I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
Workers
clear debris near an apartment building damaged in an Israeli airstrike
in Dahiyeh, Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon, Sunday, June 14, 2026.
[AP Photo/Bilal Hussein]
The United States and Iran announced a
ceasefire agreement Sunday, suspending, for now, a war that the Trump
administration began on February 28 and that has killed thousands of
people. “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,”
President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, ordering the lifting of
the US naval blockade of Iran and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
“Ships of the World, start your engines,” he wrote. “Let the oil flow!”
While the terms of the settlement remain
undisclosed, this much is already clear: The Trump administration
achieved none of the aims for which it went to war. It set out to
overthrow the Iranian government, destroy its nuclear program, break its
military and seize the Strait of Hormuz. It accomplished none of this.
Trump responded to the failure by denying
he had ever sought to overthrow the Iranian government. “As far as
regime change, I never cared about regime change,” he told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
In reality, his administration had spent
the entire year trying to bring the government down. Early on, it funded
and armed protesters inside Iran. “We sent guns to the protesters, a
lot of them,” Trump said in April.
When this failed, the United States and
Israel turned to assassination. The opening strikes on February 28
killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Revolutionary Guard
commander Mohammad Pakpour and Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, along
with much of the military command. The government did not collapse.
Khamenei’s son Mojtaba succeeded him, and it was the younger Khamenei’s
national security council that approved Sunday’s deal.
There followed a bombing campaign across
Iran that has killed at least 3,468 people, by the Iranian health
ministry’s count, and a naval blockade imposed on April 13. American
warplanes destroyed water reservoirs in Sirik that supplied more than
20,000 people and fired on oil tankers running through the blockade,
killing three Indian sailors aboard the Settebello this week. After two
months, the blockade failed to force Iran’s surrender, and the Strait of
Hormuz remained shut by Tehran’s decree until Sunday.
No agreement with American imperialism is
worth the paper it is written on. In 2015, the Obama administration
signed the nuclear accord known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA), under which Iran accepted strict limits on enrichment
and intrusive inspections. Iran kept to its terms—the International
Atomic Energy Agency certified as much in report after report—but in May
2018 Trump tore the agreement up anyway, calling it a “horrible,
one-sided deal.” Obama, who signed that accord, said Sunday it was
“doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly
different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the
first place… before we, the United States, pulled out of it.”
The pattern was repeated last year. Trump
announced a “Complete and Total CEASEFIRE” in June 2025 to end the
Twelve-Day War between Israel and Iran. That truce held until February
28, when the United States and Israel broke it, launching the war that
has now been paused.
Even as he proclaimed peace on Sunday, Trump threatened to resume the war. The New York Times reported
that in a phone call he said he would “restart military attacks on
Tehran” if Iran failed to reach a final nuclear accord, or else make the
United States “the guardian of the Middle East” in exchange for 20
percent of the region’s revenues.
Trump’s claims about the settlement were
as hollow as his account of the war. He boasted that the Strait of
Hormuz would be “permanently toll free,” but the memorandum suspends
tolls for only 60 days. Iran charged no tolls before the war—the deal
restores the prewar status quo. Trump said the inspection of Iran’s
nuclear material could wait: “We’ll get the nuclear dust later on when
we’re ready to go in and do it… there’s no rush.”
The agreement nominally covers Lebanon,
where Israel has waged a parallel war that has killed more than 3,700
people. Hours before the announcement, Israel bombed the southern
suburbs of Beirut, killing three, in a strike that nearly wrecked the
deal. Trump said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had shown “no
judgment” and told all sides to “stand down.” Israel, which was not a
party to the talks, has not endorsed the agreement, and Israeli
politicians across the spectrum denounced it.
The Democrats’ response to Trump’s moves
toward an agreement with Iran centered on the accusation that he had
failed to secure the interests of US imperialism. Democratic
Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts called the emerging terms
“basically a surrender document from Donald Trump to the supreme leader
of Iran.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, on
NBC’s “Meet the Press,” complained that the war had left the United
States worse off: “Things aren’t better for us. They’re worse. In fact,
Iran is stronger right now.”
