Best middle east history books according to redditors
We found 2,177 Reddit comments discussing the best middle east history books. We ranked the 769 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 2,177 Reddit comments discussing the best middle east history books. We ranked the 769 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Welp This book is fair to all sides, both get a coating of bile.
The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War
The best book on the middle east ever published is Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East It's the best history book i've ever read.
Some lesser known killer quotes that in my opinion put the struggle in context.
This one from Churchill in 1937 is eerily prescient.
The wealthy, crowded, progressive Jewish state will lie in the plains and on the seacoasts of Palestine. Around it, in the hills and the uplands, stretching far and wide into the illimitable deserts the war-like Arabs of Syria, of Transjordania, of Arabia, backed by the armed forces of Iraq, offer the ceaseless menace of war. To maintain itself the Jewish state will be armed to the teeth and must bring in every able-bodied man to strengthen its army. But how long will this process be allowed to continue by the great Arab populations in Iraq and Palestine? Can it be expected that the Arabs would stand by impassively and watch the building up with Jewish world capital and resources of a Jewish army equipped with the most deadly weapons of war until it was strong enough not to be afraid of them? And if ever the Jewish army reached that point, who can be sure that cramped within their narrow limits it would not plunge out into the new, undeveloped lands that lie around them?
Yitzhak Epstein....1907
"The time has come for Zionists to dispel the myth that land lies empty for the want of working hands or the laziness of the local residents. There are no deserted fields. In general we have made a blunder in our relationship to a large and passionate people. The Arab, like any man has a strong bond with his homeland, he will not abandon his country, will not wander far, he has many traditions that bind him to the soil of his homeland. Will those that have been dispossessed remain silent and accept that which is being done to them? In the end they will wake up and return to us with blows for what we have looted from them with our gold."
George Antonius, 1938
"The treatment meted out to Jews in Germany and other European countries is a disgrace to its authors and to modern civilisation. Posterity will not exonerate in any country that fails to bear its proper share of the sacrifices needed to alleviate Jewish suffering and distress. To place the brunt of the burden upon Arab Palestineis a miserable evasion of the duty that lies upon the whole of the civilised world. It is also morally outrageous. No code of morals could justify the persecution of one people in an attempt to relieve the persecution of another. The cure for the eviction of Jews from Germany is not to be sought in the eviction of the Arabs from their homeland and the relief of Jewish distress must not be accomplished at the cost of inflicting a corresponding distress upon an innocent and peaceful population".
Wow, this takes me back.
That said, for some reason the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just incredibly prone to stupidity, even more than most other troll-infested issues. When I was at university >20 years ago, there was an ongoing propaganda war between the "Israel Action Committee" and the "Muslim Student Union", who'd regularly gather at the entrance to campus to scream at each other while students tried to get past.
They had an ongoing flyer tit-for-tat, with really bad (this is pre-Photoshop) manipulated pictures. It was so awful that when I tried to take a course on the topic, with a really excellent Israeli professor who tried incredibly hard to present a moderate, totally even-handed view, the two groups would sit in the same seating areas in the lecture hall every session, glowering at each other. The moment one of them raise their hand, you knew that you had one of three options:
...because at that point, the class was just lost.
On that note, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Mark Tessler is a great read.
You serious? Because the British literally selected the tribal leader Ibn Saud and gave him control of what we now call Saudi Arabia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud#Rise_to_power
The Brits mistakenly believed that the King of Mecca was like a Muslim pope and everyone would fall in line behind him. So they created the boundary lines for Iraq and Jordan and placed his sons on the thrones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_bin_Ali,_Sharif_of_Mecca#Following_World_War_I
The founding of Israel was guaranteed by ex prime minister Balfour and later the Sykes-Picot agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement
Suggested reading:
http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1453911664&sr=1-1&keywords=a+peace+to+end+all+peace
http://www.amazon.com/Kingmakers-Invention-Modern-Middle-East/dp/0393337707
I recommend two books actually: [The Iron Cage] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Iron-Cage-Palestinian-Statehood/dp/0807003093) and [The Iron Wall] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Iron-Wall-Israel-Paperback/dp/0393321126). Each book shows how one society was shaped and the impact it had on the conflict. Neither book blames anyone but they show the rational that went into the decisions at the time,
Can we stop spreading this misinformation please?
I keep hearing this and its flat out not true and I hate that it keeps getting brought up.
The vast majority of Arabs did not fight against the Ottomans, they fought for the Ottomans. Did you all really think the Ottoman Army consisted of only Turkish soldiers? 1/3 of the Ottoman military consisted of Arab officers and soldiers. Many of them fought against the British at Galipoli and in Iraq, Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula. Unless you're talking about members of the Jordanian or Saudi Royal Family, or are affiliated with them, most Arabs did not fight against the Ottomans. Hell, even the Saudis didn't directly fight against the Ottomans until well towards the end of the war, since most of the anti-Ottoman fighting was done by the Hashemite family.
The majority of Arabs fought for the Ottomans, despite the fact that Enver Pasha (the guy responsible for the Armenian Genocide), arrested, tortured, and executed many innocent Arabs because of his own paranoia that they were somehow plotting to have him killed. In fact, we didn't learn until much later that there was no major movement to overthrow the Ottomans in favor of an Arab nationalist government. In fact, even after the Ottoman Empire was defeated, there were many Arabs who were working hard to expel the British and return back to the Ottoman Empire, but when the Mustafa Kemal declared a Turkish Republic in 1923, and all hopes of returning were lost, and that is when we started to see Arab Nationalism really start to take off as an anti-Imperialist movement.
I'm an Indian and let's not forget, that many Indian soldiers, Muslims included did fight against the Ottoman Empire. The explanation that was given to them by their British commanders were that they weren't fighting to overthrow the Caliphate, but to free it from those who have "taken the Sultan hostage" (i.e., the Three Pashas and The Young Turks).
If you want me to recommend one, let's start with this one.
A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin
The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire, 1516-1918 by Bruce Masters
More information:
The forgotten Arabs of Gallipoli | Al Jazeera
If you want to learn more about the history of the Ottoman Empire, its life, culture and the people that made up the Empire, then I suggest you subscribe to:
The Ottoman History Podcast
where they actually interview historians and experts in the field.
When the US began operating in Afghanistan in late 2001, Special Forces operators used horses to get around. A few pictures of 'em. I've read a few accounts of soldiers going into engagement on horseback there, but not an actual cavalry charge in formation to break the enemy formation.
Horse Soldiers apparently gives a good account of them, but I haven't read it.
I was a history major. I did some extensive research on the events of 1948. While the OP's account is largely accurate, there are some extenuating omissions. Be aware that any account that portrays either the Jews or the Palestinians as fully culpable is essentially promulgating propaganda. There were the assholes, and there were the assholes. This is what happened between the assholes and the assholes:
Beginning around the 1900's Jews began immigrating from Europe to what is today Israel. There were always tensions between the Palestinians and the Jews who shared the land. After WWII, there was widespread pressure to give the Jews a homeland, so in 1947, the UN voted to grant some narrow strips of land in what is now Israel to the Jews. It should be noted that the area that was granted to the Jews is less than 50% of the size of Israel today (not including the West Bank).
When the UN vote passed, the entire Arab world was in uproar. Britain was to hand Israel over to the Jews on May, 15th 1948. Skirmishes arose between the Palestinians and Jews; these skirmishes slowly escalated into a full-scale civil war (which was not the War of Independence, as the OP asserts). Arabs states held back their attacks, promising to launch an invasion only after the British left and the Jews declared independence. The Jews, determined to realize their goal of becoming an independent state, knew they were going to declare independence. However, they feared that even with the civil war won, the Palestinian populations living right near their borders would provide aid and protection to the invading forces. In order to eliminate the threat of Palestinians aiding the Arab invasion, the Haganah (a precursor to today's Israeli Defense Force) and the Irgun (a right-wing militia) engaged in tactics ranging from the civil to the brutal aimed at ousting the Palestinians (some of whom left voluntarily). About six months after the civil war broke out, a day before the end of the British Mandate and with a sizable buffer between the Jews and the Arab states, the Jews declared Independence.
What happened on May 15th? The Arab states did indeed mount an attack on Israel, but they ultimately lost what is known by the Israelis as the War of Independence. Although they were superior in number, the Arab attack was half-assed and disorganized. Arab soldiers weren't willing to risk their lives to oust Israelis -- who were ferociously defending their land. On March 10th, 1949, the Arab states surrendered and an armistice was signed. As part of the armistice, a much larger patch of land (which is still smaller than Israel today), was extracted from the Arabs as the price of losing their invasion. The rest of what is Israel today only became part of Israel in 1967.
Also, on Deir Yassin: After any battle, the Palestinians would overestimate their losses while the Haganah and Irgun would underestimate the Palestinian losses. Deir Yassin was an anomaly because the Irgun estimate was larger than the Palestinian estimate. Researchers speculate that the Irgun overestimated the numbers to intimidate the neighboring Palestinians into leaving on their own -- which many did. While probably not the vicious massacre that was reported, Deir Yassin was nonetheless a bloody invasion.
If anybody wants to read up on this further, this is probably the most impartial book I've found: http://www.amazon.com/1948-History-First-Arab-Israeli-War/dp/0300151128/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1343631186&sr=8-2&keywords=1948
Edit: I realize that this is a very emotional issue for some, but I do my best to provide an even-handed approach. There is information here that both pro-Israel and anti-Israel people would want to downvote. If you take issue, please respond with a comment.
Mark Tessler's A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is often cited as a very balanced work on the subject.
/r/AskHistorians also has some good information such as:
There are many others on the sub as well, but I think that covers the most frequent topics I have heard about Israel.
For a few more books My Promised Land by Ari Shavit is about the history of Israel, Shavit is a writer for Haaretz which is a very 'left' publication in Israel. Also, Israel by Daniel Gordis Gordis has written for a variety of publications including the New York Times and the New Republic
We have also had some posts here on /r/NeutralPolitics about this subject, which are a bit more modern than AH:
As a matter of fact, yes! David Fromkin wrote a wonderful book on the subject, "A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East." It is engaging and very informative!
http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091
Well, you could read his book on it. It's a pretty good read.
But to your point, here is an excerpt from a recent interview with him:
SL: Clearly bombing and having a war with ISIS militarily will not result in the destruction of ISIS, nor will it end ISIS’s deeply rooted ideologies. What are some factors that could prevent ISIS from flourishing or expanding – how could we defeat ISIS?
MW: Syria is where the war should begin. It’s a much more amenable set of conditions for trying to push ISIS back. If they lose Raqqa and if they lose terrain in Deir ez-Zor they’re not finished but that is a hammer blow to them.
Syria is a Sunni majority country, most of the Sunnis don’t want to work with ISIS they don’t want to be lauded over by ISIS; they’ve cut pragmatic deals with ISIS because of the lack of any alternative. They certainly don’t want to be ruled by Assad and the FSA has proven to be corrupt and illegitimate in the eyes of many of them.
The first thing you have to do is provide an incentive to the population. You have to prove to Sunnis that America cares about their plight. And by prove to them I don’t mean Samantha Power tweeting out gravely concerned warnings about the use of barrel bombs and chlorine gas. The US has if not air supremacy then certainly air superiority in northern Syria. Why not put that to even better use by stopping the Syrian Air Force from dropping barrel bombs and chlorine gas on the heads of mostly Sunnis? If they did that, then suddenly the local population in Syria says ‘oh you know what, America does care after all, so maybe we do have a partner here with the CIA or with the Pentagon.’
Robert "He Can't Keep Getting Away With This" Spencer is the eloquent and soft-spoken author of such books as Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins.
Former President Jimmy Carter actually wrote a book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
Short answer: no.
Slightly longer answer: The radicalization of Islam in the Middle East ties into the division of the region by the western powers after WWI, and further during the Cold War, when the U.S. (not only, but in particular) supported the rise to power of radical religious figures in opposition to communist/leftist parties & figures who might be sympathetic to the Soviet Union, and therefore potentially threaten U.S./U.K. access to oil in the region. This included aiding in the over-throwing of democratically elected governments in favor of autocratic but U.S./U.K.-favored leaders - most notably the U.S.-led 1953 coup d'etat in Iran, when Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown. The 1978 Iranian Revolution began as a popular uprising against the Shah who replaced him.
For more extensive reading on the subject:
Inventing Iraq by Toby Dodge (I have some major issues with Dodge's conclusions post 9/11, but the historical analysis that makes up the majority of the book is solid)
Spies in Arabia by Priya Satia, and Lawrence in Arabia are good histories of imperial ambition during the WWI period and its after-effects
Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan for the political maneuvering of the Western powers
A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin
I also recommend Edward Said, if you're looking for cultural analysis as well as history
Everything you know about Hitler and WWII is conditioned into you by a joint government-corporate-academic military grade psychological operation that's been running almost continuously since the end of the war. It ramped up big time in the 70's.
https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614
https://www.amazon.com/German-Villainy-Benton-Bradberry-2012-07-03/dp/B01FEK8ZKM/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_6?keywords=myth+of+german+villainy&qid=1556886600&s=books&sr=1-6-fkmrnull
What's funny is that Spencer didn't salute at that event. He raised a glass of whiskey. Every shot the MSM uses is a pulled back phone camera behind someone's head. There are many other cameras at the event though and he's clearly just raising his glass. Several attendees at the event did salute, the cold calculating intellectual and political powerhouse Tia 'Tequila' was one of them, and I can assure your her and the others had not the faintest idea about fascism and national socialism and were just doing it to be edgy.
Your post also seems to assume we are offended to be linked to Hitler and the national socialists. Many in the alt right are not. Many of us are are unabashed 3rd positionists (aka as fashists or national socialists). The 3rd positionist wing of the alt right strongly dissuades nazi paraphernalia, especially at public events. You can be confident that anyone with a big swastika flag is a spook. For example nobody knew who the fuck this guy was.
The dissident community isn't afraid to seriously look at the source history and the context of what Hitler did and what he was fighting for. If you were to truly explore what really went on during both wars and how the family and tribe that shall not be named manipulated and orchestrated them you'd probably change your tune about Hitler. Instead most people allow their opinion to be shaped for them by slick manipulation of consensus. I could show you several examples of these public consensus manipulation events but it would bump up against rule 6. The Phillip Rushton Suzuki debate is one example.
SECOND
What the "Iranian nuclear threat" was actually all about, was a pretext to impose regime-change in Iran, pushed by the Isreaelis and NeoCons, just as they pushed for the Iraq war with bogus claims about "WMDs in Iraq"
They exaggerated the iran threat
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-02-27/israeli-government-has-exaggerated-iranian-nuclear-threat-years
And the Iraq threat
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-12-04-israeli-iraq-threat_x.htm
The pushed for the Iraq war
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-to-us-dont-delay-iraq-attack/
and a war on Iran
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-prodding-us-to-attack-iran/
The pro-Israeli lobby had been pushing a PR war on Iran for a long time already, ie:
http://www.uscatholic.org/culture/war-and-peace/2008/06/iran-spam
And AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) spent millions of dollars trying to undermine the deal
https://www.thenation.com/article/inside-the-effort-to-kill-the-iran-deal/
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/06/429911872/in-iran-deal-fight-lobbyists-are-spending-millions-to-sway-12-senators
See, the Israelis (and Saudis) and their supporters in the US including the NeoCons and Iran hawks consider an improvement in US-Iran relations as coming at their expense, so they don't want to see the US and Iran getting along and they would rather see the US engage in regime-change in Iran
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/john-bolton-iran-regime-change-231586
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/05/its-time-to-pursue-regime-change-in-iran/
This book is all about that: http://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338
On the other hand, there are people who say that the US should "go to Iran" just as Nixon went to China because that will promote US interests the best
https://www.amazon.com/Going-Tehran-America-Islamic-Republic/dp/1250043530
Note that when Nixon decided to recognize Communist China, the US had to dump relations with Taiwan. Israel does not want to become a Taiwan if the US decides to mend relations with Iran.
Here's another book I plan to read once it comes out: https://www.amazon.com/Deal-Century-Iran-Blocked-Wests/dp/0997896507
FINALLY
The nuclear agreement called the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) is not technically a "treaty" but is an "executive agreement"
Executive Agreements are more common in international affairs than treaties, they also don't have the same formalities such as a need to be ratified through the Senate. There's a lot of hype claiming that Obama somehow violated the constitution by entering into the agreement but there's absolutely nothing unconstitutional about executive agreements, they're actually VERY common. https://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/faqs/70133.htm
There's all sort of BS being claimed, namely that Iran did not "sign" the agreement and that it is not "legally binding" -- but in fact international agreements including treaties are not legally binding (there is no court, judge or police to enforce them) and instead they are political agreements that are "binding" only as long as each party agrees to be bound by it. International agreements are also not a car loan that require you to sign them to be valid.
It is also claimed that there were "Secret concessions" made to Iran which were "exposed" by the UN.
Example:
>U.N. watchdog exposes secret concessions in Obama’s Iran deal
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2016/12/25/u-n-watchdog-exposes-secret-concessions-in-obamas-iran-deal/
But in fact literally EVERY WORD in that headline is actually false. The documents were not "exposed", the signatories themselves decided to make them public so as to end the hype about "secret deals", there were no "concessions" just technical agreements like agreeing to not count unrecoverable waste Uranium in the amount that Iran was supposed to be able to keep, and in fact the IAEA is not part of the UN but is an independent agency, and it isn't a "watchdog" either its role in the NonProliferation Treaty is just as an accountant that measures declared nuclear material to make sure the declared amounts match the actual amounts, that's all (it isn't an investigative agency or an intelligence agency charged with finding WMDs, in fact its actual job is to promote the use of nuclear technology)
The JCPOA required certain measures by Iran for at least 10-15 years (after which the "normal" Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations will continue to be in place) ie to limit the number of centrifuges it operates that are used to enrich uranium before using the material to make reactor fuel rods, to only enrich to 3.65% which can't be used for bombs (Iran never enriched uranium to bomb-grade anyway) to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium, and to cease work on a heavy water reactor and to export any heavy water it produces beyond its domestic needs. Iran has done all of that and the IAEA has verified it in its reports. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/16/11/gov2016-55.pdf
However the opponents of the deal have been claiming that Iran has supposedly "violated" the deal by producing 0.1 ton more heavy water than a the 130 ton "limit" contained in the agreement. The problem is that there is actually no such limit in the agreement.
Annex 1, Part C, Paragraph 14 of the JCPOA states that Iran is to keep enough heavy water to meet its domestic needs including contingency stocks (estimated to be 130 tons in total) and any excess is to be exported for sale.
All Iran is required to do under Paragraph 15 is inform the IAEA of its heavy water stock and allow occasional IAEA visits to the production facility to monitor the stock.
Iran has done all that too.
Note that neither paragraph imposes a specific upper limit on the amount of heavy water which can be produced.
See http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/245318.pdf for the exact text I'm citing
And 24 extra gallons of heavy water is not a violation of that "estimate". Note that heavy water itself is quite harmless and can't be used as a weapon and furthermore without an operational heavy water reactor (Iran poured concrete into the reactor their were building so it can't ever work, as the agreement required) there is no way that heavy water can somehow be used to make nukes anyway (and, the reactor was subject to IAEA monitoring anyway.)
In exchange, the US is supposed to lift as many sanctions as it can and release Iran's frozen funds. OF course the Iranians and the Obama administration new that they could not lift ALL the sanctions since most of the sanctions were imposed by COngress, not the President. So some sanctions have been removed but the US and Iran still can't do business especially since existing sanctions prevent Iran from doing business using US dollars which is the international currency. And, Congress is pushing for new sanctions. The Iranians consider this a violation of the agreement which requires the US to do its best to remove all sanctions but the text of the treaty does not actually require all the sanctions to be removed.
So bottom line is that despite all the hype, neither side has "violated" the agreement.
Note however that the US and Iran are not the only parties to the deal: Russia, China, Germany, UK and France that have signed it too, and it has been endorsed by the UN Security Council. The European courts had already ruled sanctions on Iran to be illegal before the deal,
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-sanctions-eu-idUSBRE91514220130206
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iran-nuclear-courts-insight-idUKBRE96E0M920130715
and the the other countries have told the US that they will continue to abide by the deal even if the US pulls out.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/07/iran-nuclear-deal-vital-warns-theresa-may-donald-trump-vows/
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/In-a-message-to-Trump-China-defends-Iran-nuclear-deal/article16767795.ece
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-eu-idUSKCN0PU0S520150720
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-News/Russia-Loss-of-Iranian-nuclear-deal-would-be-unforgivable-475468
http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2016/12/06/china-warns-trump-iran-nuclear-deal-must-stand/
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-iran-nuclear-europe-idUKKCN0RA2H420150910
A Peace to End all Peace by historian David Fromkin covers this in great detail. It's a great read if you want to be sad and angry and confused.
