Saturday 20 October 2018

US Impedes Efforts to Reconstruct War-Ravaged Syria




US Impedes Efforts to Reconstruct War-Ravaged Syria
PETER KORZUN | 19.10.2018 | WORLD / MIDDLE EAST

US Impedes Efforts to Reconstruct War-Ravaged Syria

The US is officially the largest donor in the world, but does it really care about those who suffer? Not so much. The administration believes nothing should be done unless it is in pursuit of political goals. International humanitarian aid has been cut recently.  In August, the US pulled out of its role in Syria’s short-term reconstruction, suspending $230 million of relief funds.
The American foreign-assistance policy is going through drastic changes. “The United States is the world’s largest giver in the world, by far, of foreign aid. But few give anything to us,” President Trump said, addressing the UN General Assembly to announce a major review process to reform the decision-making on the allocation of foreign-aid money.“Moving forward, we are only going to give foreign aid to those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends,” the president explained.
So, foreign aid is only going to friends, and friends are those who do what they are told. The No Assistance for Assad Act has passed the House and is currently before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That legislation would ensure that no US money is spent on reconstruction in government-controlled Syrian territory, either directly or through the UN, IMF, or other international bodies.
And that’s not all. The president did not provide all the details. The new policy anticipates the creation of obstacles that will impede the reconstruction efforts that are aimed at easing the suffering of people living in war-ravaged countries such as Syria. No good deed goes unpunished.
According to UN estimates, the war in Syria has cost $388 billion. Most Western companies are steering clear of that country. Any non-US company is taking a huge risk if its transaction involves Americans or an American company. Iran has been under sanctions for many years. Syrians are looking at Russia with hope while the US is doing its best to deprive them of much-needed assistance.
According to NBC News, the new administration’s strategy for the war in Syria is focused more on pushing Iran and its allies out of the country. On October 16, the US Department of the Treasury took action against 20 Iranian businesses providing a financial lifeline to the Basij Resistance Force, a paramilitary force that answers to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).  The second wave of anti-Iranian sanctions will take effect on Nov.4 and will deal a blow to the country’s oil exports.
According to the new plan, the use of arms in self-defense against Iranians is permitted but priority is given to impeding reconstruction efforts in the areas of Syria where Iranian and Russian forces are present. Sanctions will be imposed on Russian and Iranian companies working on reconstruction projects. The US military will remain in Syria as long as the administration wants them to, under the pretext that, even if ISIS is completely eliminated, the danger of small pockets of resistance popping up will remain.
Actually, this means that the forces can stay forever. The imaginary threat of an ISIS that in reality has been routed is needed because the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) covers only the groups implicated in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, plus their associates. By no stretch of the imagination could Iran be included on this list, unlike ISIS, which grew out of al-Qaeda. However, National Security Adviser John Bolton explained last month that US troops would stay “as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders.”
So, ordinary Syrians will suffer because the US does not like Iran. Refugees will not return home, thus aggravating the migration headaches for an EU that is already on the brink of dissolution. It will make Brussels more amenable to US demands, be those tariffs, gas deals, the policy on Russia, NATO expenditures, or whatever.
The announcement of a joint Russian-Turkish demilitarization zone in Idlib will push the issue of Syria’s reconstruction front and center.  If China tries to contribute, it’ll come under American sanctions as well for dealing with “Assad-allied governments and financial institutions.” Despite that,   a Chinese container ship docked on October 9 at Lebanon’s Tripoli seaport, inaugurating a Chinese-developed shipping line between Beijing and a port less than 30 km (18.5 miles) from the Syrian-Lebanese border. On October 10, China held a ceremony in Latakia, a major Syrian port, announcing its donation of 800 electrical power generators. The reconstruction of Syria’s oil facilities is underway with Russia’s help.
One might not like or support Assad’s government, but millions of Syrians cannot be left without outside aid, otherwise extremists will take advantage of the situation and we’ll see ISIS or some other extremist group take root and grow strong enough to pose a global threat. The restoration of Syria is the best way to fight terrorists — the threat the US makes a show of being so concerned about.  By impeding this process, it is shooting itself in the foot. The EU’s hopes of seeing a letup in its migration problem will be dashed. Contributing to Syria’s restoration means contributing to the solution of Europe’s most pressing problem.    The reconstruction of Syria should be depoliticized. This is the time for all international partners to join together to assist in the Syrian recovery effort.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Euro-Med: ‘At Least One Gazan is Killed Every Single Day’

Source
Palestinians taking part in the Great March of Return. (Photo: Abdallah Aljamal, Palestine Chronicle)
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) said that Israeli forces caused injuries to one in every 100 Palestinians as Gaza protests conclude 200 days and called on the international community to exert serious pressure on Israel to end its targeting of Palestinian demonstrators.
Euro-Med said in a statement:
“The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor calls on the international community to exert serious pressure to put an end to the targeting of Palestinian demonstrators in the Gaza Strip and to protect their right to peaceful assembly.”

