Israel plans to humiliate Iran and its allies to an extent that a full-on regional war, in which the United States will fight alongside them, becomes inevitable.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing a joint session of U.S. Congress on July 24. (C-Span screen shot)
By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is desperate to keep war simmering along and to draw the U.S. closer and closer to him. At the same time he cannot send ground forces into South Lebanon where they will take massive casualties.
Israel can assassinate, it can employ indiscriminate terrorism and it can bombard from the air, and it has done all these things against Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. But Israel cannot destroy Hamas or Hezbollah, cannot get back its hostages from Gaza and cannot make Northern Israel safe for its colonialists.
Nothing Israel is doing in any way advances those declared objectives and in fact makes all of them increasingly unlikely ever to be attained.
But as U.S. President Joe Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, accept and reinforce every single escalation and every single illegality, Israel’s stranglehold on its Western vassal politicians gets ever stronger.
Those have now all (including both U.K. Labour and Conservative ministers) supported illegality well beyond the stage where there is any going back. They have now to hope that they will be “justified” by military victory.
The Iraq war shows that however illegal the war, if you win you get to write — or at least interpret — the rules of international law. I wish I could come up with good counter-examples. “Justice” is visited only upon losers.
A U.S. Marine inspecting a roadside scene near Haditha, Iraq, where five unarmed civilians were killed on Nov. 19, 2005. (Unknown U.S. Marines and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service via the Washington Post, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
But the problem for Netanyahu, former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, current Prime Minister Keir Starmer, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, et al., is that just what victory looks like, nobody seems in the least clear.
We appear to be locked into a hideous distortion of existentialism, where the killing of Arabs of any age and sex is in itself the path of virtue and a reason for living.
Israel’s TikTok army of child-killers, rapists and lingerie-flaunters will take heavy casualties if it advances into Lebanon. It is currently launching intense air attacks, but it cannot destroy Hezbollah that way, not even were it to triple the colossal amount of explosive it has dropped on Gaza.
Netanyahu’s strategy of assassinations and deadly stunts appears to be an attempt to goad Hezbollah out of their own territory into a suicidal advance into Israel. But Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah is not falling for it.
It is worth stressing that, contrary to the propaganda, in the last year Israel has hit Lebanon with five missiles for every one sent by Hezbollah.
Notice how he’s 1) speaking English (because this is a performance for U.S. audiences, not for Lebanon) 2) repeating the nonsensical claim spun up by former PM Naftali Bennett?
They’re manufacturing consent, doing the Nazi tactic of ‘repeat a lie until it becomes truth.’ https://t.co/4ANvmwJ3r1
— Talia Jane ???? (@taliaotg) September 23, 2024
Meantime the United Kingdom’s claims to respect international law are exposed as an utter sham as it failed to vote for the UNGA Resolution giving effect to the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territory.
[See: On the World’s Call for Israel to End Its Occupation]
The ICJ’s ruling that the occupation is itself an illegal act, and that states must do nothing which can assist Israel to maintain it, sets out a clear legal status quo which the U.K. is equally clearly breaking.
When the ICJ decision came out on July 19, the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office statement was as follows:
“We have received the Advisory Opinion issued by the International Court of Justice on Friday 19 July and are considering it carefully before responding. The UK respects the independence of the ICJ.”
The promised response has never come; unless you take the failure to vote at the U.N. General Assembly for the implementation of the ICJ ruling as the response.
The decision to suspend 8 percent of arms export licenses for Israel was framed not in terms of this ICJ ruling — which logically can only require the cessation of all arms sales to Israel — but more broadly in terms of unspecified possible breaches of international humanitarian law.
In its “explanation of vote” at the U.N. General Assembly, the U.K. deliberately ignored a key tenet of the ICJ Opinion. The U.K. stated:
“… our abstention reflects our unwavering determination to focus on efforts to bring about a peaceful and negotiated two-state solution… ,”
This ignores the ICJ ruling that Israel must leave the occupied territories before any negotiations. An occupied people cannot negotiate with, in effect, a gun held at their head. That is explicitly why the ICJ did not accept that the Oslo Accords alienated any Palestinian rights in international law.
The U.K. is still — directly contrary to the ICJ — attempting to maintain that Palestine’s right not to be occupied was signed away at Oslo.
