheless, worked to water it down. In its abstention vote, the US has “blocked action in the General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace resolution, where you could have seen some real meaningful action.”

For moral compass scrambled; it’s hard to beat former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley. In this protracted foreign-policy mirage, Blinken, Biden, Thomas-Greenfield and their political posse do Nikki Haley, a Republican, proud, for Trump’s appointee to the UN would have done nothing different.

CEASE AND DESIST! WHERE’S THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT?

A violent offender, a serial killer, must be stopped; not cautioned and observed! ~ilana

IDF soldiers vaporize young men picking their way through rubble as though in a video game; they mock their victims, invade their homes; filch from their businesses, and rummage through the piteous intimate effects of people dead and dispossessed ~ilana

In the world of patronage, it doesn’t get much worse. The United States is at Israel’s elbow—it is a cobelligerent: In actively sustaining Israel’s armed forces, and running diplomatic interference for its politicians; America is acting as Israel’s “principal sponsor,” complicit in war crimes, signaling to the Jewish State that it will let it continue to its evil endgame.

As I ventured in January, the issuance of the equivalent of a legal cease-and-desist or a restraining order against a violent offender, Israel, is urgent and long overdue. It’s already too late for Gaza as a habitable landmass.

While progressives lauded the International Court of Justice (ICJ), my perspective about the Court’s indecision, some months back, was dimmer. (Disgust, actually.) Unfocused as I was on legalistic definitions of genocide; it was obvious to me that, what was indubitably mass murder and ethnic cleansing—crimes that are in process and ongoing—had to be stopped right away. A violent offender, a serial killer, must be stopped; not cautioned and observed!

Were the International Court of Justice an effective and just organization it would have issued some sort of binding cease and desist order, some manner of restraining order, if you will, instructing the Israel Defense Forces, the Devil’s emissaries on earth, to stop its depredations.

Another international tribunal, the International Criminal Court (ICC), had “issued, in March of 2023, warrants of arrest, no less “for two individuals in the context of the situation in Ukraine,” one of whom was Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of the Russian Federation, who was being sought for war crimes.

With respect to Israel, the inept International Court of Justice appears compromised.

For in a just society, the moral strictures that apply to the individual must also extend to the collective. Immoral acts that are forbidden severally cannot be sanctioned collectively. If the citizen must not murder; neither should The State, any state.

UN SECURITY COUNCIL CEASEFIRE IS BINDING

A Security Council resolution not defanged by the US could have included a call for diplomatic, military, political, and economic sanctions, the freezing of Israeli assets, the deployment of a protection force, and the establishment of a tribunal for future prosecution ~ilana

In its uncontested superiority, the United States has asserted, moreover, that the UN ceasefire resolution is “non-binding.” “Completely false,” fumes international law expert Graig Mokhiber, in an interview, March 26, with Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!” And I paraphrase Mr. Mokhiber:

It is black-letter law in the U.N. Charter that all members of the United Nations are bound to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council. The Charter, in Article 25, and in subsequent decisions of the International Court of Justice, has made it indisputable that Security Council resolutions are binding for all member states.

Not only is the last ceasefire resolution binding, but it opens up an opportunity, given that Israel is in breach of it, to table a resolution for enforcement under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which “empowers the Security Council to orchestrate … collective actions … through a Military Staff Committee.”

A Security Council resolution not defanged by the United States could include a call for corporeal action: diplomatic, military, political, and economic sanctions, the freezing of Israeli assets, the deployment of a protection force, and the establishment of a tribunal for future prosecution. …

... READ THE COMPLETE ESSAY: “Israel: In Violation Of God’s Law, Natural Justice, The Laws Of War & All Customary International Humanitarian Law.”

Douglas Damien Murray For IDF Beefcake & Other Such Creepy Curiosities

BAB's A List, Communism, Critique, Foreign Policy, GAZA, History, Intellectualism, Iraq, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Media, Propaganda

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BY R. J. STOVE

Herewith, a few disordered (and shamelessly impressionistic) thoughts on the current Australian political scene, as it is impinged on by the Middle East horrors. Before specifying these thoughts, I should stress the fact that I consume far less mass-media news reportage than most of my compatriots do. Besides, I don’t own a television set at all.

On the other hand, what I lose in terms of the ability to acquire up-to-date data, I perhaps gain in terms of detached observation. This is what I’ve observed here over the last few months.

Australia’s Likudniks – many of whom of course are either helots of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid empire, or Pentecostal fundamentalists, both groups being seldom more ethnically Jewish than I am – are furiously trying to dial up the volume to eleven, SPINAL TAP style. So shameless is the truckling to Bibi, that entire issues of THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN and SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA, entire talk-shows on Sky News, appear to consist of press releases from Mossad.