Euro-Med also called on “all parties concerned to exert pressure on Israel to lift its blockade affecting every aspect of Gaza’s largely civilian population.”
Euro-Med described the continued use of excessive force by Israeli forces against Palestinian protesters at the Israel-Gaza fence as “deeply shocking,” noting that in the 200 days of protests, Gaza lost 205 residents.

Euro-Med Monitor said that at least “one Palestinian is killed every single day,” further noting that “in every 100 Gazans, one injury was recorded.”
“Despite the fact that the protesters were mostly unarmed civilians and did not in most cases pose a credible threat, the Israeli forces met them with lethal force, including by live fire and explosive bullets, as well as toxic gas and tear gas.”
In addition, 69 of those injured, 14 of whom were children, suffered permanent disability, according to the latest statistics by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Euro-Med stressed,
“Israel’s response to protests violates the principles of international human rights law; that is, despite the fact that protests have largely been peaceful, Israeli soldiers killed 205 people, including five women and 38 children, while also injuring 22,527 others, 18% of whom are children.”

It added:
“The Israeli authorities continue to impose a relentlessly suffocating blockade that has left civilians unaccounted for, simply as collateral damage to a policy of collective punishment … The Israeli forces targeted Palestinians indiscriminately.”
Sarah Pritchett, Euro-Med’s spokesperson, said:
“The targeting of medical staff and journalists also contravenes international humanitarian law, specifically articles 15 and 79 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which stipulate that medical, journalistic and civilian personnel must be respected and protected.”
(Ma’an, PC, Social Media)

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Saudis now say Khashoggi killed in consulate, after claiming he left alive

Saudis say Khashoggi died after fight broke out between journalist and ‘people who met him’ inside consulate

Friday’s confirmation marks astounding reversal from earlier statements by Saudi officials (Reuters)
Saudi Arabia confirmed late Friday that Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside its consulate in Istanbul.
In a statement on Saudi state television, the country’s chief prosecutor said a fight broke out between Khashoggi and “people who met him” in the consulate. The brawl resulted in Khashoggi’s death, the prosecutor said.
The confirmation marked an astounding reversal from earlier statements by Saudi officials who insisted that Khashoggi had left the consulate alive shortly after entering it on 2 October, when he was last seen publicly.
Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman insisted earlier this month that Khashoggi had left the consulate. “Yes. He’s not inside,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg published on 5 October. “My understanding is he entered and he got out after a few minutes or one hour.”
Saudi media also reported that Riyadh fired top general Ahmed al-Assiri and a senior adviser to the royal court, Saoud al-Qahtani. Mohammed Bin Saleh Al Rumeih, a pilot and assistant to the intelligence chief, was also dismissed.
‘My understanding is he entered and he got out after a few minutes or one hour’
–Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Last week, Turkish officials told MEE and US media outlets that Saudi Arabia was preparing to admit Khashoggi was killed in the consulate, but would attempt to absolve bin Salman of any responsibility. The New York Times reported on Thursday that Riyadh was looking to blame Assiri for the murder in an effort to shield the crown prince from blame.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who earlier pledged to “sanction the hell out Saudi Arabia” if it was involved in Khashoggi’s murder, was quick to express his scepticism about the latest Saudi account.
“First, we were told Mr Khashoggi supposedly left the consulate and there was blanket denial of any Saudi involvement,” he wrote on twitter. “Now, a fight breaks out and he’s killed in the consulate, all without knowledge of Crown Prince.”
Democratic representative Adam Schiff tweeted: “The claim that Khashoggi was killed while brawling with 15 men dispatched from Saudi Arabia is not at all credible. If he was fighting with those sent to capture or kill him, it was for his life.”
Still, President Donald Trump said Saudi Arabia’s explanation was credible, Reuters reported. Speaking to reporters after a rally in Glendale, Arizona, Trump said Saudi Arabia’s announcement on the circumstances of Khashoggi’s death was a “good first step.” He also said he prefers that any sanctions against Riyadh not include canceling big defense orders.
Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said earlier in a statement: “We are saddened to hear confirmation of Mr Khashoggi’s death, and we offer our deepest condolences to his family, fiancée, and friends.”
A Turkish source who has listened in full to an audio recording of the Saudi journalist’s last moments told Middle East Eye that Khashoggi was tortured and killed in seven minutes inside the building.
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“There was no attempt to interrogate him. They had come to kill him,” the source told MEE.
Salah Muhammad al-Tubaigy, who has been identified as the head of forensic evidence in the Saudi general security department, was one of a 15-member squad who arrived in Ankara earlier that day on a private jet.
Tubaigy began to cut Khashoggi’s body up on a table in the study while he was still alive, the Turkish source said.
On Friday night, a tweet that Qahtani, the dismissed adviser, wrote last year began making the rounds again on social media: “Do you think I rebuke (others) on my own accord without direction? I am an employee and a loyal executer to the orders of my master, the king, and my master, his highness the crown prince,” he wrote at the time.
The Saudi prosecutor added that the investigation was still underway and 18 suspects had been arrested so far.
A Saudi official familiar with the investigation told Reuters that the crown prince “had no knowledge of the specific operation” that resulted in Khashoggi’s death.
“There were no orders for them to kill him or even specifically kidnap him,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity and adding that there was a standing order to bring critics of the kingdom back to the country.
“MBS had no knowledge of this specific operation and certainly did not order a kidnapping or murder of anybody. He will have been aware of the general instruction to tell people to come back,” the official said.
Saudi state TV outlet Alekhbariya also reported that King Salman was forming a committee – to be headed by the crown prince – that will be tasked with “reconstructing the leadership of general intelligence, modernising its system and clearly defining its responsibilities”.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Arabia’s king spoke by phone late Friday, stressing the importance of maintaining full cooperation between Ankara and Riyadh as they investigate Khashoggi’s disappearance, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The leaders also shared information on the independent investigations being conducted by both countries, Anadolu said.
An unidentified Saudi official said in a statement late Friday that the kingdom expressed its “deep regret” over the incident. He added that discussions with Khashoggi in the consulate “did not go as required and developed in a negative way, leading to a fight” that in turn led to the journalist’s death “and to their attempt to conceal and cover what happened”.