British military flights, weapons supplies and intelligence cooperation with the Israel occupation continue unabated. Starmer’s total support for Israel is now a fixed part of the governing landscape, as the failure to condemn the terrorist device attacks on Lebanon makes clear.
The U.S. and U.K. are now hopelessly yoked to a Netanyahu nihilist strategy of which the primary aim is to retain his own power and immunity from prosecution by permanent conflict, of a kind which makes his allies ever more complicit and which will rope them into active military support.
200 people murdered by the Zionists in Lebanon this morning, so far. That would be the equivalent of about 13,000 Americans as a proportion of the population, or as Americans like to measure it 6.5 “9/11’s”
— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) September 23, 2024
That requires constant Israeli aggression against an axis of resistance that has so far refused to be provoked into major conflict. Israel’s plan is to humiliate Iran and its allies to an extent that a full-on regional war becomes inevitable, in which the United States will fight alongside them – and very probably the Sunni Arab regimes too, I am extremely sorry to say.
According to Kanaani, the Israeli crimes in #Palestinian territory and "expansion to #Lebanon are a clear example of a serious threat to regional and international peace".#Iranhttps://t.co/4t9hR0vF12
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) September 23, 2024
This is plainly madness that is entirely against the interests of the Western powers themselves. But their politicians, including very directly Biden and Starmer, are so compromised by Zionist-lobby money that there appears to be no escape, short of popular revolt in the West.
The West is bound to Israel by the simple, unalloyed mechanism of cash paid to politicians. That is the truth.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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The question is why do they get such low %s? Is it their positions, their policies? when they reflect what a majority of “we the people” have said we wanted in poll after poll? Or is it because the Ds, especially were concerned that Nader’s 3% (with no debate exposure allowed) indicated there might be a trend developing they had to nip in the bud lickety-split – hence the “Nader got us Bush” which was clearly debunked, “3rd Parties can’t win” which is also nonsense, any candidate on a ballot can win if enough people vote for ’em, and then there’s the absurd “spoiler” bit – every candidate running is, by definition, out to “spoil” it for every other candidate – personally I would be happy to “spoil” it for the 2 parties who have spoiled so much of everything else.
But, unfortunately, these ridiculous memes seem to have succeeded in causing too many of us who want better to chicken out from actually voting for it …. if we had, in increasing numbers with each election, facing the slings and arrows of prevaricating Ds, especially, we’d have a much better Gov’t by now, as the Ds would have gotten the message – reform or lose – yup, we might still wind up with a 2 Party system but the Ds wouldn’t be one …
As for the West debacle, that’s on him – after initially getting status on ballots as a GP candidate, he “changed his mind” and went out on his own, he abandoned the Greens, and not vice-versa – if there had been no one running on the Green ticket, the party would lose it’s Party status for the first time in decades –
As to plurality, indeed, that is all one needs in each state, so let’s give it to them … she is on enough ballots to get it – let’s give it to her, unless you really prefer one of the “other two”
As to “nice lady” – one who faces cops in a demo who are knocking her over with bikes and barricades, seems to have the courage of her convictions, and there is much more to her platform than “anti-war” – the other choices are – pro-genocide, e.g.
Has this “systemic problem” that you claim prevents 3rd Party from winning changed since 160 years ago when, as you point out, a 3rd Party won? Is it the money, or is it the people who accept the money …
Which US & UK oligarchs are demanding that our politicians support Netanyahu’s rampage and our game of nuclear chicken with Russia in Ukraine?
Politicians are the errand boys of their very wealthy and wouldn’t back such reckless policies if their employers didn’t order it.
From the Surface, Truth is Never More than Refracted Reflections of (R&R)
Israel is attempting to carry out an identical strategy in Lebanon, as it did in Gaza, in the beginning, from October 8, 2023, and ongoing.
The Guardian pap.., in its constant distorting, incessantly talks of “Hezbollah and its benefactor Iran” in utterly derogatory, outrageously duplicitous, weaponized terms; never applying similar language standards to Israel and its benefactor, the U.S.A!
“When the Palestinians see that most of the Arab world has reconciled itself to the Jewish state” is a completely false statement.
To talk of most of the Arab world, as representative of the majority of its populations, is in fact outright deception.
Autocratic regimes do NOT truly represent the interests, nor especially, the will of all of the people!