You might want to check out this interesting book and then you'll find out that katsas operate in different countries...so no surprise about NZ.
Unfortunately, the most efficient way to become knowledgable about the Middle East is to read. A lot. The Middle East is a far more complex place than most people imagine and understanding the region requires a great deal of knowledge. I have been studying the Middle East for nearly a decade and I still feel like there is so much that I do not know. I would start by reading reputable news sources every day. Places like The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, Financial Times, are the Los Angeles Times are good English language news sources that you should look at. Additionally, I have written up a suggested reading list for learning about the Middle East, though it is a bit more security-related since that's my area of expertise. I hope it helps. And feel free to ask any questions if you have them.
Books - General History of the Middle East
Books - Middle East Military History
Books - Middle East Terrorism and Substate Violence
Books - U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
Think Tanks
Below is a list of several different think tanks, which frequently publish everything from extension research and analysis to quick and succinct blog posts about the issues in the Middle East. Some of these think tanks specifically focus on the Middle East, while for others it is only one area of their research.
Journals, Blogs, Podcasts, and other Publications
> And I cannot join together the image of a relatively peaceful religion of pretty great people (which I say really without any irony or quote marks) with all the wars that are caused by Islam itself and by its internal differences.
Christianity went through pretty much the same phase, but even more violent and bloody. And unlike the Muslim world, it wasn't precipitated by external forces meddling in internal political affairs. It just spontaneously happened.
I suggest reading this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091
Sunnis and Shi'ites are fighting in Iraq because of greed, a massive political power vacuum, and the spark that ignited the blaze was Al-Qaeda in Iraq (now ISIS) targeting Shi'ites and their Mosques for attacks, purposefully stoking a civil war (so they could have a chance at seizing control once the civil war took down the government and chased out the US... they wanted to rule over the ashes of Iraq). It failed because the US got the Sunnis to turn on the extremists (the Sunni Awakening). But then Syria collapsed into civil war, so the Iraqi insurgents went there and reorganized, took land, then swept back into Iraq.
A modern Western country could wipe ISIS off the face of the Earth in a ground campaign in probably a few weeks (or less if they were willing to put up with a few casualties). I think they'd prefer just watching what happens and bombing from afar (even when their own citizens become targets of ISIS, desperately trying to get the people behind the bombers to engage them on the ground so they can actually shoot back at them).
The Sunni-Shi'ite conflict in Syria/Iraq played into the pre-existing wider regional conflict between Iran and Saudi-Arabia with Iran's influence extending over Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the Assad government in Syria (as well as the Shi'ites in Iraq and Shi'ite minorities in the Persian Gulf). This conflict has been raging since 1979 after Iran's Islamic Revolution (watch the intro to the movie Argo for background on that), after which the CIA instigated their man in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, to fight Iran in a disastrous decade-long conflict.
Sunnis and Shi'ites, like Protestants and Catholics, don't usually just fight and aren't usually at each other's throats but if the situation pushes them enough, they will turn on each other (see: Northern Ireland, which was in modern times, not centuries ago).
This is an extreme simplification.
I remember Robert Fisk mentioning the effects of DU in the 1991 Gulf War. The A-10s used DU rounds, and the burning DU rounds in Iraqi tanks caused it to be turned into a fine particulate which could more easily be spread and breathed in by the local populace. Link
>"Armour piercing ammunitions are generally referred to as "kinetic energy penetrators". DU is preferred to other metals, because of its high density, its pyrophoric nature (DU self-ignites when exposed to temperatures of 600° to 700° and high pressures), and its property of becoming sharper, through adiabatic shearing, as it penetrates armour plating . On impact with targets, DU penetrators ignite, breaking up in fragments, and forming an aerosol of particles ("DU dust") whose size depends on the angle of the impact, the velocity of the penetrator, and the temperature. These fine dust particles, can catch fire spontaneously in air. Small pieces may ignite in a fire and burn, but tests have shown that large pieces, like the penetrators used in anti-tank weapons, or in aircraft balance weights, will not normally ignite in a fire."
>Natural uranium (NU) ore dust was instilled into rat lungs for comparison. The fraction dissolving in lung showed a pattern of exponential decline with increasing initial burden similar to DU. However, the decline was less steep, with about 14% appearing in urine for lung burdens up to about 200 microg NU dust/lung and 5% at lung burdens >1,100 microg NU dust/lung. NU also showed both a fast and a more slowly dissolving component. At the higher lung burdens of both DU and NU that showed lowered urine excretion rates, histological evidence of kidney damage was seen. Kidney damage was not seen with the muscle burdens tested. DU dust produced kidney damage at lower lung burdens and lower urine uranium levels than NU dust, suggesting that other toxic metals in DU dust may contribute to the damage.
>In aggregate the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU.
So yeah... DU dust = not good.
Edit: tried to fix my terrible formatting
>He uses this to say that Iran didn't offer up anything new in the agreement from what they proposed in 2005.
He's hardly the only one who points out that Iran had been making BETTER compromise offers earlier on that were rejected by the US:
US Amb. Chas Freeman:
>In 2005, Iran offered a deal. We rejected it, refused to talk to Iran directly, and doubled down on sanctions. Ten years later, we settled for much less than what was originally offered.
http://chasfreeman.net/lessons-from-americas-continuing-misadventures-in-the-middle-east/
British Sec of State Jack Straw
>“I’m absolutely convinced that we can do business with Dr Rouhani, because we did do business with Dr Rouhani, and had it not been for major problems within the US administration under President Bush, we could have actually settled the whole Iran nuclear dossier back in 2005, and we probably wouldn’t have had President Ahmadinejad as a consequence of the failure as well.”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/david-morrison-peter-oborne/us-scuppered-deal-with-iran-in-2005-says-then-british-foreign-minister
Even IAEA director ElBaradei:
> I have seen the Iranians ready to accept putting a cap on their enrichment [program] in terms of tens of centrifuges, and then in terms of hundreds of centrifuges. But nobody even tried to engage them on these offers. http://www.newsweek.com/elbaradei-iranians-are-not-fanatics-80021
Instead:
>They weren’t interested in a compromise with the government in Tehran, but regime change – by any means necessary
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/04/20/elbaradei-us-europe-werent-interested-in-compromise-with-iran/
In fact there's a long line of Iranian offers that were rejected
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700727.html
https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/when-ahmadinejad-questions-the-1.html
In 2004 Iran suspended enrichment entirely for years as a good faith gesture; the US pressured the Europeans to not accept perfectly reasonable and legal Iranian offers:
>One witness puts the problem like this: “There was not the faintest chance that President George W Bush’s Republican advisers and Israeli allies would allow him to look benignly on such a deal. On the contrary, if the Europeans were to defy American wishes, they would be letting themselves in for a transatlantic row to end all rows.”So when they came back to the negotiating table one hour later they were studiously non-committal. They spoke highly of the Iranian offer, but asked for time so that their governments could consider it.
>And when Sir John Sawers took the Iranian offer back to London it was very quickly forgotten. According to Foreign Office sources, Tony Blair intervened to make sure that it went no further
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/10007603/Iran-how-the-West-missed-a-chance-to-make-peace-with-Tehran.html
So the EU3 were basically lying to the Iranians and secretly in cahootz with the US:
>Thus, according to a cable leaked by WikiLeaks, Giannella explained during a visit to the US embassy in Brussels in December 2004 that, from an E3 perspective, ‘permanent cessation of all enrichment activities was non-negotiable, and that no other “objective guarantee” would suffice’. At the same time, she conceded that she had ‘never heard a single Iranian interlocutor even hint at the possibility of giving up the sacred “right” to develop and maintain a nuclear fuel cycle’. The ‘talks are buying time,’ she said.36 However, in the Paris Agreement, the E3 also explicitly recognized that suspension ‘is a voluntary confidence building measure and not a legal obligation’, which from the Iranian perspective implied that Iran was entitled to conduct all fuel cycle activities.37
https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/168617/EUNPC_no%2027.pdf
And ended up offering Iran an "empty box in pretty wrapping"
http://www.basicint.org/sites/default/files/PUB110805.pdf
At another point the US killed a deal after Iran had agreed to the same terms proposed by Obama just weeks earlier, causing the other parties to the negotiations to get ticked:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/flynt-and-hillary-mann-leverett/president-obama-should-be_b_592886.html
By then it became obvious that the real agenda was regime-change, and the 'nuclear threat' issue was just the cooked-up pretext, and that no matter what compromises Iran made the US would just increase demands -- like ElBaradei said above.
https://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338
http://garysick.tumblr.com/post/611735702/giving-the-finger-to-iran-and-turkey-and
https://news.vice.com/article/the-great-iranian-nuclear-swindle
Also, remember that the sanctions were already being dismantled as EU courts had ruled them to be illegal
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-courts-insight/insight-how-european-courts-are-dismantling-sanctions-on-iran-idUSBRE96E0LS20130715
Muistaakseni luin tästä Robert Fiskin kirjasta The Great War for civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. Taisin myös lukea asiasta Israelin historiaa käsittelevästä kirjasta, mutta Robert Fiskin kirja on erinomaista ja hyvin viihdyttävää luettavaa - vaikkakin Fisk on hyvin vasemmalla ja The Independentiä voisi paremmin kuvata nimellä Al Independent.
EDIT: Fisk on toiminut Independentin lähi-idän kirjeenvaihtajana iät ja ajat. Nähnyt Neuvostoliiton Afghanistanin miehityksen jne... Haastatellut myös Osama Bin Ladenia. Oli miehen mielipiteistä mitä tahansa mieltä, tämä kirja on järjettömän hyvä yhden ihmisen näkökulma lähi-itään.
>That's why it's important to combat ISIS then conceive a permanent political solution.
Sajjan is talking about the need to understand population dynamics on the ground in a place like Iraq, and how rushing in is also likely to lead to a genocide.
I would suggest reading Patrick Cockburn"s The Rise of Islamic State, particularly for context on the problem in Iraq.
If we ever want to see Iraq exist as a unified state and also defeat ISIS, we need to understand why the Sunni in places like Mosul are terrified of the Iraqi Army. If we don't conceive of a permanent solution first, air support for the Iraqi army as it moves north is air cover for the death squads that follow closely in its wake. We would likely do nothing but set up the grievances for the next bloody civil war and the next ISIS.
Israeli history Professor Shlomo Sand The Invention of the Jewish People https://www.amazon.co.uk/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234
Ashkenazi Jews originated in the Caucasus and converted to Judaism in the 8th Century AD. They have no ancestral and no DNA relationship to the Middle East.
First Customer Review:-
A thorough and interesting update on 'The Khazar Hypothesis'. In this book Shlomo Sand goes into considerable detail about the origins of the Ashkenazi Jews, providing considerable support for the view that they are of Khazar origin, and are a Slavic, not a Semitic people.
Arthur Koestler's pioneering book, 'The Thirteenth Tribe' from 1976 was subjected to all the ire that the powerful Israeli propaganda machine could throw at it. Sand's book is much better researched, and written in a less provocative manner.
More on the Origins of Ashkenazi Jews, the Origins and History of Israel, and the real reasons why Israel bombed Gaza in 2014 http://ian56.blogspot.com/2014/07/an-honest-israeli-jew-tells-real-truth_11.html
"Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," authored by Jimmy Carter, published in 2007.
>We didn't kill the Armenians because they were Armenians or because we wanted to exterminate their whole race like Hitler, but because it was war and they were our enemies.
People such as Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, who was an early member of the Nazi Party, and Hans von Seeckt spent time in Ottoman Turkey and drew inspiration from what was happening. Even Rudolf Höss, who would later be the commandant of Auschwitz, was there. He joined the German forces in Turkey.
Yes, there was an armed Armenian insurgency, but the Turks responded to that but going to every single Armenian village and slaughtering every single Armenian they could get their hands on, without respect to age or gender. The vast majority of which had absolutely nothing to do with that insurrection. Turkish soldiers took babies and bashed their brains out on rocks. They enticed the help of the Kurds in carrying away the women to be raped. Railways and cattle cars were used to transport Armenian people from one end of the empire to the other, which shares parallels with the trains used to transport Jews to death and labour camps.
Enver Pasha told Henry Morgenthau that the Armenians were being sent to "new quarters", just as the Jews were latter to be "resettled".
Morgenthau himself stated: "Persecutions of Armenians assuming unprecedented proportions. Reports from widely scattered districts indicate systematic attempt to uproot peaceful Armenian populations and through arbitrary arrests, terrible tortures, whole-sale expulsions and deportations from one end of the Empire to the other accompanied by frequent instances of rape, pillage, and murder, turning into massacre, to bring destruction on them. These measures are not in response to popular or fanatical demand but are purely arbitrary and directed from Constantinople in the name of military necessity, often in districts where no military operations are likely to take place."
Furthermore, Taalat Pasha said this in an official document to his prefect: "You have already been advised that the Government, by order of the Djemiet, has decided to destroy completely all the indicated persons [Armenians] living in Turkey.
Their existence must come to an end, however tragic the means may be; and no regard must be paid to either age or sex, or to conscientious scruples."
How on earth can you describe this as anything other than genocide?
EDIT: In case you think that Morgenthau's account is not credible since he was representing a country at war with the Ottoman Empire, I point you towards von Wagenheim, a German ambassador who lead a diplomatic mission to the Ottoman Empire, who recounted that Talat had admitted that the deportations were not "being carried out because of 'military considerations alone'". One month later, he came to the conclusion that there "no longer was doubt that the Porte was trying to exterminate the Armenian race in the Turkish Empire"
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
Thanks to DrPoop_PhD
I don't see how its relevant to the topic at hand, but here you go some good books on the topic, let me know if want any other suggestions.
A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide
Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide
A Peace to End all Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
Fall of the Ottomans:The Great War in the Middle East
Although I am not a huge supporter of all of his views, Robert Spencer's book
'Did Muhammad Exist'
http://www.amazon.com/Did-Muhammad-Exist-Inquiry-Obscure/dp/161017061X
gives a detailed and well researched analysis of the circumstances surrounding the origin of Islam, comparing and citing both Islamic and non-islamic sources. It is a top read.
Books recommended by Hamza Yusuf in the video:
This is fascinating, thank you! The election of Bernie Sanders is the best thing that could happen to U.S.-Iran relations.
Thanks to Israeli propaganda, most Americans don't understand that the Shiite peoples are non-aggressive, and only concerned to defend their national sovereignty - as opposed to Sunni fundamentalists, supported by the Saudis, who include the true jihadi terrorists. So-called Shiite "terrorists" are only defending their homelands.
My friend Jeremy Stone played a key role in opening scientific exchanges between the U.S. and Iran, before Ahmadinejad ascended to power and screwed this up. Jeremy is a friend of Foreign Minister Zarif, and speaks warmly of him. And Jeremy's foundation has commissioned the work of Gareth Porter, who wrote a book documenting that Iran never has had a nuclear weapons program: http://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459131754&sr=1-1&keywords=Gareth+Porter
I suspect that the Austrian artist, Karpour, who made that wonderful drawing of "Birdie", is of Iranian origin; do you know?: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CebXh5qUEAA7wc0.jpg
You spammed a lot of links, but tried to paper over the most important one.
>And the Dec 2015 IAEA report says nothing about a nuclear weapons program in Iran, just studies that were at worst "relevant to" nukes, but which didn't violate the NPT.
This is false. The IAEA concluded, based on limited inspections (which means more evidence of further research might be possible to find if not for the way the deal was structured), that:
>The Agency assesses that a range of activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device were conducted in Iran prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and some activities took place after 2003. The Agency also assesses that these activities did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities. The Agency has no credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device after 2009.
The IAEA therefore concluded that the same activities happening prior to 2003, related to a nuclear weapon, continued at least in part until at least 2009.
All the rest is bunk, as far as the possible military dimensions go. Iran was conducting weapons research until at least 2009.
Now I'll go through your articles:
>Actually no, the NIE is the judgment of all 16 (now 17) US intelligence agencies not just one agency, and it concluded that whatever nuclear weapons work existed in Iran ended before 2003.
No, it did not. It concluded initially that Iran appeared to have stopped in 2003, as of the NIE's 2007 report. But US reports post-2007 found that Iran had, at the very least, preserved the capabilities they had made intentionally. This was confirmed by foreign intelligence. That has been the IAEA assessment since 2011.
>Furthermore this book is states the claim that Iran had a weapons program pre-2003 was dismissed by German intelligence as fabricated: https://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338
Said book is by Gareth Porter, a reporter who has gone to great depths to try and defend Iranian actions at every turn. Porter doesn't have a history of credibility, since he has long been reflexively anti-US; he denied the Cambodian genocide, for example, and admitted it was because he just assumed the US was wrong. He has claimed the Syria chemical attack in Ghouta wasn't done by Assad, despite the UN itself affirming that it was. His claims about German intelligence are unverifiable and German intelligence has multiple times reaffirmed the threat of an Iranian bomb, should they choose to actively pursue anything beyond the design/testing stages.
>"With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapons program in Iran," an IAEA statement said. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nuclear-iaea-iran-sb-idUSTRE58G60W20090917
This is a misrepresentation. First of all, it's an outdated report from 2009. Second of all, the IAEA is saying as it has always said that it doesn't have proof that Iran is actively building a bomb. What it did have proof of was that Iran was designing weapons in ways specific to nuclear weapons, which it has confirmed.
>And Iran's repeated offers were not limited to just 2003 and 2013, there were many other cases of Iran making compromise offers that were ignored or rejected
>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/opinion/we-in-iran-dont-need-this-quarrel.html
>http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/when-ahmadinejad-questions-the-1.html
Your first link is to an op-ed by then-Iranian ambassador to the UN Javad Zarif. It's hardly a source that describes official policy, as op-eds are regularly used for foreign consumption. It specified only broad parameters for negotiations, and not "compromise offers", as you claimed. Indeed, Iran announced 6 days later that it had enriched uranium for the first time, intended to anger the US most likely. The US responded by saying that the UN should take action to tell Iran to stop its enrichment program, and Ahmedinejad said Iran would "never" stop enrichment.
Al-Monitor is a questionable site, since it has been accused of pushing a pro-Assad, pro-Iran line in the past. Nevertheless, the author is credible. He writes of Ahmedinejad's offer to discuss the 20% enriched uranium being exchanged. Thing is, the US was already considering negotiations and the P5+1 set up a framework.
When Iran came forward with a serious offer, it was debated and negotiations were set up. Not before.
>And I quoted IAEA head ELbaradei about how Iran had offered to limit is enrichment program but was ignored because the US was more interested in regime-change
ElBaradei was simply wrong; if the US was interested in regime-change, it would've done it under Bush a long time ago. Sure, the US might be interested in it, but the nuclear program was never going to be the reason given.
Indeed, Rouhani just admitted a day or two ago that Iran's government was so poor due to sanctions that before the deal, it could barely pay anything more than government salaries. If the US wanted regime-change, it would've let Iran collapse rather than struck a deal.
>And that at one point Iran even accepted the US demands during negotiations with Turkey and Brazil, but the US killed the deal after Iran had said yes. See my prior post for details, I won't repeat them here.
I looked through your links. I see nothing about Turkey and Brazil. I see an offer they made the EU, which the UK thought the US wouldn't have accepted and so it was never really brought up to the US at all.
That's it.
>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/opinion/21iht-edcohen.html
This mentions Brazil and Turkey. Maybe you meant this? This deal wasn't rejected by the US after it was accepted, it related to a deal to get nuclear fuel transported out. It didn't have anything to do with solving the question of enrichment, inspections, etc.
That deal has been criticized as worse than useless, and that article explains why the deal was essentially ignored:
>As David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, put it in a report, the deal was "not as attractive" as it had been seven months earlier. Back in October, removing 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium would have put a lid on Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons. By May, that would still leave them with enough uranium, some of it already highly enriched, to proceed toward nukes with no obstacles.
Iran obfuscated on the issue. When they had the offer to get rid of enough uranium to prevent getting a bomb, and signal to the world that they'd be fine with that, they turned it down. Then they accepted the new deal, when they were sure it would leave them enough uranium to get a bomb if they wanted one.
You see how misleading that is?
>http://garysick.tumblr.com/post/611735702/giving-the-finger-to-iran-and-turkey-and (Note the author is a former National Security Council advisor and Iran specialist)
Gary Sick hasn't been involved in the National Security Council since the few weeks he was in Reagan's administration. He pushed conspiracy theories about the Iranian "October surprise", and had no inside knowledge or nuclear expertise. Please don't misrepresent your sources, who didn't address what I linked to above either.
>... the US may have even tried to plant evidence on Iran https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-20/cia-s-nuclear-bomb-sting-said-to-spur-review-in-iran-arms-case
Even if this were true, and the allegations haven't been proven, they occurred in 2000. That has no relevance to the huge amount of evidence the IAEA received, and shows only a tiny piece. The IAEA relied on spy data from multiple countries as well as their own data.
The alleged doctoring of a few documents would not affect the overall conclusions.