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New US-led airstrikes kill over 30 Syrian civilians

More than 30 civilians killed in new US-led strikes on Dayr al-Zawr
The file photo shows smoke following an airstrike on the western frontline of Raqqah in Syria on July 15, 2017. (Photo by AFP)The file photo shows smoke following an airstrike on the western frontline of Raqqah in Syria on July 15, 2017. (Photo by AFP)
At least 32 civilians have lost their lives when warplanes of the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group carried out a series of airstrikes in Syria’s oil-rich eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr in less than 24 hours, a monitoring group says.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that strikes on the village of Sousa killed 18 civilians including seven children late Thursday and 14 more civilians on Friday. Dozens were wounded and many remained under the rubble in the village.
The monitoring group said nine Daesh terrorists also lost their lives in the raids.
Since 2014, the US-led coalition has acknowledged direct responsibility for more than 1,100 civilian deaths in Syria and Iraq, but rights groups put the number killed much higher.
SOHR says coalition strikes in Syria alone have killed more than 3,300 civilians.
Daesh terrorists had been purged from most regions in Syria only through counterterrorism operations conducted by government troops and allied fighters from popular defense groups.
The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.
The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.
On December 14, 2017, Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates stated that the US-led coalition was indeed targeting civilian facilities and providing Daesh terrorists with cover.

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Saudi Arabia—not Iran—is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world today

 by Adam Weinstein
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense of the Kingdom of Sau
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in the Oval Office at the White House, March 14, 2017.
Saudi Arabia—not Iran—is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world today and Wahhabism remains the source of most radical Islamic extremism. For years Iran has borne the unenviable title of “world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism.” However, out of the 61 groups that are designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. State Department, the overwhelming majority are Wahhabi-inspired and Saudi-funded groups, with a focus on the West and Iran as their primary enemy. Only two are Shi’a—Hezbollah and Kataib Hezbollah, and only four have ever claimed to receive support from Iran. Nearly all of the Sunni militant groups listed receive significant support from either the Saudi government or Saudi citizens.

The Great Compromise

Wahhabism is an ideology of compromise between the ambitions of the zealot and the needs of the ruler. Wahhabism can be thought of as a religio-political subcategory of the Salafi approach to Islam. Salafis get their name from the al-salaf al-salih or “pious companions” of Muhammad whose practices they claim to imitate. What distinguishes Wahhabism from Salafism is that the former is dependent on the House of Saud for its power whereas the latter is a phenomenon that exists globally.
The 18th century partnership of tribal leader Ibn Saud and cleric Abd al-Wahhab wedded two parallel sources of legitimacy in Arabia—religion and tribal kinship. The clerics known as ulema received their authority from God and then conferred it upon the Saud clan themselves. In exchange the ulema are protected from the risks that come with governance. Wahhabis must be distinguished from jihadi Salafis because Wahhabism is inextricably linked to the Saudi state and therefore not revolutionary in nature. The Royal family walks a tightrope between the liberalization necessary for economic development and strong political ties with the West, and the more conservative demands of the Wahhabi movement. One such demand is to turn a blind eye to the sponsorship and export of terrorism and jihad in South Asia, the Middle East, and even the West.

