Charlie’s Devils

 Charlie’s Devils

Jim Kavanagh

Charlie, Angel

I did not and do not give one whit about, or want to waste one ounce of intellectual energy on, Charlie Kirk.

I confess that—like, I bet, most of the people (certainly the politicians) now gnashing their teeth and attending prayer vigils—I was blissfully unaware of exactly who Charlie Kirk was, until last week when I suddenly saw him receiving the most ridiculously inflated veneration since Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize. I now know that he was a mediocre right-wing podcaster and wannabe intellectual.

This is the guy for whom there’s a massive, coordinated, multi-media campaign to turn him into a martyred national hero on a par with Lincoln and JFK? Lying in state? Really? I don't believe that even most people who liked Kirk thought he was that important a week ago.

Now, the politically dominant right-wing really—they say it openly—wants to cancel everyone who does not participate in the canonization of Charlie Kirk. You must join in the gala of national mourning and sanctification, or be removed from social media, publicly shamed, and fired from your job, if not rounded up.

Whatever the facts of his assassination turn out to be (Don’t even start!), the speed, thoroughness, and level of state-mandated adamance with which this Charlie canonization campaign took hold smacks of something prepared and organized in advance.

Because it was, and it’s not about Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk’s assassination was the occasion for activating an aggressive campaign of Zionist and right-wing repression that was waiting for an excuse. He—actually, his ghost—is now nothing but an instrument of that campaign, wielded by people who care as much about the real Charlie Kirk as I do.

Here is Charlie Kirk today:

What in the unholy algorithm did I just watch 😱

AI slop of Charlie Kirk in heaven defending Israel from Greta & Hamas 🤣 is making the rounds, and Evangelical influencer is weeping on camera over it pic.twitter.com/DtBG5i8guO

— Abier (@abierkhatib) September 15, 2025

https://twitter.com/i/status/1967602291697209472

This is what it's about: the sanctification of Charlie as a conjoined angelic twin of Israel and the demonization of any dissenters. The purpose of sanctifying Kirk is not to preach his gospel, but to recruit the Republican/MAGA base to a program of repression, destroying the First Amendment rights of expression, dissent, and protest in order to: 1)immediately, prop up falling support for Israel among “America First” young Americans who were attracted go Kirk and whose dissatisfaction with Israel he was listening to;  2) proactively, instigate an even nastier conflict between culture-war “left-right” factions that will divert the populace from the real left vs. right, 99%-vs.-the oligarchy, socio-economic civil war the US capitalist oligarchs rightly fear is coming; and 3)  justify the intensified police-state policies needed to crush it if/when it does come—whether or not any of this has anything to do with Charlie Kirk’s actual message when he was living.

I want to stress that the defense of Israel and Zionism is the immediate, urgent task of those promoting the canonization of Kirk. They certainly are right-wing defenders of capitalist oligarchy, and definitely want to pre-emptively repress any real left that would influence or lead any hint of anti-capitalist uprising. But that threat is not imminent, and they presume their ability to avoid and/or control it. They are also committed Zionists, who at this moment know that Israel and the Zionist project, which has lost all legitimacy in the world, cannot survive without the support of the U.S. government, and they are terrified of the imminent threat that the American populace—including the Republican/MAGA base—will turn decisively against that support.

Which is happening. Influential right-wing figures such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and Thomas Massie are going hard on an America-First rupture with Israel’s aggressions, with effect.  We’ve reached a point where only 22% of younger (18-34) Republicans think Israeli actions in Gaza are justified.  

That’s an amazing, and fast, reversal of Zionist fortune in the American public—crucially, in the younger demographic that Kirk affected most. And the Zionist establishment cannot allow it to continue.

In this precarious context for Zionist support in the U.S, we also have Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil’s Grayzone articles, based on “Kirk’s friend, who also enjoyed access to President Donald Trump and his inner circle.” According to that source, Kirk had refused Netanyahu’s offer of “a massive new infusion of Zionist money into his Turning Point USA,” had come to “loathe the Israeli leader, regarding him as a ‘bully,’” and “was disgusted by what he witnessed inside the Trump administration, where Netanyahu sought to personally dictate the president’s personnel decisions, and weaponized Israeli assets like billionaire donor Miriam Adelson to keep the White House firmly under its thumb.” The Grayzone source also says Kirk was “frightened” by the pressure he was receiving from Zionist donors, while Trump supporter, Harrison Smith, said he was told by “someone close to Charlie Kirk that Kirk thinks Israel will kill him if he turns against Israel.”  