>And as US Ambassador Chas Freeman has written
The ambassador who failed to get appointed during Obama's administration because he is a disgrace who blamed the "Israel lobby" for his failure to get the job, who became essentially a client of Saudi Arabia and China, and who claimed Israel runs US policy in the Middle East (despite that clearly not being the case with Obama) and despite AIPAC not even taking a position on his nomination?
That Chas Freeman?
He has no idea what happened with Iran; that wasn't his purview in the slightest. His believed "deal" on Iran being better in 2005 is baseless.
>And Iran's offers were already pretty detailed but in any case the point is that Iran was in fact willing to negotiate but was stymied. Sure, not all the details had been worked out before the negotiations, that is supposed to happen in negotiations
When they were willing to negotiate, negotiations happened.
Patrick Cockburn - The Rise of the Islamic State
is short and sweet, and avoids pro-Western jingoism
I would recommend The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East. It's not a political treatise, but I think it does a pretty good job of helping once get handle on the issues in the Middle East.
It sounds like you have two subjects, Sam Harris on Israel and is there anything stopping them. I am no friend to Islam, in fact I am in agreement with Sam that "it's the mother load of bad ideas." However, my feelings towards Islam does not blind me to the plight of the Palestinians. It's painful to watch and the sorrow that Israel heaps upon them only fuels and legitimizes the Arab/Muslim world against the West, specifically the US for funding Israel. What is going on there is nothing short of globally accepted genocide.
I too am a huge fan of Sam Harris. For the most part, I agree with everything he so eloquently states...except for Israel. I listen to his podcast every day and find myself marveling at his use of the English language in expressing such well thought out concepts and ideas. However, I try to avoid his talks on Israel, but it's really not that hard since it doesn't come up much. I just accept him for being soft on the subject.
Regarding "nothing stopping them" I hate to submit to the idea that they are on the path to steamroll all Palestinians and nothing will stop them. As long as the US is their money-guy, they will do whatever they want and nobody can say anything. Why? Because there is a huge Israeli lobby by the name of AIPAC that will destroy any American politician that questions Israel. They are organized towards one goal and fund both right and left leaning politicians and to see that goal come true, which is to ensure Israel takes ownership of the entire country of Israel and push out the Palestinians. Zionism is alive and well and its victim is the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, to say anything about the subject turns the speaker into a bigot and antisemite; there is no room to criticize Israel.
I suggest reading two books on the subject The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
From page 498 of A Peace to End All Peace:
>The public believed Thomas's account; so that when Lawrence became an adviser to Winston Churchill, his appointment over-shadowed all others. His reputation grew. He passed off his fantasies as history, and in the years to come, Lawrence was to claim far more credit for his share in Churchill's achievements as Colonial Secretary than was his due.
.....A few years later Thomas wrote a book called With Lawrence in Arabia, based on the show,repeating the story he had told to his mass audiences of millions around the world. It was an immensely readable, high-spirited write-up of Lawrence's service career—much of it untrue—that made its points through hyper-bole.
Here's a screenshot of the page for more context.
Israel guilty of a "false flag" attack? Could it be?
What would Israel have to gain from deploying chemical weapons in Syria - with the blame falling on the Assad regime? Would it benefit Israel if the world - and especially the US - were to react by increasing support for the "Syrian Rebels", or perhaps even becoming directly involved in the conflict?
Would such a "false flag" attack be out of character for Israel?
In a 1954 incident known as "The Lavon Affair", Israel recruited a group of Jews living in Israel to plant bombs targeting Egyptian, British and US facilities. The idea was to blame Egyptian nationals, and to enrage the US and British in the hopes that the British would maintain troops in the Suez Canal Zone. Though the Israeli operatives were successful in fire-bombing an Egyptian post office, the US Information Agency and a British owned theater, their plans fell apart when one of the firebombs went off prematurely in the pocket of one of the False Flag saboteurs.
Israel immediately denied any involvement, and continued to deny for 51 years. In 2005 Israeli President Moshe Katzav officially honored the surviving conspirators with certificates of appreciation - effectively an official admission of what had long been common knowledge.
More on the Lavon Affair here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
The USS Liberty Incident is yet another example of an Israeli False Flag attack that occurred during the Six Day War in 1967. During this incident, the USS Liberty, a virtually unarmed vessel assigned to monitor communications, was ruthlessly attacked by Israeli forces for several hours. The Israelis unleashed torpedoes, napalm and relentless machine gun fire on the helpless crew - killing 34 seamen, and injuring 171 others. The apparent goal of the attack was to sink the Liberty and lay the blame of the attack on Egypt (again), in the hopes of drawing the US into the war on the side of Israel.
The plan ultimately failed because in spite of the Israelis' best efforts, the Liberty stubbornly remained afloat, with its heroic crew members taking great risks to restore communications with their US counterparts.
As with the Lavon Affair, Israel denied and continues to deny that the attack on this US flagged ship was anything other than an "accident". I suspect we'll have to wait a few more years before Israel admits to the dastardly deed by "honoring" the soldiers who participated in the attack, as they did the perpetrators of the Lavon Affair.
More information on the Liberty Incident can be found here http://www.usslibertyveterans.org/ and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Liberty Incident is that the story was officially hushed-up by the Johnson Administration, and that the survivors of this cut-throat attack were ordered not to speak of this tragic stab in the back by our "ally".
Israel and its infamous Mossad are well known for employing sinister, underhanded and deceptive tactics to achieve their goals. For example, it is well documented that Israeli Intelligence deliberately fed the US false information with the intent of goading the US into attacking Iraq in 2003.
There are many other incidents in which the Israelis have allegedly utilized false-flag operations, the above are only two examples that are well known and highly documented.
Is it possible that Israel may have deployed chemical weapons in Syria, as retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff alleges in the article?
Certainly. "By Way Of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War."
http://www.amazon.com/By-Way-Deception-Making-officer/dp/0971759502
While I am not in the least surprised when Israel pulls off such stunts, I am deeply troubled that in administration after administration, the US kowtows to the Zionist State, and that no matter how much trouble she causes us in blood, treasure and reputation, countless politicians from both parties line up to pledge fealty, and support them with cash, arms, technology and UN Security Council vetoes.
Whose interests are our elected officials representing, and at what cost to us?
> what about their shitty culture, high homophobia, low women rights etc? Why would anyone want such a culture in their country?
You're right, I don't want the Republican Party in my country any more!
Nah, that was a dumb joke but I couldn't resist.
The larger problem is that people are unwilling to grapple with the intersection of politics and religion in all these Middle Eastern countries. They just want to blame Islam and pretend you can fix it by targeting Muslims, when the problems in that region are as much a result of decades of intervention by the CIA and western governments, by funding of extremism by US "allies" like Saudi Arabia (where the 9/11 hijackers came from), by horrific crimes like the War in Iraq, by unquestioning support for Israel and all the war crimes they've committed, and so forth. Seriously, It's not hard to understand why so many radicals hate us in the Middle East ... I'd probably join Al Qaeda if a drone blew up my family.
Do people think the Iranian Revolution just came out of nowhere? Go read about how the West installed the Shah to grab Iran's oil, and how the Iranian Revolution was a pushback against that. Go read about how the West supported Saddam as he was using chemical weapons against Iran.
If Islam is such a horrific and hateful religion, why isn't the biggest Muslim country - Indonesia - cranking out tons of extremists to attack the West? Clearly it's not just about being Muslim.
If anyone wants to understand what's actually going on in the Middle East, this is a fantastic and eye-opening book.
https://www.amazon.com/Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest-Middle/dp/1400075173/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485607381&sr=8-1&keywords=the+great+war+for+civilization
There are two books that I want to recommend:
The Great War for Civilisation by Fisk
https://www.amazon.com/Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest-Middle/dp/1400075173
The Bottom Billion by Collier
https://www.amazon.com/Bottom-Billion-Poorest-Countries-Failing/dp/0195373383
These two books changed the way I view the Middle East and we have never learned our lessons from the past.
Another Israeli historian Shlomo sand actually wrote a whole book about israel.
As far as i know, he still a professor in University of Tel Aviv.
source
Read this article to understand why Patrick Cockburn's book isn't reliable:
http://pulsemedia.org/2016/03/02/reporting-and-mis-reporting-isis/
The article recommends this book for something that is better researched:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ISIS-Inside-Terror-Michael-Weiss/dp/1941393578/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
In short, because we keep bombing them. Everyone we kill is someone's brother, son, sister or daughter.
The long answer very complex but boils down to centuries of imperialism, and the dismantling of the once prosperous Ottoman empire.
This is a good read on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060516054?pc_redir=1410585737&robot_redir=1
> (Especially if you've read Oren's Book, "Ally", which pretty much details how Obama fought Israel in nearly every way they could. They kept the aid and helped with some emergencies in Israel when a wildfire got particularly out of control, but Obama's administration and state department has been openly Jew hating in it's actions.
Ally is a fantastic book (I've read it twice since I bought it a few months ago), and everyone should read it along with all of his others.
I'm currently reading Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present.
I also have Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East and plan on re-reading it after I finish P, F & F.
Ally, and the interviews he's done on the book (look for them on YouTube, there are many) are very illuminating about the Obama admin, his personal worldview & the Obama/Clinton/Kerry foreign policy. Some of the interviews in particular, add a lot to the book that wasn't quite expressly said. He reveals much more about his personal beliefs in his interviews than he did in the book. He tries to go to great lengths to maintain that the Obama admin was not anti-Israel, and I firmly believe, that he firmly believes that Obama wasn't anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.
However, an intelligent reader, can deduct that Oren also recognizes that the Democrats aren't good for Israel anymore. He's quite candid that the Obama admin had a deliberate policy of ending Israel's special relationship with the US. Even Hillary Clinton, who he identified as a big supporter of Israel still did nothing to advance peace in the Middle East or even have Israel's back.
Oren, a self described Scoop Jackson Democrat, knows that despite his best efforts to maintain bipartisan support for Israel, year after year, the Democrats drift further to the left, and that support for Israel among the Democrats is becoming nothing more than a talking point.
Hey I was also interested and looked it up. I think it's this one:
The Great War for Civilisation
Order yourself a copy of The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East and let's talk again about the facts you aren't supposed to know or take into account when assessing US foreign policy.
If you really want to know, I recommend this book: 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris.
The current Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, wrote a pretty comprehensive history of the Six-Day War, called Six Days of War. It's very readable and highly respected, so I'd very much recommend it.
The media is useless. Honestly, just do some reading. I highly recommend History of the Middle East. It's a very in-depth, impartial look at the Middle East starting with a quick one-chapter primer to get you up to speed from ancient to modern times, then going much more in-depth starting around 1800 up to modern day problems such as the Arab-Israeli conflict.
If you want to confine your reading to the Arab-Israeli conflict, then I would recommend The Iron Wall which will start you off around 1947, post WWII.
The Israel/Gaza fiasco is just the latest in a looooong chain of events. Again, anyone coming down solely on one side over the other is simply ignorant of all of the facts. There's no such thing as an innocent player in this and to pretend there is is simply foolish.
You left out a very important piece of the story (I'm assuming this wasn't purposeful). The Shah was NOT installed by the Americans.
Mohammad Reza Shah (Pahlavi) assumed power in 1941, after his father was pushed out by the British & Soviets. During the period before the 'coup' (which wasn't in fact a coup), Iran functioned as a quasi-constitutional monarchy. Mossadegh was elected by the Majlis (Parliament) as PM, not president and not shah. Mossadegh was an ambitious man and pushed his power as far as he could, to the point of overstepping his rights as PM and leading the Shah (at the urging of the British) to seek his removal.
But the Shah was a coward, and was fearful of Mossadegh's popularity. So he asked for US help in ensuring Mossadegh's dismissal. When some of the military sided with Mossadegh, the Shah fled; this left Mossadegh as the highest-ranking official in Iran -- making him de facto leader.
For many reasons, Mossadegh was unacceptable as leader to the West (esp. the British), so another attempt to depose the PM was launched, under US orders. It resulted in the PM being forced to resign, and the Shah returned to his prior office. In other words, he was reinstalled. This distinction is important, as is the fact that Mossadegh was elected by the Parliament, not the people.
There's a good book on the subject, that gives the reader an exceedingly fair look at the 1953 crisis and Iranian history. It ends with some considerable bullshit, but everything else was well-written and researched.
If you are interested in further reading about their impact as well as the making of the modern Middle East following WWI, I highly suggest this book. http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091
Yeah I remember reading that in his book The Great War for Civilisation. He also had a narrow escape in Afghanistan in 2001, when a group of Afghan refugees who fled the US bombing campaign tried to stone him to death.
don't buy it from amazon, but the great war for civilization by robert fisk. hands down.
it's pretty impossible to explain israel/palestine outside of the context of the middle east, and it's pretty impossible to understand the context of the middle east outside of the last ~150 years of global history as relates to that part of the world. I'm not saying this book made me an expert, by any means, but it did open my eyes to just how fucking complex the situation is.
Robert Fisk: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.
I would suggest to read a little more about the history of Israel creation. It started by Zionist terrorists that later became officials in the government they created.
Here is a book about it as well.
Because Isreal exploits Holocaust Guilt
There's a great book about it --
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
by Norman G. Finkelstein
https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614
If you're starting to read his books, I recommend picking up ["The Holocaust Industry"] (https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1781685614&pd_rd_r=97d5364c-5a0c-11e8-a956-456fc52f333f&pd_rd_w=16qEm&pd_rd_wg=1g1Mc&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=7967298517161621930&pf_rd_r=0T0GZ21H6HQKNTF72WSZ&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=0T0GZ21H6HQKNTF72WSZ), ["Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict"] (https://www.amazon.com/Image-Reality-Israel-Palestine-Conflict-Revised/dp/1859844421/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526587388&sr=1-1&keywords=image+and+reality+of+the+israel-palestine+conflict&dpID=414Zbglcz4L&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch), and [his most recent book] (https://www.amazon.com/Gaza-Inquest-into-Its-Martyrdom/dp/0520295714).
"The Holocaust Industry" isn't as provocative now as it is was when he first wrote the book, but it still solidly holds up today. An troubling insight into the "exploitation of Jewish suffering," as he states. It's fairly short compared his other works, but that's the work which brought him into the spotlight.
"Image and Reality" is a good starting point with Finkelstein on understanding the conflict, as he dissects, piece-by-piece, common false talking points and assertions over the conflict (Joan Peters, Benny Morris, Abba Eban, amongst others); his introduction to the book's second edition provides an excellent overview of the history.
Though, it'd be an understatement not to recommend his latest book. By far the largest amount of footnotes, and he affirms by his maxim of making the book as well-sourced and truthful "as is humanly possible". He details the Mavi Marmara incident, Operation Cast Lead, and Operation Protective Edge, and the inconsistent reporting of human rights organizations. The book's final statements, especially, cut deep. Certainly his best work, indeed his magnum opus.
Sometime later on I might go through "Beyond Chutzpah" (it's labeled as his "sequel" to "The Holocaust Industry"), but the three books above are a great start at the very least.
What rubbish.
There was no such thing as "The Jews" nor was Israel their "homeland":
https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234
https://www.amazon.com/Wandering-Who-Gilad-Atzmon/dp/1846948754
Even the rabbis are facing some facts:
>Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho. And David, far from being the fearless king who built Jerusalem into a mighty capital, was more likely a provincial leader whose reputation was later magnified to provide a rallying point for a fledgling nation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/09/books/new-torah-for-modern-minds.html
Even if you accept Bible as history, in total "The Jews" were politically dominant in the area for a grand total of 600 years out of the thousands of years of history there.
In fact the whole idea of a "national homeland for the Jews" was Manufactured in Europe based on the same 19th century "Blood and Soil" ethnocentricism that created Nazism.
And considering how many wars and conflicts have resulted from the creation of Israel, saying that it has somehow secured them is absolutely silly. And in any case why should we prioritize the security of Jews over that of Palestinians? Why should a Palestinian suffer because Jews were treated badly in Europe?
It all depends on what kind of angle you're looking for.
Here is by no means an exhaustive list. I must say I haven't read all of these but have come across them in research and from previous recommendations on here, but here goes:
Background/Social & Historical contexts/Other relevant stuff
Patrick Seale - Assad (rather old, good for history)
Tarek Osman - Islamism (2016, broad coverage of Islamism in theory and practice, good context)
John Robertson - Iraq (2016)
John McHugo - Syria (2015)
Sami Moubayed - Syria & The USA (2013)
Sami Moubayed - Damascus Between Democracy and Dictatorship (2000, very good for Syrian history and experience with democracy)
Perceived pro-original opposition bias
Diana Darke - My House in Damascus (new version came out 2015)
Michael Weiss & Hassan Hassan - ISIS (2015)
Charles Lister - The Syrian Jihad (2016)
Perceived pro-government bias
Patrick Cockburn - Rise of the Islamic State (2015, this might not be as detailed as you'd want it to be)
Kurds
Michael Knapp, Ercan Ayboga & Anja Flach - Revolution Rojava (2016, the detail in this is beyond insane)
I guess not being genocidal war criminals is not an option then? I guess not when you have to find some way to justify murdering people and stealing their lands to create an ethnically-purified mythical "homeland" for a made-up people. http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234/
This is nonsense. The Ayatollah and those in power in Iran (and most middle eastern states), are just as self-interested as other people. I suspect that what they want, more than anything, is to maintain their power. That's why they always encourage others to go carry out such attacks why they themselves sit in luxury and protection. It's the same as with war-hawk politicians, advocating other people's kids sign up for the military. Plus, they KNOW that it would look horrible in the international community to start threatening to throw nukes around. It would invite more sanctions and possibly even preemptive attack - something they most certainly don't want.
And remember that they have used this "MAD doesn't apply to them" several times now. They dismissed MAD theory at first because communists were so "dedicated". Then they said that China didn't care about MAD because they had so many people the politicians didn't care if they lost 3/4 of them. Then they said that MAD wouldn't apply to India/Pakistan because there was such hatred there. Now they claim that MAD doesn't apply to Muslim extremists because they all just want to die anyway.
Plus, this all presumes that they're actively pursuing nukes, which much evidence says they're really not.
Lastly, I find it rich that this Republican is accusing his own Republican-led committee of misrepresenting (if not lying) in a Congressional report. If that doesn't tell you that neither party can be trusted, I don't know what does.
I disagree thouroughly. There has been a tremendous disinformation campaign used against Iran and mostly instigated by Israel.
Read these books by the historian, Gareth Porter
Here is an article about one of Porter's books
and "Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare"
read some of this journalism before believing Mr. Clapper who we know is in the habit of lying under oath.
There have been hushed mutterings from a few geneticists that the Jews' heritage doesn't go back to the roots one might expect. I should warn that even taking an interest in this topic makes you an anti-semite, so since you're already cursed, the two main books are:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Thirteenth-Tribe-Empire-Heritage/dp/0445042427
http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407268340&sr=1-1&keywords=shlomo+sand
> Jews had the Jerusalem as their capital for centuries.
For about 800 years, even assuming that the Bible is true
out of a total how many years of civilization there?
And they stole it from the Canannites, yes?
But in fact the Jewish residents of Jerusalem welcomed the Arabs in the Siege of Jerusalem, which at the time was under Byzantine control and not Jewish control -- the Byzantines had massacred the Jews in fact. Under the Muslims, the Jews were able to once again practice their religion, FYI
There has never been a country called Florida either, does that mean you get to steal that land and drive out its inhabitants to manufacture a fake version of a non-existent past?
And speaking of national identity, who are these "The Jews" you speak of at all?
The Invention of the Jewish People
by Shlomo Sand
http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234
Citing the redditor "gonzolegend" doesn't count as a source. I could easily post counters to his post by other redditors. You'll have to do better than that.
Here's a list of sources proving Assad's active support of jihadism:
Probably one of the best books out right now on ISIS and its development: https://www.amazon.com/ISIS-Inside-Terror-Michael-Weiss/dp/1941393578
> Just google "Israel-Palestine Mark Tessler 2014", I forget the exact name.
It is very aptly called 'A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict'. It's on its second edition now (2009).
amazon link
I always recommend three books for people who want to start learning about the subject:
Righteous Victims by Benny Morris
Israel, a history by Martin Gilbert
and Six Days of War by Michael Oren
Between those three, you have a good introduction. The Morris and Gilbert are both comprehensive histories covering everything from the early Zionists to modern day. They have very different interpretations; it's not that either one is wrong, they just place emphasis on different aspects. And the Oren is the best overview of the six day war which was the most important war in terms of causes of the present day conflict.
Mausim needs to read 'The Iron Wall' by an Israeli historian who used historical documents. The truth hurts. Israel has been the aggressor since day one. . .
http://www.amazon.com/The-Iron-Wall-Israel-Paperback/dp/0393321126
Fun fact: Israel once threatened war with Jordan because some prize-winning sheep wandered across the border into Jordan. Israel was willing to go to war over sheep!