They speak only on behalf of the elite regimes that they are.
The Duopoly, one-party ‘deep state’ U.S. today, is no different. It is just another of those willfully blind to reality, autocratic regimes.
Paraphrasing, through the eyes of the always the victims Israelis: the Hezbollah ‘terrorists’ started the war, for no reason, just as the Gazan ‘terrorists’ attacked Israel, for no reason, on October 7, 2023.
Only ultra-nationalist, ethno-Zionist Israels constant woe is me victimhood attitude, for its 100-plus years antipathetic – putting it mildly, attitude towards non-Jewish Arab-Palestinians, are justified and reasonable?
Distinguishing the actual terrorists, from the impenetrable, psychological forests of victimhood, is impossible!
Systemically, the U.S. mentor, and its benefactor, Israel, are way beyond the point of no return in making themselves good again.
In essence, were they ever good, or greater than other human beings, to begin with???
The Nation-state of America’s foundations were laid on the genocided ruins of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Only of late, historically, are these truths beginning to be more consciously recognized, thanks to the actual viewing, in ‘reel’ time exposure to the genocidal atrocities being committed, in broad daylight, by the beneficiary Israeli terrorist state, against the indigenous peoples of western Asia and the Levant.
Calling a spade a spade “originated from the classical Greek of Plutarch’s Apophthegmata Laconica and was introduced to the English language in 1542.” AI Overview.
“The Nation-state of America’s foundations were laid on the genocided ruins of the indigenous peoples of the Americas”
This is true of every nation on the planet. Every square inch of the Earth has been conquered again and again throughout the course of human history. American native tribes aren’t descendants of the first migrants across Beringia. They are survivors of the last wave of migration, with each successive migration largely conquering and killing off the one prior (with a bit of interbreeding as well). They fought viciously among themselves and genocided whole tribes before Europeans showed up with and began a conquest and genocide of their own. Just as Europeans fought viciously among themselves. In Great Britain, there is almost no native blood left after conquests by the Romans, the Angles, the Saxons, the Vikings, and finally the Normans. The same is true elsewhere, where the original native tribes from prehistory have largely been wiped out and replaced with conquerors and interbreeding.
The reason the Jewish diaspora exists is because after surviving Roman conquest and occupation, the Israelites could not survive the Islamic conquest of the Levant and fled. The Palestinian people themselves are descendants of foreign conquerors. They then began to return a bit more than 1000 years later, and displaced the descendants of the people who displaced their ancestors. Such is the history of humanity, no matter where you look.
Murray’s comment at the end of the piece “short of popular revolt in the West,” says it all, and he’s correct. Without a true Western revolt by WE THE PEOPLE, it’s a done deal and our world will end!
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
— Thomas Jefferson
Brinkmanship is the pursuit of interests (ultimately power). But the pattern of history is clear: it ultimately ends in destruction. It can be summed up in a simple syllogism: every empire eventually faces the war it is trying to avoid; today everyone wants to avoid WWIII; therefore that is the fate that awaits humanity. I explore this in my e-pamphlet The Doomsday Syllogism. Those leading us to nuclear Armageddon do not see this. They complicate falsehood to avoid a simple truth: the only thing that just save humanity. Interested, then search: The Doomsday Syllogism.
Blinken is the snake in the grass and so far effective in filling Biden’s
addled brain with Zionist fantasies. He’s ineffective as a diplomat.
Where has he authentically sought peace and/or collaboration?
His mouth flops compassion
as deep and rich as the microscopic edge of a sharp razor blade. Unbalanced
and thoughtless. Grandiose self-importance. Superficial and lacking in
substance – morally and in wisdom. What kind of a Secretary of State refuses
to talk to the “enemy”? Either an insecure, frightened or hubris inflated one.
Leaving diplomacy to the military. (Hear retired Col. Wilkerson, youtube). We have
an addled Presidential brain and a Zionist making the decisions. How stupid
is that combination?
if he succeeds rest assured it will be the end of the western order. The western oligarchy will never hurt anyone again. The countries of the global south will inoculate themselves and the western elites will cannibalize its own population’s wealth which will lead to an uprising. Should the west resort to a tactical nuclear weapon, it will be a pariah, and it will be annihilated.