I make no claim that Charlie Kirk was on the verge of renouncing Zionism, or that he was assassinated by Israel. I do know that, because he had platformed Israeli critics like Tucker Carlson and Dave Smith, he had been declared anathema by the same people who are now sanctifying, and insisting that you must worship, him.

https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1944540088400281688

My point is not to adjudicate Charlie Kirk’s “real” position on Israel. My point is this: The people behind this canonization campaign do not really care about Charlie Kirk or think he's all that. They are using his ghost to prop up the sanctity of Zionism, to gin up a "right-left" fight to forestall the "right-left" unity that has been coalescing in opposition to Israel and Zionism. It’s a reasonable discussion and potential alliance between leftists and right-populists over Israel—like this Tim Dillon-Max Blunenthal interview—that Israeli and American Zionists are terrified of.

We’re in an unprecedented—and for the Zionists, unacceptable—situation where people on the MAGA “right”—perhaps even more than those on the liberal “left”—are concluding that Israel might have assassinated Charlie Kirk and was likely involved in the JFK assassination, that Jeffrey Epstein was running a Mossad op that may have entrapped Trump, and that the country wasted its blood and treasure in a succession of regime-change wars in the Middle East for the benefit of Israel.

That's why they're going much harder with this ridiculous mythification of Kirk as Israel’s angel than they did even with Trump after his assassination attempts. Not because the person is more important to them, but because the historical moment is—a moment in which Israel is going full indefensible “final solution” in Gaza and dragging the U.S. into another wasteful war with Iran, and most people in the world and in the United States are sick of it. In this moment, the narrative managers don't give a damn about Charlie Kirk; they're concerned about defending and preserving indispensable American support for Israel and Zionism.

So, to argue about Charlie Kirk is to miss the point. It’s like arguing about the hostages in Gaza. The people pushing this campaign care no more about him than Netanyahu does about them. One might say that he, or his ghost, is effectively now their hostage.

J.D. Vance and the Republican leadership no more think Charlie Kirk is really some historic American saint and moral and intellectual giant than John Brennan and the Democratic leadership really thought Donald Trump was a spy for Vladimir Putin. The factions that spin these tales do so to corral their constituents into an ideological and political pen they can control, rather than have them wandering into forbidden places. If you thought Russiagate was about exposing Trump as a Russian agent, you were being played. If you think this narrative is about establishing the sainthood of Charlie Kirk, you are being played. If the words “left” and “right” keep you from seeing that, you are being played. The factions that spin these tales are contemptuous of you for believing them.

What I find upsetting and depressing is how quickly and thoroughly these tales saturate the political and media environment, making it virtually impossible for most people not to ingest and regurgitate them.

Do the people who liked Charlie Kirk because he presented as a free-speech warrior not see what's going on here? What they are being recruited into? It’s really not hard.

And, yes, it's a mirror version of what the liberal Democrats did during Biden—embracing expansive and malleable concepts of “terrorism” and “domestic terrorism,” “misinformation,” protest as “sedition,” “political violence,” speech as violence, etc.—to justify censorship, cancellation, and RICO prosecution. Some of us warned constantly about the precedents being set and the tools put in place that would inevitably be used against those so smugly wielding them. It was not hard to see how pernicious and stupid the Dems use of those tools were, and it was not hard to see—I did—how pernicious and stupid the Trump administration was going to be. Because neither faction really believes in the principles, or saints, they claim to revere.

It's extraordinarily depressing to see how easy it is to manipulate different groups of people with their shiny trinket.  We did succeed in preventing the Disinformation Governance Board. It’s a different administration, but the same Deep State, which now wants (because his work overall lends to this) to fold mandatory Charlie-worship in with mandatory Zionism-worship. We—everyone who wants to challenge that Deep State—better not let them get the “We'll take your social media if you criticize Charlie Kirk” Law, or any of its "We'll take your passport if you criticize Israel" affiliates.