Context for the Iran comment can be found in All the Shah's Men, an excellent book about the 1953 CIA coup in Iran which is practically already the script for a movie directed by Billy Ray starring Aaron Eckhart as Kermit Roosevelt.
There were historically two times that the Brits toppled pro democratic govts in Iran and reinstalled monarchist rule
Most people know about 1953: after the Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized Iran's oil industry ( which until then was operated as a concession by British Petroleum, and powered the British navy), a joint CIA/ MI5 operation known as TP AJAX was put into effect, reinstalling the last Shah of Iran (the same one that would be later permanently toppled in the 1979 Islamic Revolution)
Currently the most popular book on that is "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer. http://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/product-reviews/0470580410
However I also recommend Prince Farmanfarmaian's book "Blood and Oil"
What most people don't know is about the 1906 Constitutional Revolution in Iran, which established the first democracy in the Mideast, ended the 2500 history of absolute monarchy in Iran by adopting a system of Constitutional Monarchy where the King reigned but an elected Parliament ("Majlis") ruled as in the UK ( actually they copied the Belgian constitution). However this was short lived, since the British and Russian imperial forces backed another shah and put him back in power, and ended up shelling Iran's Parliament building. http://www.iranreview.org/content/Documents/Contemporary_History_The_Bombardemant_of_Majlis_June_23rd_1908.htm
Probably the best source on that is Janet Afary's book "
The Iranian Constitutional Revolution"
A certain American named Morgan Shuster who had been hired by the democratic govt to manage Iran's finances (who Britain and Russia hated) wrote a famous memoir about the times entitled "The Strangling of Persia"
All of these books are available on Amazon, buy used I suggest.
That's part of the idea. Make the waters so muddled that it's too difficult to cut through the good-faith replies from the bad-faith replies. Make it so that you eventually just lose interest since it's not you being directly affected!
Here are some good debates to get your started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ux4JU_sbB0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6To-o-aiRg
I'd also recommend reading President Jimmy Carter's Peace Not Apartheid (amazon link not necessary, use your public library!). It's a decent, short primer to the conflict.
Jimmy Carter supports Palestine.
Is it any wonder that the media completely ignores him?
A PEACE TO END ALL PEACE by David Fromkin. In my opinion, you should start with this before anything else. Well researched, respected in the academic community, well written. It's absolutely one of the best books on the subject, and the first place I would go.
Bonus FYI: the "redrawing" period went on from 1918-1922.
Also, this book is primarily focused on the Middle East, so you won't get as much on post-war Germany, or the African continent. But it will give you tons of context for what happened during the peace conference.
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805088091/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_zs7iDb51WDZHF
Edit spelling.
Dude, I've read...lots and lots of books on the subjects. Saying its "the fault" of the West is highly, highly simplifying a rather complex situation. lol "read wiki".
Dude, read this. Don't ever think that you got informed on something from a wiki article. The West had a role, but it's not like, oh, I dunno, the people of the Arabian Peninsula were just on the sidelines, passively observing.
The same goes for Afghanistan.
Why limit yourself to fiction? Here are a couple of nonfiction books that are great:
Robert Fisk: The Great War for Civilization.
Nikki Keddie: Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution
Ira Lapidus: A History of Islamic Societies
And other good ones I know of that were mentioned in here:
A History of the Arab People" by Hourani
"All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer
The Palestinian People: A History
The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land
This is all a good place to start, I think.
The Great War for Civilisation - Robert Fisk
I've spent some time in Lebanon and I'm writing my honours thesis on the Lebanese Civil War, so I can probably help you quite a bit!
Robert Fisk - Pity the Nation: Robert Fisk was the one of the first foreign journalists to go into the camp during the massacre, so his first hand account of it in this book is pretty important.
Lucile Volk - Martyrs and Memorials: This is a great little book representative of the more modern historiographic type regarding Lebanon, I'm sure there's something about Sabra & Shatila in there.
Fawazz Trablousi - A History of Modern Lebanon This is the text you should read to give yourself some quick context on the conflict as well as understand the economic and social aspects behind the broader conflict.
For articles and such I would recommend checking out JSTOR, does your university have access to it? I wrote a (terrible) paper years ago on whether Sharon was legally culpable for the massacre so I'll see if I can dig it out for you and see what sources I used.
The Lebanese civil war was shockingly complicated and the 1982 invasion was only a facet of it. If you have any questions or want some clarification, feel free to PM me and I'll help as best I can.
Cheers!
Suarez, pp 315-317: On July 23, 1954, Israeli agents blew up various post offices and cinemas and other UK and US-owned buildings in Egypt. "Egypt's arrests ignited charges of anti-Semitism". The chief rabbi of Egypt said it's not true.
> The typical view of the Western public was likely that expressed by the Manchester Guardian: the accusations against the defendants were too outrageous to be plausible.
> "What benefit could Israel have gained", it asked, from bombing American and British facilities?
The answer, however, soon became clear.
> In the blunt words of the CIA, Israel staged "Arab" bombings
to "embitter relations between Egypt and the West".
This is the tip of the iceberg.
More later.
It's not certain at all, actually. If you have any interest, check out Robert Spenser's book, Did Muhammed Exist?
The actual evidence is very scarce and none of it is contemporary. It's also weird that the oldest Torah manuscript slightly predates the alleged dates of Muhammed. He could be an entirely legendary character. There is no hard evidence for anything about him. Nothing from eyewitnesses.
> Being anti-Israel is totally fine, unless there's even a slightest wiff of, or connection to, anti-semitism, which there so often is.
Not my experience. Of the claims I have seen that particular criticisms of Israel are anti-semitic, I would say 8/10 are valid criticisms and are unfairly slandered on r/LabourUK as anti-semitism. Yes, 2/10 are a bit much, and indicate a bias against Jews. Even then I wouldn't call them anti-semitic. I would call them 'unbalanced'. Meanwhile outright anti-muslim comments like "Muslims are all criminals and rapists" are barely discussed.
In my opinion the anti-semitism label is definitely being used in a weaponised way to deflect criticism, as Norman Finkelstein documents in "Holocaust Industry" https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614. This happens on r/LabourUK quite a lot, and it is done very often by the moderators.
What Went Wrong by Bernard Lewis
There is an entire book by scholar Bernard Lewis that deals with this very question in depth. It's called What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East. It is about 10 years old by now and Lewis is not uncontroversial but I found it fascinating.
Lewis does accept your premise - that the Islamic world was once ahead of the West economically and militarily and now is not. Obviously there are nuances around what is meant by the Islamic world but I am trying to be brief.
He notes also that its NOT simply a West vs the Rest issue - he notes that at this point Islamic countries are being surpassed by Eastern countries (e.g. South Korea) as well.
As for the answer, it's been a while so it's difficult for me to summarize, but my recollection is slavery, individual rights, close relationship between religion and state, and higher status of western women (even in the 18th century) were identified as factors. The church/state separation is big - in the west, even with the Crusades and witch burnings, religion remained a distinct entity from the state. Not so in Islam, if I recall correctly
> SHOW ME WHERE HAMAS HAS STATED THEY ACCEPT ISRAEL HAS A RIGHT TO EXIST
> SOME ME WHERE HAMAS HAS STATED PUBLICLY THEY WANT A 2 STATE SOLUTION
Haaretz: Hamas accepted two-state solution
NPR: Hamas Foreign Minister: We Accept Two-State Solution With '67 Borders
HuffingtonPost:Senior Hamas Member, Reportedly Says Hamas Ready To Accept Israel's Right To Exist
Guardian: Hamas accepts two-state idea, says former US President Jimmy Carter
BBC: Hamas has agreed to a document backing a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel
UN April 2014: Hamas-Fatah reached agreement to work together to establish two-state solution
Mark Tessler. A History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
> The Palestinians have shown serious interest in a two-state solution since the mid-1970s, and its mainstream leadership has embraced the concept since the 1982 Arab Summit
A standard history of the region is important, as well as info about the colonizers who defined Palestine's borders, and then Israel's. Here are just some initial thoughts, but definitely keep searching.
A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (read this years ago; assuming it's been updated?)
The Lemon Tree (good book that really humanizes the conflict)
yeah, one of the things that pisses me off so much about the "israel = evil" brigade is the absolute lack of responsibility laid on the palestinian "leaders" who have fucked over their own people over and over with zero criticism.
israel has done terrible things as a state, there's no denying that, but it's hardly a one sided issue. i strongly suggest that anyone really interested in the subject read an academically published, unbiased history that doesn't cut too many corners (it's gonna be around 1000 pages at least.) i found this one to be very very good http://www.amazon.com/History-Israeli-Palestinian-Conflict-Indiana-Islamic/dp/025322070X
Eh, it's among the more ok-ish pieces on the topic that's out there. Sure he's biased, and some of his points are awkward at best, but the amount of either anti-semitic or anti-Arab nonsense is just mind blowing. It's hard enough to find anything that provides original sources.
And regardless of the quality (or lack thereof) of scholarship on the subject, al-Husseini had some pretty reprehensible ideas.
This is one of the best books on the history of Middle East conflict - if you search a bit, you can find PDFs of older versions.
I thought that Benny Morris' 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War was an excellent account of the 1948 war. He also covers some of the pre-war history as well. I felt like it was a pretty even-handed treatment of that particular conflict.
"For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, clean, and wrong."
http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-1948-First-Arab-Israeli-War/dp/B000ROI67I
http://www.amazon.com/1948-History-First-Arab-Israeli-War/dp/0300151128/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1325011672&sr=1-1
My personal recommendation would be these books:
1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris. This book covers the history of the first Arab-Israeli war, with great detail given for how the war was conducted, the events of it, and how the Israelis managed to succeed in winning the war itself. This focuses on the lead-up to war from the Civil War that had been going on before, and discusses the various fronts.
Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict: 1881-2001 by Benny Morris.
You certainly are a sucker for a one-sided opinion.
https://www.amazon.com/Six-Days-War-Making-Modern/dp/0345461924#reader_0345461924
Get this book. It explains the incident in great detail.
Michael Oren was Israeli ambassador to the USA, so it can not be said to be unbiased, but it is the other side of the coin.
Dammit, as a Canadian I know the USA has repeatedly been involved in "friendly fire" attacks on allies.
It happens.
My claim is that you just made an unsubstantiated point like it was some sort of common knowledge. Maybe you should re-examine the rest of your knowledge before you go on making statements like IDF soldiers rape Palestinian women and the Israeli media covers it up. Because they have no basis in reality. What does have basis in reality is the absurdity in which activists are outraged over whether IDF actually rape anyone, or not. It's unclear what would be the more preferable scenario to them in those cases, the IDF soldiers being rapists or racists.
Well, so have you..?
And before you tell me that I "need to do some more reading bro", I've read Six Days of War.. What have you read besides a Wikipedia article?
Great List.
The Iron Wall by Avi Shlaim is another that is worth reading.
Here is the desktop version of your link
http://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/0470580410 - just to make it easier! :) enjoy! -
As for the paper If I get to a good state on it, maybe. haha. It's not one of my finer works. but I'm using Iran as a case study.
Another book you may like, that I used when researching Iran for my paper! Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah. It's on OpenLibrary and is quite fascinating. Khomeini, no matter how you feel about him. was a genius.
I forget what I was watching, I think it was BBC Iran and the West they said the CIA never expected Khomeini to be able to take power. All the Shahs Men(http://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/0470580410) is a wonderful book which covers the coup against mossadegh.
I really suggest you read this book
http://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/0470580410
It is very informative on the subject and will inform you about all the politics that lead up to the 1953 coup.
Also fuck Kermit Roosevelt.
> to really understand what's going on today in the middle east, you pretty much have to go back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WW1, and then work your way forward from there
Absolutely. Actually one of my 2016 objectives was to gain a better understanding in Middle Eastern history which was something I really lacked. I am in no way an expert now but have a better idea on how everything unfolded post Ottoman Empire fall and I am genuinely disturbed at seeing how absolutely no one ever mentions any bit of relevant history in the media. The lack of any attempt at explanation is really bothering me :/
If you're interested, this book taught me a lot: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. Lots of very interesting stories about how the Middle East was built post-Ottoman empire!
There's a book called: A Peace to end all Peace
http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091
It was a great book and helped me have a decent understanding of how the West screwed over rebelling Muslims during WWI which eventually led to the conflict we see today. It doesn't directly reference Hamas but it talks about why the Middle East is screwed up and tensions between the Jews and Arabs following WWI.
You literally just described how the borders of the middle east were drawn after ww1. And I mean literally literally. How'd that work out?
A Peace to End All Peace isn't directly about WWI, but it does a great job of explaining how the war and its aftermath led to the modern Middle East.
A Peace to End All Peace covers 1914 to 1922 in the Middle East.
It has to do with oil and the imperialism, all the contemporary wars in the area was because of oil and colonization. Centuries ago everywhere was war. :) Because of the oil peace has never reached the middle East. Just like Africa and it's minerals.
Iran and the Ottomanian empire made several peace treaties and border definition in 15th and 16th century. They never attacked each other after that.
Edit: I really suggest you to read the book "a peace to end all peace: the fall of the Ottomanian empire and the creation of the modern Middle East", before making such comment. It is from a Westerner's point of view not complete but very informative.
https://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091
Victor Ostrovsky (Former Mossad case agent) described the assassination of El-Mashad in his book By Way of Deception. He described the assassination of Gerald Bull, the Canadian engineer, as well.
By Way of Deception, The Big White Lie, Reluctant Spy, and The Devil's Chessboard are a few that come to mind immediately.
Fisk: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
A lot of people would argue with Fisk and some would accuse him of being a war junky so don't discount the politics, but he was there and his notes from the invasion are really interesting.
(borrow the book if you can, only a small section is devoted to the invasion)
Robert Fisk's wonderfully encyclopedic summary of the Middle East since the breaking up of the Ottoman Empire entitled The Great War for Civilization its an incredible read and will teach you a vast amount of information.
In this vein, I really enjoy this book which gives an in-depth & comprehensive look of the history of the Middle-East over the last 50 years or so. Around 70% through it, and it's a pretty good read. Offers a mixture of individual stories/interviews, and overall political analysis of the situation.
I am being 100% sincere and as non-insulting as I can when I say this - do yourself a favor, and check out some books about the history of the Middle East, because you have some wild misconceptions.
Lawrence in Arabia is a really good one to get started -
https://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Arabia-Deceit-Imperial-Making/dp/0307476413/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469724389&sr=1-1&keywords=lawrence+in+arabia
And I also enjoyed The Great War for Civilisation, though it's a bit dense -
https://www.amazon.com/Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest-Middle/dp/1400075173/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1469724425&sr=1-1&keywords=the+great+war+for+civilization
Well, I stand corrected.
This and this are what im reading at the moment. Just finished this. Also recommend this.
I'd recommend his book on the Middle East as well. True, he as a slight left bias but he has been a foreign correspondent in the ME for twenty something years. I'd say he has a view worth considering.
It depends on what you're interested in.
Great War for Civilisation is full of fascinating stories from a war correspondent covering the middle east; he interviewed Bin Laden several times before 9/11 among other things. The book is long, but it brings the conflicts to your doorstep and takes you behind the scenes where the media is often restricted from going. Be warned of the size and content though. It is gruesome in most places, and provides a very realistic account of what goes on daily over there.
1776 tells the story of the American revolution, concentrating on the battles and the men who fought them. It is written extremely well. If you have any interest whatsoever in the founding fathers, the characters behind the revolution, or even just a good story, read it and you shouldn't be disappointed.
Short History of Nearly Everything basically takes everything you're interested in that is science related, condenses it all into discrete explanations, and combines the whole to present a great reading experience. It's a bit like doing for science what "A People's History of the United States" did for history. It all feels genuine.
Those are a few I have particularly enjoyed.
Are you looking for pulse pounding, believable-but-still-inventive enough, hardcore mercenary action? Well look no further.
Direct Action - Written by a former Ranger/SF guy, this is the first in a set of (so far) 3 books featuring Deckard as the main character. Deckard is a former SF and CIA SAD guy who ends up getting contracted by a shady cabal to form a PMC for them to use in their attempt to bring about a NWO. He says "fuck that." This is honestly some of the best in the genre of military fiction. Written by a dude who has been there and done that, it's well written and believable enough, and the action...gritty, hardcore, doorkicking, operating action. It does not stop once it starts, and neither do the sequels, Target Deck and Direct Action. They're a blast to read and I can't recommend them enough.
Task Force Desperate - America's dollar has collapsed. The military is incredibly underfunded and no longer has the ability to project power. This all comes to a head when an American military base in Djibouti is attacked and taken over. With the US no longer able to respond to events such as these, Jeff's PMC, Praetorians, are contracted to handle the situation. The guy that wrote it is a former Recon Marine, so similar to Jack Murphy, he's been there, done that, and it shows. If you want hardcore action, this is another solid book for you. The plot is a bit out there, but hey, fuck it, it's fun.
Moving away from fiction...
Level Zero Heroes - Written by one of the first MARSOC dudes that went into Afghanistan when MARSOC was first stood up. He's his MSOC's forward air controller, and it's just a pretty cool and interesting look into the special operations world from a new (at the time) SOF unit.
Horse Soldiers - About the first ODA that went into Afghanistan within weeks of 9/11. They worked really closely with CIA SAD, and it's an incredibly interesting write up on what these guys managed to do in incredibly austere conditions. They rolled around the country on horseback. That's bad ass.
First In - Similar to Horse Soldiers, but written by one of the CIA paramilitary officers that coordinated with the Northern Alliance and the SF ODAs when they first came in country. A bit dry, but if you're interested in this sort of thing, it's one of the best (and only, from its perspective) accounts of the early parts of the Global War On Terror.
Now for some non military stuff.
Dune - The best sci-fi novel ever written, bar none. It has political intrigue, an oppressed people against an overwhelmingly larger force, oh, and giant sandworms. It's hard to describe just how rich the world of Dune is in a simple paragraph, so I won't even try. If you're into sci-fi and you haven't read Dune, you owe it to yourself. You're in for a treat.
The Road - The bleakest thing I've ever read. It takes place after some type of apocalyptic event in the US (which is never detailed), and is the story of a father and his young son attempting to survive in the wasteland amongst cannibals that keep their "livestock," chained in a basement, roving bands of marauders, and other horrors. It's written in an incredibly minimalist style which adds to the tone and atmosphere so much. If you want something heavy, this is your book.
I'll probably add more but here are my recommendations for now.
No problem, not meaning to sound like his agent or anything but i really recommend his book Pity the Nation which is about the Lebanon war which he covered extensively, powerful stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/Pity-Nation-Abduction-Lebanon-Books/dp/1560254424
I also recognise that they are indeed propaganda networks at play in this crisis but i was genuinely surprised that you believed fisk ( whom i agree and disagree with about certain things) was on some pro-war western intervention side when he is actually well known for being for being quite hostile with such enterprises.
I learned a lot from his book Pity the Nation about the history of Israel-Palestinian relations and the Lebanon War, guy has some brilliant insight.
Also great is his 3-part series Beirut to Bosnia which was banned from being re-aired on Discovery after tons of pressure from advertisers and pro-Israel groups.
Fisk is beyond legit IMO.
http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Beirut_to_Bosnia
edit- thanks for the lecture! going to listen to it immediately
It is indeed a complex situation, but these would be a good start:
Earlier history:
For more contextual books, I would recommend:
https://www.amazon.com/Did-Muhammad-Exist-Inquiry-Obscure/dp/161017061X
There is great new book out called "Did Muhammad Exist" by Robert Price which brings the existence of a historical Muhammad into serious doubt. I highly recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/Did-Muhammad-Exist-Inquiry-Obscure/dp/161017061X
The Author D M Murdock (pen name: Acharya S) has specialised much of her life in research and writings on the mythical and astrological origins of religions and religious figures such as Jesus and Abraham. Her books are excellent and provide a substantial mountain of evidence that Jesus was indeed not a historical figure. A second revised edition of her first book "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold" is due out sometime this year.
Reading her work is what led me to my Agnosticism.
This is her website which includes many discussions on similar topics - http://freethoughtnation.com/
Some people claim it is more, and they too are persecuted. Anything that deviates from the "official government story" is considered blasphemy to these people, even if you think it was worse than they actually propose. An excellent book was written about this crowd by Norman Finkelstein (whose parents were in concentration camps).
https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614
Still not seeing any facts adduced.
You gave me links to sites created by---
Give me their surnames.
(Forgive me for this request. But, to understand the credibility of any claim, we have to know who is making the claim.)
We don't want to lapse into the error of circular reasoning. That is to say, intelligent people aren't impressed by the zealot who says "I know the Bible is true because the Bible says so". Anymore than they're moved by "I know the Jews lost 6 million in World War II because the Jews said so."
So give me the surnames of the people running the websites you linked to.