No one has to play our game. Western religious and moral authority in running the world is discrediting itself. The incredible costs our our attempts to dominate civilization is beginning to hit the threshold of economic impacts our expensive high tech world an inflationary ecological impacts is driving us crazy with a military protection racket gone wild. Deescalation is the only alternative and a n alternative economic model other than permanent war..
This whole scenario is beyond irrational, therefore, to me, it looks less like being driven by money, of which there is much, and more like driven by ideology, or religion. True believers have caused great damage over the years to huge numbers. We read about them in texts and somehow believe we, of the modern world, have escaped whatever demented demons drove the Inquisition, or the Salem Witch Trials, Doctrine of Discovery, Nazism, and other ideology/religious-based slaughter.
We are not dealing with rational actors, at least not in total. Therefore, trying to analyse what is happening, without addressing this important component, is incomplete, and incomprehensible otherwise.
“Religion poisons everything!” – Christopher Hitchens. RIP Christopher. We need you more than ever!
From Megatron: Hezbollah has called on Israeli settlers to leave northern Israel. The tables are turning. What goes around eventually comes around.
“…. appears to be no escape, short of popular revolt in the West.”
We can start the revolt at the polls – with both Ds and Rs in lockstep with regard to this insanity, a strong showing for Stein would be a powerful message ….
Would it?
Strong showings by Ralph Nader in the 2000s didn’t accomplish much other than getting Dubya Bush elected.
Strong showings by Ross Perot in the 90s only succeeded in getting Bill Clinton elected.
Plus, when has Jill Stein shown much aptitude for leading …. anything? What has she accomplished other than running for president a few times and getting trounced? What has the Green party accomplished under her leadership? What makes her more qualified than someone like Marianne Williamson or Jo Jorgensen? I’m sure Stein is a nice lady who wants to do good in the world, but so was my grandmother. That doesn’t mean I would have voted for her to run the country.
Ralph Nadar, with his huge respect and great name recognition, only got 2.7% in 2000 running as a Green.
Stein only got 0.36% of the vote in 2012. And 1.07% in 2016.
In 2020 Howie Hawkins taking over the Green Party baton got a pathetic 0.3%.
The Green Party has never got any traction in the US.
And Stein has messed in her own nest with serious voters this election cycle by initially promoting Cornell West as the Green Party 2024 POTUS candidate – until he flaked out!
The sad fact is that with the US’s first-past-the-post & winner-take-all voting, and the anachronistic Electoral College with its Superdelegates, there is not even a theoretical chance a Third-Party candidate can be elected POTUS.
hxxps://fivethirtyeight.com/features/america-isnt-really-set-up-for-third-party-presidential-bids/
It’s a systemic problem. Well proven in 1992 when Billionaire Ross Perot challenged GW Bush and Clinton on a populist platform of slashing the budget deficit.
He got 19.0% of the vote ~ but didn’t receive a plurality of voters in any state.
Giving him ZERO ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES.
Until America changes its method of voting in its President, its stuck with its two-party duopoly.
Voting for the nice lady Dr. Jill Stein, even with an anti-war platform, is the definition of throwing away your vote.
She will NEVER become the 47th POTUS. A third-Party Candidate has never won in 160-years
I don’t know that it has anything to do with the electoral college or other constitutional voting structures and restrictions. After all, the first 100 years of America featured an unaffiliated president (Washington), a Federalist, four Democratic-Republicans, five Democrats, four Whigs, a Republican (Lincoln), and a National Union president. So obviously, different parties can rise and fall under the electoral system.
There is nothing in the constitution that says state electors have to be ‘first past the post’. Nebraska apportions them based on the popular vote in the state. Other states can do the same if they so wish (and have the political will to change their current system). The problem is, most states don’t want to do it, and the Democrat and Republican parties don’t want it either. The last thing Democrats want is for Republicans to take home a portion of California’s electoral votes, and the last thing Republicans want is for Democrats to take home a portion of Texas’ electoral votes.
IMO, the issue is money, not the electoral system. Too many entrenched monied interests want to protect the status quo, and will spend profligately to make sure nothing ever changes. The current system favors them. They don’t want it changed. Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Big Pharma, and the legacy media are fat and happy, and would like to stay that way. So is Washington DC, where bureaucrats sit in comfortable sinecures counting the days until they can collect their fat pensions, and politicians and their staff happily ride the public/private money-train of transitioning from public office / political aide to lobbyist or corporate government compliance officer and then back again every few years.