Exporting Jihad And Buying Friends

Some contend that Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia are being used as scapegoats when in fact the real causes of Islamist terrorism are far more complex. Mohammed Alyahya made just this argument in his New York Times article “Don’t Blame ‘Wahhabism’ for Terrorism.” The crux of the argument is that “most Islamist militants have nothing to do with Saudi Wahhabism.” For example, he asserts that the Taliban are Deobandis which is “a revivalist, anti-imperialist strain of Islam that emerged as a reaction to British colonialism in South Asia” and al Qaeda “follow a radical current that emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood.” While a nuanced understanding of the causes of terrorism is important, it must not lead policymakers to ignore an obvious source.
It is certainly true that not all Sunni extremist movements find their roots in Wahhabism. Al Qaeda was inspired by the anti-state Islamist literature of Muslim Brothers like Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb. But organizations and movements evolve. The al Qaeda we know today is very much a product of the more extreme elements of the Wahhabi movement that is tolerated and promoted by Riyadh. However, it is Pakistan rather than the Arab world, which is the true ground zero of Saudi Arabia’s export of extremism. An invasive strain of Saudi-sponsored Salafism, often referred to as the Ahl-e-Hadith movement, has spread throughout Pakistan, all the while the fundamentalist Deobandi movement is increasingly supported by Gulf donors. According to a U.S. government cable, “financial support estimated at nearly 100 million USD annually was making its way to Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith clerics in the region from ‘missionary’ and ‘Islamic charitable’ organizations in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ostensibly with the direct support of those governments.” This fusion of Salafism and Deobandism occurs at the expense of indigenous South Asian interpretations of Islam like the Sufi-oriented Barelvis.
The close relationship between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan began as early as the administration of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. According to a recently availableCIA report, in 1975, Bhutto “obtained assurances of generous aid from Saudi Arabia” during a state visit. In exchange for such support Pakistan “furnished military technicians and advisers to the armed forces of Saudi Arabia.” Other CIA documentsreveal that during Zia ul-Haq’s military dictatorship, Pakistan viewed the Soviet presence in Afghanistan beginning in 1979 as an existential threat. So Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency was more than enthusiastic to train Pashtun mujahideen to fight the Soviets with Saudi and U.S. assistance.
Saudi officials naturally garnered greater respect from Pakistani officers than their American counterparts due to the revered status of the Kingdom as caretaker of the two holiest sites in Islam. The U.S. also underestimated the extent to which Pakistani officers would develop sympathies for the militants they spent years training. The ISI became an intermediary between Saudi Arabia and militant Islamic groups across South Asia. During the 1990s, the ISI shifted its focus towards Kashmir and the Punjab in an effort to counter perceived Indian aggression. But the deep connections fostered between the ISI and various militants resurfaced after 9/11 when their focus pivoted back to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile the ISI fought some militant groups while allowing others like the Haqqani Network to remain powerful. When Osama bin Laden was discovered in Pakistan, the U.S. ramped up drone strikes against safe havens, and the ISI retaliated by releasing the name of the CIA’s Islamabad bureau chief which resulted in numerous death threats. Since 9/11, Gulf dollars have continued to bolster extremist groups inside Pakistan even as Pakistani civilians die by the thousands from suicide operations linked to Saudi-sponsored madrasas.
In exchange for tolerating Gulf-sponsored terrorism Pakistani leaders get security. While in power they have an unofficial army of militants they can call upon to deal with anything from Baluchi separatists to keeping India on its toes. Once they leave power they have an escape hatch to protect them and their family. When Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was found guilty of corruption, kidnapping, and hijacking, in the summer of 2000, Saudi Arabia accepted him to live in exile. Benazir Bhutto’s notoriously corrupt widow and ex-president, Asif Zardari, went on a “self-imposed exile” to the U.A.E. throughout 2016. And the former president and general, Pervez Musharraf, is currentlyhiding out in Dubai to avoid prosecution for treason charges.
But the export of extremism from Saudi Arabia is not always by design. In his history of Pakistan, Ian Talbot argued that “the exposure of the lower-class Pakistanis to the Islamic heartland further encouraged a mindset favourable to Islamization, although Zia was to find that its impact on sectarianism was to prove unpredictable and potentially destabilizing.” Saudi Arabia fears the effects of its own radicalization and recently deported 40,000 Pakistani workers over concerns of terrorism. Today South Asia is rocked by sectarian violence from the mountainous peaks of Kabul to the tropical markets of Karachi and posh hotels of Mumbai. This February, suicide attacks killed hundreds across Pakistan. The province of Sindh begged the central government to shut down Gulf-funded seminaries. Islamabad declined.