Let us all learn more about these objective impartial fonts of truth you credulously promote. I'm just curious. Are these the same credible sources that have also "proven" that the Romans murdered four billion Jews at Bethar (as the Talmud says)?
I'm just going to leave this here: https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3HB558T1F1URP&keywords=the+holocaust+industry+by+norman+finkelstein&qid=1570360846&sprefix=The+holocaust+industry%2Caps%2C203&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483129182&sr=8-1&keywords=the+holocaust+industry
Profiting from the holocuast. This is a true holcaust industry.
[This] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Islamic-State-Sunni-Revolution/dp/1784780405) book is a very good explaining how ISIS rise from the ashes of Iraqis Al-Qaeda.
didn't Cyrus the great, (the persians) free the jews? lol. Also the continuity of jewish history is adequately questioned in this book, http://www.amazon.ca/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417045798&sr=1-1
but this is besides the point,
the real question is, who has the power to, often anachronistically, create history in the first place?
>most white people have nothing to do with black's people's predicament
there are some people in the world who have historically benefited from the oppression of others, regardless of their intentions (although that was made clear in the earlier quote i gave). In western society, racism is intrinsically linked to white supremacy; as such, only those who benefit from white supremacy, only those who have access to this "privilege," may be identified as racist. When non-whites are negatively biased against one another, who benefits in the end? In a similar vein, when a supplier and a consumer engage in a trade, sure they each benefit, but who are those that ultimately benefit? In the first case, it is those who have access to white privilege, and not those affected by internalizing and believing the illusions that they are inferior races (if you are a dark skinned black women, take a moment to google image the term 'beauty'.. how would it affect you to see light skinned people as the prime idea of what this term encompasses?'). In the second, it is those who have access to printing currency and determining its trajectory. Of course, this is why intersectionality is important: those who ultimately benefit in both cases are the same people. the fact that some of the oppressed have been able to climb out of the hole and others have not been able to, doesn't really matter. all of this requires empathy.
Take for instance, the idea of ‘ethnic solidarity’; where migrants and minorities provide economic and social support that is biased against or excludes white communities. Those who claim that this exclusion is racist against whites; or that, by prejudicing and categorizing their own and/or other non-white communities as being vulnerable, they are perpetuating ‘the problem’ are missing the point all together: that the problem of racism is nothing without power. In other words, oppressive institutions, in this case involving race and economic/social power (class), are necessarily interconnected and cannot be understood separately. The more precise our level of analysis would like to be, the more context dependent it becomes.
Theres a great book on al this:
http://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406506670&sr=8-1&keywords=porter+manufactured+crisis
Any nuclear program can be used to make nukes in the indefinite future. Right now 40 countries coud make nukes if they wanted.
http://www.rense.com/general43/nations.htm
Iran's nuclear program actually started at the behest of the USA http://www.iranaffairs.com/iran_affairs/2006/05/blasts_from_the.html
Thus far no evidence of any nucear weapons program has ever been found in Iran, which is why the US now phrases the issue in terms of "intention to obtain capabilities" - since conveniently there is no way to PROVE that something can't happen in the indefinite future so Iran is always "on the hook" no matter what it does. Iran even suspeded the enrichment of uranium for 3 years
See, the "Iranian nuclear threat" is a cooked-up pretext, that's all.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/02/21/iaea-conduct-complicates-iran-nuclear-deal/
This was the same shit they pulled with the invasion of Iraq - even when the Iraqis filed a 12000 page declaration proving they didn't have WMDs anymore, the US accused them of lying just by filing such a large document - but the US was careful to first remove the pages that implicated US and Western countries in Saddam's WMD program. http://www.projectcensored.org/3-us-illegally-removes-pages-from-iraq-un-report/
See, it really doesn't make a difference if there's any actual proof -- not if you can just say it over and over again until it becomes "true" and people repeat it. And the media help sell this bullshit.
You have to understand that the US dispute with Iran is not and never was really about 'nuclear weapons' --- just like the US dispute with Iraq was not really about "WMDs in Iraq" -- that was just the BS fed to the public to justify the plans to topple the regimes there http://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338
That was just a pretext, and justification for an entirely different policy of imposing regme change in those countries.
There is in fact no evidence of any Iranian nuclear weapons program, and Iran's nuclear program is perfectly legal.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/09/iran-nuclear-power-un-threat-peace
All countries are equal, legally, and so all countries can make nukes if they want. There is no law of nature that says the US can but not Argentina or Iran. Most of the countries of he world including Iran agreed to forego that right, in exchange for certain promises from the countries that already had nukes (these promises have been ignored or violated by the nuclear-armed states.) This bargain was made in the NonProliferation Treaty. However that treaty itself says that the countries are free to withdraw from it if they feel the need to do so, and can go back to having the option ot make nukes.
There is another issue here with respect to Iran: the right to enrich uranium and have the technology to be self-sufficient in nuclear power. The US says this is dangerous because the same technology "could be" used to make nukes, and it wants to limit the number of nations that can enrich uranium. Enriching uranium is a necessary step in making reactor fuel, as well as potentially bombs. Other nations -- particularly developing nations -- say the US is out to create a cartel of nuclear fuel providers, and is using the "nuclear threat" as a pretext to dominate the sole source of energy in the post-oil world. http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/bush-proposals/
I would like to recommend: "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror" by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan (2015)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ISIS-Inside-Terror-Michael-Weiss/dp/1941393578
My synopsis:
Weiss and Hassan detail how Iraq was politically destabilised all-the-while explaining how the jihad movement arrived, spread, and took root in Iraq. Great detail is given on Zarqawi, it's organisations, their role in destabilising Iraq, and how they laid the foundations for Daesh. They also detail how Syria was politically destabilised, how the jihadi movement arrived in Syria, and how Jabhat al-Nusra and Daesh have different ideologies which explains the current situation in Syria.
Gulf of Tonkin 1967: McNamara knew it was a mistake before LBJ used it as an excuse to escalate. Daniel Ellsberg’s firsthand account from inside the Pentagon: http://www.pbs.org/pov/mostdangerousman/excerpt-ellsberg-memoir/2/
(Gareth Porter says Mac kept the truth from LBJ: https://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/05/how-lbj-was-deceived-on-gulf-of-tonkin/ )
Cold War’s End 1988-1991: CIA so busy lying about Soviet power under Casey and Gates, they missed the USSR’s fall. http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21487-no-tears-for-the-real-robert-gates
Iraq War I: 1990-1991: Lied about Iraqi preparations to invade Saudi, Iraqi forces murdering babies https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.html
Kosovo: 1999: Lied about 100,000 Albanian Muslims slaughtered by Serbs
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/aug/18/balkans3
Afghanistan: 2001: Lied that Taliban wouldn’t give up Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5
Iraq War II 2003: Lied that Iraq was making WMD, including nuclear weapons, was allied with al Qaeda https://medium.com/dan-sanchez-blog/16-articles-that-expose-how-they-lied-us-into-war-in-iraq-bedf2e47c0bc
Somalia 2006: The Islamic Courts Union government was not truly in league with al Qaeda as claimed https://www.thenation.com/article/blowback-somalia/
Libya 2011: Lied that there was an impending genocide in Eastern Libya https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/29/hillary-clinton-libya-war-genocide-narrative-rejec/
Syria 2013: No Slam Dunk on al Qaeda false-flag sarin attack, they finally admit much later
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/03/10/neocons-red-faced-over-red-line/
Iraq War III 2014: Yazidis on Mt. Sinjar did not need rescuing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/2014/08/13/5fdd3358-2301-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html?utm_term=.b2834d3b716b
Yemen 2015: Not really bad intel, but notably knew war would be “long, bloody and indecisive,” launched it anyway, just to “placate the Saudis.” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/world/middleeast/yemen-saudi-us.html
—Hasn’t led to war yet, but they’ve been lying for years about Iran’s intent and actions to make nuclear weapons, which never existed. https://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338 https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/16/when-the-ayatollah-said-no-to-nukes/ CIA did finally admit this was so in 2007 https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/20071203_release.pdf —
Older phony casus belli:
1812: Impressment of sailors was the excuse when the Democrats really just wanted to seize Canada. https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/06/19/1812-the-war-partys-first-success/
1846: Mexico: U.S. invaded, called it defense from the Mexicans https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutions
1861: Civil War: Keeping Ft. Sumpter open after South Carolina secession was a provocation. (Everyone’s got a different opinion about this one.)
1620-Current: Indian wars: Paid Napolean for the land. God says we can. And they started it anyway. http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist110/unit3/indians.html
1898: Spain: Remember the Maine was an accidental fire which spread to the magazine. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/pdf/Maine.1898.pdf
1898: Philippines: Must Christianize these Catholics. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/blackboard/mckinley.html
WWI: Lusitania was a deliberate provocation, Zimmerman telegram threat of German-Mexican invasion of U.S. Southwest was a ridiculous joke. https://www.amazon.com/Lusitania-Colin-Simpson/dp/0582127076 https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/zimmermann
WWII: Pearl Harbor: FDR Knew. https://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299
Korea: Syngman Ree’s forces’ provocations preceded Northern invasion https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2013/07/28/who-really-started-the-korean-war/
bad parallel. read norm finkelstein
There is a lot of deliberate misinformation as well as plain ignorance in the reporting since this is a highly polarized and legal/technical area. I suggest this book:
Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare by Gareth Porter http://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338
More
http://www.juancole.com/2012/09/top-myths-about-irans-nuclear-enrichment-program.html
But yes, the US encouraged Iran to go nuclear in the first place, back in the 1970s. Since then Iran's population has tripled, its oil production has halved, and it burns half of that at home instead of exporting it.
http://iranaffairs.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/15_billion_deal.jpg
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/14/opinion/14iht-edsahimi_ed3_.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3983-2005Mar26.html
Note that the US doesn't accuse Iran of actually having a nuclear weapons program, but of "intending to obtain the capability" to make nukes. This is neither illegal nor rare, but is inevitable in having a nuclear energy program. As a former IAEA inspector explained:
>And so, clearly Iran has mastered many technologies in the uranium-handling and enrichment areas, such that if they wanted to go ahead, they probably could do it. That would make them a threshold state. We can name any number of other states in the world with the same level of technology and expertise. It's the intent that you have to worry about. We don't see intent to this case. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13286
The "Iran nuclear threat" is actually just a pretext to try to impose regime change in Iran just as "WMDs in Iraq" was a lie and pretext.
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/04/20/elbaradei-us-europe-werent-interested-in-compromise-with-iran/
Unfortunately it's a book and not an article
Gullible people are the ones who once again believe yet another version of "WMDs in Iraq" brought to you by the very same poeple too
I don't really care what you think, the facts are the facts.
Israel was hyping the "nuclear threat" from Iran for its own reasons http://www.haaretz.com/livni-behind-closed-doors-iranian-nuclear-arms-pose-little-threat-to-israel-1.231859
Iran's nuclear program was started by the USA
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3983-2005Mar26.html
and was always quite legal http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jun/09/iran-nuclear-power-un-threat-peace
There's zero evidence of any Iranian nuclear weapons program, ever.
>'Mossad, CIA Agree Iran Has Yet to Decide to Build Nuclear Weapon'
read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3983-2005Mar26.html
and
>Despite growing international concern about Iran's nuclear program and its regional ambitions, most U.S. intelligence shared with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has proved inaccurate, and none has led to significant discoveries inside Iran, diplomats here said. http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Most-U-S-tips-fingering-Iran-false-envoys-2646358.php
According to IAEA Director Elbaradei:
>I have been making it very clear that with regard to these alleged studies, we have not seen any use of nuclear material, we have not received any information that Iran has manufactured any part of a nuclear weapon or component. That’s why I say, to present the Iran threat as imminent is hype. http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/2009/10/elbaradei-interview-language-of-force.html
And
>With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon programme in Iran. http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/17/us-nuclear-iaea-iran-sb-idUSTRE58G60W20090917
and
>The IAEA is not making any judgment at all whether Iran even had weaponisation studies before because there is a major question of authenticity of the documents. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article28114.ece
Even the new, US-backed IAEA Director
>The incoming head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday he did not see any hard evidence Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear arms. "I don't see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this," Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran's atomic program since his election, when asked whether he believed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons capability. http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/07/03/us-nuclear-iaea-iran-exclusive-idUSL312024420090703
and lets remember that Iran has bent over backwards and has actually allowed more inspections than legally required
>"Any country, I think, would be rather reluctant to let international inspectors to go anywhere in a military site," Mr. Blix told Al Jazeera English about Parchin in late March. "In a way, the Iranians have been more open than most other countries would be." http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2012/0420/Iran-s-Parchin-complex-Why-are-nuclear-inspectors-so-focused-on-it
Claims that Iran blocked legally-required inspections were denied by even the IAEA http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/11/us-iran-nuclear-iaea-idUSKRA15680720070511
So lets see, that's ELBaradei, Blix, and even Amano (who had actually secretly sworn loyalty to the US http://www.theguardian.com/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog/2010/nov/30/iaea-wikileaks) -- three heads of the IAEA say no nuclear weapons program existed in Iran
And actual arms inspectors...
>Iran has mastered many technologies in the uranium-handling and enrichment areas, such that if they wanted to go ahead, they probably could do it. That would make them a threshold state. We can name any number of other states in the world with the same level of technology and expertise. It's the intent that you have to worry about. We don't see intent to this case.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13286
And actual nuclear experts http://original.antiwar.com/yousaf-butt/2014/06/18/what-is-the-quality-of-scientific-evidence-against-iran/
Oh and the actual international community also backs Iran http://indianexpress.com/article/news-archive/web/india-with-nam-in-slamming-iaea-report-on-iran/
Nonaligned states protest Israeli attacks on IAEA http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/22/us-nuclear-iaea-nonaligned-idUSL2187147520071122
The US has been pushing some documents as proof that Iran supposedly engaged in nuclear-related studies (Called the "Alleged Studies" by the previous IAEA director, and "Possible Military Dimensions" by the new, US-backed IAEA director) until 2003 however the evidence -- to the extent the US has actually let anyone including the IAEA or Iran to see -- has been laughed at/ There have also been a variety of half-baked leaks of "proof" of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, for example the "AP Graph" http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ap-exclusive-graph-suggests-iran-working-bomb which turned out to be a hoax http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/29/ap-iran-nuclear-program-graph-explanation as was the general quality of the scientific evidence against Iran http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/1205/Flawed-graph-weakens-case-against-Iran-nuclear-program-video
This book is all about that http://www.amazon.com/Manufactured-Crisis-Untold-Story-Nuclear/dp/1935982338
I'm sure this is the book I was thinking about: https://www.amazon.com/ISIS-Inside-Terror-Michael-Weiss/dp/1941393578/ref=cm_cr_othr_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
I haven't read it but I heard it's good. While it goes into a lot of detail regarding Zarqawi and Al Qaeda, it unfortunately peddles the same old "all the tons of Iraqi Baathists who made ISIS" conspiracy theory.
Anyways, it is safe to say it is the greatest exaggeration of the 21st century. Several former officers with no known affiliation with the former Iraqi govt or Baath party being exaggerated to legions of high ranking Baath party members is nothing short of pure sensationalism.
I wouldn't even put those officers close to the most important factor for ISIS's growth either. Nouri Al Maliki's time and authoritarianism, Zarqawi, the US's complete mishandling of Iraq from 2003 to the present, Bashar Al Assad's mishandlings (also speaking of Al Qaeda links, Assad supported Al Qaeda during the Iraq War), and the Syrian civil war are what ISIS grew and thrived from. Not a guy who was removed in 2003 and had spent his 35 years as de facto and de jure leader of Iraq smashing terrorists and jihadists.
When you think about it, the same people who were trumping the Al Qaeda claims still haven't let up to this day. Yellow journalists and some bruised pro-war conservatives are the reason why this current theory even came about in 2014 and into 2015.
Kyle Orton is probably the best example of neo-conservatives who never quite let the Iraq War go and and still trying to justify it. Orton claims that the government's Islamic concessions and reforms (something most other Muslim countries were doing in light of the Islamic revival and which even European countries are doing nowadays too; and do note Iraq today is almost entirely run by Islamist parties) was a deliberate conspiracy to create ISIS. Of course it is nonsense, but people will try to link anything. Orton literally states Saddam gave us ISIS. He's also claimed in another post that ISIS would have came up without the Iraq War or anything else because Saddam created it. Suffice it to say, there is good reason why when anything of Orton's gets posted on this sub, it gets slammed by people of all sorts of factional and political leanings, including American conservatives.
Similar people/journalists/bloggers in other camps and places are also the reason for the cropping of the "Assad made ISIS", "USA made ISIS", "Russia made ISIS", "Gulf countries made ISIS", and for a long time, the most popular conspiracy theory in Iraq was the USA, Israel (sigh), and Gulf countries created ISIS. The Iraqi parody of ISIS "Al Dawlah Al Khrafa" makes fun of this theory.
> this being pretty common and undisputed knowledge.
While that's the commonly held belief, it is not undisputed.
Shlomo Sand, a professor of Israeli history at Tel Aviv university, posits in his book The Invention of the Jewish People that Ashkenazi jewry is not in fact descended from the Jews who once lived in Judea and Samaria, but rather that they are decended from peoples who converted to Judaism in the middle ages. He draws on a wide range of archaeological, historical and demographic evidence to support his claim, and presents a persuasive argument.
While this book has come under heavy criticism in the West, it's worth mentioning that it was well received in Israel, and was on the bestseller list there for nineteen weeks.
Edit: I see that Sand now has a follow-up book, called The Invention of the Land of Israel. The Guardian has a review here, for those interested.
Put very very simply...
ISIS, aka ISIL, aka IS (Islamic State), aka Daesh, is a group that currently rules territory in portions of Iraq and Syria. Their aim is to create a state ruled by an extremely strict interpretation of Sunni Islam, and they believe themselves to be fulfilling religious prophecy, one of the groups discussed in Islamic eschatology; their official magazine is named Dabiq after the down of Dabiq, where a Sunni Hadith declares that during the apocalypse "an army consisting of the best (soldiers) of the people of the earth at that time will come from Medina" to repel the armies of Rome. THey believe they are that army and anticipate an apocalyptic battle.
They are notorious for the severity of their laws (women must remain indoors when not with husbands or fathers, thieves suffer amptuations, public music results in beatings) and the brutality with which they enforce them, along with their terrorist tactics against their enemies (meaning: directly targeting civilians to frighten and intimidate people into surrendering). Their activities extend to things considered gross human rights violations by everyone but them -- using child soldiers, mass rape, slavery, mass executions.
If you are interested in reading further, I would recommend the essay What ISIS Really Wants by Graeme Wood and the book The Rise of Islamic State by Patrick Cockburn.
Not sure if you remember but I had asked about books on ISIS 2 months ago and you gave some good responses.
What do you think about this book?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1784780405?keywords=ISIS&qid=1453840359&ref_=sr_1_10&sr=8-10
Why not try this instead.
This map including your video on youtube is complete BS. You have no idea on the nature of Jews and you are just peddling Jewish mythologies that have no basis in reality. The scientific papers you reference use vague genetic findings that make assumptions based on those vague findings to align with Jewish mythologies which can be easily disproven by actual history and other more rigorous scientific papers. In fact, there was no "Roman exile" from Palestine (the original Jews were only banned from the old city of Jerusalem to the surrounding area) and practically all Jews today are descended from converts from various locations outside of the Levant, mostly North Africa (Berbers), Europe, Turkey, Iran, Ethiopia, Russia, and Yemen. Many of these Jews may have intermixed with one another to form a "pseudo-race" but that doesn't mean they originated from a single location like your map and video suggests. The descendants of the original Jews of Palestine are known as Palestinians today.
Go read "The Invention of the Jewish People" by Israeli professor and historian Dr. Shlomo Sand.
Are you claiming that Judaism arose spontaneously, out of thin air? Perhaps the Hebrews just sprang out of the ground somewhere? Are you arguing that Judaism is the first, or earliest religion? That it has no historical antecedent whatsoever? That monotheism was not, in fact, predated by polytheism? Have you conducted any research to support these claims?
The segments in my post are well-cited. Perhaps you'd like to refute the authors of the research? By all means, look up the citations and compose angry, emotionally-based retorts to this historical and archaeological research.
Educate thyself. The following works are by Israeli authors:
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
Authors: Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, an archaeologist, historian and contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine.
The Invention of the Jewish People
Author: Shlomo Sand, Professor of History at Tel Aviv University
The Wandering Who
Author: Isreali-born Gilad Atzmon
Review:
It is a scholarly and truly monumental work, deeply profound and, of course, controversial. (Alan Hart, British Journalist and covert diplomat in Middle East, ITN's News at 10, BBC's Panorama)
> Also, while we're talking about foreign affairs, how do you feel about the specific targeting of civilian women and children? Trump has expressly advocated for it. How do you not find that repugnant? How do you feel about torture--not "advanced interrogation techniques"--actual torture?