A warning must be made. Whatever the
failures and setbacks of the past four months, American imperialism will
only redouble its efforts to dominate the Middle East and the world by
military force.
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It’s important to understand that, contrary to Donald Trump’s quip to Barak Ravid that Netanyahu has “no f***ing judgment,” the Israeli Prime Minister knows exactly
what he is doing: With a set of strikes at the Dahiyeh neighborhood in
Beirut, he is trying to kill both the pending US-Iran peace deal and the
fragile peace between Israel and Lebanon that would come with it.
There is a further strategic dividend.
Netanyahu is also seeking to preempt Iran’s attempt to establish a new
regional deterrence equation – one in which attacks on Beirut, and
potentially on Lebanon more broadly, would trigger a direct Iranian
response against Israel. By striking now, he is not merely targeting an
adversary; he is challenging the emergence of a regional order that
would constrain Israel’s freedom of military action.
Netanyahu even posted a video on his Twitter bragging about the attack:
תקפנו בדאחייה בביירות מטרות טרור של ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה. ישראל לא תסבול ירי לשטחה pic.twitter.com/wVARFCkDQe
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) June 14, 2026
The exchange of fire between Israel and
Iran last week was about far more than retaliation. After Israel defied
President Trump and struck Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood, Iran responded
by attacking Israel directly – the first time Tehran had launched
strikes on Israel in response to an Israeli attack on Lebanon. Israel
defied Trump once more and retaliated against Iran, prompting another
Iranian response, after which Israel confined its next strike to
southern Lebanon rather than Beirut.
The cycle reflected Iran’s attempt to
establish a new regional equation: that attacks on Lebanon would no
longer be cost-free for Israel, but would carry the risk of direct
Iranian retaliation. For the first time in decades, a major regional
power was seeking to place hard-power constraints on Israel’s freedom of
military action beyond its borders.
Having reestablished its own deterrence,
Tehran was now attempting to establish extended deterrence to its
partners as part of a broader effort to rebuild its forward-defense
posture. Israel, unsurprisingly, viewed this as a direct challenge to
its long-standing freedom of maneuver and moved quickly to prevent the
new doctrine from taking hold.
Of course, extended deterrence can not be
established through a single exchange of fire. At a minimum, it would
require several rounds of action and reaction before either side
accepted it as a new reality. And even then, it would never be
foolproof. Tehran understands that its purpose cannot simply be to
eliminate Israeli strikes on Lebanon, but to force Israeli leaders to
think twice before authorizing them by attaching a new and significant
cost: the likelihood of direct Iranian retaliation.
It was therefore clear that Netanyahu had
not abandoned the fight. Yet for several days, even as Hezbollah and
Israel continued to exchange fire, he refrained from striking Beirut’s
southern suburbs and testing Iran’s new red line.
But today, just hours before President
Trump was expecting Iran to sign a memorandum that would end the
U.S.-Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Netanyahu crossed both
Tehran’s and Trump’s red line: keeping Beirut out of the conflict.
Netanyahu clearly timed this for maximum
impact. With a single set of strikes, Netanyahu may have advanced two
goals at once – torpedoing Trump’s peace deal and preventing the
emergence of a new deterrence equation that would impose meaningful
constraints on Israel’s military operations in Lebanon.
A diplomat involved in the talks told Fox News that: “This is a clear attempt by Israel to sabotage the President’s deal and drag the United States back into war.”
Trump, meanwhile, is once again reportedly “pissed off” at Netanyahu. In a Truth Social post,
the president declared that the strike on Beirut “should not have
happened,” while pointedly questioning whether it was a proportionate
response to Hezbollah’s latest attack on Israel.
“Israel has the right to defend itself
against threats,” Trump wrote, “but the attack it was responding to was
very small and meaningless. Nobody was hurt, injured, or killed, and it
should not disrupt this important process.”
The statement was notable not merely for
its criticism of Netanyahu, but for what it implied: that Israel’s
strike was neither militarily necessary nor diplomatically prudent at a
moment when a potential breakthrough with Iran appeared within reach.
