I have read through the entire 181 pages of Trump’s “peace deal” for Israel, and it is breathtaking. It is not just that the “solution” it proposes is ludicrously one-sided, it is the entire analysis of the problem to be solved which reads as pure, unadulterated zionist propaganda.
For example, the word “violence” is used repeatedly. But it only ever refers to violence by Arabs. There is not one single mention of violence by Israel against the Palestinians, even though the ratio of killing between Israelis and Palestinians over the last ten years is approximately 80:1 . The only mention of violence against Palestinians at all relates to Kuwaiti expulsion of Palestinian refugees after the first Gulf war.
The analysis of the refugee issue is the same. Nowhere can the paper bring itself to note the key historic fact, that the Palestinian refugees were expelled from Israel. The paper treats Palestinian refugees as if they had simply materialised as an inconvenient phenomenon, like a plague of locusts. This “othering” of Palestinian refugees permeates the entire paper:
It must be stressed that many Palestinian refugees in the Middle East come from war torn countries, such as Syria and Lebanon that are extremely hostile toward the State of Israel
No. Palestinian refugees were driven by violence from the land that is now Israel. Families who lived there two generations ago have been displaced in favour of families who claim the land because their ancestors lived there eighty generations ago. That is a matter of indisputable fact.
You can claim that displacement of the Palestinians from Israel was justifiable because of the urgent need for a state for Jewish people after the Holocaust. You can claim that the displacement of Palestinians from Israel is justifiable because it is divinely ordained. You can claim the displacement of Palestinians from Israel is regrettable but irreversible. Make what argument you wish, but to refuse to acknowledge the basic fact that the Palestinian refugees were driven from Israel is a pathetic act of cowardice that underlines the sheer intellectual shoddiness of the paper.
The “deal” makes a direct equivalence between Palestinian refugees and “the Jewish refugees who were forced to flee from Arab and Muslim countries”. The language here is extremely revealing. The Jewish refugees “were forced to flee”. There is no hesitation about this claim of victimhood. Whereas there is no acknowledgement at all that the Palestinian refugees “were forced to flee” by the Israelis.
It is undoubtedly a valid point that many Jews were disgracefully and involuntarily driven out by Arab nations, and their suffering is too often overlooked. However to claim the numbers are equivalent is to ignore the fact that a significant portion of the Jewish population of Arab states moved voluntarily to the new homeland, whereas none of the Palestinians expelled from Israel left voluntarily. But the more glaring fact ignored in the paper is that the majority of the Jewish refugees from Arab lands were given the property of Palestinian refugees in Israel. The claim that both sides are in equal need of compensation is therefore a nonsense.
The failure to admit the Palestinian refugees were driven out of Israel panders disgracefully to the most extreme zionist propaganda, which claims that the land was empty before the Israelis settled it in 1948. This is a classic colonist origin myth, used repeatedly by the British Empire, by white settlers in the USA, and of course by apartheid South Africa. When the Trump deal was first published, I was genuinely astonished to find twitter awash with thousands of tweets claiming the Palestinians do not exist as a people. This is an extraordinarily prevalent racist trope among zionists and appears to be not policed on the internet at all. I have read hundreds of articles about the hateful phenomenon of anti-semitism in the mainstream media. I don’t think I have ever seen this extreme zionist racism of “there is no such thing as Palestinians” ever mentioned in the MSM as a problem. But zionist racism is a huge problem, and it underlies the fundamental analysis of the Trump paper.
If you cannot bring yourself to acknowledge, even once in 181 pages, that the Palestinian inhabitants were driven out of Israel, there is no chance the proposals built on these fundamentally dishonest foundations will be solid.
The Trump paper has three fundamental “solutions” to the Palestinian refugee issue.
1) Only those originally displaced to be deemed refugees, not their families.
2) Not one single refugee to be allowed to return to Israel (yes, it does actually say that)
3) No compensation to be paid to refugees by Israel
I have often pointed out that the proposed “two state solution” for Palestine has always been no more and no less than the old apartheid policy of “Bantustans” in South Africa, where the indigenous population were herded into six self-governing and four supposedly “independent states”.
It is worth pointing out that the apotheosis of the apartheid system, the Bantu Self-Governing Act of 1959, was given Royal Assent by Queen Elizabeth II, a point now rather skated over by a false narrative that apartheid was a solely Afrikaaner project post-Independence.
The major similarity that I had been pointing out with Bantustans was revealed by the map: fractured lands, not forming any kind of economically viable unit. Trump proposes Israeli annexation of the whole of the Jordan Valley, of North Jerusalem and large areas of the West Bank, the remnant of which is to be shattered by 15 Israeli sovereign settlements connected by Israeli only roads. Trump’s “Palestine” is very plainly not viable.
But the Trump proposals for how “Palestine” will run, make the Bantustan comparison still more stark. Indeed, the restrictions on the so-called “state” of Palestine under the Trump plan from having its own military or security forces are even greater than those imposed on the Bantustans by apartheid South Africa. Trump also proposes that Israel should have the right to stop Palestinian refugees from the wider diaspora entering the new “state” of Palestine.
A “state” not permitted to define its own citizens is not a state.
It does not stop there. The “state” is to have no right to a territorial sea or exclusive economic zone, with its sea to be given to Israel in contravention of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It is not to be allowed to conclude treaties without Israeli consent. It is not even to be allowed to open a port but to be forced to import and export goods through Israeli ports – in other words, the Israeli economic blockade is to continue on the new “state”. Plainly, even apart from the unviable fracturing and the shrunk territory, the administrative arrangements proposed make no attempt to reach the level of statehood.
Surely, then, the proponents of the “two state solution” must have reacted strongly to this betrayal of their proposal?
Well, no.