Controlling The Message

The internet age rendered in-person missionary work by Saudi clerics less relevant. The radical messages of Saudi preachers and their protégés can be viewed on mobile phones across the world. Students filter into the seminaries in Mecca and Medina and return to teach at the hundreds of madrasas spread across the world. These representatives of the Kingdom do not always preach a militant message. Sometimes, and perhaps more dangerously, they preach an apologist one.
In 2008, popular Indian televangelist Zakir Naik called 9/11 an “inside job” done by the Bush administration to defame Islam. He also commented that “If he [Osama bin Laden] is terrorizing America the terrorist, the biggest terrorist, I am with him.” Despite these comments Naik went on to win the King Faisal International Prize for his “service to Islam.” The conspiracy theories he peddles are crucial to Saudi Arabia’s standing among the Muslim masses that are not necessarily prone to violence. However, conspiracy theories that brush aside the problem of extremism within the Kingdom are nothing new. Rumors about U.S. involvement in the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca led to an attack on the U.S. embassy in Islamabad in 1979 resulting in the death of two U.S. citizens.
Meanwhile Saudi Arabia spends millions on public relations firms in Washington D.C. every year in order to ensure it is not viewed as a state sponsor—or even enabler—of terrorism. The Kingdom attempts to contain the effects of its own hate preachers by campaigning to distance itself from the most egregious acts of terrorism in the Muslim world while still embracing a Salafi message. All the while in D.C. the Kingdom scrambles to disassociate itself not only from terrorism but from extremism altogether.

A Complicated Relationship

Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull once asked President Obama “aren’t the Saudis your friends?” Obama famously replied “it’s complicated.” It is complicated. How can Saudi Arabia possibly serve as an effective partner against terror when its internal security is dependent on the continued export of terrorism? The answer is that for both Saudi Arabia and the U.S. the other has always been the perceived lesser of two evils.
In the early 1930s when U.S. companies first began to explore the Saudi oil market they were favored by the Royal family over the British who were viewed as imperialists disguised as businessmen. This enemy-of-my-enemy partnership grew closer during the Cold War and the goal to contain the Soviets was described as the “complementary foreign policy” of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in a 1983 CIA memorandum. The fact that Saudi Arabia promoted a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in order to counter the Soviet Union did not alarm the U.S. intelligence community. Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution in Iran cemented Saudi Arabia’s position as the lesser of two perceived evils.
When the Gulf War incited harsh criticism of the Royal family for hosting non-Muslim soldiers they responded by coopting the majority of Wahhabi scholars into official government positions. Those who were too extreme for government work were encouraged to go abroad. The “28 pages”  report detailing connections between the Saudi government and 9/11 hijackers proved once and for all that it wasn’t only private Saudi citizens who provide financing and manpower to radical terrorist organizations but the government itself. But Saudi Arabia claims it too is in a fight against radical extremism. Yet the majority of terrorist attacks in the Kingdom remain directed at the Shi‘a minority in the Eastern Province and Western targets. In fact, the U.S. State Department website explicitly warns citizens in Saudi Arabia to avoid “places where members of the Shia-Muslim minority gather.”
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad recently wrote in Politico that the Saudis claim to have adopted a  new “policy of honesty” and admitted to him that in the past they had funded extremists. However, partial confessions and lukewarm commitments to fight terrorism are a pillar of Saudi diplomacy. After 9/11, the Saudi government made some effort to share intelligence and set up rehabilitation facilities for low-risk terrorists. But this was largely a show of good will that produced few long-term gains in the war on terrorism. The infamous “Podesta emails” confirm that the U.S. intelligence community believes Saudi Arabia and Qatar are now  “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL.” The export of fanaticism and terrorism is a necessary release valve so that the fragile equilibrium of Saudi society does not implode.

One Terrorism Policy

When the late Taliban commander, Mullah Mansoor, was killed in May of last year, it was his recent trip to Iran that became the focal point of discussion. For years, however, Washington all but ignored that the vast majority of the ammonium nitrate used to construct IEDs that delimb American soldiers in Afghanistan comes from Pakistan. In 2007, at the height of the war in Iraq, the U.S. military estimated that 45% of all foreign terrorists targeting U.S. troops were Saudi. Now the debate in Washington is whether to designate Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as terrorist organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood has rarely engaged in terrorism and the IRGC’s main focus appears to be Iranian dissidents abroad and fighting ISIS in Syria. Meanwhile the metastasization of Gulf-sponsored terrorist networks continues unabated. Counterterrorism policy has been reduced to a popularity contest rather than an assessment of real threats.
The U.S. must stop treating implicit and explicit state sponsors of terrorism differently. Saudi Arabia’s compartmentalized efforts at containing rather than eradicating extremism should not be lauded as a genuine partnership. States that clandestinely sponsor terrorism, albeit sloppily, must be held to the same standards as those that openly provide support. Counterterrorism strategists must adopt a long-horizon approach and recognize that state sponsors of terrorist groups are responsible for the consequences even when those organizations inevitably go rogue and turn on their benefactor. And just as Pakistan paid a heavy price for tolerating Saudi support for Wahhabi terror, the U.S. and the West are starting to feel the brunt of their own negligence of Riyadh and Doha’s love affair with terrorists.
Indeed, the very phrase “biggest state sponsor of terrorism” is best removed from diplomatic vocabulary altogether because so long as it shines the spotlight on only one country, others will hide in its shadow.
Adam Weinstein is a veteran of the Marine Corps, where he served in Afghanistan, and a policy research intern at the National Iranian American Council. He tweets at @AdamNoahWho.