The question is why do they get such low %s? Is it their positions, their policies? when they reflect what a majority of “we the people” have said we wanted in poll after poll? Or is it because the Ds, especially were concerned that Nader’s 3% (with no debate exposure allowed) indicated there might be a trend developing they had to nip in the bud lickety-split – hence the “Nader got us Bush” which was clearly debunked, “3rd Parties can’t win” which is also nonsense, any candidate on a ballot can win if enough people vote for ’em, and then there’s the absurd “spoiler” bit – every candidate running is, by definition, out to “spoil” it for every other candidate – personally I would be happy to “spoil” it for the 2 parties who have spoiled so much of everything else.
But, unfortunately, these ridiculous memes seem to have succeeded in causing too many of us who want better to chicken out from actually voting for it …. if we had, in increasing numbers with each election, facing the slings and arrows of prevaricating Ds, especially, we’d have a much better Gov’t by now, as the Ds would have gotten the message – reform or lose – yup, we might still wind up with a 2 Party system but the Ds wouldn’t be one …
As for the West debacle, that’s on him – after initially getting status on ballots as a GP candidate, he “changed his mind” and went out on his own, he abandoned the Greens, and not vice-versa – if there had been no one running on the Green ticket, the party would lose it’s Party status for the first time in decades –
As to plurality, indeed, that is all one needs in each state, so let’s give it to them … she is on enough ballots to get it – let’s give it to her, unless you really prefer one of the “other two”
As to “nice lady” – one who faces cops in a demo who are knocking her over with bikes and barricades, seems to have the courage of her convictions, and there is much more to her platform than “anti-war” – the other choices are – pro-genocide, e.g.
Has this “systemic problem” that you claim prevents 3rd Party from winning changed since 160 years ago when, as you point out, a 3rd Party won? Is it the money, or is it the people who accept the money …
Oh my – after all these years, that broken record of “Nader got us Bush” is still playing – when it is clear to anyone paying attention that it was the SC that “called it for Bush” when they stopped the Fla. recount …
As for Perot – 19%, as i recall, the last 3rd Party to be allowed in Pres. debates – wonder why that is …
What has Stein accomplished – if nothing else, demonstrating over and over that the duopoly will stop at nothing to keep 3rd Party candidates off ballots, esp the Ds when that Party challenges them from the Left … so who, precisely, is it that is a “danger to democracy” – we criticize “authoritarian” Gov’ts., “dictatorships”, who outlaw political parties, or jail, or worse, their candidates to keep from being challenged by them because they know they are popular – in this “democracy” all we have to do to stop challengers is keep them off ballots – problem solved – what is widely known, commented on often, even here, as our totally dysfunctional, corp bought and sold duopoly can then proceed apace, feeling confident that it has narrowed the field to 2, and forced us to choose between a LOTE – or stay home, as so many do …
As for qualifications – hmm, what about Trump or Harris makes them “qualified”? Their “experience”? In what, being able to successfully maneuver themselves in a corrupt political environment? What have they “accomplished” in overseeing a country that, by any measure, is sinking lower and lower in just about every parameter with regard to the welfare of “we the people”?
As for your grandmother – perhaps she would have made a better Pres than any of the ones we have had in the last 30 years or so … especially if she espoused the principles and policies that Stein does …
It amazes me that people still want to stick with this D/R duopoly when we could do so much better if we stopped denigrating the ones who offer us better, as you do here, and supported them instead ….
Our world is a shit hole all thanks to these fucked-up so called leaders in the west. I hope they all burn in hell with the devil incarnate, Netanyahu!
LOL
The world would be a paradise if only we could do away with nasty western world leaders. A true utopia of humanitarian leadership from China, Russia, and the Islamic nations would solve everything. Unless you are gay. Or a reporter. Or a woman. Or a dissident. Or practice a disfavored religion. Or don’t practice a favored religion (in the Islamic states). And so on and so forth.
Western civilization is far from perfect and has many, many problems. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I’d rather live in a flawed democratic republic run by warmongering oligarchs than in an Islamic theocracy or a communist autocracy where the state wields unlimited power.
After all, there is a reason that western countries face an immigration crisis of too many people wanting to move in, as opposed to most non-western countries facing an immigration problem of brain drain and too many people wanting to move out. The west may be a damn mess, but it’s still the best thing going.