In many ways the most incredible thing about the Trump proposals is how welcoming the western powers were. The general reaction from all European governments was that these are serious proposals with which the Palestinians must engage. While the ridiculous assessment from Dominic Raab that “this is clearly a serious proposal” is perhaps what you would expect from a state looking to the US for economic crumbs, the Palestinians might legitimately have expected better from the EU than the official response, which welcomed Trump’s “commitment to a two state solution”, of France which “welcomes Donald Trump’s efforts”, and of Germany which “appreciates that the president is sticking to the two state solution”.
The Palestinians were probably less disappointed by the support of the traitorous dictatorships of the Saudi and other Gulf States for their close Israeli ally, which is par for the course. But the fact that the international community recognises as a proposed “two state solution” a paper which in no sense whatsoever establishes a Palestinian state within any normal definition of the word, should tell us something important.
As I have repeatedly stated, those who trumpeted the “two state solution” have always been con-artists who do not believe in a viable Palestinian state at all. The fact that Blair and Bush, two dedicated ultra-zionists, stood in the Rose Garden and promised a “two state solution” as part of their propaganda for the Iraq War and other Middle East invasions, really should have shown people of goodwill this was a blind alley. The Trump proposals are a betrayal of the Palestinians, of course. But they are not unique to Trump and they are exactly what Blair, Bush and all the zionist apologists intended all along.
The “two state solution” was always a con.
There is no viable two state solution. To create a viable Palestinian state alongside a viable Israeli state would now involve highly undesirable further forced movements of population. The only long term solution for Palestine/Israel is, as with South Africa, a single state in which everybody has a vote and everybody is treated equally, irrespective of ethnicity, creed or gender.
Trump may, peculiarly, have done one good thing with these ludicrously unfair proposals. He has exposed the hollowness of the “two state solution”, and the pretence that it offers any justice to the Palestinians of way forward towards peace.
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A master class and tour de force. Thank you Craig. Let’s hope the Palestinians show a bit of magnanimity when the one state solution finally arrives. Not all the ?? citizens are bad. I suspect they will have a new flag and name for their state. The document you have analysed may have the unintended consequence of bringing that day nearer.
What truly dark times. Of course the “deal of the century” was always going to be a sick joke. Trump is dependent on the ultra-Zionists, Kushner, the late Adelson et al (despite Trump’s casual anti-Semitism).
Some points of light. The Patriot missile defence system doesn’t work. US forces will be out of Iraq and Syria before summer. Turkey does not approve of Trump’s plan (Erdogan is playing his own game).
Darker considerations still. The US has just deployed a new, small (third of the size of Hiroshima) “that one was just a warning”, submarine launched nuclear missile. Trump is one Sudafed fuelled rant away from the big one. Expect some patch of Iranian desert to be vitrified.
Speaking of dark times, your thoughts on Sturgeon’s capitulation yesterday?
I think with Kushner there the administration in charge of the White House is Israel. Trump is just lipstick, able to arrange a few deals that will enrich Trump Inc.
Re Submarine launched nuclear missile
Would that be the one mentioned to be in preparation back in 2018 in this article? https://www.defensenews.com/space/2018/02/02/the-us-could-be-getting-2-new-nuclear-capabilities-here-are-the-details/
It’s just pedantic me preferring that assertions mentioned in comments have a basis in fact, that my worries be real rather than imaginary. So agreed, dark times indeed, does Trump want war?
The statement “All Muslims who come in peace will be welcome…” says everything about this plan. No-one would ever find it appropriate to say “All Christians who come in peace will be welcome”. And rightly so.
Any prospect of this country offering political support for the Palestinians has noweffectively been ended, perhaps forever, by Labour party centrists and the liberal media. So successful has their cynical tactic been that Bernie Sanders is now also being smeared as an anti-Semite by gentile centrist Democrats and liberal pundits in the US.
It will very soon filter down from the media and political class to the wider public that only one point of view is permissible on the Israel/Palestine question, perhaps legally.
Bernie Sanders is jewish but that doesn’t stop him being anti-semitic these days.
An absolute lie, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Most Jewish people are anti-semitic, in that they hate Arabs.
And that’s why, instead of Israel, we need a Palestinian state that respects the semitic peoples: Christian, Jewish and Muslim, amongst others.
Actually that won’t do. “Semites” are (or were) technically the descendants of Noah’s son Shem. But that theory would also make Japhethites and Hamites Jewish.
Nowadays the term “semitic” simply means ethnically Jewish. It’s incorrect to refer to Palestinians as semitic.
Incidentally, there’s a good argument that many Jews are not descended from the origjnal Children Of Israel, and therefore not “semitic” in that anachronistic, racial sense. Many Ashkhenazi Jews from Eastern Europe were probably not migrants from Israel, but converts, with Eastern European ancestry.
The use of the word “Semitic” to describe ethnic or racial origins is – or should be – discredited. It dates back to 19th century scholars who also believed in the “Aryan” race. The word “Semitic” derives, as Jimmeh said, from the descendent’s of Noah’s son Shem.
But as that person is mythical, the whole idea of “semitic races” is meaningless.
The proper use of the word “semitic” refers to language. In this sense, according to Wikipedia, by far the most widelty spoken Semitic language is Arabic. It is spoken by approximately 60 times as many people as Hebrew.
“The most widely spoken Semitic languages today are (numbers given are for native speakers only) Arabic (300 million),[7] Amharic (~65 million),[8] Tigrinya (7 million),[9] Hebrew (~5 million native/L1 speakers),[10] Tigre (~1.05 million), Aramaic (575,000 to 1 million largely Assyrian fluent speakers)[11][12][13] and Maltese (483,000 speakers)”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages
“Bernie Sanders is jewish but that doesn’t stop him being anti-semitic these days”
He presents himself as being against the Netanyahu faction and sectarianism.
He’s a Leftie Global humanist, and they’re Rightie sectarians.
That’s the grand dialectic.
Only problem is, the Netanyahu faction themselves are .intent on creating a Eurasian global humanism, and their current sectarianism may be seen as, not so much ideological, but merely instrumental to that end.