As the man sings, “Everybody plays the fool sometime. There's no exception to the rule.” But time has run out on the American merry-go-round of tomfoolery.

When will enough people wake the fuck up?

___________________________________

Swallowing Syria

Swallowing Syria
Jim Kavanagh

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the summit of Mt. Hermon in Syria, Dec 17, 2024. (Photo: Screenshot/GPO)

I am finding it very hard to swallow the disaster that has occurred in Syria, or to digest its consequences. It makes me sick.

Though it foresaw the looming disaster, my last article was written just before the flight of Assad and the fall of Damascus, and it was still possible to imagine there might be another out to be played. Well, it’s now, definitely, game over, and there’s no denying who won and who lost. The result is depressing and demoralizing.

To reprise what I said in that article, “If Now that Syria is lost to the Erdogan-sponsored Jihadi forces, Russia, Iran, Lebanon, the Axis of Resistance, and the Palestinian people will have lost something very important, something that cannot be recovered without a…more deadly fight than would have been required to prevent the loss.” Correspondingly, US imperialism, Zionism, and Turkish neo-Ottomanism have won a strategic geopolitical victory that gives them advantages that will be hard to overcome.

Since 2012, I’ve written at least 17 articles about the vicious “multiple, concentric proxy war” the US, Israel, Turkey, and the Gulf States (especially Qatar), with their jihadi pawns, have waged to destroy the Syrian state. By 2015, it had become “the most expensive US covert action program in history.” Along with many others, I critiqued and attacked the Axis of Chaos’s arrogant and insouciant destruction of a country and a region, creating hundreds of thousands of casualties and refugees, destroying ancient and vibrant cities and towns, replacing secular pluralism with head-chopping takfiri sectarianism—all to eliminate a polity independent of and resistant to U.S. imperialism, Zionist colonialism, and Turkish ambition. I and many others had been glad to see that project interrupted by a Russian intervention, and, even though most of us knew that it was not stopped, we were too complacent about the ongoing destructive effects of the ongoing U.S. occupation and sanctions (per US thug Diana Stroul) and way too complacent about the persistence and armament of the Turkish-controlled jihadi redoubt in Idlib.

Over the last couple of years, many of us focused on the waning hard and soft power of U.S. imperialism in relation to the rising military power of Russia and China and their allied economic bloc in BRICS, as well as to the waning of Zionism’s hard and soft power in relation to the rising power of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Axis of Resistance and in relation to the world’s (especially the world’s youth) rising understanding of the illegitimacy of Zionist colonialism.

All these factors are still true and in play, but we have foolishly underestimated how strong, tenacious, and diverse the Zio-imperialist team is, and we have to recognize that. We didn’t see him as the team slugger, but, in Syria, Erdogan came in and hit a walk-off home run. And we didn’t even know what inning we were in. It’s going to be a long, hard season.

Here’s where we now stand, what we have to accept:

Syria is gone. The “nation” of Syria exists only as a wished-for abstraction; it is no longer, and will never again be, the geopolitical polity that it was. It is now a territory divided into sectarian—ethnic and religious—cantons, with no central administration or military power, subject to the political and military whims of actual states, especially the United States, Israel, and Turkey, who planned and executed that outcome.

The current “leadership” in Syria is comprised of the rebranded Al-Qaeda, now named Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al-Golani. As I’m writing, Golani is still a “terrorist” with a USG $10-million-dollar bounty on his head, although he’s also meeting with Western media personalities and cabinet officials, who are frantically rebranding him. Haircut, beard trim, new suit, and even a new name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and voila, the old ISIS/al-Qaeda “terrorist” becomes an internationally respected, diversity-loving, moderate rebel.

In fact, the HTS/al-Golani-al-Sharaa “leadership” controls nothing. Its job, that it’s doing very well, is to stand down and allow Israel to bomb the former country over 800 times to destroy every bit of the former Syria’s military and its research facilities, to take its main water resources,  and to invade, seize, and settle all the former Syrian territory it wants. HTS’s job is to allow its immediate puppet master, Erdogan, to remind the world that, if it weren’t for that pesky World War a hundred years ago, Aleppo and Damascus would be part of Turkey. HTS’s job is to “shift” the former Syria into a full “free-market” economy so that US and European capital can buy up all its assets. And HTS/Golani has no more important job than constantly to proclaim that their new regime has no quarrel with Israel or the West, and will peacefully accommodate whatever the fuck Israel, or Turkey or the US/Blackrock want to do with the corpse of Syria. It makes me sick.

