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U.S. Surrenders On Syria – Resistance Turns Eyes On Israel
This New Yorker piece is notable for its arrogant headline, and several false assertions. Those may be necessary to divert from its real message – the U.S. surrender to the realities of Syria: Trump to Let Assad Stay Until 2021, as Putin Declares Victory in Syria
[T]he Trump Administration is now prepared to accept President Bashar al-Assad’s continued rule until Syria’s next scheduled Presidential election, in 2021, according to U.S. and European officials. The decision reverses repeated U.S. statements that Assad must step down as part of a peace process.
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The Trump Administration says it still wants a political process that holds the prospect of Assad’s departure. But it has concluded that it may take until 2021, when the next election is scheduled, to pull it off.
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U.S. officials worry that Assad could win the 2021 Syrian election, one way or the other, and remain in power for years to come.
The U.S. "lets Assad stay" because there is simply nothing else it can do without waging a large scale war. It has tried everything else – and lost. In 2012 it attempted to assassinate Assad, but he wasn't at the security meeting that the CIA blew up. It send 100,000 Takfiri fighters from all over the world to Syria and shipped in ten-thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition. The global anti-Syrian propaganda campaign in favor of the Takfiris was unprecedented. It tried to build a political opposition and sponsored it with hundreds of millions. It lastly invaded the country and tried to split it by force. It failed on all fronts.
The U.S. decision reflects the Administration’s limited options, the military reality on the ground, and the success of Syria’s Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah allies in propping up the beleaguered Assad regime.
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The Syrian opposition groups backed by the United States have been ineffectual. They have squabbled among themselves and split into factions.
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Diplomatically, Washington has been marginalized by the powerful troika of Russia, Iran, and Turkey, which now dominates the peace process.
In 2013 the author of the piece, Robin Wright, presented the Israeli dream of a split up Middle East.
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It was a remake of the "Blood Borders" map peddled in 2006 by the neoconservatives Col. Ralph Peters. That gain was an updated version of a map of a "New Middle East" by Bernhard Lewis published in Foreign Affairs. Those maps went into the trash-bin when the U.S. had to leave Iraq. Wrigth's cartographic expression of imperial arrogance will end there too.
Wright is heavily wired in Washington. She is part of the *borg* and held/holds positions at the U.S. Institute of Peace (which plans wars), the Wilson Center, Brookings and Carnegie Endowment. That she has now given up on her ludicrous map likely reflects the leading opinions within those institutions.
One wonders if the military junta in the White House is on board with this. It continues to dream of keeping Syria and Iraq under its thumb:
Col. John Thomas, spokesman for the US Central Command (CENTCOM), said that the international coalition forces would remain in Syria to support the operations of the Arab-Kurdish “Syrian Democratic Forces” until the conclusion of negotiations on a political solution in Geneva.
He added that the US forces would continue to fight terrorist organizations close to “al-Qaeda” in Syria, including al-Nusra Front, “regardless of ISIS presence.”
Dream on.
Yesterday Putin visited Syria. He declared victory and announced that part of the Russian troops in Syria would return home. He made sure that everyone, the U.S., the Turks, the Saudis and the Israelis, understood that the troops would be back in no-time if they try to reignite the war:
"If terrorists again raise head, we will deliver such strikes on them that they haven’t seen so far," Putin told the Russian military.
Another member of the Syrian alliance, the Lebanese party Hizbullah, is now refocusing on Israel. Trump's hail-Mary pass of illegally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital came just in time to give new impetus to the resistance:
Mr Nasrallah called on the “resistance axis” — a reference to Hizbollah and its Syrian and Iranian allies and patrons — to “devote all its power and time to the Palestinians. I call on all the resistance factions in the region to unite and put one common strategy and practical plan to face this threat,” he said.
It was Israel that was behind (pdf) the campaign to dismantle Syria and Iraq. It utterly failed and the revenge will be harsh. Hizbullah is better armed and trained than ever. Battle experienced Iraqi and Iranian groups stand ready. The Syrian army is much better trained and equipped than before the war. The Iraqi resistance leader Qais Al Khazali recently visited south-Lebanon and took a look over the border into Israel. He was surveying the new battlefield.