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Excuses, Excuses when the Stone-Thrower is an Israeli Settler and the Victim is Palestinian

Source
Palestinian Aisha Al-Rawbi, a mother of eight, died after Jewish settlers stoned her car in the West Bank. (Photo: via Social Media)
In 2015, Israel approved a law that stipulated a 20-year prison sentence for individuals caught throwing stones. The intention was to target Palestinians involved in resistance activities, despite the discrepancies between armed Jewish Israeli settlers and Palestinians in terms of weapons available for them to use. “Tolerance towards terrorists ends today,” commented Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.
“A stone thrower is a terrorist and only a fitting punishment can serve as a deterrent and just punishment.”
Yet despite claiming that Palestinians who throw stones during clashes “provoke” unwarranted violence, stone throwing by Jewish Israeli settler-colonists has many precedents and victims and is usually overlooked. The latest Palestinian victim of Jewish stone-throwers was Aisha Al-Rabi who was killed last Friday while on her way home in the car. Settlers hurled stones at the family car, killing Aisha and injuring her husband Yacoub.
Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin described the killing and subsequent attachment of blame to Jewish settlers as “a scrap of an incident”. He added, “It is quite galling that it takes an incident like this in relation to a Palestinian vehicle for it [stone throwing] to be raised on the agenda.”
In fact, B’Tselem has documented many instances of settler-colonial violence, including stone throwing by extremist Jews on many occasions. The Israeli rights group has pointed out that there is an absence of law enforcement in such cases.
The Israeli media gives priority to detailing clashes between stone-throwing settlers and the Israeli military, which usually end in a tally of those injured and a notification of temporary arrest. There is an explicit difference in punishment and media portrayal between settler violence and Palestinian resistance. The former is exempt from punishment, whether the violence is directed against Palestinians or the Israeli military; the latter, meanwhile, is criminalized.
Al-Rabi’s case crossed a red line as regards media coverage due to settlers causing her death by stone throwing, hence the need for her murder to be downplayed by Levin. His comments indicate that close scrutiny of Jewish Israeli settler stone throwers is unacceptable to right-wing politicians, particularly when the victim, who was killed, is a Palestinian.
However, if the context is taken into consideration, it is clear that the Israeli state has manufactured a culture of impunity for stone-throwing (and other) crimes by its settler population. This precise bequeathing of impunity is evidence of the colonial state’s dependence upon its settlers, no matter that they live in illegal settlements, to preserve its existence.
While condemning the murder, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov failed to address settler stone throwing, focusing instead upon the attack as creating “a new cycle of violence that would further undermine the prospects of peace between Palestinians and Israelis.” This was not, however, a “new cycle of violence”; to describe the crime this is to absolve the Israeli colonial state and its settlers of embracing stone throwing as the means to terrorize Palestinians merely for being the indigenous inhabitants of historic Palestine.
Palestinian stone throwers, facing heavily armed settlers and the military, face harsh sentences and at times even extrajudicial murder for daring to resist the colonial violence endorsed by Israel. Al-Rabi’s killing was an unprovoked terror attack. Will Shaked’s misplaced words, directed against Palestinians, be fully invoked against Jewish Israeli settler stone-throwers when, as in this case, the end result is murder? Or will it be yet another example of excuses, excuses but no justice from Israel’s Justice Minister?
– Ramona Wadi is a staff writer for Middle East Monitor, where this article was originally published. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

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Israel’s Defiance of History, Morality and Law