Wild Turkey: Syria’s Blindside

Wild Turkey: Syria’s Blindside
Jim Kavanagh

The sudden jihadi offensive in Syria is a disaster. It is, first of all, a disaster for the Syrian people. It's also a disaster for the Palestinian people, Hezbollah, Iran, and the entire axis of anti-Zionist resistance. And it's a disaster for Russia (and China) and the project of replacing unipolar American hegemony with multipolarity based on a new BRICS-based global political economy.

It's a disaster that challenges all the parties involved to recognize that what they might have more comfortably treated as parallel but separate conflicts are elements of one big, unavoidable war that is going to require new strategies from each and from all of them together—strategies that reconcile the interests of each with the interests of all. If that is possible.

It does no good to downplay the disaster-in-progress in Syria. In short order—what can aptly be called a blitzkrieg—jihadi forces have taken control of Aleppo, a city of over 2 million people and one of the oldest continuously habited cities in the world, and Hama, a city of a million people, with—and this is the crucial point—no significant resistance from the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

We can comfort ourselves by saying it’s a tactical retreat and the Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah, and the Iraqi PMU cavalries are on the way. These are potentially formidable forces, and we all saw how Russia and Hezbollah helped the SAA defeat what seemed an unstoppable jihadi offensive from 2011 to 2019.

But, a) “Helped” is the operative word.  The SAA fought like hell during that time, resisting every assault from a panoply of forces supported by the U.S., Israel, NATO, and Gulf monarchies, until Russia and Hezbollah came in and turned the tide. This time, the SAA melted away from two major Syrian cities in a week, despite knowing that the Idlib jihadis were arming up for an offensive. As I write, the jihadis are threatening Homs and have the momentum. There may not be enough time for Russian, and/or Iranian, and/or Iraqi forces to assemble and organize an effective defense, let alone counteroffensive, before Damascus is breached. Something has gone seriously wrong with the SAA, whether complacence, incompetence, and/or corruption (per Alexander Mercouris, who reports that the SAA Aleppo contingent simply defected), and foreign forces cannot replace what was a disciplined, dedicated SAA. If Assad needs an extended commitment of masses of foreign troops (which Russia never supplied) to stop the jihadis, Assad is toast. Russia and Iran can help Syria; turning it into a protectorate of Russia or Iran is another thing entirely.

The Question is Called: Waiting for Iran to Answer

The Question is Called: Waiting for Iran to Answer

Jim Kavanagh

So, it looks like we’re heading into a major war. With its assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s chief “ceasefire/hostage release” negotiator, topping off its incessant, deliberate slaughter of Palestinian children in Gaza and its accelerated evictions and home demolitions in the West Bank, Israel has erased any scintilla of pretense that it is doing anything else but trying to “finish ’48”—-achieve the total ethnic cleansing of Palestine via extermination and expulsion.

Israel has crossed all and everybody’s red lines. Israel is telling the world it will kill anyone and any number of people, anywhere, at anytime of its choosing, and it does not give a damn about what anyone in the world thinks of it. It is acting with complete, insouciant, contemptuous disregard of international law, conventions, and common morality, certainly of the people and nations it considers its adversaries and of the countries on whose support it depends.

Israel’s Solution to Gaza: War on Iran

 Israel’s Solution to Gaza: War on Iran

Jim Kavanagh

Youssef Massoud |AFP via Getty Images

A US-Israeli war on Iran is very likely very soon. Here are four reasons why I say that:

1. A military attack on Iran has been an Israeli demand for at least fifteen years, in active preparation by the U.S. and Israel for at least six years, and was already ordered by the president.

Per the long 2019 New York Times article, The Secret History of the Push to Strike Iran, “Hawks in Israel and America have spent more than a decade agitating for” war on Iran. In 2008, Israeli politicians Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Olmert, and Ehud Barak began to pressure U.S. President George W. Bush to join an attack on Iran, but he was “unequivocally against” it.

