Friends, Sorry to have been ignoring the list... had to get some paying projects delivered. There haven't been many responses to the 'goals & strategy' thread. Perhaps we burnt ourselves out on the 'Returning to the Garden' thread, which was more or less on the same topic. I guess we can let that rest until inspiration reappears. Meanwhile, we might as well keep on world events. Ever since Israel accelerated its campaign of state terrorism against the Palestinian people, with Washington's tacit approval, it has been clear that the U.S. is up to something in the region. Either it's seeking to start a regional war, or it's seeking an excuse to come down hard on Israel and compel occupation of the Palestinian territories by non-Israeli forces. (If the latter, it wouldn't be to help the Palestinians, but to project a larger U.S. military presence in the area for other reasons. Any benefit to the Palestinians would be strictly 'collateral'.) Below are some reports which predict that war is about to start. That may indeed be the most likely outcome. On the other hand, if the U.S. is planning to take direct control in the area, a threatening war scenario would be precisely the excuse needed, given the strong U.S. domestic sympathy for Israel. If the game plan is war, I don't have a clear understanding of what the regime hopes to gain from such an adventure. We do know however that such a war would be nuclear. Israel has made that very clear, and it has at least 200 nuclear warheads and sophisticated delivery systems to get them to their targets. Such a nuclear war might be difficult to contain, and I find myself pondering the predictions from Revelations. In Revelations, Russia (the Bear) gives Israel an ultimatum, presumably to prevent it from striking out at its neighbors. The outcome is a general devastation that reaches far beyond the Middle East. The scenario is quite plausible even if the source is dubious. Whatever game the U.S. is up to, it is risking the annihilation of Israel, the Palestinians, Arab states, and who knows who else. It could only make sense for some deep geopolitical objective, such as destroying Russia, or as an act of mass genocide to help solve the 'over population' problem. Such scenarios do fit into the current modus operandi of the global regime, given its genocidal behavior in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Africa. But I still hold out hope for the less drastic scenario, where the U.S. is seeking only an excuse for a large military presence in the region. It seems that we'll know soon enough. rkm http://cyberjournal.org ============================================================================ Delivered-To: moderator for •••@••.••• Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 06:53:58 -0400 From: "Nurev Ind." <•••@••.•••> Organization: Nurev Independent Research To: Activist Mailing List <•••@••.•••> Subject: War in Mideast by October, Report Says War in Mideast by October, Report Says 6:50 am PST, 8 June 2001 7am.com News http://7am.com/cgi-bin/wires02.cgi?1000_2001060801.htm An intelligence firm has said Israel could be facing a full-scale regional war by October, and that top Israeli commanders are becoming frustrated by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hesitation to destroy the Palestinian Authority's infrastructure. Texas-based Stratfor.com, a global economic and military intelligence analyst firm, said in a report Thursday that Israeli military leaders were "disillusioned" with Sharon, and believes he may have lost his nerve. "Sharon had pledged over and over that he would order an attack that would destroy the Palestinian Authority and exile Chairman Yasser Arafat from the region," the analytical report said. "That opportunity came over the weekend when a Palestinian suicide bomber sent by the Islamic Hamas group blew himself up and killed another 20 Israelis," said Stratfor. However, the next day, June 2, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz presented to Sharon a plan for a massive bombing sweep that would destroy the PA infrastructure and lead to the exile of Arafat. "But Sharon, under massive pressure from the United States and the European Union, said no. Arafat had pledged a cease-fire, and Sharon did not want to be seen as the one who ruined the opportunity to end the 8-month-old war against the Palestinians," Stratfor.com said. According to the report, the result of that has been some "deep soul-searching" within the upper echelons of the Israel Defense Force. Top commanders, the report said, believe Sharon is following exactly the same path as his predecessor, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, whom Sharon defeated soundly in February. "Barak was held back from ending the war against the Palestinians by the refusal of then-President Bill Clinton to support a drive to exile Arafat. Barak felt that without U.S. support, Israel would be alone against the world," the report said. Now, because of the civilian leadership's lack of will, IDF commanders believe Arafat, over the next several months, will continue to wage his campaign of Palestinian terror against Israel, but will "keep it below Sharon's level of tolerance." Meanwhile, his allies in the region Iran, Iraq, and the Hizbollah terrorist organization "will rearm for a regional war against Israel," the report said. "As the military brass sees it, Iran, Iraq, the Palestinians and Hizbollah want a regional war. Syria and Egypt are preparing for such a development. The brass is divided over whether Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will join such a coalition when the time comes," analysts said, in the report. "In every meeting with U.S. officials, Mubarak has pledged he will stop such a war. But in public, the Egyptian president has been talking very tough," said the report. The "time frame" for such a war is "between October and the end of this year," analysts said, according to the report. ============================================================================ Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 08:31:14 -0400 From: "Nurev Ind." <•••@••.