Then again, you can see that the Sanders faction are the ones who supported the Palestinians, and always going on about Israel’s crimes and so on. There was so much, much much, of this. They were dominant, in Israel and the West more generally, up until the switch to the Right in Israel with those waves of refugees from Communism and particularly after the fall of the USSR.
These now control Israel. They’re very sectarian, again perhaps only instrumentally so. They killed off the Left and Western Global humanism, and they gave control of Israel to the Kremlin, which kinda makes sense in Eurasian Belt and Road terms.
So, Israel has done with the West, and is turning its attention East; from Manhattan to Moscow.
You can see there’s an economic exhaustion in the West, but much productive potential in the East.
Kinda makes sense.
I mean, Bernie is what they’ll be needing in the East, in the future, but he’s bust in the West.
Go East, young man.
They only need to keep the Western consumerism operation in place until they replace it with the Eurasian internal market.
At some point in the future they’ll financialise Eurasia and it’ll go bust and then the West shall be the growth area.
What better way to create a future growth area than to depress it for several generations.
New York City was depressed for many years. Crime, vice, drugs and the rest.
Had you bought property in those areas in those days and held until Giuliani cleaned the City in the 90s, you’d have made a fortune.
There was this Trump guy who had a stellar rise in NYC real estate, then lost it all. Then made it all back and more after Giuliani cleaned the city.
Are they still about these guys.
What they doing now.
Beyond accetance of the reality that the Palestinians have been screwed and will no doubt continue to be, i have never really had an opinion on the the topic. None of my business, the world is a fairly sh!t place and “humanity” a misnomer. Thank’s Craig for shining a light on the issue.
Human nature being what it is, would it not be fair to assume that Scotland if independant within Europe would find itself in a similar political and ecconomic position? Perhaps, all beit without the walls, barbed wire, rockets and random shootings.
Without western support Israel wouldn’t last five minutes.
they have nukes.
they wouldn’t be able to cause nearly as much trouble in the middle east, i’ll grant you.
Nukes wouldn’t be of any use in defending against the kind of attack that would be mounted on Israel.
If they decided to fire off nuclear weapons against nearby countries such as Iran, that would simply bring down 100 times as heavy retribution on their heads.
Israel is a very small region; the Israelis have all their eggs in one very small basket.
Thank you so much Craig for taking the time to actually read the 181 page Trump “peace deal” and report the basic facts. As expected it is a disaster for the Palestinians and a give-away for the Israelis. It is such an outrageous slap in the face to the Palestinians: NO ocean access, NO ports of their own, NO refugee return or remuneration for being forced out of their homes and off their land at gunpoint in the 1940s-50s, leaving them to live in squalid refugee camps in neighboring countries. Of course NO Palestine defense forces allowed. Europeans could care less about this injustice and actually go along with Trump 🙁 It is indeed sickening that a spoiled brat american zionist millionaire, Jared Kushner is now deciding the fate of Palestine! Trump and Kushner: a new nadir in politics on the world stage 🙁
No ports, this is very important (in Israeli viewpoint) in keeping the people down.
They can not be supplied with missiles by sea.
No off-shore rights.
The Eastern Mediterranean is a Methane big deal. Israel is convinced all the gas belongs to Israel.
Gaza is directly in-shore from this potential bonanza.
All split up in to little pockets, so individually containable, when things start to get out of hand, as they will.
No direct contact with Jordan, only through Israeli controlled roads. Yet the Palestinian people have more in common with Jordanians than any other peoples.
I am sure this has been drawn up by The Donald so as to be unacceptable.
Not really new, Versailles, and look where that got us.
Superb job. That is ALL you need to know. If Craig can do it, why MSM with billions behind them cannot? I guess everyone here knows the answer.
There was Robert Fisk
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-israel-palestinian-peace-deal-century-netanyahu-middle-east-a9309396.html
and even the Guardian allowed a comment.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/30/trump-israel-palestinian-peace-plan-is-beyond-insulting-thats-deliberate
Waiting for the backlash for that tomorrow in the even worse Observer
Because of the billions behind them? (And the assassins those billions can hire).
Thanks for that excellent analysis, Craig.
The “deal”, cynically synchronised with the 75th anniversary of the Russian liberation of Auschwitz, is a measure of the Zionist domination of US foreign policy.
Ditto the control of much of the international mainstream media given the absence of any similar critique to Craig’s appearing since the Trump/Netanyahu announcement.
If they can do that to Washington, what chance did Corbyn ever have of becoming British PM?
I will try to justify the non-condemnatory international reaction. The plan is such a pile of bs that no sane government decided to go heads-on with the US over it. Everybody just ignores it – why beating a dead horse?
I thought that the Joan Peter’s narrative had been well and truly rebutted, clearly not.
From what little I saw (and I try NOT to see too much!), BBC reporting on this issue gave the impression that those exasperated Israelis were bending over backwards for the Palestinians. Boo! Nasty Palestinians!
I had to laugh when Trump said the Palestinians would not be allowed to cherry pick the good bits of his deal what good bits??? The dogs in the street know that Trump is doing all this to get Jewish support for him in his impeachment trial as I see it it has got to the stage that telling the truth is anti Semetic
I have given up on that.
The new 10 commandments are very much like the old ones, in that they are meant to give you laws you can not fail to break, if you are a human, and then imprison your mind with the resulting guilt.
The ‘Thou must not think Jews have too much power’ commandment becomes harder and harder to adhere to as it Jews not Israelis that command us to believe it.
That was always a dodgy one in the ‘Are you an antisemite questionnaire?’. What is too much power, in what fields (politics, sport?) and what percentage of Jews (none, few, many, most, all?) and how much power do the Zionist Jews wield within the Jewish community (none, few, many, most, all?) , and how much do i care either way (not at all, a smidgen, a bit, quite a bit, etc?), all of which have to be considered in the one word, yes or no answer.
‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife’ What never, not even once in my whole life, not even a bit, not even at Christmas? Ah, but at least i can confess right, phew. But not with the new commandments, damned from one second in a questionnaire. That questionnaire was obviously a trap but why? Is it to stop us questioning and thinking and to shut down debate.
Who was it that smeared Corbyn and the Labour left. Who forced all new Labour leader candidates to sign up to the 10 commandments and who is it supporting this new Palestinian concentration camp? Is it all the Israelis?
We have to have the courage to stand up and say when some Jews are behaving badly without being branded antisemitic.
I don’t believe Israel should have been created, that makes me an antisemite. I don’t believe it has a right to exist, that males me an antisemite. The Israelis don’t appear to believe that it has a right to exist either, hence their out to lunch defensiveness shown in this so called plan.
A one state solution seems to be the only way forward. Get rid of the name Israel and Palestine and create one state with freedom and equal right for all. Returning Palestinians would claim their old lands and Jews would have to buy or rent land like anyone else in the world.
Of course this isn’t going to happen but in 200 years the Jewish holocaust will become a distant memory and there has to be, eventually, a return to reason, decency and basic human rights.
In 200 years there may not even be any races/ethnic groups. How many generations will it take before we are all mixed race atheists (sensu stricto)?
Ever since, as a young man, I r4ead the Bible cover to cover, I have been amused that, virtually opposite the Ten Commandments, you will find detailed instructions on the care and punishment of slaves.
Craig. A typo
‘The “two state solution” as always a con.’
” I was genuinely astonished to find twitter awash with thousands of tweets claiming the Palestinians do not exist as a people”
I wonder how many of those tweets were computer generated hasbara.
One could argue, with much greater force and justice, that the Israelis do not exist as a people.
They are more like a pirate crew.
Isnt this pure colonialism? What do US have to do with the conflict? Who are they to decide the borders especially since the proposal do not respect international law to begin with?
The problem isnt so much the position of the US, they have always been biased on Israel/Palestine – though Trump being more honest than lets say Obama about it. No the problem is that arab states and EU do not protest. And if they do not protest, who will?
No. The conflict will go on as always, palestinians will not ever grow strong because they will be bombed, attacked and driven out before as past 70 years.
“Isnt this pure colonialism? What do US have to do with the conflict? Who are they to decide the borders especially since the proposal do not respect international law to begin with?”
Melian Dialogue!
A great analysis.
This year has started so badly, I really do despair when I think of where we will be in twelve months time. Unless we are now at the bottom and “things can only get better”.
Here’s hoping that Trump doesn’t get a second term this year.
You wanted him to be in power, remember.
We wanted Mr Trump to be President (a position that doesn’t necessarily confer much power, if any) because the alternative was Hillary Clinton.
Who had already committed herself to starting a war against Russia. Which would kill us all.
The mere fact that we did not wish to die in a thermonuclear holocaust does not necessarily mean that we wholly approve of Mr Trump. But, as is always being pointed out, the whol structure of the US political system is expressly designed to prevent anyone decent or honest from becoming a candidate, let alone being elected.
So the President doesn’t necessarily confer much power, you say.
OK then, you wanted the Republicans to be in power, rather than the Democrats. Are you happy with them, and the way they’ve run things?
glenn_uk, you don’t seem to have read my comment. Or, if you did, to have understood it.
I didn’t say anything about Republicrats or Demoblicans, because as Gore Vidal put it,
“There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party… and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt – until recently… and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties”.
Tom, your position was inconsistent. First you say Clinton would have ensured we would all be dead by now (and there’s proof of that, of course). Then you say Trump is President but that’s OK because the President doesn’t control things as much as does the party they stand for.
OK, fine. But then you go to say the parties are both the same anyway.
So why did you want Trump? Ah right – because Clinton would have ended the world. But you say the President is only led by their parties, and both are the same, and… we have circular logic at its best.
Personally, I do not see both parties as the same. For example – look at anything the US government has ever done for the working man. List the things the Republicans have done, then list those of the Democrats. Is the list the same? Or perhaps you know very little about the US system – which is fair enough – but don’t suppose to lecture others on it.
glenn-uk, when I took my degree in history at Cambridge, I specialized in US history. Since then I have read a lot more about it, and have kept up to date with developments. It is likely that I have forgotten far more about American history than you will ever know.
I will admit that I am not privy to the inner workings of power in Washington since 2000. I honestly do not know if a president could order the armed forces to attack Russian forces without being disobeyed, or arrested and placed in custody.
While the president doesn’t appear to have much personal power nowadays – note that Mr Trump has not even been able to choose his own cabinet, but has consistently appointed people who embody the exact opposite of his avowed intentions – rhetoric has a lot of momentum of its own. A president, like Mrs Clinton, who breathes fire and brimstone and proclaims her intention to put the Russians in their place, would elicit a powerful echo from the media and many of the voters. In certain circumstances that could set off a political chain reaction that starts a war without anyone particualrly wanting one. That’s how WW1 began.
“How do wars start? Wars start when politicians lie to journalists, then believe what they read in the press”.
– Karl Kraus, “Through Western Eyes – Russia Misconstrued” http://www.hellevig.net/ebook/Putin's%20new%20Russia.pdf
“…look at anything the US government has ever done for the working man…”
I’m looking… I’m looking… I’m looking. But there doesn’t seem to be much to see.
@ glenn_uk February 1, 2020 at 17:36
It was obvious that both Clinton and Trump were crooks, but there was far more evidence of absolute evil in the case of Clinton (and her hubby).
Now Trump has proved himself a moronic murdering turd, and like the Clinton’s belongs in the dustbin of history, along with Ford, Nixon, Reagan, and the Bush’s.
The US Electoral System will ensure no decent President will be elected, just as the MSM and the Lobby ensured we didn’t get a decent Prime Minister.