They ran into resistance again with the Obama administration, whose message, according to State Department official Wendy Sherman, was: “Please don’t go off on a hair trigger and start a war, because you’re going to want us to come in behind you,” Netanyahu thus saw Obama as “part of the problem, not the solution”—although maybe not then Vice President, “I am a Zionist” Joe Biden, who, in one meeting, “threw his arm around [Uzi] Arad [one of his former top advisers] and said with a smile, ‘Just remember that I am your best fucking friend here.’”

Israel had better luck with the Trump administration, especially after the ascension of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, who were themselves hot for attacking Iran. in June 2017, CIA Director Pompeo up a stand-alone Iran Mission Center, replacing previous Iran specialists with “a much more focused and belligerent group.” Its purpose—as of any Mission Center—was to “elevate” the country as a target. It was headed by Michael D’Andrea, a convert to Islam known as “the undertaker” and "Ayatollah Mike, who was  notorious for his “central role in the agency's torture and targeted killing programs,” and for having an “aggressive stance toward Iran.”

This was followed in December 2017, by the signing, in a “secret” meeting at the White House, of a pact with Israel “to take on Iran.” This This was a pact to coordinate “steps on the ground” against “Tehran and its proxies.” The Israelis considered these secret “dramatic understandings” to be of “far greater impact” on Israel than Trump’s more public recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Press TV Discussion of Prospects for New Israeli Government (5/31/2021)

 Hamas: New Israeli PM will not change Hamas stance

Week in Review Discussion on Loud & Clear (12/27/2019)

The Week in Review

Friday is Loud & Clear’s weekly hour-long segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. Today they focus on a new Rachel Maddow critique and a broader Russiagate wrapup, the history of American politics, CIA-funded propaganda and arts, the 2020 race, one positive Sanders piece, Warren’s chameleon-like practices, Biden’s standing, Israel’s Likud election, and the new interviews out with the Navy Seal accusers of Ed Gallagher. Brian and John speak with Jim Kavanagh, editor of thepolemicist.net, and Sputnik News analyst and producer Nicole Roussell.
[My related article: Investigation Nation: Mueller, Russiagate, and Fake Politics] 

Listen to "The Week in Review" on Spreaker.

Loud & Clear is a daily program of news, commentary, and political analysis on Radio Sputnik, hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, featuring independent experts, activists, and political writers. (Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.)

Impeachment: What Lies Beneath?

 

Reuters

The Raw

The Democrats have now revealed the hand they're going to play for impeachment.  I have been vehemently arguing against playing this game and pointing out how futile it is, but, seeing the two cards actually laid out on the table, even I am gobsmacked at what a loser of a hand they’ve got.

Of course, we have to recognize Gerald Ford’s correct point that “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history,” and accept that the Democratic majority in the House at the present moment will determine that their two charges against Trump are impeachable offenses.

But it's equally true that an acquitable charge is whatever more than a third of the Senate considers it to be, and the issue will finally be decided by the political support the charges can muster from Republican senators and their constituents. 

Given the ideological disposition of those senators and constituents, as well as the widespread reluctance of Americans generally to impeach a president—an act that does annul an election—over any but the most serious offenses, it is hard to believe the Democrats think they will sway anybody with the thin gruel they are serving up.

Loud & Clear Discussion of Netanyahu Indicment (11/22/2019)

Netanyahu doubles down on own defense following indictment

The Israeli media are weighing in on the indictment yesterday of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three felony counts of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. Most of the reporting so far has been factual, with outlets going to lengths to explain exactly what the charges are. The debate now is whether he can remain Prime Minister while under indictment, whether he can maintain his parliamentary immunity, and if he can’t, how he can fight the charges in criminal court. Brian and John speak with Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net.
[Related Article: Sacrificing Gaza: The Great March of Zionist Hypocrisy]

Listen to "Netanyahu doubles down on own defense following indictment" on Spreaker.

Loud & Clear is a daily program of news, commentary, and political analysis on Radio Sputnik, hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, featuring independent experts, activists, and political writers. (Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.)

The Empire Steps Back: Trump Withdraws From Syria – Impeachment Now Possible

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (8/16/19)

Global Unrest: Hong Kong Protests, Chinese Tariffs, US Near Recession and More!

It’s Friday, so that means it's panel time. 

Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways has been caught up in the fallout of ongoing pro-democracy protests in the semi-autonomous Chinese city. Hundreds of flights were canceled this week because of protests at Hong Kong International Airport, and the airline has threatened to fire employees who take part in the demonstrations. It was announced Friday that the company's CEO Rupert Hogg and Chief Commercial Officer Paul Loo are resigning. The airline's stock has fallen almost 24% since April. What’s going on in Hong Kong and why?

Fast and Furious: Now They’re Really Gunning for Trump

Here’s what I saw unfold in the media during the 24 hours from Monday to Tuesday afternoon (May 15-16).

On Monday, I saw blaring headlines throughout the day on Twitter about how Trump had betrayed some “highly-classified” intelligence secrets to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during their meeting last week. I was busy and paid little attention to this news, but I figured Trump must have committed one of his hallmark impetuous faux-pas involving some massive security breach, given the hysterical tone of the coverage.

I awoke Tuesday to read the stories in the New York Times (NYT), and the Washington Post (WaPo), sourced to anonymous “current and former government officials,” recounting that Trump had told the Russians a big secret—the NYT did not specify what, but WaPo identified it as an “Islamic State terrorist threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft.” As both papers acknowledge—though WaPo makes the irrelevant point that it would be illegal “for almost anyone in government”—Trump, as president, did nothing illegal in telling the Russians this, and, according to the NYT’s own sources, and to National Security advisor Lt. Gen. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson—the only people cited who were actually in the room—Trump “discussed the contents of the intelligence, but not the sources and methods used to collect it.”

Per McMaster: “The president and the foreign minister reviewed common threats from terrorist organizations to include threats to aviation. At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed, and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly.” Neither of the articles, and no one cited in them, disputed this. Per WaPo: “He did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances.”

So far, I was seeing nothing to break a sweat over. Is there some problem with notifying Russia—or anyone else, for that matter—of an Islamic State threat to blow up civilian aircraft with laptop bombs? Is the idea that we’re supposed to sit back and let it happen? What sane person wouldn’t be glad this warning was given to Russia, and wouldn’t want Russia to give it to us if the circumstances were reversed? Is this not a routine exchange of threat information in a closed principals’ meeting?

Turkey Invades Syria. America Spins The Bottle.

  Tom Janssen | CagleCartoons.com

So within the space of a few days, the United States has, first, commanded the government of Syria to keep its air force away from part of its own sovereign territory, Hasakah, occupied by American soldiers and their Kurdish “partners”; it then, with applause from other NATO countries, provided air support for a Turkish invasion of Syria and seizure of the Syrian town of Jarablus from those “partners.” These are unambiguous acts of war, and Orwellian acts of doublethink aggression.

Note that Hasakah, where the incident with the Syrian Air Force took place, is not in an area controlled by ISIS. So whatever American troops were doing there, they were not fighting ISIS. Note also that Turkey’s announced reason for seizing Jarablus—in order to seal the border and prevent ISIS in Syria from receiving recruits and supplies—is a flimsy excuse that, as the New York Times (NYT) reports, the Turks don’t even try to maintain: “Turkish officials made little secret that the main purpose of the operation was to ensure that Kurdish militias did not consolidate control over an area west of the Euphrates River.”’

As Al-Qaeda cleric Al-Muhaysin has assured would-be recruits: “The truth is that the Turks don't prevent anyone from entering Syria.” If the Turks wanted to close the Syrian border, across which they’ve been trafficking ISIS soldiers, arms, and oil for years, they could just close it, on their side. No need to invade Syria. In fact, ISIS was informed of the attack, and left Jarablus before the brave Turks and their Syrian rebel partners arrived. The Washington Post said: “The rebels encountered almost no resistance from Islamic State fighters, who fled ahead of the advancing force.” The blogger Moon of Alabama (MoA) made the point more sharply: “There was no resistance to the move. The Islamic State, which had been informed of the attack, had evacuated all fighters and their families out of Jarablus. … As one commentator remarked: They even left mints on the pillows. The toleration of ISIS by Turkey, which includes some not so secret support, will likely continue.”