•••> Organization: Nurev Independent Research To: •••@••.••• Subject: Preparing the American public for war in the Middle East. 6/7/01 Cal Thomas is a Conservative writer and commentator. I would also describe him as a " Zionist Christian." This would obviously color his point of view, but does not alter the historical facts he describes below. This is another article which appears to be preparing the public for radical military measures or war in the Middle East. I personally speculate that the US Bush administration has given Israel the OK signal. Too bad. This could have been avoided. Nurev ======== A coalition of terror Cal Thomas http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas.html THE suicide bombing outside a Tel Aviv night club last Friday night, which killed 19 and injured scores of other mostly young people, is the latest in a continuing strategy to exterminate Israel and eliminate every Jew from the area. ---<snip>--- ============================================================================ X-Sent: 11 Jun 2001 01:44:29 GMT X-EM-Version: 5, 0, 0, 19 X-EM-Registration: #01B0530810E603002D00 Reply-To: •••@••.••• To: "MER" <•••@••.•••> From: "MER" <•••@••.•••> Subject: Calamity About To Befall Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 19:54:45 -0400 _______ ____ ______ / |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S / /|_/ / /_/_ / /\ Making Sense of the Middle East /_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \© http://www.MiddleEast.Org News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups, and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know! * * * * * * * IF YOU DON'T GET MER, YOU JUST DON'T GET IT! To receive MER regularly email to •••@••.••• CALAMITY AHEAD Courageous Israeli Writer Issued Dire Warning "A whole nation is now huddled around one tribal bonfire to lament its bitter fate, mourn its dead and ignore the dead of the other side. As usual, it views itself as the victim, turns the enemy into Satan and waits, inactive and bravely unthinking, for the calamity that is about to befall it and for which it is in no small measure to blame." MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 6/10: Indeed the Israelis have brought this on themselves. To put it bluntly, their colonial and racist mindset, their duplicitious and neo-apartheid "Peace Process", their brutal and militant occupation policies, have brought both themselves and the Palestinians to today's impasse and indeed to the brink of calamity...to the "abyss". Of course the Americans are for sure at the least co-conspirators in this whole venture. Hence the biggest guns have been brought in, none other than the head of the CIA himself with his most extensive entourage, for the most desperate attempt yet to force the Arafat Regime on the Palestinian people however much against their will. The "peace process" of Rabin was all along from the very start just a continuation of the occupation by other more crafty means. And no amount of torturing and bribing, of killing and maiming, was able to make it otherwise. Indeed the volcano is now nearing explosion. But this one, unlike mother nature, has a label "Made in Israel" with an associated stamp "Made in USA". UNDER THE VOLCANO By Gideon Levy [Ha'aretz, 10 June 2001] There has never been such unity here. Listen to the Israeli public discourse and you hear only one voice. From one terrorist attack to the next, the nails are being driven into the coffin of the concept of pluralism in Israel; the attack at the Dolphinarium in Tel Aviv was the last nail. The horror of the event sent everyone into a state of paralysis: children and parents, right and left - everyone agrees with everyone else. Fear became the teacher and brought about a consensus that would shame no totalitarian regime. One nation, one stand. Its basic elements: there is no one to talk to, Arafat is not a partner, we have to do "something," to deliver a final crushing blow once and for all. We offered them everything and they chose war, there will not be peace in this generation, we will live by the sword for all time. And overlaying it all, an appalling wave of hatred for Arabs has seized everyone. Who doesn't hate Arabs a little these days? Who still believes them? Who thinks it's possible to make peace with them? Where are the days when it used to be said that for every two Israelis there were three opinions? Now, every three Israelis have barely one opinion. From being an ultra-involved nation, where every social gathering and every taxi trip was always accompanied by lively political arguments, the nation in recent months has become a choir that sings one song, in one voice. Beyond the monotony, and the danger such a development poses for democracy, it holds out a more immediate risk. The fact that no one is asking tough questions, that no one is proposing bold alternatives and that the public agenda is becoming so uniform, wholly aimed at the next war, should be cause for great concern. Like a village living below a volcano and waiting complacently for the next eruption, Israel is watching events unfold as though watching a natural disaster over which no one has any control, and muttering its well-worn slogans. So we're headed for another terrible eruption of bloodletting, that's how it goes. Above all we are witnessing the evaporation of the left; but there is hardly anything left of the center, either. "We are all settlers," say people who not long ago styled themselves leftists and centrists; it is not only writers' widows, such as Edna Shabtai, who are turning right. The thin shell of the peace camp broke apart in an instant, after its enlightened members found out that the Palestinians were not managing their affairs exactly according to the model the peaceniks had created