>
You're going to talk about a bullshit Fox News narrative and then go digging in the gutters for that garbage. When questioned about this Trump sited the San Bernardino terrorists family members that were complicit in the attack they carried out. Some of those family members have since been arrested by the current administration (Obama). He was also probably trying to ensure situations wouldn't arise where the surviving family members would profit from these attacks. See the article below for the action that is now being taken by the current administration (Not Trump). This all seems reasonable to me.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-san-bernardino-attack-life-insurance-lawsuit-20160531-snap-story.html
And are you seriously that fucking disturbed about water boarding? Is that what you're calling actual torture? These people just beheaded a priest in a church today. We should go a lot further than we have been. Our rules of engagement are a joke.
And you're right. Hillary Clinton is not solely to blame for the rise of ISIS. President Obama can also take some of the credit for trying to solve this issue through air strikes and arming rebels alone. It's been documented in several sources that weapons turned over to moderate rebels inevitably end up in the hands of ISIS. All this because of their obsession with ousting Assad. This should all be common knowledge by now from the daily reports published in the mainstream media, but here's a book that's spells it out easy enough for you to understand if you're seriously that far behind.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Islamic-State-Sunni-Revolution/dp/1784780405
I also love that you seem to have no problem with all the overwhelming evidence of a rigged primary. Bernie was fundraising for Hillary all along. No big deal, right? Because ZOMG TRUMP!
There was also the problem that the Muslim world for the longest time felt that because they were the technological superiors of Europe / the middle east (Which they were at the time) That they would both stay the technological superiors, and that they had nothing to learn from what they saw as backwards Europeans.
Between the 1660s and the 1690s the Ottoman Empire started losing a lot of battles against the Europeans and Russians due to the European's use of organized rifle regiments and battle tactics. While the Ottomans certainly had guns themselves, they hadn't bother to learn how Europe was using them and the improvements their neighbors to the north had created in modern combat and tactics. The Ottomans also didn't really know how to negotiate when they lost as they simply hadn't really majorly lost in the recent past, so Europeans took some pretty heavy prizes from the negotiations. This is considered by some the start of the fall of the middle-east's fall from power to now play second fiddle to European super-powers.
The book "What Went Wrong?" by Bernard Lewis covers this exact topic rather succinctly, covering how Islamic world went from the military and technological masters of the world to... well where they are today.
This is probably the best source out there. It is incredibly balanced and incredibly comprehensive.
That is not what I recall from my professor's book, nor his course on the subject.
https://www.amazon.com/History-Israeli-Palestinian-Conflict-Indiana-Islamic/dp/025322070X/
Alas, I don't have the book in front of me.
With that said, refer to the chart on Page 5 of the below PDF. Note that it is a source which is "Pro-Zionist," but the numbers mentioned align with my former professor's research. Of the land under Jewish control in 1947, 57% of it came from Arab landowners.
http://www.wordfromjerusalem.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/the-case-for-israel-appendix2.pdf
On a personal note - I don't have a horse in the race. The course I took at the University of Michigan was quite the eye opener for me with impassioned arguments from both the Jewish and Muslim communities. For many of these kids, it was the first time they actually got to debate the matter outside of the safe space of their family dinner table.
Edit: Removed a sentence I used twice.
Suggestion: History through Prof. Mark Tessler. Unbiased. Informative.
http://youtu.be/u57yxd753f8
http://youtu.be/Zm09uRDdzto
http://youtu.be/lpsxiMrgVK4
http://youtu.be/8O9AHzUKYk8
One person? Try looking online a bit, you will find hundreds of videos and descriptions of Hamas using schools, hospitals and civilian buildings as launch sites; along with Hamas telling civilians to ignore Israeli warnings to leave just to increase the body count.
One random video posted by a random user on YouTube is meaningless, for all I know you posted it and then called it out to further your antisemitic agenda.
>Nazi like colonization is simply not justifiable, you're wasting time.
Er... how much do you know about this conflict? If you think it's that simple then I suggest reading a few books on the topic, this and this and this are all good start points.
TestTube did a decent summary of what happened.
Also, why did you randomly go to this topic? We're talking about how Hamas is using human shields and how Al Jazeera, among others, have been clearly caught out in their pro-Hamas propaganda. If you can't back up your points in this argument don't try to change the topic...
>instead of feeling like you have a duty to argue this point, step back and try to actually explain to yourself why a tiny land mass like Israel needs 38 billion dollars for military operations
Ever hear of the Suez Canal? The Cold War? The aide program to Israel and Egypt which is why Israel and Egypt haven't fought a war in 40 years (something they used to do every 5-7 years prior to the US brokered 1978 Camp David Peace Deal).
Good for you for questioning things, but it seems like you have allowed yourself to follow a pretty biased and incomplete set of sources (600 babies killed in the 'Hannibal' raid - I mean come on).
And frankly
>we're all being completely duped into this shit
Is such a incomplete, shorthanded, non-nuanced view of the world that you should really stop and think about what leads you to believe you can boil complex geopolitical situations into such a tight and tidy narrative. The world is not that easy - it may be easier to believe you can see "behind the curtain" and understand the evil rich capitalists controlling the entire world like a comic book super-villain... but I submit to you that such a belief is frankly lazy and self centered.
This type of belief only allows you to feel like you have some deep understanding of the workings of the world and the multi-facted interests, dynamics, and peoples who shape history - but without the true historical knowledge to back it up.
__
>tribal loyalty and religion is extremely blinding and biasing
Is it possible that political and other beliefs are equally as blinding? Anti-Zionism doesn't have a monopoly on "truth"
___
Drugs are awesome, but try reading some books also:
>Morris's work on the Arab–Israeli conflict and especially the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has won praise and criticism from both sides of the political divide. He is accused by some academics in Israel of only using Israeli and never Arab sources, creating an "unbalanced picture".[3] Regarding himself as a Zionist, he writes, "I embarked upon the research not out of ideological commitment or political interest. I simply wanted to know what happened."[4]
>>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris
>This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of the military engagements, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side―where the archives are still closed―is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials.
>>https://www.amazon.com/1948-History-First-Arab-Israeli-War/dp/0300151128
Or even a documentary:
>The 50 Years War Israel And The Arabs
>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSAD9pS8NIw
Being baked and learning can be fun. :)
And there are tons of other sources out there including Illan Pappe (who I hate and think does incredibly poor scholarship) and everything in between.
But please stop adopting such a, frankly, ZOG-like view of the world. Nothing is that easy, even if it can feel good when it provides a simple framework for a complex and interconnected world.
We can acknowledge, however, which side currently holds more unabashed hatred of the other side. Undeniably, Palestinians hate Israelis more than they themselves are hated in return. This has to do with a long line of anti-Semitism among the Arab populations (e.g. supporting the Nazis during WW2) and the systematic lack of education and freedom in Arab controlled lands. Fire up 'the street' against a common enemy and people forget to rebel against their own corrupt tyrants.
Source: Oren, M. B. (2003). Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. New York: Presidio Press.
I am currently reading Six Days of War. Oren writes extensively not only on the war itself, but on the factors leading to it as well (pg. 1-61 covers post WWII to May 1967, pg. 61-170 covers the direct lead-up [May 1967], pg. 170-305 covers the war itself, and the last 20 pages kind of wrap it up) .
Ironically, I actually got that from a pro-Palestine site. The book it references is Iron Wall, page 264. King Hussein of Jordan said:
>"... I was offered the return of something like 90 plus percent of the territories, 98 percent even, excluding [occupied East] Jerusalem, but I couldn't accept. As far as I am concerned, it was either every single inch that I was responsible for or nothing."
So outside of East Jerusalem, it would've been potentially 98% of the West Bank.
>Furthermore, prior to the declaration of Israel, the future Israeli people had attempted over several decades to establish a mutually beneficial state
Read these and see how wrong that statement is,
http://www.amazon.com/Plowshares-into-Swords-Zionism-Israel/dp/1844672352
http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Wall-Israel-Arab-World/dp/0393321126/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301948665&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Zionism-Real-Enemy-False-Messiah/dp/0932863647/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301948693&sr=1-1
(the above is in 3 vols)
Just as a quick point for future. If you break your posts you want both responses under the parent not chained like this. I don't get notified if you reply to yourself.
> It was a very different time, and we shouldn't be doing things like that anymore.
And people then would have said the same thing, "sure this sort of formations happened during the 30 years war... but now we have more limited warfare and treaty enforcement...."
> Seems like ethnic nationalism to me.
Well yes Israel is ethnic nationalism. That's not a point in dispute. The point of dispute is why this particular ethnic nationalism is singled out for destruction when most of the world is governed by ethnic nationalists with little comment.
> According to the Shaw commission people were concerned that the new Jewish immigrants would eventually try to take the place over.
The Shaw commission is 1929. That's a decade into British rule. We are talking about the situation during the end of the Ottomans. You are a decade off here. The Shaw commission is a reaction to the fact that the Jewish population, as a result of Palestinian terror is now Zionized and has a distinct national identity. And when is firmly entrenched as well in the Arab population. Hapoel Hatzair (a cultural Zionist party) had merged into Ahdut HaAvoda (David Ben-Gurion's party). Labor Zionism was the dominant form of Zionism.
You seriously have to stop treating all of history as one big blog. 1882-1949 is 61 years. 61 years took just as long back then as it does today.
> But were they opposed to the immigration, or to the proposed partition, etc? The British had already promised the Palestinians independence, and then snatched the rug out from under them. I can see how people might have been upset.
Your order of events is backwards again. The opposition to Jewish immigration is organized to an overall political platform among Palestinian Christians by 1911. Balfour is not till 1917. Mostly the opposition is forming (at least among the Christians) well before there is anyone knows Turks will be replaced by the British as opposed to the French, Russians, Germans, Syrian nationalists...
> Now I'm just confused - what are you asking me about the US?
Assume the Green Party won the election. How many Americans is Jill Stein willing to lose in a war with Israel to achieve your goals. 1,000; 20,000; 400,000; 8m? Can she justify those loses to Americans? Remember you are talking a 1st world army with ICBMs. Beating them is certainly something the USA can do. Beating them cheaply is not.
> You know, sometimes people say that Palestinians hate Israel more than they love their children. It sounds like you are saying that about the Israelis. It is horrifying that the Israelis would nuke their own people. That really surprised me.
Let me really horrify you the party that had ordered that strike to happen had the tank battle gone the other way won the next 2 elections. The Israelis love Israel more than their children. Jewish history teaches them that their children have no future without Israel.The official strategic (as opposed to tactical) nuclear policy is called the Samson doctrine after the bible verse "God grant me your strength one last time that I may die with my enemies" (https://youtu.be/Ro3pIwHbHuQ?t=160). Ariel Sharon, prime minister 2001-6, had a quip he used with leaders who shared your view that the Israelis would surrender their freedom, "This time we don't go to Auschwitz alone". Let's not forget when you discuss Israel you are talking about the people who invented apocalyptic literature.
The Israelis love their country. They will die in large numbers for their country just like Americans. They are if anything substantially more determined than Americans would be. They are never leaving. They are never going to agree to return to slavery under Palestinians. They will go to war, and fight a brutal war to prevent Israel from falling. You can agree or disagree with nationalism. But don't assume Israelis are at all ambiguous on nationalism. Don't underestimate their determination. As you read more of the history of the Yishuv and Israel you'll see that many Arab leaders made the same mistakes through the decades thinking of the Israelis as colonizers and then discovering that they were willing to fight with the bravery of natives.
> But they're willing to be the foreign ruler over other people?
If they have to, yes. They would rather not. Israelis will accept humane compromises at reasonable cost. But that's as far as they will go. Just as your neighbors in Georgia might be willing to compromise with Mexico but not accept Mexican rule over them.
> This is why I say that the Israelis have turned into the pigs from Animal Farm. They started off like everybody else and then turned into what they claimed to be fighting.
If you want to use that analogy, the Zionists were horses who dreamed one day of being pigs.
> I haven't found any books, even history books, that aren't supporting a side. If you know of some, I'd love a list. Seriously.
The book that both knowledgeable Zionists, non-Zionists and Palestinians most agree on is https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Wall-Israel-Norton-Paperback/dp/0393321126 . I could list a bunch of others but if you are only going to read one this is the book. That's a very straight history, excellent research, balanced... but you will likely have a lot of trouble identifying with either side. If you want a narrator who is more of a western style liberal and thus you might be able to better relate to who is struggling with Israeli history while sharing your values: https://www.amazon.com/My-Promised-Land-Triumph-Tragedy/dp/03855217 .
> The English [17th century Massachusetts] were the foreigners...they came to conquer and colonize.
OK good clear answer. When did they become natives and Massachusetts their's rather than Mashpee, Pennacook...?
> But still nobody's denying those groups did awful things.
I'll deny they did awful things. They killed very few people to get the British to leave. They seem to have done a wonderful job of scaring the British off without killing too many of them. As humane as possible.
> I don't know what then. It does make the Harry Potter universe seem really appealing though.
What then is exactly what happened in China, France, Ireland.... a culture arises and people assimilate into it. The national identity becomes broader and encompasses essentially all the residents of the territory. The French don't think of themselves as Franks, Burgundians, Aquitaines... they all have a Frankish/French shared identity. That's what will happen. The nations that used to exist are absorbed into the now dominant nation and the oppression ends.
> But it hasn't made me less of an anti zionist. I still don't think it takes a genius or a scholar to know right from wrong.
I can't do anything about right from wrong. I'll settle for true and false.
There is an excellent book titled "All The Shah's Men" that goes into great detail concerning this coup d'etat. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (better known today as British Petroleum) had a lucrative deal with the Iranian government to share the vast majority of the oil earnings with foreign investors. But in 1951, the Iranian government voted to nationalize Iran's oil fields and more importantly, democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh who fought against foreign companies. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company begged Winston Churchill to help and he reached out to the CIA. The CIA started the coup under Operation Ajax and the SIS started their own operation titled Operation Boot. This CIA led coup ended in 1953 with Mossadegh being deposed by a brutal dictator; Mohammed Rezi Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran.
Fun Factoids:
President Teddy Roosevelt's grandson, Kermit Roosevelt Jr. was the CIA's Directorate of Plans and senior coordinator for Operation Ajax.
Maj. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Sr., grandson of Gen. Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. and commander in chief of United States Central Command during the invasion of the Persian Gulf War, was sent by the CIA to persuade the Shah to return from exile. In addition, Schwarzkopf Sr. also trained the brutal paramilitary police force SAVAK whose torture methods ranged from electric shock, pulling of teeth, and pouring boiling water down the anus. After the 1979 revolution, SAVAK was dismantled but it is highly likely the SAVAK command and its methods were simply implemented under the new name SAVAMA.
Apartheid is a discriminatory legal separation. In the US an example of apartheid was the famous blacks-only, whites-only water fountains in some parts of the US South. The term is famous from the racist system used by Israel's old ally, the country Israel worked with to develop nuclear weapons, the apartheid regime of South Africa.
The US president that negotiated the Israeli-Egyptian peace deal, Jimmy Carter, wrote a book on the topic: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
In one interview Carter described one aspect of Israeli apartheid this way: "When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa."
Ah, yes, classic tactics--call anyone who points out the truth about Zionist control of U.S. foreign policy insane, a neo-Nazi and a conspiracy theorist. Problem is, hasbarah (that's what you are, whether you are paid or volunteer) fewer and fewer people are falling for that fallacious b.s. anymore. That's why you're throwing such a tantrum--this is the death throws of the censorship you defend. Mearsheimer and Walt couldn't even get their paper published in a major U.S. outlet. Things have changed a LOT since then. You're losing.
Anyway who knows anything about U.S. politics knows that a candidate stands virtually zero chance of getting elected unless he kisses the Zionist Lobby's ring. There are occasional miracles of zero consequence, like Ron Paul, but exceptions prove the rule. AIPAC brags about destroying U.S. candidates who don't toe the line! And you can't deny it!
I'm not delusional--if you didn't think there was a chance other people might be reading this, you wouldn't be going to such embarrassing lengths to distract front he truths I'm laying down, DAWG.
Here's that great article by former CIA officer Phil Giraldi. And make sure to google "hasbara." It's stunning.
http://www.crescent-online.net/2014/06/how-the-israel-lobby-works-philip-giraldi-4504-articles.html
And here is the wonderful book by the wonderful Jimmy Carter. It's a shame Zionists sued him over this book, but what are you gonna do?
http://www.amazon.com/Palestine-Peace-Apartheid-Jimmy-Carter/dp/0743285034/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1421022795&sr=8-2&keywords=israel+apartheid+state
And yes, I am absolutely sure that Gen. Petratraeus' woes are partially the result of his comments that enraged Zionists. This is by no means an insane POV. It's a totally rational interpretation. Your ranting and raving and "Neo-Nazi" accusations won't change that fact.
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/when-former-cia-chief-david-petraeus-enraged-israel-lobby
And here is a great video from that famous neo-Nazi, Ralph Nader:
https://zionismkills.wordpress.com/tag/ralph-nader/
It's hard to answer this question without explaining significant background history of the conflict. It looks like you want Cliff's Notes on the conflict, and I'm afraid it isn't possible. In short, it's quite like any other land possession conflict, but the inclusion of religion (i.e., Biblical significance of the land), the holocaust, and the role of the U.S. make this particular conflict more relevant to Americans than a similar dispute elsewhere.
If you really want an answer to your question, you'll have to do some reading:
If you want a progressive viewpoint: Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid (Jimmy Carter)
If you want a pro-Israeli viewpoint (this doesn't mean the progressive viewpoint is anti-Israeli): The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can be Resolved (Alan Dershowitz).
For the record, I have read neither but I am familiar with where each of the author stands on Israel.
Former President Jimmy Carter wrote a book he called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. So the comparison is clearly made, and quite publicly so, even in the US.
"A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East" by David Fromkin is the book you are looking for.
https://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091
A Peace to end all Peace
It has been really good, I am glad I had a decent knowledge of the subject before starting it.
> Until the US overthrew Saddam and the Arab Spring, the region was generally stable. A hell of a lot more stable than ti is now
So in turn the US created a power vacuum... Instability in the Middle East has been the goal for over a century. Read something, like http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091
And what about the CIA's major role in overthrowing democratically elected politicians?
I recommend "Peace to end all Peace" By David Fromkin http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091
As far as I know, the book is still representative of the current state of scholarship concerning the period. It deals exclusively with the period between 1914 and 1922, which is, by this time, relatively declassified in terms of documentation, so I wouldn't expect another book to eclipse it any time soon, unless someone happens to write a better synthesis of the available material.
It looks like the publisher recently released a 20th anniversary edition with an afterword from the author. That wasn't the edition I read, but I would imagine Fromkin's afterword serves as an index of more recent developments in the study of that period.
As for follow-up reading, my plan is to go regional, with a string of books about the development of the nationalisms that got their start in that period. So, on the one hand, I want to start digging backwards into the Ottoman Empire prior to the Young Turk movement (which more or less starts APTEAP), and on the other, I'd like to examine the modern histories of Transjordan, early Jewish nationalism, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Before I get to all of that, though, I've got A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani, which ought to keep me occupied for a while, once I start it.
The book By Way of Deception published around '91, and purportedly written by a disenchanted Mossad agent asserted the same thing.
"By Way Of Deception" by Victor Ostrovsky
If you are interested in this article, I highly recommend this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Way-Deception-Making-Unmaking-Officer/dp/0971759502
Amos_Quito: ^^original ^^link
Israel guilty of a "false flag" attack? Could it be?
What would Israel have to gain from deploying chemical weapons in Syria - with the blame falling on the Assad regime? Would it benefit Israel if the world - and especially the US - were to react by increasing support for the "Syrian Rebels", or perhaps even becoming directly involved in the conflict?
Would such a "false flag" attack be out of character for Israel?
In a 1954 incident known as "The Lavon Affair", Israel recruited a group of Jews living in Israel to plant bombs targeting Egyptian, British and US facilities. The idea was to blame Egyptian nationals, and to enrage the US and British in the hopes that the British would maintain troops in the Suez Canal Zone. Though the Israeli operatives were successful in fire-bombing an Egyptian post office, the US Information Agency and a British owned theater, their plans fell apart when one of the firebombs went off prematurely in the pocket of one of the False Flag saboteurs.
Israel immediately denied any involvement, and continued to deny for 51 years. In 2005 Israeli President Moshe Katzav officially honored the surviving conspirators with certificates of appreciation - effectively an official admission of what had long been common knowledge.
More on the Lavon Affair here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavon_Affair
The USS Liberty Incident is yet another example of an Israeli False Flag attack that occurred during the Six Day War in 1967. During this incident, the USS Liberty, a virtually unarmed vessel assigned to monitor communications, was ruthlessly attacked by Israeli forces for several hours. The Israelis unleashed torpedoes, napalm and relentless machine gun fire on the helpless crew - killing 34 seamen, and injuring 171 others. The apparent goal of the attack was to sink the Liberty and lay the blame of the attack on Egypt (again), in the hopes of drawing the US into the war on the side of Israel.