@Tom: Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier.
T: ” It is likely that I have forgotten far more about American history than you will ever know.”
Very good, I always admire modesty. Indeed, it appears you’ve forgotten just about everything – or maybe skipped a few classes.
You say Trump hasn’t even been able to pick his own cabinet. That might be because his picks – when put up against any scrutiny at all – turned out to be criminals, liars, domestic abusers or just plain crazy. Half of his picks came from characters he liked after watching Fox News’ “Fox & Friends”.
Are you suggesting that Trump has his picks made for him? Who did that then?
Anyway, we’re straying from the point. You claim it’s all about the party when it comes to Trump, but then it’s all about the President when it comes to Clinton. That’s known as trying to have it both ways.
G: “…look at anything the US government has ever done for the working man…”
T: I’m looking… I’m looking… I’m looking. But there doesn’t seem to be much to see.
Ok then, here are some points you must have missed (or forgotten!) from that famous Cambridge degree of yours:
Social Security; Medicare-Medicaid; Peace Corps; unemployment insurance; welfare (for the poor and corporate); civil rights; student grant and loan programs; safety laws (OSHA); environmental laws; prevailing wage laws; right to collective bargaining (which brought about paid medical insurance, paid vacations, pensions, etc.); workers’ compensation; Marshall Plan; flood-disaster insurance; School Lunch Program; women’s rights.
The Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage, instituted child labor laws, and setting up time-and-a-half pay for over a 40-hour week.
There’s FHA-HUD with its public housing, urban renewal and 44 million residential homes (before WWII almost 70 percent of that nation were renters; by the 1970s this had been reversed). And farm-conservation subsidies — USDA programs, Farmers Home Administration (the bankers didn’t want to make rural loans), small flood-control lakes (more than 3,000 in Oklahoma alone), rural water districts, rural electricity (REA).
The GI Bill was passed, which the Republicans at the time bitterly opposed. They were salivating over millions of returning veterans to hire as cheap labor. More than 8 million have used college benefits, creating millions of entrepreneurs; most of whom had never dreamed of college. For the unemployed GI, there was $20 a week for 52 weeks to help get started (a lot of money in those days). The Veterans Administration provided more than 2 million home loans.
(The above is adapted from a letter from Clint Gold, read out on the Mike Malloy show from time to time. There’s a lot more, but let’s leave it at that for now.)
*
If you – with your superior education and knowledge – can demonstrate how the Republicans have done anything comparable to this, the floor is yours.
I would seriously question anyone who thinks a party like the Republicans could ever be better for the working man, or the rest of the world for that matter. Environmental legislation, for example, has been stripped by Republicans every time they get into office.
The idea that the Democrats would allow Clinton to start a war with Russia is best left to the propagandists and their useful idiots (such as Paul Barbara). It would behoove you not to follow suit.
Well said Craig. Copies to Trump, the Kushners and all the other so called Christian Zionists in the USA and here in the UK.
While under the UN partition plan Israel was allocated 55 percent, today it controls more than 85 percent of historic Palestine. The Nakba led to the displacement of some 430,000 Palestinians, half of whom originated from the areas occupied in 1948 and were thus twice refugees.
23 May 2017
Al Jazeera on the 1948 ‘cleansing’, ie the killing, displacement and expelling.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/05/nakba-start-1948-170522073908625.html
The diaspora of the Palestinians is widespread. There are said to be 7m Palestinians in the global diaspora.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_diaspora
This is a Palestinian lady talking about the day of remembrance in June. It is a Turkish website.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OENdykQzzkw
May I offer my little video about a visit to Palestine which I made last year which crystallises my thoughts on the situation?
It begins as a travelogue, then firms up.
Thirty three minutes.
https://vimeo.com/343618593
“It must be stressed that many Palestinian refugees in the Middle East come from war torn countries, such as Syria and Lebanon that are extremely hostile toward the State of Israel…”
I think that the word “Palestinian” offers a very helpful clue. Refugees from Syrian might be described as “Syrian refugees”, refugees from Iraq as “Iraqi refugees”. So by that logic, “Palestinian refugees” would be…
If the answer is “Dunno”, that’s a sign that Israeli propaganda has succeeded in abolishing the nation of Palestine altogether.
Well the PLO did do a stint in Lebanon and Libya and have good caose to be hostile. Perhaps he was referring to those diaspora.
That’s really grasping at straws. It is called the Palestine Liberation Organization because it aims at the liberation of Palestine.
Meaning that the people who lived there – and their ancestors for thousands of years – should get back the land, houses and property stolen from them by force.
What was the point of this US document other than the payments made to those who wrote and prepared it, and practice for Zionist propagandists and influencers? How can “peace” be possible with the agreement of only one side in a conflict anyway? There are only three ways: that side wins a complete victory; it capitulates; or it builds a big wall (or series of walls).
Terminology:
1) “Jewish refugees from Arab lands”… A few fled, including from Zionist false-flag bombs; others weren’t in any trouble but migrated on the basis of Ashkenazi promises. Most of them weren’t “refugees”.
2) “Jewish refugees from Arab lands“… Let’s call them what they called themselves at the time, before the huge racist indoctrination: Arab Jews, or Jewish Arabs, i.e. Arabs with a Jewish religious tradition. They had a moral right to live where their families actually truly had lived for many generations. Zionists wanted to kick them out, and used whatever methods they could, in Yemen, Iraq, Morocco, wherever. Zionists needed them, especially young people and those of childbearing age, to build their little Nazi settler state in Palestine. Zionism was (and still is) a project of Ashkenazi criminal gangs.