A boy in Gaza gathering rocks to defend against Israeli snipers. (Photo: Abdallah Aljamal, PC)
No state established on land seized by force from the people living on that land can claim moral legitimacy and a ‘right’ to exist.
A purported ‘right’ to exist is not central to the existence of states anyway, let alone colonial settler states established amidst the wreckage of the genuine rights of another people.
States exist because they have strong armies because their enemies are too weak to destroy them, because they have good relations with near and far neighbors whose respect they have earned and because they have the consent of the people they govern.
They do not exist because of an imagined ‘right’ to exist. Were that to be the case, no state would ever have risen and then fallen in history. They would all still be here.
Israel understands this as well as anyone. It makes a lot of noise about its right to exist and its legitimacy but this is bluster. It knows why it exists and why it believes it will continue to exist. It has a strong military. It has nuclear weapons. It can destroy anyone who threatens to destroy it. These are the constituent elements of its existence, not morality and the ‘rights’ of which it endlessly talks.
‘Rise up and kill first” is not just the motto of Mossad but of the state. This is what it has done repeatedly ever since 1948. It has risen up and killed first, but with declining efficiency and herein lies the danger to its existence.
Its enemies are catching up. It has these enemies, not because of opposition to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. They certainly did oppose it but had this been followed with admissions of moral responsibility and legal liability, accompanied by material measures to make up for the damage done. Israel might have achieved a measure of consent within the Arab world.
It does have some but in a vacuous form. The treaty with Egypt has prevented war but the people of Egypt are as resolutely opposed to Israel as they were the day it was signed. This is not blind animosity but born of the fact that instead of working for a just peace, Israel has done its best to secure an unjust peace. It wants peace entirely on its own terms, which of course can never be achieved when two parties are in dispute if a serious peace really is the desired objective.
Israel’s bona fides are not genuine and never were. It has deceived not just its enemies but its partners. It has taken them for a ride. The Oslo ‘peace process’ was all process and no peace and was never designed, in the official Israeli mind, to lead to a genuine peace. It was aimed at achieving through an endlessly stretched-out ‘peace process’ what otherwise would have had to be achieved through war and it worked perfectly.
The trade-off for a genuine peace, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, are now densely settled. Facts always matter and nothing has mattered more to the Zionists from the beginning than creating facts on the ground that could not be removed because they were facts, irrespective of what the law said.
About a million settlers now live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank colonies. How can all these facts possibly be reversed, Netanyahu and his cohorts say with the palms of their hands extended helplessly as if they had nothing to do with this process and can’t do anything about it anyway.
Of course, they can be removed, as the French settlers in Algeria were in the 1960s, after 130 years of French occupation. Israel should have been made to remove its West Bank and East Jerusalem settlers long ago, apart from the fact that they never should have been there in the first place.
In any case, this should be regarded as Israel’s problem, instead of various governments accepting Israel’s justification of an illegal presence. One punishes the lawbreaker. One does not allow it to get away with the stolen goods.
The fact of settlement was intended to smother the question of illegality and in some minds, the American in particular, the strategy has succeeded. In the official US view the territories taken in 1967 are no longer occupied but ‘administered’ or ‘contested,’ enabling the next step, the shifting of the embassy to Jerusalem.
If Israel annexes all or most of the remainder of occupied Palestine the US will not oppose it and in time it will accept it, underlining the first point that the achievements of raw power, diplomatic, economic and military, are what is important to the Zionists and not the ephemera of legitimacy and the ‘right to exist.’ These phrases are fictions, distractions, the cover for a deeply immoral and deeply illegal process.
For Palestinians the state is illegitimate. There is absolutely no reason why they should think otherwise. There is no reason why they should have accepted a recommendation of the UN General Assembly in 1947 that was only passed because of threats by the US to vulnerable delegations.
There is no reason why they should accept their expulsion from their homeland, even if they have to deal somehow with the fact of Israel’s existence. No resolution gave Israel the right to take the land and drive out the people and no resolution could have given Israel such a right. Palestinian rights are inalienable.
The Palestinians have both law and morality on their side. Israel has neither. Even while claiming legitimacy and the ‘right to exist,’ it has never abided by the UN resolutions laid down as the conditions for its acceptance as a UN member.
But for the protective arm of the US, it may well have been suspended or expelled from the UN long ago. After all, what club accepts the membership of those who are warned time and again but still refuse to obey its rules?
States often violate international law. Israel is the only state in the world that lives in permanent, continuing violation of international law, not at one but many levels. This is not incidental or accidental but the necessary condition of its existence. To live within the law, to respect the law, would mean that Israel could not be what it wants to be and could not have what it wants to have.
To be what it wants to be, at least what every government has wanted it to be since 1948, Israel must live outside the law. The law is not relevant anyway. Israel sneers at the UN and has no respect for international law when it comes to Palestinian rights. It only respects its own laws, which of their nature are occupier’s laws and thus inconsistent with and indeed in violation of international law.
Israel’s strong right arm is all that really counts. ‘Friendships’ and pseudo-alliances, such as the ‘unbreakable bond’ with the US, are important but only for as long as they serve Israel’s interests. There is no sentiment here. Israel flattered Britain with fine phrases before jumping in the direction of the US when Britain had no more to give. For seven decades the US was the gift that kept giving but now that it is running out of steam as a global power, Israel has to hedge its bets, hence Netanyahu’s currying of favor with Vladimir Putin and the ramping up of its relations with China.
