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Another Interview With Dominique De Villepin On The Conflict In Palestine (As Translated By Arnaud Bertrand)
On October 28 I posted (with the author's permission):
An Interview On Gaza With Dominique De Villepin (As Translated By Arnaud Bertrand).
There is a new interview with Dominique De Villepin which has also been translated by Arnaud Bertrand.
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand – 1:22 UTC · Nov 8, 2023
Another masterful interview on Gaza of Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who IMHO is the best diplomat the West has produced in decades.
Again I believe that his words are so important and so rare among Western leaders today, that I decided to translate it in full (the bold parts are emphasis Villepin himself made when speaking):
One does not have to agree with De Villepin. But one has to acknowledge that he is one of the few European politicians who has put real thoughts into the issue and who points to a potentially sensible end:
What follows is Arnaud Bertrand's translation:
— Begin of translation —
"The Israeli government, Benjamin Netanyahu, failed on October 7th and failed doubly. Firstly, in its ability to ensure the protection of the Israeli people by allowing massacres that are an abomination to occur. He bears direct responsibility for what happened. And his second failure is having encouraged a policy of occupation and colonization, which continues at this moment in the West Bank and constitutes another threat to Israel if a second front in the West Bank were to open.
"The Israeli government, Benjamin Netanyahu, failed on October 7th and failed doubly. Firstly, in its ability to ensure the protection of the Israeli people by allowing massacres that are an abomination to occur. He bears direct responsibility for what happened. And his second failure is having encouraged a policy of occupation and colonization, which continues at this moment in the West Bank and constitutes another threat to Israel if a second front in the West Bank were to open.
Force does not ensure the security of a people! This is what all Israelis must understand today. And what is important is that since October 7th, the Israeli government's choice has been to escalate the use of force. You know, neither force nor vengeance ensures peace and security. What ensures peace and security is justice! And justice is not being served today.
The rationale of the Israeli government for the bombings happening today is flawed, and the whole international community can see it. The principle is: "we target terrorists, and unfortunately, there are also civilian populations," what is euphemistically called in military language "collateral damage." It must be understood that this collateral damage is not accidental. That is to say, it is perfectly predictable and fully accepted.
[Host: "But once again, the responsibility is not solely Israeli."]
But once more, let's stop asking about responsibility; let's look at the reality of what's happening on the ground! Assigning fault, allow me to tell you, we will leave to historians. What we want is to stop this violence, to stop these massacres. Israel is putting itself in danger, even more today, with this type of warfare and these types of strikes.
We are essentially dealing with a policy of vengeance from the Netanyahu government. Israel has the right to self-defense, but self-defense does not give an indiscriminate right to kill civilian populations. When you target an ambulance, you can always imagine that there was a terrorist in one of the ambulances, or not. But the result is that there are children, women who die. Every child, every woman killed, that's more terrorists. Therefore, Israel's objective, what Israel achieves, is exactly the opposite of what they wish. So, it is essential today to change this logic and return to a strategy that is sound.
Hostages, everything must be done to secure their release. But let's not forget: the Palestinian people are also taken hostage, by Hamas and by Israel. And Hamas, we all know, cares little for the Palestinian people. So telling Hamas: "we will not lift the siege, we will not have a humanitarian truce until the hostages are released," is a dialogue of the deaf.
Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a war to do everything so that the political solution does not come to the table. And this is where the international community, Europe, the United States, must tell Benjamin Netanyahu that this war is not acceptable. It is not acceptable because it leads us directly [to escalation] – because we can see it well, from Hamas we will move to Iran, from Iran we will move to other targets, and we then enter into the logic of a clash of civilizations. When Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu says that on one side there is the people of light and on the other the people of darkness, we can see the kind of spiral we are getting into.
All the wars that have been going on for the past twenty years are wars that begin and do not end. These are frozen conflicts. We know how to start a war; we do not know how to end it. And Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu could control Gaza, it would change nothing. There will continue to be terrorist attacks, Israelis will continue to live in fear. We must get out of this. The second reason why this is yesterday's war is that the war against terrorism has never been won anywhere. Force is not the answer, once again. Vengeance is not the answer. The answer is justice, and that is what all the peoples of the world, all those who today watch what is happening, call for justice.
Today the direction we must follow is to prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from continuing his suicidal logic that will make Israel a besieged state. They can besiege Gaza, but they will be besieged. And do not think that tomorrow we will again have a pacified discourse with Saudi Arabia, with the Arab states that will normalize the situation: no! The wounds of history are awakening.