Washington is frustrated by Tehran’s
insistence that Trump rein in Israel, even as American officials believe
Iran has failed to similarly restrain Hezbollah. It is equally
frustrated that a deal it urgently wants with Iran is now being held
hostage by Israel, ironically at the request of the Iranians, since it
is Tehran that insists that any ceasefire must be region-wide and
prevent Israel from having the ability to restart the war.
That frustration is understandable. But
Washington must also recognize a basic reality: the only way to delink a
U.S.-Iran agreement from the Israel-Lebanon conflict is to delink the
United States itself from Israel’s recurring resort to military
escalation.
As long as Israel retains the capacity to
drag the United States back into conflict, Tehran will see little reason
to separate diplomacy with Washington from the wars Israel chooses to
start and pull the US into.
Indeed, the principal reason Tehran
insists on a region-wide ceasefire is to deny Israel the ability to draw
the United States into yet another war with Iran itself.
If Trump were to clearly establish that
the United States would neither participate in nor defend an unjustified
Israeli military escalation, Tehran might no longer see the need to
link a U.S.-Iran accord to the Israel-Lebanon front.
Such a calculated distancing from Israel
would serve American interests in any case. But the need for it has
rarely been more apparent than it is today.
Trita Parsi is the Executive VP of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
and an award-winning author. Washingtonian Magazine has named him one
of the 25 most influential voices on foreign policy. Noam Chomsky calls
him “one of the most distinguished scholars on Iran”
Today is the birthday anniversary of Che Guevara (June 14, 1928).
Che Guevara was and is an inspiration to
all those who fight against and oppose imperialists and their lackeys
throughout the world. The centre of that power was and still is the
United States, the ‘leader’ of the warmongers, war criminals, weapon
industries and its allies who further the cause of American hegemony and
perpetuate the power of colonial powers like Israel.
Che Guevara and Fidel Castro stood against
the gangster policies of the United States and its wars of aggression.
For instance, the ethnic cleansing in Palestine that is still going on
is because of the power Zionists wield in America and direct the course
of US foreign policies.
In Iran, America and Britain toppled the
democratic government of Dr Mossadegh in 1953 and reinstated the pliant
regime of the Shah. The Washington rulers did the same with the
socialist-democratic government of Allende in Chile. America has been
the patron of all the right-wing dictatorships in Latin America.
The people who stood up against the
American domination in the western hemisphere were Fidel Castro and his
comrades like Che. They were the people who liberated Cuba from the
Batista dictatorship and heroically upheld the cause of freedom and
independence of the island nation despite all the efforts of the US to
destroy the Cuban revolution and the CIA’s hundreds of secret plans and
attempts to kill Fidel Castro.
—-
“Whenever death may surprise us, let it be
welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and
another hand reaches out to take up our arms.”
While talks in Cairo center on
disarming Hamas, Israel has kept killing hundreds of Palestinians
without accountability and is expanding its control over the strip
despite an alleged ‘ceasefire’
The US military has begun constructing a
“huge base” on the Gaza envelope to implement US President Donald
Trump’s plan to “take over” the strip, Israel Hayom reported on 13 June.
The US base, being built near the Israeli
military base at Reim settlement, will function as both a military and
civilian headquarters for the organizations and forces arriving in the
area to implement the Trump plan.
In February 2025, Trump proposed a US “takeover” of the Gaza Strip.
The plan called
for the forced displacement of approximately two million Palestinians
to neighboring lands and redeveloping the territory as a high-tech
business and tourism hub that Trump said would become the “Riviera of
the Middle East.”
The new base will replace the US facility
in the Israeli town of Kiryat Gat, established under the direction of
Trump’s Board of Peace in the wake of the October 2025 “ceasefire.”
Representatives from more than 24
countries staffed the multinational headquarters and were tasked with
overseeing the ceasefire and the entry of humanitarian aid.
The Kiryat Gat base was also meant to
direct the operations of an International Stabilization Force (ISF)
tasked with providing security in Gaza.
However, Israel has continued to severely
restrict the entry of aid into Gaza, recently suspending all shipments,
while the ISF has yet to be formed.