3) “Zionist racism”… All Zionists are racists. There is no exception. There cannot be an exception, because Zionism is the ideology that a Jewish-supremacist state has the right to exist in Palestine. All white supremacists are racists; all Jewish supremacists are racists too. If there were any black supremacists, all of them would be racists as well. “Zionist racism” is a tautology. The correct term is “Jewish racism“. It does not imply that all Jews are racists any more than “white racism” implies that all white people are racists. Of course the Jewish religion is racist, so there is the question of why on earth any of those whose parents or grandparents followed this racist religion want to have an identity founded on such a heritage, but that’s another question. Some don’t – e.g. Mordechai Vanunu and Gilad Atzmon stopped viewing themselves as Jews. Some do – e.g. Israel Shahak, unless I’m mistaken, still viewed himself as a Jew although he rejected all kinds of racism. (In particular, he would have vomited his guts up had he read the obituaries claiming he thought “Jews have a duty to lead the anti-racist movement”.) Perhaps those in the latter group haven’t thought about it much, or maybe they just like eating bagels and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Regrettably the Palestinian situation is not unique.
Twice, my partner was displaced from her home and farm lands to make way for colonial, white settlers. Never the less, at night she still slept in the bush away from the village to avoid being, raped, mutilated and murdered for the glorification of the liberation by the brave men fighting for independence and what was right.
Of course the freedom fighters were not fighting for freedom, no one ever does. They were fighting on behalf of the mineral conglomerates, the men who saw an opportunity.
On the other hand my ex-wife’s family have lived since 1946 in a sumptuous family home allocated to them as good party comrades after abandonment by fleeing Sudetenlanders. Queer old year ‘46 what with the King David Hotel incident and the Bordeaux vineyards being attacked by locusts.
Though second hand, I have living memory association with these events paralleling both sides of the Palestinian situation and can only conclude that without a solid bunch of mates, solid financing and a good supply of machine guns, mortars and ammunition the only option for the under dog is migration.
Unfortunately the PLO squandered a lot of international sympathy for the Palestinians who came to be perceived as a nuisance once the PLO adopted the tactic of Propaganda of the Deed. Headlines are fickle friends.
Dominated in a union with no say in matters, seems to be the model Trump envisages for Palestine. Yet some who disapprove would have Scotland a smaller duck in a larger pond than at present, rather than strive to be our own duck in our own pond.
I have witnessed first hand the economic colonisation of central and eastern Europe and it was nothing to do with bringing civilisation to the natives. It was always about money, power and control. Once the attractions of low rent and cheap labour are consumed the rapacious benefactors moved on to cheaper, less regulated climes leaving a swamp of consumer debt owed, to the men who saw an opportunity. In the EU we would be the grovelling gopher on the periphery, handing over our sweeties and peeing our pants every time anyone says boo.
“It is worth pointing out that the apotheosis of the apartheid system, the Bantu Self-Governing Act of 1959, was given Royal Assent by Queen Elizabeth II, a point now rather skated over by a false narrative that apartheid was a solely Afrikaaner project post-Independence.”
Ah, the British angle. That’s very interesting. I hadn’t thought about it before, but the South African regime was of course a monarchy under the British monarch all the time until it left the Commonwealth in 1961.
I bet there were British “thinkers” involved in setting up the apartheid and bantustan systems in South Africa.
(And for that matter the same is probably true of the system in their beloved Rhodesia. Interestingly, the only times Britain has ever exercised its UN Security Council veto without at least one other state in the “Permanent Five” doing the same were in relation to Rhodesia.)
(Then there was Malayan independence in 1957 and Singapore getting put into Malaysia for two years before becoming independent, its military trained covertly by Israel. Principles of racial difference run through the whole way Singapore is run. Tories love Singapore.)
Notwithstanding Graham Greene’s novel “The Human Factor” (published many years later, in 1978) (which must have scandalised traditionalist “boarding school did me no harm” types in Whitehall because of its portrayal of an interracial marriage), the view among most British officials in Whitehall and in the gentlemen’s clubs of St James’s and at Britain’s “two universities” in the 1950s and 1960s must have been that apartheid was a damned good thing, and that anybody who thought otherwise needed to be ignored at best, and to be subjected to a bloody good horsewhipping if they took it into their lefty heads to make a noise about it and thereby irritate their betters.
After all, what are elite private boarding schools based on, if not segregation?
Those who ran the British state loved segregating the oiks into castes too – by dividing the English state school system into “secondary moderns” and “grammars”. The segregation was based on what in effect was an “IQ” test taken at age 11, called the “11+”. If you speak with an elderly person they will be able to tell you “I passed the 11+” or “I failed the 11+” or “my brother failed it and I passed it” or whatever. It was serious social engineering. Hitler would have loved it.
Guess what – that whole model was justified by the “work” of Cyril Burt, the “psychologist” and “geneticist” who faked his “twin study” results at University College, London, in a fanatical mouth-foaming effort to prove that the social pyramid is a natural order and that the more proley you are the less resources for betterment you ought to be allotted.
That is EXACTLY the same mentality as the one that Tories displayed who said that coalminers shouldn’t be given baths in their homes because if they got them they would only put coal in them. “It wouldn’t be the same for us”, and so on.
Burt treasured the copy of “Hereditary Genius” he was personally given by Francis Galton.
Britain is the country where T S Eliot rejected George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” on the grounds that the pigs should rule because they are more intelligent.
Nowadays “the scientist with the data” is Robert Plomin, who works at King’s College, London, and who seems to be chums with both the Duke of Cummings and his wife Mary Wakefield at the Spectator.
The British angle is interesting because of the whole tradition that comes through Galton and Spencer and down through a couple of Huxleys and on to today and the rising tide of “behavioural genetics” etc. backed by such as Gove and Cummings. The British ruling class have for centuries believed they are genetically superior.
Plomin makes sure he doesn’t say much about “race”, leaving his readers to draw their own conclusions from his work which is of course as racist as f*ck, as is Charles Murray’s.