for them. The Palestinians resorted to violence and dared to demand the right of return. The conclusion: the left was wrong. The result: an almost wholesale drift to the right. The media, the leaders of the peace camp, together with Labor, the Likud and Rehavam Ze'evi - all are declaiming almost the same message. Can anyone seriously point today to substantial differences not only between Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres, but even between Yossi Sarid and Limor Livnat? The right says, honestly, that it aspires to fighting a war, while the left says that war is inevitable because of Arafat. That is a very minor difference - too minor. The lip service the left is paying in the form of calls for a freeze on construction in the settlements or for the establishment of a Palestinian state, is pathetic: too little and too late. It didn't have to be this way. The voice that has been muted is now more essential than ever. Israel needs another voice now, not just that of the brave but minuscule Gush Shalom (the Peace Bloc). Where are the intellectuals and the statesmen to assert that the Palestinians could never have accepted what Ehud Barak offered, that the way it was offered outraged them even more? Who will declare that a just solution to the conflict must include not only a fair territorial solution but also a just solution for the refugees, including recognition of their right of return? Who will speak out in a loud voice to offer a truth different to the one now sweeping the country from end to end? Who will state that the occupation is an act of violence, the most terrible of all, that terrorism is not only suicide bombers but also firing missiles at inhabited homes? Who will assert the truth: That there are too few differences between a person who blows himself up outside a discotheque and kills 20 boys and girls, and a person who frivolously fires shells at a house in which an infant girl has just finished drinking milk from her mother's breast? That depriving a whole nation of freedom of movement and placing that nation in a prison is an act of violence more cruel than any in the past, and stirs a people to fight using whatever means it has? That the incitement in the Palestinian media is not that much worse than the incitement on Israeli radio and television? That the present war is first and foremost a war over Netzarim and Yitzhar, and that if they or all the settlements did not exist our situation would be immeasurably better? That the roots of Palestinian terrorism have to be sought in the Israeli occupation and not in the Palestinians' genes? Almost no one is asking these questions. A whole nation is now huddled around one tribal bonfire to lament its bitter fate, mourn its dead and ignore the dead of the other side. As usual, it views itself as the victim, turns the enemy into Satan and waits, inactive and bravely unthinking, for the calamity that is about to befall it and for which it is in no small measure to blame. ---------------------------------- MiD-EasT RealitieS - http://www.MiddleEast.Org Phone: 202 362-5266 Email: •••@••.••• ============================================================================ From: MER <•••@••.•••> To: "MER" <•••@••.•••> Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2000 09:55:15 -0400 Subject: Quote of the Week - Ayatollah of Israel Reply-To: •••@••.••• Organization: MiD-EasT RealitieS "How can you make peace with a snake? The Ishmaelites [Arabs] are all accursed evil people... God regrets having created these Ishmaelites." "Rabbi Ovadiah's fulminations cannot easily be dismissed. A former chief rabbi of Israel, and a religious scholar of some repute, he is also the spiritual leader of the Shas party, the kingmaker of Israeli coalition politics." MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - 8/8/00: It's rather ironic that in the modern secular world of the 20th century there is a such a revival of theocratic based nationalism in the Middle East. Whatever one's view of this development its important to realize that this didn't start with the Iranian revolution against the Westernized Shah. Nor did it begin with the Muslims who in casting off the Ottoman Empire early in the last century dreamed of an Arab nation based on geographic nationalism. It actually started with the birth of the first specifically religiously identified state in the region in 1948, the "Jewish State". And the ramifications of this development are still taking place. The following article appeared in ©The Guardian on 7 August by Suzanne Goldenberg writing from Jerusalem: "The bad boy of the Israeli rabbinate created a rare unity between Arab and Jew yesterday, scandalising his own people by saying that the millions killed in the Nazi Holocaust were sinners, and outraging Palestinians by declaring them accursed "snakes" despised by God. The outpourings from Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, who devoted his Saturday sermon to the Holocaust and the Arab-Israeli peace process, caused a firestorm as prominent Israeli rabbis and politicians as well as Palestinians took to the airwaves to deplore his views. "The victims of the Holocaust, all 6 million Jews, all those poor people who were lost at the hands of those evildoers the Nazis were reincarnations of earlier souls who sinned time and again and did all sorts of things that shouldn't have been done, and were reincarnated so that things could be set right," the rabbi told a crowded synagogue in Jerusalem, and thousands of followers who tuned in on pirate radio stations. He berated the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, for trying to make peace with the Palestinians. "Why are you bringing them close to us? You bring snakes next to us. How can you make peace with a snake?" Rabbi Ovadiah told his applauding followers. "The Ishmaelites [Arabs] are all accursed evil people. They are all haters of Israel. God regrets having created these Ishmaelites," he