In such milieux, the term “antisemite” is promiscuously applied not only to brain-dead mullahs who now and then chant nasty things about Jews at a public protest outside the Sydney Opera House, but to the coolest and most reasoned criticisms of Israel’s official policy since October 7, of whom some are even Jewish. And yet …

It isn’t working. Even I can tell that it isn’t working.

In the 21st century’s first few years, when most of these same people furiously defended the buccaneering expedition to Iraq, the policy of shouting down all disagreement with Israel’s regime did still work. As recently as a decade ago, it did still work.

Not now, though. The opposition to the Gaza ethnic cleansing is now too widespread among intelligent Australians, and, I suspect, too confidently maintained, for the toothpaste to be reinserted into the tube. It appears that the time when even the mildest criticism of Netanyahu was equated with mass-murdering Einsatzgruppen has now – for better or for worse – ended.

I’ve also noticed a marked demographic split, on the issue of who is currently supporting Netanyahu and who isn’t. As a general rule (there exist, needless to say, exceptions), the demography is as follows:

* PEOPLE UNDER 40: Pro-Palestinian, except for a handful of neocon dittoheads in the above-named, mostly Murdoch-controlled, outlets.

* BOOMERS, APPROACHING PENSION AGE, FROM THE VIETNAM-DRAFT-DODGING GENERATION: Overwhelmingly pro-Netanyahu.

* RETIREES IN THEIR 70S, 80S, AND 90s: Surprisingly inclined to give Palestinians the benefit of the doubt. I wonder if bitter memories of America’s Anglophobic behavior over Suez in 1956 are figuring in this age group’s memories.

In a way, I could almost feel sorry for the Murdoch-controlled dittoheads. With them, as with Comrade Zhdanov chewing out dissident writers and composers in Stalin’s Russia after World War II, there’s clearly a sense of bewilderment that anyone should show such base ingratitude as to exhibit opposition. To quote Orwell’s comments on the Stalinist cultural purges of 1947-1948:

The thing that politicians are seemingly unable to understand is that you cannot produce a vigorous literature by terrorizing everyone into conformity. A writer’s inventive faculties will not work unless he is allowed to say approximately what he feels. You can destroy spontaneity and produce a literature which is orthodox but feeble, or you can let people say what they choose and take the risk that some of them will utter heresies. … They [the Soviet politicians] don’t know what literature is, but they know that it is important, that it has prestige value, and that it is necessary for propaganda purposes, and they would like to encourage it, if only they knew how. So they continue with their purges and directives, like a fish bashing its nose against the wall of an aquarium again and again, too dim-witted to realize that glass and water are not the same thing.

Strangest of all, to me, is the fact that even the cleverest of Bibi’s apologists (and that’s not saying much) – to wit, Deviant Douglas Murray, neoconservative armchair Clausewitz, and accordingly a tireless apologist for every dirty deed now being carried out by uniformed IDF beefcake – is no longer, as hipsters would put it, “cutting through.” Not on this topic.

Goodness only knows what all of the above portends. What I can say with a measure of certitude about the Australian scene is a variant of the ancient aphorism about New York. Namely, that if the Likudniks can no longer make it here, they can no longer make it anywhere, other than in the United States of America.

***************

Melbourne-based historian and organist R.J. Stove is the author of César Franck: His Life and Times and of a forthcoming book (Kings, Queens and Fallen Monarchies, scheduled for 2024) about Europe’s monarchist movements between the two world wars. Dr. Stove’s innumerable disastrous career decisions include a total refusal to regard Rod Dreher* as the greatest Christian theologian who ever lived.

*Screen Pictures of Douglas Damien Murray For IDF Beefcake is courtesy of this site:

https://www.fanpop.com/clubs/damien-thorn/images/30060000/title/damien-photo?card

& here:

https://nypost.com/2023/11/15/opinion/on-the-ground-inside-gaza-where-israel-is-trying-to-save-civilians-from-hamas/

NEW PODCAST (1/25): Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder In Gaza

America, Anti-Semitism, Argument, Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Free Speech, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Just War, Justice, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy, Reason, South-Africa

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If you know in advance that your actions will cause the deaths of thousands-upon-thousands of civilians; attached to your criminal actions (actus reus) is a guilty mind (mens rea), which means malice aforethought, also known as intent, in Western jurisprudence and judicial philosophy. ~ilana

IN THE HARD TRUTH podcast, “Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder In Gaza,” David Vance and myself hammer-out the truth together about Gaza, which is, in my opinion, not a hard thing.