You are ignoring a very real religious component that binds Judaism and Christianity
… and a very real religious component between Islamist fundamentalists like Hamas and Judaism. It’s not just about land. Tribalism and religious dogma are a very real part of the problem and cannot be ignored.
The U.S. is a failed country, with a failing government, that doesn’t follow its signed treaties and its own laws. I would start with the 14th Amendment that says nobody who participates in an insurrection can run for, or hold office.
We will need to replace the whole bunch of bribe taking elites, and our two corrupted political parties with a more open multipolar political dialogue, along with a more democratic multipolar world.
In short, we will need to adapt to the loss of Empire and its faux based “world rule order”, where we make the rules but don’t even follow them ourselves.
Hmmm… I think everything “israel’ is doing is a sign of weakness not strength. Instead it’s using terror as a weapon on the civilian populations of Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Iran, hoping that it will break their will. Does the US want to get involved directly in a ground war in West Asia? I don’t think so, anymore than it wants to get directly involved in a ground war with Russia. In fact the parallels are instructive. This is why the US has no problem sending arms to Israel and propagandising why it does so, it can easily convince the populations of the West,with the massive psyop it has deployed. ‘Israel’ simply cannot sustain a ‘conventional’ war anymore than it could back in 1967.
Great comment William.
money makes the world go mad!
the west’s self-righteous arrogance
and indifference are beyond belief.
as to hoping for popular revolt in
the west – i.e. the global north -,
i’m afraid people will only start revolting
once their own blood starts flowing …
empathy is hard to come by these days.
even worse, those who show it now
must expect to get beaten or thrown
behind bars to be silenced ‘for good’.
peaceful co-existence, anybody?
the silent majority is probably for it.
sorry, they’re so silent!
perfectly inllustrating how far and deep the tentacles of the zionist-lobby money reach let’s just recall the visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau (jan. 2024) by one of the richest men on earth, of X and Starlink-fame –
Genocide as a means to force the United States into war with Iran on behalf of Israel. Just how stupid are our leaders? How stupid will we prove to be when Zionists again play the victim?
The name of the article quoted in previous post: A Jihad For Love: The Quest For Agape In Islam First published on Jan 01, 2000, republished in 2009 by Common Ground News Service.
“Israel plans to humiliate Iran and its allies to an extent that a full-on regional war, in which the United States will fight alongside them, becomes inevitable.” That’s what they want all along and are moving forwards on because the windows of opportunity are closing once the ME understands what’s about to happen to their culture, religion, and resources.
If there is one or two fears the capitalist run countries fear most is “At the heart of all things is the germ of their overthrow,” wrote Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif in her novel, The Map of Love. In the heart of the Islamic religion is a great humanity that finds usury or interests as condemned by Allah and considered a sin. Not only that, and what these war mongers cannot do is love in the form known as Agape, because their religion is money and power not this, as explained by its author: “In the collection of hadith compiled by Imam Malik is even more explicit” about what God had to say about Agape love: “God said, ‘My love [mahabbati] necessarily belongs to those who love one another [mutahabinna] for My sake, sit together for My sake, visit one another for My sake, and give generously to one another for My sake’.”
Mahabba differs from agapé in one crucial respect: because serving and approaching the beloved is a form of ongoing personal struggle, mahabba is a form of jihad. A far cry from the violent and indiscriminate “small jihad” preached by militants, mahabba is a form of the greater jihad, or jihad against one’s own ego.
But Ahdaf Soueif is right: at the heart of all things is the germ of their overthrow. The struggle to serve God, and one another, out of love, is the jihad of human potential against the jihad of violent ideology. If resurrected, it has the power to change the world.”
G. Willow Wilson is a Muslim author and essayist. Her articles have appeared in publications including The New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly. Her graphic novel CAIRO, with artist MK Perker, is available from Vertigo Comics.
Playing Chicken with people who seek Martyrdom is really, really stupid. It is unlikely to end well for the people who believe that ‘having the most toys’ gets a soul to Heaven. Usually, their drive to collect more toys in the future to have the biggest stack of toys of all time, and their desire to enjoy their toys, will make them ‘chicken out first’.