Israel's interest is to have a responsible state at its side. And this responsible state, let's stop splitting hairs, must clearly be the West Bank, all of the West Bank. It must be Gaza, with access between the two territories, and East Jerusalem. The problem, and this is the whole point of Benjamin Netanyahu's escalation, is that Benjamin Netanyahu does not want it. And the policy of separation must be dignified. That is, it must confer to the Palestinians a state where they can live, a viable state, a true state, which can build itself and which will be all the more at peace…
[Host: "Does that mean that the settlements in the West Bank have to be removed?"]
Well, when we left Algeria, there were a million French who left Algeria. Today there are 500,000 Israelis colonizing the West Bank, and there are 200,000 in East Jerusalem.
[Host: "They must leave the West Bank?"]
Yes. Yes, that is history, that is responsibility, that is the price! I tell you solemnly, it is the price of security for Israel! And all those who today consider that it will never be enough are pursuing the worst policy."
— End of translation —
Bertrand adds:
Credit to @caissesdegreve who took these extracts from the original interview which can be found here: Conflit Israël-Hamas : la riposte israélienne n'est "ni ciblée ni proportionnée"
“Even Nasrallah in his recent speech pointed out that the responsibility is with America, not the Jewish people. Israel is a neocolonial project whose origins are the British Empire and extremist Puritan theology. That theology was a remnant of the Crusades as the Ottoman Empire was a major force when those ideas were formulated and in the mid 1800s during Herzl’s time. Those conquest of the Holy Land ideas are held most fervently, not by the atheism Jews, who are merely benefiting from them, but fanatical, religious America.
Is all I have heard about is Netanyahu and the Jews, but again and again, we see US Presidents, swearing on the Bible then quickly proceeding to genocide one Islamic country after another to yet another wildly cheering Congress with the next $100 billion in hand.”
Posted by: Turk 152 | Nov 8 2023 19:23 utc | 185
Like Nasrallah, Vladimir Putin has also laid guilt for this Middle East war–and conflicts elsewhere around the world–at the feet of America:
“We must clearly understand who in reality is behind the tragedy of peoples in the Middle East and in other regions around the world, who has been organising this lethal chaos and who benefits from it. In my opinion, it has already become clear to everyone, as the masterminds brazenly act in the open.
These are the current ruling elites in the United States and its satellites who are the main beneficiaries of the global instability that they use to extract their bloody rent. Their strategy is also clear. The United States as a global superpower is becoming weaker and is losing its position, and everyone sees and understands this, even judging by the trends in the world economy. The American-style world, with the hegemony of one country, is being destroyed and is receding gradually but inexorably into the past.
However, the United States is unwilling to accept this, and instead seeks to preserve and extend its dominance, its global dictatorship, which is easier to achieve amid such chaos, because the United States believes this chaos will help it contain and destabilise its rivals or, as they put it, their geopolitical opponents, among which they also rank our country, which in reality are new global growth centres and sovereign independent countries who are unwilling to kowtow and play the role of servants.”
Meeting with members of the Security Council and Government, and heads of security agencies
http://en.kremlin.ru/catalog/keywords/78/events/72618
The journalist Pepe Escobar once wrote a book that described America as the Empire of Chaos.
This is true.
The USA is deliberately fomenting conflict, chaos, and war of all types around the world so as to weaken its enemies from Russia to Iran to China and maintain this American dictatorship over the world.
America believes that it is relatively insulated from the chaos that it foments in the Eastern Hemisphere, as it is an continental island empire protected by a very large moat (the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans) in the Western Hemisphere.
What is truly Orwellian is that Americans lie to themselves that they are altruistically defending freedom, democracy, individual rights, property rights, and other Goebbelsian rationalizations–as opposed to genocide, exploitation, and war crimes without limit.
Indeed, America’s unending crimes against humanity are actually somebody else’s fault. It’s the Globalists. It’s the WEF. It’s the Jews. It’s the Russians. It’s the Chinese. It’s the Muslims. It’s the Arabs. Anybody but America.
America is a virtuous innocent lamb, forever being threatened by “Evil-Doers who hate our freedom.”
This fucked up worldview is rooted in American national identity itself, which is based on the delusion that the USA is the “New Jerusalem in the New World”–the Shining City on a Hill that was chosen by God as a “light unto nations.”