Drawing on the essay, “Memory & Indictment: Today’s Jewish Taliban Not The Israel I Grew Up In,” I say that it is inarguable:

The case against Israel’s murder spree in Gaza is ethically simple, and not within the realm of opinion. It is immutable, eternal truth that, right and wrong are universal, not relative. There are no special tribal privilege clauses. Thus, like gentiles, Jews are prohibited from mass murder. The Sixth Commandment (“Thou shalt not murder”) is neither opinion, nor is it optional.

“Memory & Indictment: Today’s Jewish Taliban Not The Israel I Grew Up In,” IS A WIDE-RANGING ESSAY, an intellectual and spiritual purge of sorts. It spans, by necessity, past and present, the personal and the political, the philosophical and the factual.

It “hermetically seals the indictment of the Jewish Taliban’s mass murder in Gaza.”

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

Published by The New American, The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, and The Mises Institute, Power & Market—the essay is a First Principles deconstruction of Israel’s orgiastic murder spree in Gaza opinion.

It is thus, I propose, not opinion, but truth.

For, like the laws of logic, right and wrong are universal, not relative. There are no special tribal privilege clauses—Jews, like gentiles, are prohibited from mass murder. “Thou shalt not murder” (you can “kill,” but you cannot murder—read about the Biblical difference in the essay) is neither opinion, nor is it optional. That’s why the Sixth Commandment is called a … commandment. Immutable natural law is truth, not opinion.

What Israel has visited on Gazans and their little enclave is irreparable, orgiastic mass murder and ethnic cleansing; a blitzkrieg wherein the civilian population has been bombed, buried—dead and alive—then evicted for life.

Eviction is in accordance with an Israeli government policy plan, cited in my essay, but, alas, omitted, I believe, from the South African brief to the International Court Of Justice. I read the Jewish State’s population-eviction document in Hebrew, in English, and in incredulity.

The essay was variously titled elsewhere as follows: “Jewish Supremacism, Like American Exceptionalism, Breeds Barbarism,” “Israel’s Hamas Made Me Do It Claim Doesn’t Excuse Tel-Aviv’s Barbarism,” and an “Hermetically Sealed Indictment Of The Jewish Taliban’s Mass Murder And Ethnic Cleansing In Gaza.”

It “hermetically seals,” the case against the prosecutors and defenders of a war, “70 percent of whose casualties are women and children.” After following the contours of argument and facts, herein, not a sentient soul can say that the war on Gazans qualifies as a just war. It doesn’t even remotely abide by Saint Augustine’s “Just War Theory,” which, while imperfect, is also closer to truth than opinion. Gazans are owed reparations in perpetuity for that which is irreparable.

Brief excerpt: https://www.ilanamercer.com/2024/01/memory-indictment-todays-jewish-taliban-not-israel-grew/

“…. In truth, Israel owns the killing field that is Gaza, circa 2023/2024. The offensive it has waged on Gaza is as close to Total Warfare (a term reserved for war against any and all), as modern war has gotten.

And war against civilians is war on civilization.

Yet, all Israel has to do to make world leaders turn tail is intone psychopathically that ‘Hamas made me do it. Hamas ate my homework; I mean my conscience.’

The ‘Hamas made me murder 25,700 souls (at least) and displace two million men, women and children’ excuse-making ‘argument’ will not wash as an argument for mass murder. For one, he who offends against innocents is responsible for his offenses; not a third party. For another, …whether it is committed by decree of the one or by the will of the many; by actors within or without The State; by the designated ‘good guys’ or by the ‘bad guys’—murder of innocents is still murder. Murder by ‘democratic’ approval is also still murder, however many approve of it.

Besides, mass murder is never ‘unintentional’ when you know it is inevitable and incidental to your ‘mission.’

Annoying as they are, neither do the pitiful caches of arms, ostensibly located in hospitals, begin to justify the grotesquely disproportionate sallies against Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital and all other hospitals, murdering patients and refugees. A hospital should never be demolished. Instead, demolish we must the demented ‘argument’ that claims for Israel a right to drop dumb bombs on Gaza’s doctors and patients. The former, apparently, are expected not only to palliate their imperiled patients, but also account for Hamas’ whereabouts.”….

What Israel has visited on Gazans and their little enclave is irreparable, orgiastic mass murder and ethnic cleansing; a barbaric blitzkrieg whereby the civilian population has been bombed, buried dead and alive, then evicted for life.

David pushes back by saying that Hamas are a terror group that should be wiped off the face of the earth. But he also emphasizes that collective punishment is always wrong. David does agree that Israel has a right to self defense but it has to be carried out with concern for the civilian Gazan population.

We appreciate a Follow at Hard Truth.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/12/gaza-vs-fallujah-barbaric-blitzkrieg-highlights-u-s-marines-superiority/

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2023/11/bibi-netanyahu-may-find-dock-hague/