Plomin is not just some isolated figure. He runs the huge “twin project” for the British state. He also works on the culture hand-in-hand with those such as Steven Pinker who is also praised by Cummings, in the specific context of what he says about the supposed in-born superiority of Ashkenazi Jews. (Anybody who hasn’t sussed what a vile racist Pinker is should watch this talk he gave. I’ve set that link to start at 4:00. Listen until 5:28.) If anyone is in any doubt about how to read this, you just have to imagine replacing what Pinker reports his grandfather saying about “goyish” stupidity with a similar “funny story” about a white grandfather saying the same about his black employees.
Sorry – this is the link to the Youtube video with the time setting added.
N
You are a Britnat hypocrite. You post stuff all the time slagging off the Brutish state but you categorically say Scotland cannot and must not revert back to its pre 1707 independent nation status. We must suffer as well because well because……
Still waiting for you to explanation your crap comment re Barnett formula and Scottish fishing. N you are a Britnat hypocrite who posts a lot of crap.
Craig mentions that many Jews were driven out by Arab nations. In this connection, ccording to “Ben-Gurion’s Scandals,” by Naeim Giladi, Iraqi Jews were “persuaded” to leave Iraq after WW2 by false flag operations carried out by Mossad to make Jews think that they were being persecuted and it would be dangerous for them to remain. According to Giladi, the mainly Ashkenazi Jews in Israel wanted Arab Jews to work the land for them and since most of the Arab Jews themselves seemed happy where they were, an incentive to move in the form of bombs was provided. There is also an article about the whole business here. http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/ameu_iraqjews.html
It shows a truly extreme level of dishonesty and hypocrisy for Zionists (heavily armed Ashkenazi criminal terrorists who chased very large numbers of Palestinians from their homes in 1948 and 1967, stealing whatever their victims couldn’t carry with them) to say that the Arab Jews whom they replaced their victims with, and whose offspring they wouldn’t exactly invite into their homes as equals even if they have now managed to ensure that most of them don’t even speak their immigrant parents or grandparents’ language, namely Arabic, are in fact Jews who were expelled by Arabs and forced to become refugees by horrible racist Arabs for no other reason that they were Jews.
What parallel is there for that level of lying?
Of course, it does help the Israeli position that there is such great uncertainty as to what it means to be Jewish.
Does it mean to have adopted the Jewish religion, in some more or less sincere way – whatever your genetic or cultural background may be?
Does it mean to be genetically Jewish – whatever that may mean?
Or does it mean that your mother is/was Jewish? Or just that you have decided to consider yourself Jewish?
A Brilliant Deconstruction Craig. Thank you for your time and work on this.
And this Con trick is much, much more Deceitful than we thought.. A truly horrendous Plan / Deal.
I see that Robert Inlakesh was live streaming about an hour ago.. As Pro-Palestinian Protesters Surround The US Embassy, Rejecting The So Called Deal Of The Century.
I could only find a Face book link for that..with ‘ Press TV Uk ‘
That plan has an awfully long border to patrol, and to potentially violate. Even if the Israelis tried to impose it, there would be trouble. Maybe that is what they want as an excuse to carve up Palestine still further.
“who claim the land because their ancestors lived there eighty generations ago.”
The biggest lie of all.
Ashkenazi Jew have with the original semitic population of Palestine as much to do as the European settlers with the Native NA population. Somewhere related in deep human history.
Even the Sephardic population has little if at all originally genetic connection to Palestine, being and admix of all ethnicities around the mediterranean from North Africa to Italy to Spain and Portugal, Egypt etc.
It is also well known that at the time of before and at the 1st century the population of diaspora jews in the Mediterranean exceeded the Jews in Palestine, and that the only Jews that really can claim Israel as a homeland with sufficient genetically based connections are the remnant of jews still left from the time of the last major Jewish Rebellion by Bar Kokhba, after which a few percent remained..
https://theconversation.com/ashkenazic-jews-mysterious-origins-unravelled-by-scientists-thanks-to-ancient-dna-97962
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/325779v1.full
By this definition none of the jewish settlers immigrating to Palestine in the first to middle decades of the last century had any more right to a “homeland” than the settlers of the Americas from Europe and the present day structure in Palestine/Israel is that of a Jewish “religion based” occupation – no secular defensible claim based on ethnicity or genetic connection exists.
This plan seems like nothing more than a stepping-stone toward Israel’s full annexation of the West Bank.
An unacceptable plan meant to be rejected. How else can one realistically interpret it?
PS I’m not sure that a 2-state solution was “always a lie”. But it’s clear that at some point, Israeli hard-liners decided that they would press their advantage (AIPAC Congress + Israel’s military power) to take ALL of Palestine.
!!
Rules-based International Order: BOHICA!
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I’m glad to see, Mr. Murray, that in this situation you are not inclined to take sides, as in the article about the Crimea. One country for many nations and religions is right idea. I’m sorry to say, I don’t see any opportunity for this today.
Israel occupied the territory and protects it with teeth and elbows. Israeli law does not allow citizenship except for ethnic Jews or people practicing Judaism, maybe some exceptions for very important influential people. Is Israel likely to change its citizenship laws?
Another sample of this behaviour is quite close to me – Ukraine follows the same path, a state for Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian, professing their own separate religion (they have already received the Tomos).
Israel obtained the support of the strongest country. If an Arab becomes the next president of the United States, (or at least marries his daughter to a Palestinian), then the situation may change. Ha ha, fiction.
I do not see how a peaceful compromise is possible with this self-centrist position of Israel. But, I do understand Israel’s motives in its actions. They finally got homeland for themselves. The neighboring countries in the Middle East are unanimously hostile to them. About 6 million of European Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust, while the entire population of Israel is barely 9 million today. So, much is at stake for them.
As for the Americans, this is the deceitful state. Recently, the Holocaust Forum was held in Israel, and Mr. Pence never spoke about Soviet soldiers, but did not forget to mention American troops.
US embassy attributed the release of Auschwitz to American soldiers, although they was none of them there, Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army.