Israel's great new alliance with Saudi Arabia has not helped its position. The Salman tyrant and his son are in an insecure position and their great relations with Trump have tanked, allegedly over the issue of Jerusalem.
The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahoo is under pressure at home. The corruption accusation accumulate and his time in office is now limited.
Who will replace him? What is the new plan the Zionists will come up with to react to the changed situation?
For those who haven’t seen it:
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On the Anti-Semitism of the Present Government
A Dissenting Note on the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917
By Lord MONTAGUE
I have chosen the above title for this memorandum, not in any hostile sense, not by any means as quarrelling with an anti-Semitic view which may be held by my colleagues, not with a desire to deny that anti-Semitism can be held by rational men, not even with a view to suggesting that the Government is deliberately anti-Semitic; but I wish to place on record my view that the policy of His Majesty’s Government is anti-Semitic in result will prove a rallying ground for Anti-Semites in every country in the world.
This view is prompted by the receipt yesterday of a correspondence between Lord Rothschild and Mr. Balfour.
Lord Rothschild’s letter is dated the 18th July and Mr. Balfour’s answer is to be dated August 1917. I fear that my protest comes too late, and it may well be that the Government were practically committed when Lord Rothschild wrote and before I became a member of the Government, for there has obviously been some correspondence or conversation before this letter. But I do feel that as the one Jewish Minister in the Government I may be allowed by my colleagues an opportunity of expressing views which may be peculiar to myself, but which I hold very strongly and which I must ask permission to express when opportunity affords.
I believe most firmly that this war has been a death-blow to Internationalism, and that it has proved an opportunity for a renewal of the slackening sense of Nationality, for it is has not only been tacitly agreed by most statesmen in most countries that the redistribution of territory resulting from the war should be more or less on national grounds, but we have learned to realise that our country stands for principles, for aims, for civilisation which no other country stands for in the same degree, and that in the future, whatever may have been the case in the past, we must live and fight in peace and in war for those aims and aspirations, and so equip and regulate our lives and industries as to be ready whenever and if ever we are challenged. To take one instance, the science of Political Economy, which in its purity knows no Nationalism, will hereafter be tempered and viewed in the light of this national need of defence and security.The war has indeed justified patriotism as the prime motive of political thought.
It is in this atmosphere that the Government proposes to endorse the formation of a new nation with a new home in Palestine. This nation will presumably be formed of Jewish Russians, Jewish Englishmen, Jewish Roumanians, Jewish Bulgarians, and Jewish citizens of all nations – survivors or relations of those who have fought or laid down their lives for the different countries which I have mentioned, at a time when the three years that they have lived through have united their outlook and thought more closely than ever with the countries of which they are citizens.
Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom. If a Jewish Englishman sets his eyes on the Mount of Olives and longs for the day when he will shake British soil from his shoes and go back to agricultural pursuits in Palestine, he has always seemed to me to have acknowledged aims inconsistent with British citizenship and to have admitted that he is unfit for a share in public life in Great Britain, or to be treated as an Englishman. I have always understood that those who indulged in this creed were largely animated by the restrictions upon and refusal of liberty to Jews in Russia. But at the very time when these Jews have been acknowledged as Jewish Russians and given all liberties, it seems to be inconceivable that Zionism should be officially recognised by the British Government, and that Mr. Balfour should be authorized to say that Palestine was to be reconstituted as the “national home of the Jewish people”. I do not know what this involves, but I assume that it means that Mahommedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious test.
I lay down with emphasis four principles:
1. I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my
family, for instance, who have been in this country for
generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of
desire with any Jewish family in any other country beyond the fact
that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion.
It is no more true to say that a Jewish Englishman and a Jewish
Moor are of the same nation than it is to say that a Christian
Englishman and a Christian Frenchman are of the same nation: of
the same race, perhaps, traced back through the centuries –
through centuries of the history of a peculiarly adaptable race.
The Prime Minister and M. Briand are, I suppose, related through
the ages, one as a Welshman and the other as a Breton, but they
certainly do not belong to the same nation.