went on. Rabbi Ovadiah's fulminations cannot easily be dismissed. A former chief rabbi of Israel, and a religious scholar of some repute, he is also the spiritual leader of the Shas party, the kingmaker of Israeli coalition politics. Shas, which combines ultra-Orthodox theology and ethnic pride of Middle Eastern Jews, is the third largest party in the Israeli knesset, or parliament, and Mr Barak is desperate to woo its 17 parliamentarians back to his coalition. That explains the prime minister's tepid response yesterday. Ignoring the slur against the Palestinians, Mr Barak said the rabbi's comments did not befit a religious leader of his stature. "They are liable to harm the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust and the feelings of their family members," his office said in a statement. Mr Barak's silence on the attack on Arabs was inexcusable, said the Palestinian information minister, Yasser Abed Rabbo. "Every Israeli stands accused of being a racist until he condemns this racist and idiot." An Israeli Arab member of the Knesset, Ahmed Tibi, said he would ask Israel's attorney general to charge the rabbi. That seems unlikely; the attorney general has already refused to charge Rabbi Ovadiah with incitement after he called the secular education minister an enemy of the Jews who should be liquidated." ============================================================================ X-Sent: 10 Jun 2001 12:16:49 GMT X-EM-Version: 5, 0, 0, 19 X-EM-Registration: #01B0530810E603002D00 Reply-To: •••@••.••• To: "MER" <•••@••.•••> From: "MER" <•••@••.•••> Subject: War Warns Top Saudi Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 07:16:53 -0400 WAR POSSIBLE WARNS TOP SAUDI MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 6/10: Normally one of the last places one would turn for truthfulness, integrity, and information would be the Saudi royal family. Currently headed by a former playboy who drank, gambled, and womanized his life away in Beirut and London -- before assuming the throne -- it is the Saudi "royal family which epitomizes the "client regime" realities that have so fractured, weakened, and prostrated the whole region once known as "the Arab world." And of course it was only a decade ago now that King Fahd was visited by then Defense Secretary Cheney, accompanied by the Washington Saudi Ambassador, and told (not asked) American forces were about to descend on the Kingdom in what has become essentially a masked American occupation of Arabia. Just as an aside, in those days Osama bin-Laden was also visiting King Fahd -- he was then a member of one of the Kingdom's most prominent families and a most welcome visitor to the Royal Palace. The Americans are working hard to cover up all the war talk. But their actions betray their words and reveal their real concerns: A Secretary of State cancelling trips to remain in Washington to "preside" over things with everyone in the region. The Head of the CIA personally, as never before in history, taking charge of a region in person acting as a kind of day-to-day pro consul, like in the day of Roman rule. Leading Western diplomats and covert types running rampant throughout the region from one capital to the next, desperately trying to preserve the whole facade of "client regimes" and financial interests created largely on their behalf and kept in place for nearly a century now through constant Western intervention and manipulation. SAUDI CROWN PRINCE WARNS OF MIDDLE EAST WAR Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has warned of the prospect of a Middle East war, accusing Israel of raising Middle East bloodshed to "unacceptable" levels. Abdullah told German magazine Der Spiegel that the region is "sitting on a powder keg" that could "explode at any time". He added that such a war "would not only affect Israelis and Arabs but many parts of the world" but did not elaborate any further. Abdullah, who ended a three-day official visit to Germany on Friday, blamed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for eight months of violence that has left 484 Palestinians and 108 Israelis dead. He told the magazine: "The bloodshed is reaching levels we can no longer accept. The Israeli war machine takes aim daily at unarmed people who are at the most throwing stones." Abdullah said Palestinian attacks against Israelis were "a sign of desperation and frustration", and that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat could only stop his people's revolt if Israel ends the "cancerous growth of settlements in Palestinian areas". Abdullah, who met Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder during his stay in Berlin, encouraged the European Union to mediate in the Middle East and said Germany should not be restrained by historic traumas. "The crimes of the Nazis against the Jews must not serve as an excuse for accepting crimes against the Palestinians," he told the magazine. [This Is London - 9 June] ---------------------------------- MiD-EasT RealitieS - http://www.MiddleEast.Org Phone: 202 362-5266 Email: •••@••.••• -- ============================================================================ Richard K Moore Wexford, Ireland http://www.fantasticforum.com/cyberjournal/rkm_index.html http://cyberjournal.org A community will evolve only when the people control their means of communication. - Frantz Fanon "Consensus does not mean agreement. It means we create a forum where all voices can be heard and we can think creatively rather than dualistically about how to reconcile our different needs and visions." - Starhawk, "Lessons from Seattle and Washington D.C.", in "Democratizing the Global Economy", Kevin Danaher, ed., Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2001. Permission for non-commercial republishing hereby granted - BUT include and observe all restrictions, copyrights, credits, and notices - including this one. ============================================================================ .