The plan ultimately failed because in spite of the Israelis' best efforts, the Liberty stubbornly remained afloat, with its heroic crew members taking great risks to restore communications with their US counterparts.
As with the Lavon Affair, Israel denied and continues to deny that the attack on this US flagged ship was anything other than an "accident". I suspect we'll have to wait a few more years before Israel admits to the dastardly deed by "honoring" the soldiers who participated in the attack, as they did the perpetrators of the Lavon Affair.
More information on the Liberty Incident can be found here http://www.usslibertyveterans.org/ and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Liberty Incident is that the story was officially hushed-up by the Johnson Administration, and that the survivors of this cut-throat attack were ordered not to speak of this tragic stab in the back by our "ally".
Israel and its infamous Mossad are well known for employing sinister, underhanded and deceptive tactics to achieve their goals. For example, it is well documented that Israeli Intelligence deliberately fed the US false information with the intent of goading the US into attacking Iraq in 2003.
There are many other incidents in which the Israelis have allegedly utilized false-flag operations, the above are only two examples that are well known and highly documented.
Is it possible that Israel may have deployed chemical weapons in Syria, as retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff alleges in the article?
Certainly. "By Way Of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War."
http://www.amazon.com/By-Way-Deception-Making-officer/dp/0971759502
While I am not in the least surprised when Israel pulls off such stunts, I am deeply troubled that in administration after administration, the US kowtows to the Zionist State, and that no matter how much trouble she causes us in blood, treasure and reputation, countless politicians from both parties line up to pledge fealty, and support them with cash, arms, technology and UN Security Council vetoes.
Whose interests are our elected officials representing, and at what cost to us?
I'm reading The Great War for Civilization which is a history of the middle east/biography of a foreign correspondent who interviewed Osama a couple of times. The way he was describing Osama almost made me post on /r/INFJ to ask if Osama Bin Laden was an INFJ. Glad you answered my question for me!
I've been slowly reading The Great War for Civilisation by Robert Fisk, who was a reporter on the ground in many of the major conflicts in the Middle East in the late 20th century (Iranian revolution, Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion, many others). It's been really good so far, both w.r.t. close-up "this is what day-to-day was actually like" and big picture "this was important because ...".
Check out Robert Fisk's "The Great War For Civilization."
That's what I'm here for bud. I'll call him out for you!
But really, the Middle East, and especially Iran is soo damn fascinating. I too wish more people who choose to discuss it actually put in the work to understand it.
BTW, have you read The Great War for Civilization yet? Kinda old now but a must-read in my opinion if you study the region.
> Going to a private Christian school probably had a lot to do with the pro-israel lens
Yikes. Fundies want the Israelis to raze Al-Aqsa and rebuild the Old Temple so Jesus can return through the Eastern gate and bring about Armageddon. The prophecy of madmen.
Hope you're not in with that crowd. Regardless, yes, it's increasingly difficult to find good sources on the Middle East, its nations and conflicts.
A good primer would be Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation.
https://www.amazon.com/Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest-Middle/dp/1400075173
Very dense but it covers much of the nuance of these conflicts and gives a good background on the power players. It will open your eyes to some interesting things, IMO.
Good luck out there
If you're looking for a broad history covering the last half century or so take a look at The Great War for Civilisation. It's a pretty dense book and takes some time to get through but it covers a lot of ground and certainly sets the stage for the modern Middle East as we know it now.
> If OP has time, there are two books that I would recommend:
> The Great War for Civilization (Niall Ferguson)
> Truman (Stephen McCullough)
Did you mean The Great War for Civilization or Civilization: The West and the Rest? I didn't see a book by that name by Ferguson.
I highly recommend this book for anyone trying to make sense of the region:
https://www.amazon.com/Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest-Middle/dp/1400075173
It's a long read, but worth it!
> Of course, reading solid history books on the topic is good.
The book by former journalist Robert Fisk "The Great War for Civilization" is in my opinion an excellent book to understand the background of not just Israel/Palestine, but the entire middle east. It does not fail to mention where everything got started, which is the time when Europe had colonized much of the middle east, and how that set the stage for everything to come.
However, it is over 1000 pages long...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_War_for_Civilisation
ISBN 1-4000-7517-3
https://www.amazon.com/Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest-Middle/dp/1400075173
You can read about Robert Fisk's encounter with OBL for that Dec 6th 1993 The Independent article and other encounters with OBL in Afghanistan in Robert Fisk's book:The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.
The book is huge and has errors in it. But you can read it for entertainment.
Here is the mobile version of your link
"Global War on Terror (GWOT) was known by those who fought it for long periods of boredom, punctuated by masturbation and enemy fire."
Seriously, there are so many viewpoints and critiques of the GWOT and implications of such an effort and progressing, globalizing world that Google really is your friend.
To give you only bullet points would be unfair. But I will toss a few good book links below.
http://www.amazon.com/Taliban-Militant-Fundamentalism-Central-Edition/dp/0300163681/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405913163&sr=8-1&keywords=taliban
http://www.amazon.com/American-Spartan-Promise-Mission-Betrayal/dp/0062114980/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405913151&sr=8-1&keywords=american+spartan
http://www.amazon.com/Horse-Soldiers-Extraordinary-Victory-Afghanistan/dp/1416580522/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1405913294&sr=8-2&keywords=horse+soldiers
http://www.amazon.com/In-Graveyard-Empires-Americas-Afghanistan/dp/0393338517/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405913285&sr=8-1&keywords=graveyard+of+empires
Context. Great book, 10/10 would recommend.
Suggested further reading: Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton.
http://www.amazon.com/Horse-Soldiers-Extraordinary-Victory-Afghanistan/dp/1416580522
http://www.amazon.com/Horse-Soldiers-Extraordinary-Victory-Afghanistan/dp/1416580522
http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/Afghanistan/Operation%20Enduring%20Freedom.htm
Not a usual recommendation, but Billy Waugh will provide you with the unconventional for sure, which I think every conventional officer should be fairly knowledgeable in convetional and asymmetrical manners of warfare. There isn't necessarily too much truly in-depth, but the nature of his work during the early recent era's are introspective.
The main trilogy I think every officer should read is a trilogy that has a heavy emphasis on the incompetency of leadership during World War 2, known as the 'Liberation Trilogy', by Rick Atkinson:
https://www.amazon.com/Liberation-Trilogy-Boxed-Set/dp/1627790594
And here is the one on Billy Waugh and the gang:
https://www.amazon.com/Horse-Soldiers-Extraordinary-Victory-Afghanistan/dp/1416580522
If you can get a hold of it, read "Horse Soldiers" which is the story of these guys and their efforts in Northern Afghanistan. It is really gripping and tells the story of how the war on Terror started very well.
http://www.amazon.com/Horse-Soldiers-Extraordinary-Victory-Afghanistan/dp/1416580522
Pity the Nation by Robert Fisk. Fisk covered the Lebanon war (one of the first reporters on scene at the Sabra & Shatila massacre), the invasion of Iraq, nd he covers the Syrian war today. He writes for the Independent and lives in Beirut.
Interesting backstory. I will probably postpone reading this for now, it would bring back a lot of violent memories from my childhood probably :) Thanks for the suggestion though.
Norman Finkelstein himself usually recommends these three books pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian-Arab conflict:
​
Benny Morris, Righteous Victims
Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land
Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation
​
As an aside, I'd also highly recommend Finkelstein's own Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.
​
https://www.amazon.com/Pity-Nation-Abduction-Lebanon-Books/dp/1560254424/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1497027621&sr=8-2&keywords=robert+fisk
>but there is an alliance with hezbollah and ba’athists within lebanon
The Syrian Ba'ath and the Iraqi Ba'ath are totally different.
If you want a place to begin read, you can start with this: https://www.amazon.com/Muqtada-al-Sadr-Shia-Revival-Struggle/dp/1416551476
And this: https://www.amazon.com/Pity-Nation-Abduction-Lebanon-Books/dp/1560254424
It is even more interesting when you get into it.
If you ever have the urge to learn about this time in Lebanon, which we haven't brought up, the American military attack, The Israeli invasion, the Syrian invasion, The Palestinians, and the Civil War that were happening all during the 1980's I recommend this book: Pity the Nation.
Which takes it's name from the Lebanese Poem:
>Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion.
Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave
and eats a bread it does not harvest.
Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,
and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.
Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,
yet submits in its awakening.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
save when it walks in a funeral,
boasts not except among its ruins,
and will rebel not save when its neck is laid
between the sword and the block.
Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,
whose philosopher is a juggler,
and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking
Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,
and farewells him with hooting,
only to welcome another with trumpeting again.
Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years
and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.
Pity the nation divided into fragments,
each fragment deeming itself a nation.”
Passenger trains joined the Irgun’s targets by 17 August (1936), when it attacked the Jaffa-Jerusalem line with grenades and gunfire at the bridge at Shlush Street in Tel Aviv, causing (as the Irgun put it) “great consternation among Jaffa Arabs”. One passenger died on the spot, and others were critically injured. Palestinian beach-goers remained a favoured target for the next decade; the terror gang murdered some in March, 1937, as well as agricultural workers in the Hefer Valley.
Irgun bombings of Palestinian cafés are first documented in April 1937 in Haifa, and bombings of Palestinian buses as early as September of that year. Rehavia was hit on 6 March, Yazur on 22 March, Jerusalem on 20 May, with further attacks on 7 July and 20 October.
On the 11th of November, the Irgun threw a bomb at a group of Palestinians on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, “near the garage of the ‘National Bus Co.’,” and that month it attacked cafés in Jerusalem with semi-machine guns and grenades. Palestinian vehicles in the Galilee region were attacked in December, and on the 27th the Irgun opened fire on a Palestinian bus on the Tel Aviv - Jerusalem Road.[89]
After “two sacks containing bombs were found on the Iraq Petroleum Company’s workers’ train from Haifa”, the British reported on 11 April 1938, a Palestinian sergeant removed the canvas sacks from the train and placed them in the Company’s terminal site, where they exploded, killing two people and seriously wounding a third. As police rushed to the scene from Haifa, news came of a similar sack discovered on another train in the vicinity. That carriage was evacuated and uncoupled, and a bomb expert was summoned. Before he arrived, a sergeant and two constables ignored (or were unaware of) warnings not to risk entering the carriage and, hoping to protect the train, threw the sack out the window. It exploded, killing two of them. The British appear not immediately to have known the origin of the bombs, until the Irgun took credit for placing the “clock mines” on the trains carrying Palestinian workers. Four more people were killed that day by Irgun bombs near Kiriat Haim.[90]
The Irgun attacked what it called “mob rioters” (?) on 17 April, and four days later tried to blow up a Palestinian bus, but the grenade failed to explode. “Reprisals against groups of Arabs” followed on 17 May in Jerusalem and on the Hebron-Jerusalem Road. More “mob rioters” were attacked on 23 May, this time in the Tel Aviv area, and that day there were attacks against Palestinians in Haifa in response, however illogically, to the British trials of three Irgun members. The Arab market in Jaffa was hit with explosives on 26 June, and on the fourth of July five more Palestinians were killed and twenty wounded in an Irgun attack on the Arab quarters (what the Irgun referred to as “concentrations of Arabs”) in Jerusalem. The Irgun attacked Palestinian buses in the Ramle area on 5 July.[91]
What happened on 6 July (1938) was the urgent topic when the British ship HMS Repulse anchored in Haifa Bay two days later. The District Commissioner came aboard and explained the situation on shore:
A large bomb had been thrown on Wednesday afternoon [6 July] in the Arab market, and had exploded causing a large number of casualties, and these had increased to about 120 before order was restored.[92]
As reported in Falastin, the terrorists had
slipped up to the roof of a shop in the entrance to the bazaar market near the Aloon market and threw a bomb on a crowd of Arabs and it exploded with a terrible noise near the shop of the Jewish money changer who was killed with his son ... the sight of [the many victims] was harrowing, this one moaning, that one in pain.[93]
The attack, the British report said, “must almost certainly have been committed by Jews of the Revisionist party”. It was indeed the Irgun, whose records cite both this and a similar bombing “in the Old City of Jerusalem” that day. On 7 July Irgun militants from Kfar Saba took up positions on the Tel Aviv - Haifa highway “to attack Arab traffic”, but they hit Indian visitors from Tanzania instead, mistaking them for ‘Arabs’.[94]
After a bomb “tore apart a bus filled with Arab countryfolk” (as the NY Times reported it) by the Jaffa Gate on 8 July, killing four Palestinians immediately and wounding thirty-six, the British took four Jews into custody for the crime, among them the alleged bomb-thrower—a twelve-year-old schoolgirl. The blast was so strong that it shattered a nearby vegetable market. The Irgun, taking responsibility, boasted that the bombing had caused “great consternation in Arab quarters”. For the British, it was an early indication of the Zionists’ radicalisation of children.[95]
To prevent further attacks, the British assigned a platoon to safeguard each of Haifa’s five police districts and imposed a curfew—yet the Irgun pulled off an even deadlier terror attack on 15 July. Disguised as an Arab porter, the bomber placed a booby-trapped “cucumber can” in the middle of Haifa’s Arab market, killing “scores” of Palestinians and wounding many. In Jerusalem three days after that attack, another bombing by Jewish militants killed eleven Palestinians and seriously wounded three.
In Haifa, “just when the situation in the town seemed to be getting back completely to normal”, a captain in the Royal Navy reported on 25 July, Zionist terrorists threw a bomb into the (Arab) melon market, the same as the 6 July attack. The time chosen—six o’clock in the morning—ensured maximum civilian casualties. The bomb “did a terrible amount of damage, causing the death of 45 Arabs, wounding 45 others, and killing 3 horses and 9 donkeys”. Early morning food shoppers might have thought the situation was safe, since “no more public place could have been chosen”, situated by Kingsway, the Seamen’s Institute, the headquarters of the landing parties, “and within easy sight of the Central Police Station”.[96]
The next day (26th), one of the Irgun’s most venerated ‘martyrs’, Jacob Rass (Yaacov Raz or Ras), tried to deposit “a particularly loathsome time-bomb in the Old City of Jerusalem”, as British records put it. Dressed as an Arab, Rass hid the device in a barrow of vegetables and was wheeling it into the market when suspicious onlookers exposed the bomb and handed him over to the British. According to the Irgun, he committed suicide to avoid revealing secrets under torture.
‘Arab deaths’ were the goal of the militia, which inhabited an imagined Biblical ‘Israel’ that had never ended: it extolled Rass and its other fallen who had “saved the honour of Israel [this still a decade before the state that adopted the name] more than once during years and enlarged the number of Arab deaths in Jerusalem, Haifa and other parts of the country”. To encourage what it called “right-thinking Jews” in the murder of Arabs, the Irgun exploited Biblical passages, such as the Old Testament’s account of Moses.[97]
---
[89] A British War Cabinet Report dated January, 1940, cites an incident of October 5, 1939, in which 43 armed and uniformed Irgun were caught, and a large cache of weapons and explosives discovered in a nearby settlement, as Britain’s first confirmation of the Irgun as a specific organization; This may have made it bureaucratically official, but British records well before this date cite the Irgun by name and as responsible for terror attacks; TNA, CAB 67/4/17; Kister, Irgun, 246.
[90] TNA, CO 733/370/11, especially Dispatch No. 383 Reference No. K/50/38; Kister, Irgun, 249; NYT, 12 Apr 1938.
[91] Kister, Irgun, 251; Pedahzur & Weinberg, Religious Fundamentalism, 100-101; By 1939, more than 60 terror attacks against Palestinian civilians are known. Hoffman, Anonymous, records the April 21 attempted bus attack and claims that the bombers intended to blow up a bus whose passengers included certain ‘Arabs’ who, the bombers claimed, were responsible for an attack against Jews. Even if the claim of guilty Palestinians on that bus were correct, and even if one forgets the majority of the victims would have been innocent passengers, Hoffman’s position is untenable, as the bombers then targeted a different bus after failing to hit the first. (k1736 etc); Bell, 42.
[92] TNA, ADM 116/3690, No. 191/9862; see also beginning (unnumbered) pages.
[93] Falastin, 7 July 1938, in Palestine Chronicle.
[94] TNA, ADM 116/3690, No. 191/9862; see also beginning (unnumbered) pages.
[95] NYT, 9 July 1938; Kister, Irgun, 251 (which cites an attack at the Jaffa Gate at 10 July, but this is presumably a misdating for July 8).
[96] TNA, ADM 116/3690, SECRET. H.M.S. “REPULSE” at Haifa, 3oth July, 1938. For Tel Aviv attack, Hoffman, Anonymous, k1896, cites a bombing in Tel Aviv on 23 July 1938 in which twenty-three Jews were injured.
[97] TNA, KV 5/34, 10AB; Bell, Terror, 42-43; Kister, Irgun, 252.
---
For more info consult this book.
Here's some summer reading for you:
https://www.amazon.com/Did-Muhammad-Exist-Inquiry-Obscure/dp/161017061X
http://spencerwatch.com/why-spencerwatch-com/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/robert-spencer-calgary-1.3558485
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Spencer_(author)#Controversies
http://www.loonwatch.com/tag/robert-spencer/
The guy even wrote a book about how Muhammad may not have even been a real person (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Did-Muhammad-Exist-Inquiry-Obscure/dp/161017061X). The guy is a looney and consumed with hatred for Islam.
https://www.amazon.com/Did-Muhammad-Exist-Inquiry-Obscure/dp/161017061X
A very good new book on the origins of Islam was just published last week:
Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins
A controversial topic for sure, but written respectfully, academically and with great research and documentation.
I haven't researched it yet myself. A few books that talk about it: Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins and Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World. My source for knowing anything about it is the Bible Geek podcast, specifically this episode where he talks a lot about it. (Don't let the name of the podcast turn you off, he is an atheist)
https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614
>behind every destructive revolution is based on literally two examples?
Well I just used the two worst of the 20th century. If thats not good enough we can go deeper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsions_and_exoduses_of_Jews
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/expulsions.html
>The first in Russia (led by a non-Jew and the most Important Jew got an ice pick to the head) and one being
No, Lenin was a quarter Jewish. Trots and Marx also Jews.
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/was-lenin-jewish/
>an intellectual movement in literal Nazi Germany.
Frankfurt School was all Jewish, buddy. You clearly havent done the research on this.
https://www.bh.org.il/blog-items/frankfurt-school-jewish-intellectuals-made-60s/
>You have to establish a valid reason for them being hated
You want me to tell you why people hate Jews? Its been the same reasons for a thousand years. Are you really that out of the loop?
>The Schengen Area is a Jewish plot as well?
The Jewish influence on the recent open border policy of Europe is well documented. The most visible being George Soros and his Open Society.
>I didn't realize that free movement of Europeans that preexisted the refugee crisis by two decades was also made to allow Muslims to take over, despite it not effecting Non-EU states.
Who does the end of European nationalism benefit? It sure as hell doesnt benefit Christians or Europeans. This isnt rocket science.
>I'm still waiting for this thousands of years of evil Jewish plotting and not you simply pointing out modern ideas and policies you don't like and blaming Jews.
Oh you are actually willing to do some real reading into it? Sure I can help you there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Critique_series
https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Revolutionary-Spirit-Impact-History/dp/0929891074
https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+holocaust+industry&qid=1558996929&s=books&sr=1-1
That interview makes it incredibly clear that Dershowitz is a lawyer above anything else - and as Finkelstein says, this is why lawyers have a bad reputation. The most damning part, I think, is the discussion of Dershowitz's two-order-of-magnitude error in the number of arabs who fled in 1947-48 (33:38). That's just plain poor scholarship, and it seems that Dershowitz's citation directly contradicts his claim. In response, Dershowitz dismisses this error because it weakens the evidence for his claim rather than strengthening it. But he still made a serious factual error in his book, which would be mortifying for any serious scholar. Yet the only thing he seems to care about is employing lawyerly rhetorical techniques to deflect and deny.
Apparently Dershowitz put up an intense campaign against Finkelstein's application for tenure at DePaul, seemingly in response to this controversy (see /u/e40's comment on this post for a link). That is shocking. Here is a fascinating discussion with Noam Chomsky concerning this debate. I didn't know much about this before, but it's just outrageous stuff. It makes me want to read Finkelstein's book more than anything else, actually. Looks pretty interesting.
EDIT: added links to e40's comment, Amazon
Be very very careful going against Jewish interests. This is one of the most censored topics.
Stuff like Culture of Critique. Already taken down by Amazon. It had amazing reviews, and averaged around 4.5-5.0
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2019/03/12/amazon-bans-culture-of-critique-and-separation-and-its-discontents/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/182136.The_Culture_of_Critique
"MIND BLOWN.
This should be required reading in school.
Exposes a fundamental issue in our society that most are completely unaware of.
