Category Archives: Middle Eastern Politics

The Palestine-Israel Conflict: Its Political and Legal Underpinnings

Rohini Hensman:  “The Political and Legal Underpinnings of the Palestine-Israel Conflict,” in New Politics, 2023 …. ……………………… https://www.academia.edu/110094670/The_Political_and_Legal_Underpinnings_of_the_Palestine_Israel_Conflict?email_work_card=view-paper

On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a massive attack on Israeli territory, killing 1405 people including over 300 soldiers according to the Israeli state, although a month later the death toll miraculously came down to 1200. The Israeli state has responded by bombing the Gaza Strip, in which Hamas has its headquarters and over 2.3 million civilians have their homes, starving inhabitants of food, water, medicines and fuel. But why did this happen? And what can be done about it? On these questions, there is no agreement whatsoever.

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King Abdullah Speaks Out: A “Two-State Solution” for Palestine Arena

Item in Washington Post, 14 November 2023

King Abdullah of Jordan penned an op ed for the Washington Post yesterday. It can be found at, …. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/14/king-abdullah-jordan-two-state-solution/
 
 Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein is king of Jordan. 

For more than a month now, the war in Gaza has been dividing the world, with the deepening split aggravated by intense emotions. Two narratives, Palestinian and Israeli, have pitted demonstrators, media outlets, religions, peoples and regions against each other. In the process, the moral clarity that we should and must share about basic human values has turned into moral confusion.

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Rushdi al-Saraj the Acclaimed Photo-Journalist killed in Gaza Bombardment

ITEM in The ECONOMIST, 28 October 2023, .… with this leading line: “Rushdi Sarraj, photo-journalist and film-maker, was killed in an Israeli missile strike on October 22nd, aged 31

ANYONE GOING to Rushdi Sarraj’s photo stream on Flikr was in for a surprise. It opened with pictures of birds. They were common terns, trim and black-backed, and he caught them wheeling, diving, probing the waves and riding them, as he loved to do himself. Rather than focus on the crowded backdrop of the Gaza shore, full of fishing boats, shacks and grim apartments, he snapped the birds over the blue open sea or against the blue open sky.

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Bertrand Russell’s Message to the World on Zionism in January 1970

“Bertrand Russell’s Last Message“…. January 1970 presented at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egfCTz-ZuZU .… & now sent to me by “A Sri Lankan in Brisbane” who reiterates the stance he took a few days back with An APPRAISAL that I present for readers to appraise after listening to the You Tube presentation marked above and is attached Blogging Theology MEMO below.

Portrait of British philosopher and social activist Bertrand Russell smoking his pipe as he looks out to sea, circa 1960….. Photo by Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

 


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Israeli PM’s Message imitates Goebbels’ Programme

Camel Rider …. with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

Attached is a video clip of a statement made by Yair Lapid on 24 October which (thank God) was broadcast on RUSSIA TODAY. You won’t find it in the Western media. It serves as a reminder that people do need to watch RT because that’s where you can find all the juicy news the West ignores. 

Yair Lapid stated,

“If the international media is objective, it serves Hamas. If it just shows both sides, it serves Hamas. My argument is that the media can’t just claim to bring both sides of the story. If you do that, you are only bringing one, Hamas’ side. That’s cowardly and it’s lazy. It’s an insult, insult to the victims including the Palestinian victims. It is also an insult to the core idea of what journalism is. Believe me, I know, I was a journalist for 31 years. — Yair Lapid, Israeli Prime Minister, July- December 2022.  

This is an extremely irrational and fallacious argument, very much in the spirit of the propaganda rhetoric that once came from Joseph Goebbels.   

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USA encourages Israel’s Nazi Pathways

Blackjack Bibi …. with the title and the highlights being impositions by The Editor, Thuppahi

I was interested in the “NOTE from VB, an American citizen from Sri Lanka” which refers to Nikki Haley advocating the final solution for the Palestinians with the words “finish them off” in a hail-blaze glory of mass extermination which has come to embody what the West and Australians refer to as “Western values”. Haley doesn’t seem to realize what she is advocating is what Hitler advocated for the Jews. These two “final solutions’ can never be right under any circumstances.

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No Victors in the Hellfire of Gaza and Palestine

KKS Perera, in Daily Mirror, 23 October 2023, where the title reads ‘…Yeah, We Wept, When We Remembered Zion’

The situation in the Gaza Strip remains highly complex and tense, with dire consequences for the Palestinian inhabitants.

472 people lost their lives in Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza; thousands suffered injuries in a highly contentious air raid on the hospital. Approximately one-third of Gaza’s population consists of children. When Israel drops phosphorus bombs, it’s the children who are desperately fleeing the deadly white plumes. The disruption of food and water supplies by Israel is exacerbating the situation. Hospitals are on the verge of running out of electricity.
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Madness at the Heights of Power in USA: Electoral Demogogy

A NOTE from VB, an American citizen from Sri Lanka … responding to the Item in Thuppahi from  “A Sri Lankan in Brisbane”

Future Leadership in USA – Republican Presidential Candidate Nikki Haley

Citizen: “What will you do with Iran if you were President?”

Hayley: What I said to Netanyahu …. Finish them! Finish them! They are only going to try and kill us and kill Israelis …..”

No worries, guys! The land of the free and the home of the brave will be in good hands!

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The GAZA Clash & Its Ramifications: Fundamental Grounding …. A Sri Lankan’s Reading

A Sri Lankan in Brisbane … responding to my Thuppahi Question: Why did HAMAS launch an attack in Palestine [with implicit awareness of extreme Israeli retaliations] ? … with the highlighting in red being that of the Editor, Thuppahi and that in black being the author’s.

HIS RESPONSE

Dear Michael,

Israel has never been a country that abided by International rules.

Although the majority of Jews migrated to Israel from Russia & Eastern Europe, the British & US heavily back Israel because the wealthy Jews who fund US Congress are in the US & UK. The US Congress is beholden to these wealthy Jews for their election funding. In addition, almost all Arab countries are headed by corrupt US cronies, beholden to the $.

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Yousef Dawas, Palestinian Writer: RIP

Who will pay for the 20 years we lost?” is an essay written by the Palestinian writer Yousef Dawas. Here, he recalls the destruction of his family’s orchard by an Israeli missile strike in May 2022. The orchard was his family’s history and heritage with olives, orange, lemons, guavas, and pomegranates. For a Palestinian, the destruction of trees and orchards can be more painful that the destruction of one’s home because these things are often tied to one’s family history and heritage.

The essay was published on 14 January 2023 at https://wearenotnumbers.org/who-will-pay-for-the-20-years-we-lost/

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