2. When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home,
every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish
citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out
its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country, drawn
from all quarters of the globe, speaking every language on the
face of the earth, and incapable of communicating with one another
except by means of an interpreter. I have always understood that
this was the consequence of the building of the Tower of Babel, if
ever it was built, and I certainly do not dissent from the view,
commonly held, as I have always understood, by the Jews before
Zionism was invented, that to bring the Jews back to form a nation
in the country from which they were dispersed would require Divine
leadership. I have never heard it suggested, even by their most
fervent admirers, that either Mr. Balfour or Lord Rothschild would
prove to be the Messiah.
I claim that the lives that British Jews have led, that the aims
that they have had before them, that the part that they have
played in our public life and our public institutions, have
entitled them to be regarded, not as British Jews, but as Jewish
Britons. I would willingly disfranchise every Zionist. I would be
almost tempted to proscribe the Zionist organisation as illegal
and against the national interest. But I would ask of a British
Government sufficient tolerance to refuse a conclusion which makes
aliens and foreigners by implication, if not at once by law, of
all their Jewish fellow-citizens.
3. I deny that Palestine is to-day associated with the Jews or
properly to be regarded as a fit place for them to live in. The
Ten Commandments were delivered to the Jews on Sinai. It is quite
true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so
it does in modern Mahommendan history, and, after the time of the
Jews, surely it plays a larger part than any other country in
Christian history. The Temple may have been in Palestine, but so
was the Sermon on the Mount and the Crucifixion. I would not deny
to Jews in Palestine equal rights to colonisation with those who
profess other religions, but a religious test of citizenship seems
to me to be the only admitted by those who take a bigoted and
narrow view of one particular epoch of the history of Palestine,
and claim for the Jews a position to which they are not entitled.
If my memory serves me right, there are three times as many Jews
in the world as could possible get into Palestine if you drove out
all the population that remains there now. So that only one-third
will get back at the most, and what will happen to the remainder?
4. I can easily understand the editors of the Morning Post and of the
New Witness being Zionists, and I am not in the least surprised
that the non-Jews of England may welcome this policy. I have
always recognised the unpopularity, much greater than some people
think, of my community. We have obtained a far greater share of
this country’s goods and opportunities than we are numerically
entitled to. We reach on the whole maturity earlier, and therefore
with people of our own age we compete unfairly. Many of us have
been exclusive in our friendships and intolerant in our attitude,
and I can easily understand that many a non-Jew in England wants
to get rid of us. But just as there is no community of thought and
mode of life among Christian Englishmen, so there is not among
Jewish Englishmen. More and more we are educated in public schools
and at the Universities, and take our part in the politics, in the
Army, in the Civil Service, of our country. And I am glad to think
that the prejudices against inter-marriage are breaking down. But
when the Jew has a national home, surely it follows that the
impetus to deprive us of the rights of British citizenship must be
enormously increased. Palestine will become the world’s Ghetto.
Why should the Russian give the Jew equal rights? His national
home is Palestine. Why does Lord Rothschild attach so much
importance to the difference between British and foreign Jews? All
Jews will be foreign Jews, inhabitants of the great country of
Palestine.
I do not know how the fortunate third will be chosen, but the Jew
will have the choice, whatever country he belongs to, whatever
country he loves, whatever country he regards himself as an
integral part of, between going to live with people who are
foreigners to him, but to whom his Christian fellow-countrymen
have told him he shall belong, and of remaining as an unwelcome
guest in the country that he thought he belonged to.
I am not surprised that the Government should take this step after the formation of a Jewish Regiment, and I am waiting to learn that my brother, who has been wounded in the Naval Division, or my nephew, who is in the Grenadier Guards, will be forced by public opinion or by Army regulations to become an officer in a regiment which will mainly be composed of people who will not understand the only language which he speaks – English. I can well understand that when it was decided, and quite rightly, to force foreign Jews in this country to serve in the Army, it was difficult to put them in British regiments because of the language difficulty, but that was because they were foreigners, and not because they were Jews, and a Foreign Legion would seem to me to have been the right thing to establish. A Jewish Legion makes the position of Jews in other regiments more difficult and forces a nationality upon people who have nothing in common.