The Baltic states, together with Poland, are trying to rewrite the history of World War II.
Lying dogs.
85% of Jews were killed in Poland, 90% in Lithuania and Latvia, the highest loss rates among ALL countries, even in Germany itself it was 80%.
Every time I see the memory of the dead Soviet soldiers is despised, it hurts me. There are still live eyewitnesses. And those who have died already, our grandparents, they have descendants and we remember. I remember.
Nothing can be built on egocentrism and lies. Only honesty, only truth, even bitter, only admission of guilt, recognition of mistakes, forgiveness and compensation – only this way allows us to steadily move towards peace.
Nobody is ready for a compromise yet. No one is ready to say “ours” instead of “mine”.
https://youtu.be/-evIyrrjTTY
Yes, this attempt at erasing Russia’s pivotal contribution from history is particularly obnoxious and says more about the current state of the US and specifically the quality of its current leadership, than anything else.
The Nazis may well have triumphed completely had it not been for the Red Army. War historians suggest no less than 93% of all Nazi casualties were inflicted by the Red Army and Russia suffered itself incredible losses.
Mike Pence is a Christian fundamentalist who believes in rapture; a real bible basher who wears his faith on his sleeve. Many believe him to be more dangerous than the reckless Trump.
It is not their ‘homeland’. See previous comments.
I usually listen to advice if it’s presented in a polite manner. For instance, “please read the comments …”
But advice from unknown people’s nicknames, I usually ignore, sorry.
I admit that this is an international forum and the rules of Internet courtesy in your country may vary, however.
I also understand that some commentators here may be annoyed by a Russian person who learned your language and came to your forum to express an opinion that is different from yours. Although I’m embarrassed to cause such a mess in your world, but unfortunately, I can not adjust my opinion to your preference.
Thank you.
So if a history book was written under a nom-de-plume, that was factually correct, you would ignore it’s truth, because:
“advice from unknown people’s nicknames, I usually ignore.”
A peculiar attitude.
Hopefully the Russian wiki will be a genuine history – any idea how it is coming along?
It will be a suitable antidote of the Jimmy Wales / Phillip Cross lie epidemic.
Thank you for reading the 181 pages of Zionist expansion and what is effectively a plan for genocide of the Palesti9nian people. I am appalled at the nonchalant acceptance of Germany and or France, but not surprised at the silent clapping of Europe’s fascists who have adopted Israels treatment for their own racial hatred of Roma and others.
Hitler would have loved Netanyahu’s plan to steal Palestinian and Syrian lands, he would have supported their apartheid policies which separate Israels Arabs from housing allocations and or land ownership.
The development of submarine based nuclear tipped cruise missiles by the US, which will be, by design, fit into Israels Dolphin class subs the Germans provided and subsidised, is highly destabilising the ME further as Israel is patrolling Irans coastal waters as we speak.
It could never be a workable plan when Trump’s Zionist son-in-law helped craft it, and without the input of the Palestinians themselves. Still Trump and Netanyahu, the former impeached, the latter facing corruption charges, will push ahead with it regardless of the fact that the Palestinians have already shot it down in flames.
The international community, but not everyone will welcome the idea, some only in a broader sense, others in the implementation. The glaring facts are that no nation wants to see trade tariffs increased or sanctions from the US, by speaking out on this one-sided, concocted plan aimed at benefiting Israel.
If Trump and Netanyahu go ahead with this absurd plan we can expect more violence, and more Palestinian deaths. Oh the UN will condemn the violence and no doubt pass more resolutions, but nothing solid will be done.
Have you seen the knowing way Kushner and Netanyahu look and smile at each other, the way they embrace, most unseemly. The nepotism involved in the Trump White House is mind-blowing to most non-Americans. What qualifies Jared and Ivanka for such high-profile roles over other more capable individuals?
Kushner, who is Jewish himself and a self-declared zionist, wrote a piece in the NYT calling for anti-Zionism to be equated with anti-Semitism. To say the man has an agenda to favour Israel is a huge understatement. The demand to recognise Israel as ‘Jewish State’ seems from another age of ethnic intolerance, 22% of Israelis are Arabs, have they no place being there?
There are four things you need to understand about Donald Trump and the Israel lobby:
1 – Trump is an actual, genuine America firster. That differentiates him from all his Democrat and most of his Republican predecessors.
2 – Permanent Washington – which includes most professional journalists – despises him for this and will tell any lie, break any law or abuse any trust to stop him.
3 – In order to counter their malicious effects, he needs a powerful ally, and in Washington, they don’t come any more powerful than the Zionists.
4 – Their help comes with a very high price tag. The sad fact is that the Palestinians are paying for the treachery and disloyalty of the American left.
@ Athanasius February 1, 2020 at 16:02
‘…Trump is an actual, genuine America firster…’
How on earth can he be an ‘American Firster’ when he supports fracking (inevitably poisoning the water tables), removes the puny ‘teeth’ from regulatory agencies (already ‘captured’ by the Corporations) so that human effluent is spread over farmland, along with heavy metals and other dangerous poisons and carcinogens which Corporations have been ordered to dump in the drainage system, further bankrupts America by wars and big buck bankrolling of the Pentagon, slams countries around the globe with ‘casus belli’ draconian sanctions (the type which FDR placed on Japan, with the intention that they would decide enough was enough and would make the first attack). That trick worked like a charm at Pearl Harbour.
As you say, the Moronic Tramp has powerful friends in Tel Aviv and AIPAC, and why would he not have, since he is very clearly on a ‘Tramp first’ (albeit it in realiity an ‘Israel First’) crusade and they are happy to humour him, and the Devil take the hindmost.
Trump cares about Trump, first, last and all points in between. America is his plaything (or so the sick puppy thinks).
But it is a “Two State” Solution, both States being Israel
https://twitter.com/asadabukhalil/status/1224552612952854529