Book is well referenced, and have fact checked many of the claims myself, which i've proven to be true."
Stuff by Ron Unz.
http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-racial-discrimination-at-harvard/
The book the Holocaust Industry
https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=holocaust+industry+finkelstein
The book the Israel Lobby, written by two Harvard professors
https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=the+israel+lobby
Nobel laureate Solzhenitsyn wrote a book about Jews in Russia, 100 Years Together, that few dare publish.
Roosh V, as a proponent of mens rights, questioned Jews and feminism, and promptly had books deplatformed from Amazon. He was banned from the UK. Books along the lines of Bang, Bang Ukraine, etc.
Check lectures by Michael E Jones. A Catholic that calls out "Jewish influence."
https://youtu.be/uYOcyDRcG1E
Check videos of Alex Jones talking about "globalists", which some say is a codeword for Jews.
If you really want to combat censorship try to find videos that Youtube is about to take down. People keep trying to get the truth out and censors keep taking it down. Look at videos listing 109 countries Jews were kicked out of, as an example.
https://youtu.be/6roAvG02gms
Try to guess the religion of the people usually taking these things down, and not giving people the chance to defend the truth of their work or statements.
https://www.adl.org/blog/pick-up-artist-roosh-v-moves-from-misogyny-to-anti-semitism
Remember, feminism is a Jewish movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Feminists_by_religion
...there's much more to say, if the censors don't get you first!
Ah, that is difficult. Middle Eastern conservative conspiracy theorist parents are the most convinced that everyone outside the Middle East is the "enemy". It becomes very hard. They sometimes even believe in many Jewish conspiracies, and may even pretend it has nothing to do with their religious beliefs but it does.
He believes this because he thinks Muslims are incapable of committing evils if they "truly believe in his Islam" (his being his own beliefs). This is very common, even among secular Muslims.
The only way to combat this thoroughly, is if they can read in English, buy them books by Sam Harris (to undo his religious indoctrination from childhood upbringing; and he specializes in understanding Islam better than most), Bernard Lewis (to undo his historical indoctrination, as Arabs are very historically-aware people and they love to cite history. Bernard Lewis can also explain the positive sides of Westernization and how due to religion, Muslims try to explain every fault in the Muslim world, by blaming external enemies).
These guys know the Middle East and Islam better than any westerner. I tell you this as an ex-Muslim. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise as there are people who think that criticizing Islam is wrong but criticizing an idea is NEVER wrong. Criticizing people who believe strongly in an idea stubbornly, is also never wrong.
As a side note, I believe your father can indeed be convinced. However, it will take a monumental effort on your part to flood him with information to undo his Islamic-Arab indoctrination. He could even be an atheist Arab currently, but that Islamic indoctrination is hard to undo. It makes them biased to be sympathetic to Middle Eastern governments/peoples.
Because books are difficult for someone to read and finish...
I might suggest some other options:
Bernard Lewis:
Neither Sam Harris nor Bernard Lewis disrespects Islamic peoples or the Middle Eastern ethnic groups. They simply have a higher level understanding that criticizes the negative aspects and calls it for what it is.
Bernard Lewis book:
Sam Harris book:
I highly recommend this stuff, because it will get to the root issue of WHY your father believes in conspiracy theories like 9/11 stuff. The 9/11 conspiracies are motivated by arab nationalism and religious indoctrination in particular for Arabs. They may not be nationalist or religious; but they still have those childhood indoctrination that affect their way of thinking.
You know what's funny is that the people who have lived in the Middle East, the people who have been Arab nationalists or Arab Muslims, and are now NOT anymore; are usually better able to respect the works of Sam and Bernard, than people who've never been to the Middle East.
I've only read one book (What Went Wrong? Bernard Lewis) that touched on the lack of innovation and Lewis proposed it was the Islamic faith itself that was the reason for it. Any thoughts on that?
edit: Thanks for the answers!
Of course I support the freedom and rights of women. What kind of question is that? Isn't that a standard facet of Western culture in general? There's a great book called What Went Wrong about how Islam used to be the world leaders in science and culture, and how today they are backward and almost primitive by our standards. One of the main conclusions of the book is the middle East and Islamic areas have ignored women and essentially kept them from learning and contributing to society. The fact that Western culture has embraced women's contributions, from at least Marie Curie going forward, is part of the reason why we are where we are today.
​
As a red blooded, passionate male I am very much in favor of birth control. Not sure what you mean by "access for women and young girls who otherwise couldn't get it." Are you asking do I think all women should get the pill for free? Are you asking do I think minors should get the pill without parental consent? Those are tough questions. Here's one back, do you want to pay for it? I pay a hell of a lot in taxes already.
​
I used the free health clinic when I was in high school to get STD tested and got a few free condoms too. I'm good with those public social establishments the same as I'm good with public libraries, public schools and public interstates and roadways. I'm also highly in favor of free hospitals for US military veterans. These are current social programs I, as a conservative, am in favor of. Your question makes me wonder what you must think of conservatives. Do you really believe we are all ignorant, racist, women hating but Christ loving Nazis that the media tells you to believe?
​
How do YOU show your support to your fellow women? I just treat them as people and friends and enjoy their company.
I did read, mostly Morris books (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, and ordered this (not from amazon but that is the name of the book) ) to Kimmerling. that is why I asked for a citation.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Iron-Wall-Israel-Paperback/dp/0393321126
The Iron Wall by Avi Shlaim.
However, to be fair, it should be pointed out that he's British and that he may be a rabid anti-Semite.
Yep, really great book called 'The Iron Wall' about the history of Israel. Basically, being a dickhead from inception to the current day. With some humor. Israel threatened a war with Jordan in it's early days because sheep wandered across the border...
http://www.amazon.com/The-Iron-Wall-Israel-Paperback/dp/0393321126
WWI smashed both Christendom (rule by Christian monarchs) across Europe, and the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. In its place were installed democracy (rule by puppets whose political campaigns were paid by the shadow elite) and dictatorship (rule by puppets installed by the military controlled by the shadow elite). Prior to WWI, the Christian and Muslim empires fought for territory but did not fight amongst themselves within their own territory. After WWI, the Middle East was divided and conquered, and European society was no longer Christian. The shadow elite was now able to enjoy power, wealth, and sex.
See http://www.amazon.com/1917-Red-Banners-White-Mantle/dp/0931888050 and http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805088091
read this before you make a judgement call on them mossad
http://www.amazon.in/By-Way-Deception-Making-Officer/dp/0971759502
No I know you are an idiot. Afghanistan during Russian War, Iraq, So many Latin american countries, Israel, Syria (assad regime), Egypt, Saudi, etc.
Don't even pretend that those are not forms of colonialism, not to mention all the indirect forms of control through World Bank and IMF loans.
American interventionism is an indirect form of colonialism. When you prop-up pro-American dictators.
http://www.amazon.ca/Rogue-State-Guide-Worlds-Superpower/dp/1567513743
http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest/dp/1400075173
Mossad
How Israelis look.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1844676234/ossnet-20
what about Jonathan Pollard?
Kuwait and Iraq.
Abu Gharib ?
why does some americans support the female?
Iraq roads
We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805094369/ossnet-20
Terrorists
Finally, ... how come no US military wether low or average rank is waking up
why is it the west call us backwards but when we show them buildings and education also entertainment they call us Show Offs ? and ignore the positive and useful for negative and useless ? why cant they say good job and well done?
why do they always ask for prostitiution, alcahol and nudity? instead of asking for a meeting and having normal conversations, drink pepsi and wear just clothes that does'nt show cleavage and ass?
why is that they say boohoo poor women in middle east but when she visits she gets snarled at ?
>of course nationalism is connected to language because nationalism is all about believing in the same thing and loving the same thing. To do that you must speak the same language to convey ideas to each other. But it could have been English for all I care! the fact the Jews spoke Hebrew had nothing to do with the UN vote. If you show me a source then there would be something to talk about.
You are contradicting yourself. Earlier you tell me it had nothing to do with it, now you're telling me of course it does.
And I didn't say anything about the UN vote. The UN vote was secured by other means.
>Again, you keep saying the same thing without backing it up. You keep saying the fact that Jews spoke Hebrew was a major role in our claim to the country. Show me a source that says that
It is the logical conclusion of the statements I made earlier, which you have verified as true. Why don't you show me a source that says it isn't?! Hahaha..who says the burden of proof is on me here?? I just made a logical argument and you agreed to it.
Language plays a key role in nationalism and culture, and they could not have created the zionist pretence of "return" to a "national homeland" without having any single thing unifying the populace other than some shaky self-identification as "jews". Without a single thing unifying them, Ethiopian Jews and Yemeni Jews had absolutely nothing in common with secular Jews coming in from Germany, or Russian peasant jews, or American Jews showing up from Brooklyn. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the language played an extremely important role for zionism.
If you can't provide a source to dispute that, then at least provide a logical argument other than "no it didnt".
>So you think millions of people decided to only speak Hebrew just as a ruse that the Jews have a connection to Israel??
No, people didn't decide as some ruse. They wanted to believe in it. They wanted to feel like a unified nation.
>The purpose of Zionism was to go back to their roots, to what they used to be. And that was having a sovereign country, with a unique language.
This is exactly my point. It is an artificial identity. It is as artifical as a bunch of people invading Israel from Syrian and Lebanon and "modernizing" the Canaanite language. Their culture isn't Canaanite, they have the cultures of the Arabs, French, Greeks - whatever. Just as the Jews had the culture of the Germans, the Russians, etc. It is a nationalist myth. Many countries do this. The Finns, when striving for independence from Russia, concocted a nationalist architecture that was made up. They copied other scandinavian architecture and tweaked it and everyone acted as if it was some kind of indigenous Finnish architecture.
>If Hebrew (for some weird reason) caught on and was spoken in all the major countries, it would still be the native tongue of Israeli Jews.
Yes and if Hebrew wasn't artificially reconstructed, then what would Israel's national language be today? Russian? Arabic? German? Yiddish? Farsi? Ethiopian? All of them? How would this nation of cousins speak to each other? They wouldn't!
>And yes. If you learned Jewish history like I did, there was an exile from Israel. Some people went to Europe, and some people went to the arabian peninsula and north africa. But they all come from the same place... At the end of the day, both sects of Judaism are simply that. Jews. And that is the root that zionism is trying to get back to.
This isn't even agreed on!
I suggest you read The Invention of the Jewish People
Jews are not some ethnically united group. They didn't even 'leave'. Most stayed, and just converted to other religions. Those would be the Palestinians.
And getting back to some nationalist mythical culture is as artificial as Egyptians reviving the Pharaoh culture, or Lebanese and Syrians and Iraqis reviving Canaanite culture. It's artificial. It's fake. It's just there to make people happy and give them some sense of self-respect.
That is what zionism is about. Not returning or any of that shit. Theodore Herzl and the other founders of zionism were largely secular atheists. Zionism didn't take on the aire of "return" or any of that shit till later. It's easily proven - look at how many people who made aliyah to Israel "hebrewized" their names. People wanted to feel like they were 1 national group, so American jews coming in with names like John Carpenter or some shit are all of a sudden Avi Ben Ami or some shit. If you can't understand what I'm saying you are living in the same nationalistic dream land. Nationalist ethnically pure nation-states was a concept that died in the 20th century my friend.
read the book and write a review.
http://www.amazon.com/Invention-Jewish-People-Shlomo-Sand/dp/1844676234/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405599531&sr=8-1&keywords=shlomo+sand
The Middle East is f'd up because of Islam. Islam started with bloody conquest and pillage and when it could no longer flourish through murder it began to decay. Islam's brief period of supposed glory took place when the people in charge weren't fanatics but people who realized that Jews and Christians and other minorities were contributing more than most Muslims.
What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East
> What is the source for what you are claiming?
1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris
Also, I think it's interesting that the framing of the conflict is presented as a foregone conclusion: The U.S. military against the Tea Partiers. Setting Man against Man, as in "Let's You & Him Fight"
Hmmm... who thought that one up? I wonder if it's those people who wage war by way of deception
Why not All Americans vs. The Zionist Machine that has hijacked our Republic?
All long standing terrorist/resistance organizations have used this tactic. Che Guevara even wrote about it. Use the civilian population as a shield, and when the authorities harm civilians to get to you - you look like heroes, as you're the only gun in town.
Hamas launch attacks every time there's a peace deal on the table - a deal would strip them of political power; and they can't allow that to happen. So they take the losses associated with the Israeli reprisals, and look like heroes to all the angry young men who've lost family.
See: http://www.amazon.com/Great-War-Civilisation-Conquest-Middle/dp/1400041511
The first link is not even a separate war, that's part of the six-day war; Egypt tried to take back the Sinai which was occupied by Israel's initial aggressions. Israel started that war. The second link is the war in 1973 that I was talking about initially and that one is even debatable.
I doubt you are honest or literate enough to actually read this, but here you go:
https://www.amazon.com/State-Terror-Terrorism-Created-Modern/dp/1566560683
Have a great day.
https://www.amazon.com/Did-Muhammad-Exist-Inquiry-Obscure/dp/161017061X
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/8574
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2012/12/the-christian-origins-of-islam
In addition, Mecca didn't even exist at the time, much less as a huge trading city. Physical archeology has proven this.
You don't hear about this because most people don't care, Al Saud kills people who try to research it over there, and Islamaphobes like the myth because they can paint Mohammed as Hitler and hate to think of Islam as just heretic Jesusism. All sides have a vested interest in maintaining the fiction, but like Christ and Buddha, it never happened.
Thanks to the National Archive, You're welcome.
The ashkenazi jews come from the old Khazar kingdom
What's with the "tribe" stuff. Genetically related to the Khazars. Historically related to the Khazars. The main city, Atil, (NW Caspian Sea) was wiped from the face of the earth by the Rus - "not a grape, not a leaf on a branch". Disporia into what became Russia and Poland. Not, as "historically" presented, from the eastern meditteranean. Jews but not Semites. Palestinians are Semites forced to convert to Islam.
Edit: Read Schlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People
So crimes against humanity in the name of a religion are time sensitive? Or is there a statute of limitations on moral indignation?
There's a reason some of these people are very angry. We just typically see the end result and rarely how the atrocities began
I don't really see how Islam, as it is written, is any more violent than Christianity or Judaism, but for some reason, people separate the economic and political motivations from the religious ones, excuse the old motivations as being irrelevant, and leave a nice, neat little scapegoat with which the West can engage in a permanent war and gradual genocide.
I agree with many of the comments shown here. I took a class on answering exactly this question. The Middle East technological advance plateaued due to Islamic law/text restricting various ways of life. This ultimately hindering progressive technical advancements the West had enjoyed. There is a great book by Bernard Lewis that highlights much of what is discussed here:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Went-Wrong-Between-Modernity/dp/0060516054
There is no doubt that there is Anti-Semitism, or at least harsh Anti-Zionism in the Arab world.
But do Jewish attacks and Israeli attacks and Israeli gang attacks and Israeli sponsored terrorism ever make the news? No.
Israel is a modern state created by use of terrorist attacks.
https://www.academia.edu/1449704/Jewish_Terrorism_and_the_Creation_of_the_State_of_Israel
https://www.amazon.com/State-Terror-Terrorism-Created-Modern/dp/1566560683
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_state-sponsored_terrorism
Not to mention it is the world's leader in Cyber Terrorism also.
There is also the highly curious case of ISIS, a global terrorist organization which carried out attacks in Sri Lanka, France, UK, etc but never even touches Israel, one time even apologizing to Israel, and seems to only support the zionist cause 🤔
It's unfortunately a total lie that Islam has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists. The majority of Muslims support evil policies such as murdering people who leave or criticize Islam, systematically oppressing unbelievers, systematically oppressing Muslims themselves (I can't imagine what it must feel like to be a genuinely free thinker - or just a normal person who doesn't like Sharia - in a Muslim majority country. It must be absolute hell), honor killings, etc.
A majority of Muslims also support absolutely barbaric Islamic jihad terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah (depending on whether or not they're Sunni's. Sunni's hate Shi'ite Muslims. And Hezbollah is a Shi'ite jihad terrorist group). And virtually all Muslims hate Israel and want to carry out a second Holocaust against the Jews.
A majority of Muslims also support pedophilia, wife beating, killing homosexuals, cousin marriage, etc.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Opinion-Polls.htm
Muslims who deny these ugly truths are either denying reality out of shame or purposefully lying in order to make Islam look good (Muslims are absolutely obsessed with making Islam look good even if it means covering up ugly truths and blatantly lying).
Muslims are practically experts at duping non-Muslims and presenting them with a highly censored version of Islam in order to make people complacent about the real goals of the Islamic ummah (hint: your death or enslavement), to gain new converts and avoid scaring new converts away.
For example: if you're a Christian and Muslims are trying to sweet talk you about how much they love Jesus and recognize him as a prophet, then you need to realize that, in reality, Muslims hate Christianity. A large portion of the Quran essentially revolves around bashing Christians as the "vilest of creatures".
In the Islamic version of the End Times, Jesus comes back to the world as a Muslim, destroys all the crosses and kills all the Christians and sends them to hell if they don't convert to Islam. So, Muslims are telling you a comforting half-truth when they say they love Jesus in order to disarm you. They love their version of Jesus. Not the Christian version of Jesus.
If you're not a Muslim, then Muslims aren't supposed to be friends with you because you're "unclean". And if you're a religious minority in an Islamic majority country that upholds Sharia as the law of the land, then you'll be denied basic human rights and live as an oppressed 2nd class citizen. And if you step out of line (like protesting your oppression), they can kill you without penalty. And if the government itself doesn't kill you (they usually want to avoid bad international PR), then they'll look the other way as the enraged Muslim mob kills you.
And the problem with Islam goes beyond mere popular opinion amongst Muslims; its the texts themselves that are rotten to the core. It's the depraved theology of Islam which inspires Muslims to act like violent and tyrannical savages.
After all, Muhammad was a barbaric warmonger whose favorite wife (he had many. Including non-Muslim sex slaves) was a 9-year-old girl named Aisha (who he also beat), who had his critics tortured and killed and who led his early followers on dozens of jihad campaigns against his non-Muslim enemies (he even completely destroyed a Jewish tribe. He had over 600 of the Jewish males from the tribe beheaded. He then enslaved their wives and their children).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-o9l3kTSd0
And of course this all assuming that Muhammad actually existed in the first place and that the Quran and Hadiths accurately depicted him:
http://www.amazon.com/Did-Muhammad-Exist-Inquiry-Obscure/dp/161017061X
Can you imagine if Jesus acted in such a way and how that would affect the actions of modern day Christians? It would be the Christians running around shrieking "The power of Christ compels you!" as they carried out literally thousands of suicide bombings all throughout the world and ruthlessly abused basic human rights on an industrial scale.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
Scroll down to see the daily instances of Islamic jihad terrorism documented.
The only good Muslim is an ex-Muslim. Period. Deluding yourself about how your "beautiful" and "peaceful" religion has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists is little more than self-deception and religious propaganda. Meanwhile, Muslims will continue to slaughter innocent people and Islamic societies will continue to be backwards as they happily oppress 1+ billion people all across the globe.
And worse, that violence, oppression and backwardness is coming to a neighborhood near you thanks to mass immigration and extremely high Muslim birth rates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-3X5hIFXYU
Not to mention Western "liberals" have decided to protect Muslims from criticism and promote their religion (including Sharia). God help us...
I thought Palestine dosent exist neither do Palestinians so what changed? Israeli apologists and there mental gymnastics. It’s kind of Ironic you call Palestine a terrorist state when Israel was literally founded by terrorism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/assessing-role-of-terrorism-by-jewish-underground-in-founding-of-israel/2015/03/13/9ac811fe-b938-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6c9728f1dcfd
https://www.amazon.com/State-Terror-Terrorism-Created-Modern/dp/1566560683
As long as you attribute this hatred of Israel to Islam or a cultural defect of some sort you will never stop it. To get an idea you might start by reading this new book:
https://www.amazon.com/State-Terror-Terrorism-Created-Modern/dp/1566560683
"This new book shows how the use of terror by supporters of the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine was systematic, routine, and accepted by Jewish leaders as necessary to achieve their aims. At the height of the British Mandate in Palestine, terrorist acts were carried out at a frequency and with an intensity that has been largely forgotten, even though daily newspaper headlines in the US, Britain, and Palestine spoke of bombings, assassinations, and massacres against Arabs and British civilians, as well as soldiers. Suarez tells this story using the terrorists' own accounts in secret internal papers boasting of their successes, and quoting from contemporary intelligence briefings and secret diplomatic correspondence."
Israel historian Ilan Pappé had this to say about this book:
"A tour de force, based on diligent archival research that looks boldly at the impact of Zionism on Palestine and its people in the first part of the 20th century. The book is the first comprehensive and structured analysis of the violence and terror employed by the Zionist movement, and later the state of Israel, against the people of Palestine."