I feel that the Government are asked to be the instrument for carrying out the wishes of a Zionist organisation largely run, as my information goes, at any rate in the past, by men of enemy descent or birth, and by this means have dealt a severe blow to the liberties, position and opportunities of service of their Jewish fellow-countrymen.
I would say to Lord Rothschild that the Government will be prepared to do everything in their power to obtain for Jews in Palestine complete liberty of settlement and life on an equality with the inhabitants of that country who profess other religious beliefs. I would ask that the Government should go no further.
E.S.M.
1917
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Posted by: kgw | Dec 12 2017 22:16 utc | 21
@21 kgw, thanks for that. Here’s something else many might not have seen. It’s valuable in that it dispels the Zionist mythology about Jews always being the enemies of Muslims in the Middle East; prior to the Zionist invasion Jews, Muslims and Christians got along fine in the Levant (& Maghreb) region.
1919 THE SYRIAN CONGRESS AT DAMASCUS
We the undersigned members of the General Syrian Congress, meeting in Damascus on Wednesday, July 2, 1919, made up of representatives from the three Zones, viz., the Southern, Eastern, and Western, provided with credentials and authorizations by the inhabitants of our various districts, Moslems, Christians, and Jews, have agreed upon the following statement of the desires of the people of the country who have elected us to present them to the American Section of the International Commission; the fifth article was passed by a very large majority; all the other articles were accepted unanimously.
1. We ask absolutely complete political independence for Syria within these boundaries. The Taurus System on the North; Rafeh and a line running from Al-Juf to the south of the Syrian and the Hejazian line to Akaba on the south; the Euphrates and Khabur Rivers and a line extending east of Abu Kamal to the east of Al-Juf on the east; and the Mediterranean on the west.
2. We ask that the Government of this Syrian country should be a democratic civil constitutional Monarchy on broad decentralization principles, safeguarding the rights of minorities, and that the King be the Emir Feisal who carried on a glorious struggle in the cause of our liberation and merited our full confidence and entire reliance.
3. Considering the fact that the Arabs inhabiting the Syrian area are not naturally less gifted than other more advanced races and that they are by no means less developed than the Bulgarians, Serbians, Greeks, and Roumanians at the beginning of their independence, we protest against Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, placing us among the nations in their middle stage of development which stand in need of a mandatory power.
4. In the event of the rejection by the Peace Conference of this just protest for certain considerations that we may not understand, we, relying on the declarations of President Wilson that his object in waging war was to put an end to the ambition of conquest and colonization, can only regard the mandate mentioned in the Covenant of the League of Nations as equivalent to the rendering of economical and technical assistance that does not prejudice our complete independence. And desiring that our country should not fall a prey to colonization and believing that the American Nation is farthest from any thought of colonization and has no political ambition in our country, we will seek the technical and economic assistance from the United States of America, provided that such assistance does not exceed twenty years.
5. In the event of America not finding herself in a position to accept our desire for assistance, we will seek this assistance from Great Britain, also provided that such assistance does not infringe the complete independence and unity of our country and that the duration of such assistance does not exceed that mentioned in the previous article.
6. We do not acknowledge any right claimed by the French Government in any part whatever of our Syrian country and refuse that she should assist us or have a hand in our country under any circumstances and in any place.
7. We oppose the pretentions of the Zionists to create a Jewish commonwealth in the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine, and oppose Zionist migration to any part of our country; for we do not acknowledge their title, but consider them a grave peril to our people from the national, economical, and political points of view. Our Jewish compatriots shall enjoy our common rights and assume the common responsibilities.
8. We ask that there should be no separation of the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine, nor of the littoral western zone which includes Lebanon, from the Syrian country. We desire that the unity of the country should be guaranteed against partition under whatever circumstances.
9. We ask complete independence for emancipated Mesopotamia and that there should be no economical barriers between the two countries.
10. The fundamental principles laid down by President Wilson in condemnation of secret treaties impel us to protest most emphatically against any treaty that stipulates the partition of our Syrian country and against any private engagement aiming at the establishment of Zionism in the southern part of Syria; therefore we ask the complete annulment of these conventions and agreements.