But, if they are too asleep at the wheel to do so, they’ll get to see the Big Grin on the face of the other driver, who has been abused for 75 years and seen the people they love killed around them, and who believes that their reward for their struggle is to rise to Heaven as a Martyr in a fight to make sure that the people they love will not be oppressed in the future as they were oppressed.
The British never understood why Gandhi’s followers were marching up the guns at the Salt Mine. And the Southern Democrats never understood why people were willing to face their water cannons and attack dogs to try for justice. And apparently the Ivy League and Georgetown still don’t teach such things.
“Israel plans to humiliate Iran and its allies to an extent that a full-on regional war, in which the United States will fight alongside them, becomes inevitable.”
Precisely. This has been Israel’s sick bloody goal all along.
I find it quite fascinating that Americans always speak current wars in the future tense.
World War III is already in progress. The West Asia front has been very active for almost a year now. Can people not hear the explosions? The screams? I suppose this means that I might have to admit that the Americans really are quite exceptional. Exceptionally Deaf.
Sounds as if it’s long past time to start proceedings to throw some rogue nations out of the U.N.
Who would be left?
Throw out the Muslim countries for human rights violations against gays and women. Throw out Israel, Russia and the NATO countries for non-stop war-mongering and profiting off human suffering. Throw out China for it’s treatment of Uyghurs. And so on and so forth until no one is left.
I’m no fan of the UN and would not shed a tear if they went the way of the League of Nations, but if you believe in their mission and efficacy, you can’t start throwing disfavored countries out. The whole point of the UN is it is a place where everyone gets a voice, even tiny nations and ‘evil’ nations.
“Who would be left?”
Since you ask, by far the vast majority of the U.N.’s members do not fit reasonable criteria for being literally ‘rogue’ nations, e.g., being war-mongering (including genocide) and other radical attempts to control other countries’ internal behavior to gain unearned advantages, though lesser vassals of the U.S. often aid its radical misbehavior because they see its hegemony as being useful to their own (though not necessarily their citizens’) interest. What constitutes being an actual rogue nation when it comes to basic U.N. red-lines (even though until now its nominal red lines have been honored more in their intent than in their substance) is not trivial. Lesser misbehavior is often handled diplomatically and/or by mechanisms like sanctions which provide opportunities for transgressors to reassess their behavior and become better world citizens.
In two of your previous comments on this article your attitude appears to be a very Western one of the “I’m all right Jack” variety, and that’s not what the U.N. is supposed to be all about (which may explain your relative disdain for it).
I agree.
Next step.
Also, throw the USA off the UNSC.
Also, while we are at it, stop the UN’s global digital ID plans in their tracks.
This is not what the UN was created for: to enable global surveillance by our digital masters.
Like the USA, the UN has been captured and must be either freed of the globalist puppeteers or replaced by something more effective and more relevant to actual global well-being
Well … at least american pols get the money returned to america in the form of bribes … er … lobbying that they send to israel in the first place.
Indeed. They’re buying off our government, if you can even call it that, with our tax dollars that are supposed to be used to meet domestic needs. Perhaps a mass tax revolt is in order.
I don’t know how the United States, considering the effluvia of lies and propaganda it spews, thinks that it is taken seriously when it professes to be humanity’s safeguard of “freedom and democracy.” It has been the co-perpetrator in the largest, most vile and incessant assailer of human rights and destroyer of human life, known to ALL sentient life (both human and other) on this planet since the Third Reich and Nazis futilely tried to seize the entire world back in the 1940’s. The Americans are merely walking in their masters’ footprints. It is the most conspicuous and most guilty butcher and genocidal mass murderers of innocents around the globe. It is an acolyte of the Great Deceiver, even as it lies and professes exactly the opposite of everything it chooses to discuss. It is the greatest bastion of deception, hypocrisy, and pure evil threatening all of our lives, safety and sanity. Those mother penetrators from Washington must be exterminated by some means or another, else they will extinguish all reason, love, and life itself on this planet and there will be no second chance for our foolish lineage and all its malefactions. Sorry, but there is NO absolution or dispensations for mass slaughter of women, children and other innocent people identified only by their assumed genome. Joe Biden, YOU are a hard core fascist practitioner of genocide. Kamala Harris, YOU are the same… as well as every stinking bastard who has been a member of Biden’s horde of demons in the White House. I will NOT reconsider.