After the US and Israel launched a war on Iran on 28 February, the overwhelming majority of personnel left Kiryat Gat.
Israel Hayom noted that plans for
the new US base include the construction of a tower intended for the
command and control of forces in the field.
The US military has already begun issuing
tenders to private contractors, including for the supply of mobile
structures to house personnel and serve as a headquarters until
permanent buildings are established at the site.
The new base will also host troops from the ISF if it is formed.
Five countries previously agreed to send
forces to Gaza, namely Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and
Albania. Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Azerbaijan have expressed a
willingness to participate but have made no firm commitment.
Currently, no countries are willing to
send troops due to fears that their forces will be tasked with disarming
the Palestinian resistance, as well as concerns about the ongoing
US-Israeli conflict with Iran.
The construction of the new US base is
being fully coordinated with the Israeli Defense Ministry. Military
officials expect the base to be constructed and staffed within a few
months.
The report comes as talks continue between Hamas and Israel via negotiators in Cairo.
Israel persists in demanding Hamas
disarmament before progressing the ceasefire, while simultaneously
continuing to kill Palestinians in Gaza without consequences and
expanding its occupation rather than withdrawing from the territory
seized during the genocide.
Israel has killed nearly 1,000
Palestinians in Gaza and expanded its control of the strip from 50
percent to at least 60 percent since the ceasefire.
One security source told Israel Hayom
that the “chance of renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip is greater than
the possibility that Hamas will actually be disarmed through a
diplomatic agreement.”
“Demilitarizing Gaza became a bigger aim than stopping Israel’s genocide; such is the absurd truth,” wrote author Ramona Wadi.
While “colonial expansion as the reason
behind Israel’s genocide in Gaza, utterly exposed for the entire world
to see, [it] is never discussed by the international community. On the
contrary, the Board of Peace promotes it and sets the conditions that
justify colonialism instead of preventing it, using an extension of the
same narrative Israel used to destroy Gaza,” Wadi added.
The Israeli military has continued
its attacks across the occupied West Bank as its troops have stormed
several villages and towns, the Wafa news agency reports.
Aljazeera, 14 June 2026
Here’s a quick look at the latest developments:
Israeli forces carried out multiple raids across the West Bank,
including home searches and detentions, according to Palestinian
security and local sources.
In the Bethlehem area, troops raided the village of Husan and the
city of Beit Sahour. No arrests were reported in Husan, but in Beit
Sahour, a family was told their son, Mohammad Mousa Dar al-Asas, must
surrender to Israeli authorities.
In the Salfit area, Israeli forces stormed the town of az-Zawiya at
dawn, searched several homes and detained a young man identified as
Khaled Shukeir.
Seven Palestinians, including a father and his four sons, were arrested in the town of Anata, east of Jerusalem.
Israeli forces demolished residential and agricultural structures
north of Jerusalem. Bulldozers operated by the Israeli military razed
property belonging to the al-Zawahra family in the Bedouin community of
Khallet al-Sidra in the town of Mikhmas.
The Palestinian Authority’s war on the
resistance is the continuation of a collaboration with colonialism that
Palestinian elites have practised for more than a century
A member of the Palestinian Authority
security forces fires tear gas towards a protest against their security
operation in Jenin in the occupied West Bank on 16 December 2024 (Jaafar
Ashtiyeh/AFP)
Amid the ongoing Israeligenocide in Gaza and its terror in the West Bank and Lebanon, the Palestinian
and Lebanese resistance must confront not only their Israeli enemy, but
also their own elites who are collaborating with that enemy.
The historical reaction to colonial conquest and imperial control across much of the world has been threefold.
First, radical resistance by the majority of poor peasants and workers, and by a substantial sector of the urban middle class.
Second, cooperation and compromise by much
of the wealthy elite and some sectors of the middle class, justified by
the belief that such cooperation would lead to colonial concessions and
avert an outright confrontation in which the colonised would surely be
the losers.
Third, complete subservience and
collaboration by another sector of the wealthy, hoping to receive
preferential treatment over rival elite cooperators and compromisers,
based on the logic that the persistence of colonial control benefits the
elite as local agents of colonialism.