This is the Christian fundamentalist basis of America as a country.
And for all the massive crimes that Israel is guilty of, Israel is just a Mini-Me version of America in the Middle East.
As the fake “anti-war Conservative” Lauren Boebert revealingly stated about her support of Apartheid Israel: “There have been two Nations created to glorify God, Israel and the United States of America. I will bless both, I will honor both. I will do all I can to stand and defend them”
https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1717246361446551736
God’s Chosen People (Israel) is the unsinkable aircraft carrier for God’s Chosen Empire (America).
Posted by: ak74 | Nov 9 2023 5:09 utc | 611
“Even Nasrallah in his recent speech pointed out that the responsibility is with America, not the Jewish people. Israel is a neocolonial project whose origins are the British Empire and extremist Puritan theology. That theology was a remnant of the Crusades as the Ottoman Empire was a major force when those ideas were formulated and in the mid 1800s during Herzl’s time. Those conquest of the Holy Land ideas are held most fervently, not by the atheism Jews, who are merely benefiting from them, but fanatical, religious America.
Is all I have heard about is Netanyahu and the Jews, but again and again, we see US Presidents, swearing on the Bible then quickly proceeding to genocide one Islamic country after another to yet another wildly cheering Congress with the next $100 billion in hand.”
Posted by: Turk 152 | Nov 8 2023 19:23 utc | 185
Like Nasrallah, Vladimir Putin has also laid guilt for this Middle East war–and conflicts elsewhere around the world–at the feet of America:
“We must clearly understand who in reality is behind the tragedy of peoples in the Middle East and in other regions around the world, who has been organising this lethal chaos and who benefits from it. In my opinion, it has already become clear to everyone, as the masterminds brazenly act in the open.
These are the current ruling elites in the United States and its satellites who are the main beneficiaries of the global instability that they use to extract their bloody rent. Their strategy is also clear. The United States as a global superpower is becoming weaker and is losing its position, and everyone sees and understands this, even judging by the trends in the world economy. The American-style world, with the hegemony of one country, is being destroyed and is receding gradually but inexorably into the past.
However, the United States is unwilling to accept this, and instead seeks to preserve and extend its dominance, its global dictatorship, which is easier to achieve amid such chaos, because the United States believes this chaos will help it contain and destabilise its rivals or, as they put it, their geopolitical opponents, among which they also rank our country, which in reality are new global growth centres and sovereign independent countries who are unwilling to kowtow and play the role of servants.”
Meeting with members of the Security Council and Government, and heads of security agencies
http://en.kremlin.ru/catalog/keywords/78/events/72618
The journalist Pepe Escobar once wrote a book that described America as the Empire of Chaos.
This is true.
The USA is deliberately fomenting conflict, chaos, and war of all types around the world so as to weaken its enemies from Russia to Iran to China and maintain this American dictatorship over the world.
America believes that it is relatively insulated from the chaos that it foments in the Eastern Hemisphere, as it is an continental island empire protected by a very large moat (the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans) in the Western Hemisphere.
What is truly Orwellian is that Americans lie to themselves that they are altruistically defending freedom, democracy, individual rights, property rights, and other Goebbelsian rationalizations–as opposed to genocide, exploitation, and war crimes without limit.
Indeed, America’s unending crimes against humanity are actually somebody else’s fault. It’s the Globalists. It’s the WEF. It’s the Jews. It’s the Russians. It’s the Chinese. It’s the Muslims. It’s the Arabs. Anybody but America.
America is a virtuous innocent lamb, forever being threatened by “Evil-Doers who hate our freedom.”
This fucked up worldview is rooted in American national identity itself, which is based on the delusion that the USA is the “New Jerusalem in the New World”–the Shining City on a Hill that was chosen by God as a “light unto nations.”
This is the Christian fundamentalist basis of America as a country.
And for all the massive crimes that Israel is guilty of, Israel is just a Mini-Me version of America in the Middle East.
As the fake “anti-war Conservative” Lauren Boebert revealingly stated about her support of Apartheid Israel: “There have been two Nations created to glorify God, Israel and the United States of America. I will bless both, I will honor both. I will do all I can to stand and defend them”
https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1717246361446551736
God’s Chosen People (Israel) is the unsinkable aircraft carrier for God’s Chosen Empire (America).
Posted by: ak74 | Nov 9 2023 5:09 utc | 612
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