In the end, Israel’s ultimate defense is not questionable ‘friendships’ and ‘mutual interests’ that never last forever in the game of nations but its own strong right arm. So how strong is it?
Well, Israel has nuclear weapons and thus the ‘Samson option,’ the ability to pull down the roof on everyone’s head as well as its own. Whether, in the final resort, it will use these weapons is a question for the future but Israel’s possession of them has not deterred its enemies.
Rationally, perhaps it should have, but who is being rational here, a government and movements that resist occupation, as is their right in international law, or a government that continues an occupation, in defiance of law, morality and against the possibility of one day being able to call the people whose land it has taken and the states around its non-declared borders genuine ‘neighbors’? Against the possibility, it might be said, of one day really being able to call the Middle East home.
Whether or not the nuclear threat is a bluff, and given the extreme nature of Zionism, it probably is not, the resistance continues. With its nuclear weapons, yes, Israel has the capacity to destroy all life in the Middle East, but short of this, what about its conventional weaponry and military strength? Is this enough to hold its enemies at bay and beat them on every occasion?
The answer has to be probably not. In 1967 Israel caught Egypt and Syria napping. With their air forces destroyed on the ground, they were rendered almost helpless from the first day but it is most unlikely that there will be another 1967.
Since then Israel’s conventional military superiority has been slowly but perceptibly declining. In the size of the territory it has taken and the size of its population it lacks strategic depth. It must fight short wars. Thus, in 2006, after only a month of fighting Hizbullah, a guerrilla organization, not a regular army, it had to withdraw. The longer a war continues the less likely it is that it will be able to win it.
Its ‘victory’ in 1973 came about because Anwar Sadat stopped his army from fighting. In the first week of the war, the Israeli forces on the east bank of the Suez Canal were routed. Sadat never intended to defeat Israel because he knew the US would not allow it, so he declared an ‘operational pause’ after nine or ten days and handed Israel the opportunity to recover and cross the canal to the western side.
With Egypt sidelined militarily because of the 1979 ‘peace treaty’, Israel was free to go on the rampage elsewhere, mainly against Lebanon, a virtually defenseless target against the operations of a large army and air forces.
‘Incursions’ ending in thousands of civilian deaths led up to the invasion of 1982. What were the consequences? For Lebanon and the Palestinians, about 20,000 dead civilians, including the thousands killed in Sabra and Shatila. For Israel, yes, the defeat of the PLO was an achievement, but not much of one compared to the establishment of a far more dangerous enemy, Hizbullah.
By 2000 Hizbullah had driven Israel out of Lebanon and in 2006 it drove it back again. All Israel could do was use its air power to devastate cities, towns, and villages, but on the ground in the south, its highly rated Merkava tanks were destroyed and its troops outfought by Hizbullah’s part-time soldiers. This was a humiliating outcome for an army touted as one of the best in the world. Borrowing from Hizbullah, the Israeli military then increased the intake of ideologically committed recruits into the ranks of its officers, many of them from West Bank settler colonies.
Since then Israel has been itching to have another go at Hizbullah but this time the deterrence factor is working against it. It knows Hizbullah has built up an armory of missiles that can cause devastation across occupied Palestine. It knows its anti-missile defenses will not be able to stop many of them. In the meantime, while weighing up its chances and while preparing the blows that it says will destroy Lebanon as well as Hizbullah, it has a softer target to pick on, Gaza.
There, its onslaughts over the years, vicious in the extreme, brutal and inhumane, have killed many thousands of Palestinians. Hundreds of Palestinians, mostly very young, have been shot dead by snipers along the Gaza fence just in the past few months, without the Palestinian will to resist being destroyed.
The Israelis are now fighting balloons carrying fire into the occupied land, while Palestinians continue to strike at settlers occupying their land on the West Bank, despite the terrible consequences to themselves and their families.
Through all of this, Israel’s actions and reactions are becoming more hysterical, exposing psychological fragility and nervousness within the shell of outward confidence. It cannot shut down Palestinian resistance, its intimidation of Iran and Hizbullah has not worked and in the US there is a growing awareness that Israel is a violent racist state that does not merit by any means the large-scale support the US has always given it.
It is fighting back with all the weapons at its disposal, including hasbara, the attempt to criminalize the BDS movement and attacks on individual academics but the tide is running against it.
States need flexibility but Israel has none. Its power is brittle and like the oak against the willow, when the storm comes it is more likely to fall. After more than seven decades, it has no friends and allies in the Middle East worthy of the name. It uses Arab governments up just as they use it up but the Arab people are just as strongly opposed to this western colonial-settler implant in their midst as they always were. To repeat, this is not because they can’t adjust but because Israel can’t. In terms of being accepted by the Arab masses, it has not moved an inch forward.
History worked once for Israel but it is not working for it now. The wheel is turning against it. All it has on its side is armed might. By no means is this to be underrated but time does not stand still and neither do enemies convinced they have a just cause standing against a state that within itself knows it does not have a just cause.
Israel is always preparing for the next war but against a real enemy, not just defenseless civilians reduced to fighting back with fire balloons, it is going to take casualties unprecedented in its history next time around.
This is the very least that is going to happen, and all because of the determination to create a Jewish state on territory populated by people who are not Jewish. In the arrogant, twisted mindset of Netanyahu, Naftali Bennet, Ayelet Shaked, Avigdor Lieberman and the racist rabbis and settlers urging them on, it is the ideology that matters and not the peace and security of the Jewish people living in Palestine. Legitimacy is not the point. The point of the sword is the point and just as Israel has lived by it, so must it live with the possibility that one day it will die by it.
– Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press).

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