Taking Liberty: Killing Americans To Protect Israel

On this day in 1967, the Israeli Air Force attacked an American reconnaissance ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 174. Over a period of an hour-and-a-half after Israeli pilots identified the ship as American, while the sailors battled to save the ship and their lives, the Israelis attacked the ship from the air and torpedo boats, hitting it with armor-piercing rounds, at least one bomb and one torpedo, and strafing the lifeboats. The Israelis wanted no survivors to embarrass them. Israeli jets had also targeted the antenna, to keep the ship from calling for help. But, as James Bamford recounts, a couple of radiomen:

patched together enough equipment and broken antennae to get a distress call off to the Sixth Fleet, despite intense jamming by the Israelis. "Any station, this is Rockstar," [radioman] Halman shouted, using the Liberty's voice call sign. "We are under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance." 

"Great, wonderful, she's burning, she's burning," said an Israeli pilot. 

But, hey, the Sixth Fleet had the message. We all know what happened next. Seen it in every movie. The cavalry was on the way. You can hear the order to American pilots: “Splash the bastards.”

Er, no. Wrong movie. (Try Exodus.) What actually happened was that the Secretary of Defense (Robert McNamara) and the President of the United States (Lyndon Johnson) twice recalled the American planes that were launched from nearby carriers to defend the ship.

Gaza Calling: It’s the Colonialism, Stupid!

On how Gaza lays Zionism bare, in eight bites.

nakba 4 by sameer-kH

Subjugate, expel, exterminate

This summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza was a horror show. Whole families killed, whole neighborhoods levelled, schools and hospitals attacked, electricity, water, and waste treatment facilities destroyed, about 500 children killed, 3000 injured (1000 with lifelong disabilities), and 1500 orphaned – utter devastation.  We’ve all seen the pictures. I’ve written about it. I’m not going to go over the specifics again.¹

I share with many the conviction that this deliberately disproportionate carnage constitutes a despicable crime. It has certainly forced everyone to confront the deep disparities and injustices embedded in what’s called the Israel-Palestine conflict. The incessant waves of death and destruction visited on Palestinians for decades have challenged even those Westerners predisposed to “liberal Zionism” to question more radically what they think the Jewish state, and the Zionist project, is, was, or could be all about.

Conversely, the aftermath of the Gaza carnage has seen the defenders of Israel become ever more frantic and adamant in asserting the absolute righteousness of the Zionist project—not just refuting, but wherever possible refusing to allow any fundamental questioning of its legitimacy. Ask Stephen Salaita.

Yet, casualty figures and atrocity photos are not really what the argument is about. We have to remember, as Miko Peled points out, that: “Israel began attacking Gaza when the Strip was populated with the first generation refugees in the early 1950s.”² This summer’s Gaza carnage helps reveal the problem, but it is not itself the fundamental problem.

The fundamental problem is colonialism. You know, that thing where a group of people, who want the land somebody else is living on, take it. By subjugating, expelling, and/or exterminating the indigenous population.

The fundamental argument here between Zionists and non- or anti-Zionists is not about civilian casualties, but about colonialism. It is not about how many civilians the IDF (or Hamas) killed last month, but about the ongoing colonialism-in-progress that necessarily produces these casualties. It’s colonialism that provides the context which gives the facts and events their ethico-political meaning.

This needs to sink in. Israel is a colonial-settler state. Zionism is a colonialist project.

Gaza, Israel, and America: Crime and Demolishment

Shejaiya  Neighborhood in Gaza/Mahmoud Hams (AFP)/Getty Images

The Israeli army is one of the most powerful in the world, usually ranked around fourth in firepower. It can deploy a half a million troops with a panoply of state-of-the-art weaponry—from body armor, integrated electronic communications and control, and sniper rifles, to tanks, artillery, airpower, drones, ships, and submarines—and, of course, an arsenal of nuclear weapons that have been in development over fifty years. It is backed by the most powerful armed force in the world, which continuously supplies it with whatever arms, cash, intelligence, and political and diplomatic support it needs—an effective guarantee of military (though not political) victory.

There are a few thousand militants armed with light infantry weapons and homemade rockets among the 1.8 million people in Gaza, one of the most densely-populated territories on earth. Those 1.8 million people have been locked into that territory by Israel (abetted by its Egyptian ally, and backed by its American patron), which controls the entry and exit of every person and particle, making Gaza what even British Prime Minister David Cameron (who helps to enable this policy) calls a “prison camp.” This siege has been Israel’s way of punishing the 1.8 million people of Gaza for, among other things, having freely and fairly elected leaders that Israel doesn’t like.