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These responses have been recorded across the colonised and post-colonial world – from Asia to Africa.
The Arab world – including the Palestinians – has been no exception.
Pre-Nakba Palestinian society responded to British colonialism and Zionist settler-colonialism by following this script exactly
Indeed, pre-Nakba Palestinian society responded to British colonialism and Zionist settler-colonialism by following this script exactly, as it would after the Nakba.
Since the early 1920s, while divided among
themselves, wealthy Palestinian elites broadly agreed that resisting
Zionist colonialism required cooperation with the British occupiers.
The strategy was led by the Arab Executive
and the Supreme Muslim Council, both dominated by major wealthy
Jerusalem, Jaffa and other urban Palestinian families.
They were opposed by other elites, mainly a
rival Jerusalem family and other families marginalised within these two
bodies, who supported full collaboration with the British and the
Zionists.
The latter, with Zionist funding and
support, established the “Agricultural Party” (al-Hizb al-Zirai), the
National Muslim Society and later al-Hizb al-Watani (the National
Party).
The majority of peasants and workers chose resistance, with substantial support from the urban middle classes.
The independence movement
Middle-class intellectuals were so
dismayed by Palestinian elites – whether the outright smaller group of
collaborators or the larger group of “cooperators” – that they formed
Hizb al-Istiqlal (the party of “independence”) in 1932.
The party supported peasant and worker
resistance and launched a civil rights movement of demonstrations,
boycotts and civil disobedience.
A story of a 1930s uprising against British colonialism is key to understanding Gaza today
Hamdi al-Husayni of Gaza (unrelated to the
elite Jerusalem Husayni family) and other young Istiqlal leaders were
inspired by other anti-colonial struggles, especially Gandhi’s
activities in India.
Emulating Gandhi, the Istiqlal Party
leadership, including Husayni and Akram Zuaytar, a young schoolteacher
from Nablus, Izzat Darwazah, a nationalist publicist and teacher, and
the lawyer Awni Abd al-Hadi, who was also a secretary of the
elite-controlled Arab Executive after 1928, called for non-cooperation
with the British rulers of Palestine.
They borrowed tactics, including Gandhi’s
March 1930 month-long Salt March across India, as well as boycott and
civil disobedience.
Soon after forming the party, Istiqlal leaders openly criticised elite Palestinians for complicity with British rule.
At the party’s first mass meeting in
December 1932, its leaders called for independence, denounced Britain
and Zionism, and called for cooperation with newly independent Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Accusing the Arab Executive of passivity, they demanded its leaders refuse cooperation with the British Mandatory authorities.
The following year, Istiqlal’s capacity
for mobilisation peaked, as British suppression, Zionist apartheid,
evictions of Palestinian peasants and Jewish immigration to Palestine
reached unprecedented levels.
Resistance and repression
Failing to persuade the Arab Executive to
adopt non-cooperation, the Istiqlal Party mobilised demonstrations in
October 1933, protesting British policy and Jewish colonisation.
The executive eventually relented and
backed calls for demonstrations, despite “opposition” from the
collaborationist elite faction.
Thousands marched across Palestine,
including 8,000 in Jaffa alone – among them 600 Palestinians from Wadi
al-Hawarith whose lands were taken over by Zionist colonists a few
months earlier. Rampaging British police killed 26 unarmed demonstrators
in Jaffa and Haifa and injured dozens more.
Palestinian elites began to organise political parties that competed for British favour and to curry favour with the Zionists
British authorities, wealthy elite
Palestinians of both camps and Zionists all saw a common interest in
suppressing the Istiqlal Party.
Their combined efforts succeeded in all
but destroying what had become the most popular Palestinian
anti-colonial party by 1934-1935.
Still, younger Palestinian activists,
including former members of Istiqlal and the Congress for Youth,
intensified their calls on Palestinian elites to abandon their futile
efforts to win British support against Zionism and adopt non-cooperation
instead.
By 1936, Palestinian workers launched
multiple strikes that elite leaders opposed, costing them further
support among the youth movement, the rump of the Istiqlal Party and its
working-class supporters.
As elite politicians continued talks with
the High Commissioner about establishing a legislative assembly, new
meetings – led by Istiqlalists such as Hamdi al-Husayni and joined by
urban workers – culminated in a major general strike declared on 19
April 1936.
Lasting for six months, it remains the world’s longest general strike to date.
Highly mobilised Palestinians, led by
Istiqlalists and youth groups, including the Young Muslim Men’s
Association, moved to the forefront of political life.
Their momentum compelled elite politicians
– among them the Mufti Amin al-Husayni, who had initially opposed the
strike – to establish the Arab Higher Committee a week later as a
coalition to replace the defunct Arab Executive, which had been
dissolved in August 1934 amid elite factionalism.
The Higher Committee sought to moderate
demands for civil disobedience, while the British High Commissioner
reminded the elite leadership of their role in restraining the masses.
The 1936 Palestine strike: A history of Palestinian revolt
The mufti’s reticence to support the general strike and the broader Palestinian revolt lasted well into the summer of 1936.
Meanwhile, Palestinian elites began to
organise political parties that competed for British favour and, in the
case of the collaborationist National Defence Party, to curry favour
with the Zionists.
Amid the commitment to resistance among
peasants, workers and middle-class youth and intellectuals, and the
elite’s continued cooperation and collaboration, the Palestinians’ Great
Revolt erupted and lasted until its final brutal suppression by the
British and their Zionist colonial settlers in 1939, with more than 8,000 Palestinians killed.
Palestinian elite collaborators formed a
counter-revolutionary militia called the “peace bands” to kill
Palestinian revolutionaries.
The defeat of the Revolt led to the 1948 Nakba nine years later.
Oslo’s heirs
These dynamics re-emerged in the post-Nakba period.
The children of expelled Palestinian
peasants and workers, alongside some of the middle classes, launched a
new political struggle in the late 1950s, which transformed into an
armed resistance movement by the late 1960s.
Elite Palestinians would soon co-opt the
movement, ostensibly to help it gain “international” legitimacy, first
by interceding with Arab regimes to recognise the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) in 1974 as “the sole legitimate representative of the
Palestinian people”.
Funding from Arab regimes soon domesticated the PLO.
Replicating the strategy of the pre-Nakba
Palestinian elite, the PLO sought to cooperate with the US and Europe by
“moderating” its demands for Palestinian liberation from Zionist
settler-colonialism to calling instead for a “two-state solution”.
Secret channels with the US and open
channels with Europe ultimately diminished the erstwhile PLO agenda from
total liberation to demanding a mini-state on a fraction of Palestine’s
territory.
But if the PLO after 1974 replicated the
role of elite Palestinian cooperators and compromisers between the 1920s
and 1940s, the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords
transformed the PLO yet again into that other part of the 1920s-1940s
elite – including the Agricultural Party and the National Defence Party –
who collaborated outright with the Zionists and their colonial
sponsors.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) today is a mirror image of these collaborator forces.
Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat’s PLO and the
successor PA have tried to extinguish all attempts to reinvigorate the
struggle championed by the Istiqlal Party and the peasant
revolutionaries, which was initially espoused by the PLO’s “rejectionist
front” since the mid-1970s, as well as by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and what
remained of the PLO left since the late 1980s and early 1990s.
This culminated in the coup
against the elected Hamas government in 2007, organised by the US,
Israel and the PA, echoing how a similar coalition ganged up against the
Istiqlal Party in the 1930s.
The PA security forces played the role of
the 1930s “peace bands”. This is the situation that the Palestinian
people have found themselves in since 1993.
Their struggle today continues to be one
between a collaborationist PA and a pro-liberation resistance intent on
ending settler-colonialism.
The Gaza genocide is how Israel and its western sponsors have responded to the Palestinian resistance, while their PA proxy has intensified its war and repression against the resistance in the PA-controlled West Bank areas during the genocide.
The PA is aided in its efforts by the Israeli occupation army and armed Jewish colonial settlers.
But just as the collaborating and
cooperating Palestinian elites of the 1920s to 1940s were unable to halt
the resistance, the current PA collaborators are failing at their
assigned task of vanquishing the spirit of resistance among
Palestinians.
It is this ongoing resistance to Israel
and its western sponsors, and the collaborating PA and the wealthy
Palestinian elites who support it, that will ultimately decide the
future of the Palestinian people.
After more than a century of collaboration
and resistance, and Israel’s refusal to halt its genocide, the scales
continue to tip persistently in favour of the resistance.
Obstacles to the aggressors’
expansion and occupation in the Middle East are Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah,
the Houthis and Shia militia in Iraq. They are presented as “threats”
rather than defenders of their dignity, sovereignty and land.
U.S.-Israel biennial command post
simulation and training exercise, October 2010. Then IDF Deputy Chief of
Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz and Deputy EUCOM Commander U.S. Lt. Gen.
John D. Gardner (IDF/Flickr)
If you understand who the aggressor is, you are on your way to understanding the mad and perilous times we live in.
Once you get that, what you’ve been taught all your life starts to lose its hold on you.
Establishment education and media try to confuse you. Independent media like Consortium News try to clarify.
Establishment education and media portray the aggressor as the defender, and the victim as the threat. Consortium News
endeavors to show you the “threat” is really an obstacle. An obstacle
to aggression and occupation. An obstacle to expansion. Locally and
globally.
Few would agree with aggression, paid for
with your taxes in a so-called democracy. So obstacles to aggression
become threats you’re supposed to be afraid of. Offensive action is made
to appear as “defense” to protect you from the “threat.”
There’s nothing new in this. The Romans
dressed up their imperial aggression as self-defense against fake
threats. Rome provoked tribes, first in Italy and then Gaul and
Germania, into forming alliances to protect the tribes’ sovereignty, and
then Rome presented these alliances as “threats” that had to be
destroyed, justifying war against them.
Rome would also provoke an adversary into invading or launching an attack to obtain the casus belli needed
to start a pre-planned war. For instance, Roman ally Masinissa of
Numidia repeatedly raided Carthage to provoke it into finally responding
militarily in violation of a treaty it had with Rome. The empire used
this as a pretext for total destruction and annexation — even though
Carthage, an obstacle to Roman expansion, posed no realistic,
existential threat.
In the earlier U.S. imperium, Mark Twain explained it this way:
“The statesmen will invent cheap lies,
putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will
be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently
study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he
will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for
the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque
self-deception.”
Today the obstacles to the aggressors’
expansion and occupation in the Middle East are Iran plus the legal,
armed resistance to Greater Israel and Greater America: Hamas,
Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shia militia in Iraq. They are presented as
“threats”rather than defenders of their dignity, sovereignty and land.
Nazi Germany portrayed resistance fighters in France, Italy, Greece,
Yugoslavia and elsewhere as a “threat,” as “terrorists” and “bandits” to
delegitimize legitimate obstacles to total domination.
In Asia the “threat” is China. Beijing
protecting its sovereignty in its own region is somehow a threat to U.S.
warships near China’s waters and to Taiwan, which the U.S. agrees is
part of China.
In Europe years of NATO expansion, refusal
to negotiate a mutual security treaty, rehabilitation of fascism, a
coup, and civil war in Ukraine against ethnic Russian coup-resistors
provoked Russia to intervene, much as the Romans provoked Carthage.
Getting Russia to invade Ukraine allows
the portrayal of Moscow as the aggressor and a “threat” to all of Europe
and not as an obstacle to the U.S. and Wall Street return to their
1990s dominance of Russia. (Now there is constant talk of direct NATO
war with Russia. The fear is another provocation to get Russia to start
it.)
All of these obstacles to U.S. global
hegemony are presented to you as existential threats that only the
mighty United States, NATO and Israel can protect you from. There’s
nothing in it for them, of course, except saving your life, we’re
expected to believe. Except you don’t have to believe it. You have
alternative media like Consortium Newsto expose the deceptions on a daily basis.
That’s why pro-establishment social media
companies and so-called anti-disinformation services have tried to hurt
us. And that’s why we need your help. So …
(Photo credit: REUTERS/AMMAR AWAD)