The noble principles enunciated by President Wilson strengthen our confidence that our desires emanating from the depths of our hearts, shall be the decisive factor in determining our future; and that President Wilson and the free American people will be our supporters for the realization of our hopes, thereby proving their sincerity and noble sympathy with the aspiration of the weaker nations in general and our Arab people in particular.
We also have the fullest confidence that the Peace Conference will realize that we would not have risen against the Turks, with whom we had participated in all civil, political, and representative privileges, but for their violation of our national rights, and so will grant us our desires in full in order that our political rights may not be less after the war than they were before, since we have shed so much blood in the cause of our liberty and independence.
We request to be allowed to send a delegation to represent us at the Peace Conference to defend our rights and secure the realization of our aspirations.
-1919 Petition of the General Syrian Congress to the League of Nations
Posted by: nonsense factory | Dec 13 2017 0:09 utc | 28
@nonsense factory | Dec 13, 2017 12:10:19 AM | 50
Your fragment on this reading commenting Sun Tzu, reminds me of the congitive-conductual technics used to disengage people from adictions.
It is said that when you rationalize your irrational doings and try to find a reason on why you do such things, you will get soon to the conclusion of their irrationality and the great prejudice derived for yourself, as well as the mecanization implied in the repetition of those acts you are hunged in. What could not be ellaborated from those not only totally irrational but besides inhuman as could be the act of war….
The thing is that repetition of acts, irrespective of being irrational, leads to create neuronal connections which makes for you easy to repeat them authomatically in the future with increasing lesser effort/motive, but besides, lesser opportunity to change, unless you propose it yourself with a good gathering of will….
Since war gets people very close to savagery and deshumanization, once one immersed in this kind of behavior 24/7 for decades, it is probable that you could find it difficult to avoid continue behaving so, not only with those who you deem as opponents, but also even with those in your side….This is why I see that this continuous attitude will lead not only Israel but also the US to self-destruction if the path is not changed.
Since a wannabe “nation” from its very inception involved in war for profit, be it to loot lands, homes, and cause prejudice to others, I wonder if, at this time, Israel could be able to do something different to what has became a full time dedication….Watching the attitude of its young serviceman from the IDF which flood the net, all real footage, seems that a complete generation, or two, are lost for to achieve peace by cronical inability leading to impossibility…..Obvioulsy, and precisely because this attitude is what please those in power, and so is promoted, we have little or no news of other young people who could constitute any hope…We have already the savage declarations of young members of the Knesset about the Palestinians…But, what is the pulse in the streets…I am not able for the moment to travel there, but it would be quite interesting to take the pulse on what the common people really thinks….
To this you have to add the hatred and resentment you continually instill inside your opponents´ minds and souls…,especially when they suffer your continuous opression, something you also sow and will remain there for generations….
So, for at least one or two generations to come, I do not see any hope coming from Israel in the path towards peace unless a great catastrophe happens that massively convolute the Israeli society and makes them reflecting a bit…On the other hand, I wonder if the Israeli intelligentsia is wholly invanded by this cancerous disease or there is any sector of it who is thinking in the necessary change of paradigm as the only hope for salvation….Of course, the first step is taking the far-right out of power…After having witnessed its real nature, widespread corruption and hunger for ethernal war, would be able Israeli society to make a move for sanity, if not for themselves to prevail?
Heartbreaking crying of a Palestinian child when his father is arrested by Zionist occupation forces.
The routine in #Palestina.
#JerusalemIsTheCapitalofPalestine
https://twitter.com/pechosboys/status/940195717901152256
Fawzi Mohammad Al Juniedi, 16, has become the icon of Palestinian youth resistance.
#JerusalemIsTheCapitalofPalestine
#AlQudsCapitalOfPalestine
https://twitter.com/pechosboys/status/940264673139675136/photo/1
Here you have another future Palestinian hero ✌️✌️🇵🇸🇵🇸
https://twitter.com/siriorojo/status/940294294287671297/photo/1
Crime and Zionist impunity: observe the deliberate abuse of a Palestinian young and the beating by the occupation forces. Subsequently, they attack health personnel and journalists.
#FreePalestine
https://twitter.com/pechosboys/status/939898299758374913
Posted by: elsi | Dec 13 2017 20:28 utc | 76
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