Murder at a Discount: Pricing Lives in Israel

Here's an excerpt from the New York Times story, by Isabel Kershner and Jodi Rudoren, on the apparent revenge abduction and killing of Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian in Jerusalem:

The Israeli minister of internal security, Yitzhak Aharonovich, urged residents to “lower the volume” regarding the suspicion of a revenge attack by Jews. “There are attempts to make a connection between the two incidents and we are still checking all directions,” he said on Israel Radio. “There are many possibilities, criminal and nationalistic, and everything is being examined in a responsible manner.”

Is this what the Israeli government did when young Jewish kids went missing? Did the Israeli government "lower the volume" regarding its "suspicions"? Or didn't they—on the basis of pure suspicion, before anyone was known to be killed, before any suspect was identified or charged—raid, bomb, destroy homes, abduct and arrest hundreds, kill at least six people? Did they not, without any evidence, “make a connection” and use the incident to it as a pretext to attack a political party (Hamas)?

"Without America this cannot happen." Jewish Grandmother Shows the Way

On June 12, three Israeli teenagers disappeared. The Israeli government and most of the media say they were “kidnapped,” although there have been no ransom demands. If they were taken by one of the five previously-unknown groups that claimed responsibility (including, apparently, a branch of the now-ubiquitous ISIS), that group would probably say that they were  “captured.” Some Palestinians have described the teenagers as "soldiers" or "soldier-settlers," or "armed settlers." Israel denies they were soldiers (probably true, especially for the two 16-year-olds), but at least one of them lived in an illegal West Bank settlement, where carrying arms is common..

However these particular teenagers have served the Israeli state and its settlement enterprise, in order to understand the motivation of whoever might have taken them, it’s worth remembering the policies that teenage Israeli soldier boys carry out on the even-younger boys of the illegally-occupied population:

Keep on Truckling: Mayor of New York's Job "is to be a defender of Israel"

Really?  "Part of my job description is to be a defender of Israel"

Bill de Blasio & Avigdor Lieberman/Bill de Blasio via Wikimedia Commons

Keep on Truckling.

"When you need me to stand by you in Washington or anywhere, I will answer the call and I will answer it happily, because that’s my job."

As it is the job of every major-party politician in the United States. And don't you forget it.

This was the newly-elected "progressive" New York City Mayor de Blasio speaking to AIPAC at the New York Hilton last night, as recounted by Philip Weiss.¹ According to The New York Times, this event was a "private” speech. It was kept off his public schedule, and a reporter who attempted to cover the event was ejected by security.  Nothing to see here.

Say Hello to My Little Friend 

By the way, that little fella de Blasio is schmoozing with in the picture above is Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's Foreign Minister.

Lieberman is, shall we say, a colorful character.

Dropping a DIME: Max Blumenthal and the Erosion of Liberal Zionism

Zionism, like capitalism, is losing its aura of beneficence and inevitability, as its fangs become harder to hide. Israel is not the Upper West Side overseas. (No matter what many people on the Upper West Side may like to think.) It is a violently racist colonial enterprise, with all the ideological and practical viciousness that implies. 

This is the implicit conclusion of Max Blumenthal’s latest book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, based on four years of reporting in Israel, which has touched a raw and festering nerve in the American liberal community.  Chris Hedges, who spent seven years as a correspondent in the Middle East, including Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem, calls Goliath “one of the most fearless and honest books ever written about Israel. Blumenthal burrows deep into the dark heart of Israel.”

By “racist,” I mean, first of all, fundamentally ethno-religious supremacist: The inescapable premise of Zionism is that the lives, property, security, fears, hopes, and aspirations – all that constitutes the humanity – of Jewish settlers in historic Palestine trumps that of the indigenous non-Jewish population.  Of course, this kind of supremacism is inevitably unconfined.  Until the next plane hits a building, Americans – even American liberals – might not be overly discomfited by the discounting of Arab Palestinians’ humanity, but Israeli Zionism is becoming increasingly “racist” in a sense that Americans can easily recognize, and liberal Americans not so easily dismiss: